We — a Russian, a Ukrainian and an American — together are making a podcast that teaches children to enjoy great books. We see it as an antidote to the bigotry and animosity dividing the three nations.

TL;DR: a literature professor from Saint Petersburg (Russia), a composer and actors from Kiev (Ukraine), and a producer from Boston (USA) are creating a not-for-profit podcast teaching children to appreciate great books. We see shared appreciation of literature as a way to bridge the ideological divides between the Russian-speaking populations of the three nations.​I am hoping my post will not be taken down for self-promotion: we target the Russian-speaking audience and have nothing to gain from promoting it here. I am mostly posting to brag about what we have accomplished and gather some feedback. I am also hoping that this sub may find our story interesting.​Full story:I am an American of Russian descent, my wife is an American of Ukrainian descent, so our American-born kids are a blend of all three cultures. Our family sees reading as an essential part of a child’s upbringing, so as soon as our daughters learned to read, we sent them on the path of developing a good taste in literature. When I was in high school (long time ago) in Saint Petersburg, I had an amazing literature teacher, the kind you remember through the years. Several years ago I sought out his contact information, and since then he has become our daughters’ guide in the world of books — they meet weekly over Skype, discuss the books they had read that week, and make plans on what to read next. This approach has worked wonderfully: my girls have become avid readers and I am very happy with the reading choices they make and their ability to truly understand literature.​Independently of all that, like everyone else in my circle, I have been growing increasingly horrified of the unraveling of relationships between the three nations that my family has roots in. I see friendships shatter, family members stop speaking to each other. However, I also notice that all the political animosity has not affected the cultural common ground — people on all sides still share many of the same interests when it comes to books, music, film. Having come to this realization, I suggested to my daughters’ literature teacher that we should do something to preserve this common ground for future generations. That is how the idea of a podcast teaching the love of literature to Russian-speaking children all over the world was born. Each episode consists of a short story read by a professional actor, with the teacher giving an brief introduction prior to the reading, and then suggesting topics for follow-up discussion at the end.​From the onset, we have decided that we will strive for the highest quality podcast possible. The market of Russian-language podcasts is by far not as developed as it is in the US, and most of the existing podcasts are still rudimentary. So we set out to find a composer who would write original music for us, and a sound engineer who would ensure professional editing. We already had the Russian on our team (the teacher), the American (me), so the only natural thing to do would be to look for the composer (he later ended up being our sound engineer too) in Ukraine.​Fast forward to today, we have produced and published seven episodes and are getting pretty good responses from the listeners. We introduce young readers to a variety of Russian and American authors (from Chekhov and Tolstoy to O.Henry and Bradbury) and we get listeners from all over the world. Considering that we are entirely self-funded and non-commercial, I am pretty happy with the results so far.​Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to share our story with one of my favorite communities here on reddit.​EDIT: A few folks pm’d me asking for the name, so I figured I’d include it here (didn’t think to do it originally since it doesn’t make much sense for non-Russian speakers). We are called “Зелёная лампа” (Green Lamp) — an allusion to a famous XIX century literary society (among other things). We are online at https://lampa.fm and https://ift.tt/2Nu4ifT. via /r/podcasts https://ift.tt/2IL9Vpf