Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:02I don't even know who I
00:00:05belong to. I belong to my loved ones, to my
00:00:08closest family. I am their own.
00:00:11Let's move to April 2013, when
00:00:14your article
00:00:18bloom on my path, "My Life with Ann Leena" was published. It was a frank
00:00:22article about your home life, focusing
00:00:25on your bedridden mother, who needed 24-hour
00:00:29care. "A place in a nursing home was not
00:00:32possible. This article received a lot
00:00:36of feedback, a lot of sympathy, and a lot
00:00:40of condemnation. It was another such
00:00:43inflammatory boil that you
00:00:46pressed. How do you look at all of that from 13 years
00:00:50ago today?
00:00:53vaatate,
00:00:57It was a deep trauma that happened to us, because
00:01:01it lasted four and a half years,
00:01:04and I have communicated with people who have been in the same situation,
00:01:08and I know, this is now, excuse me, a scientific fact,
00:01:11that people who have been in such a situation, they eventually go
00:01:15insane, they seek help, and this happens within a year and a half.
00:01:18We lasted four and a half years
00:01:21without anyone going insane. Well, it's true,
00:01:25I fled to Käsmu,
00:01:27and my husband then came on weekends,
00:01:30came to Käsmu. So for the weekends, we managed to find a
00:01:33caregiver, and he came to Käsmu, and then that helped him
00:01:37to somehow get over it, but it lasted four and a half
00:01:40years, and it hasn't let me go since, because
00:01:44first, well, as journalists, we have noticed
00:01:47that an interesting discussion has emerged about what happens
00:01:50when an old person falls down at home. Who
00:01:53comes and helps them up? Before, the police did it, now the police no longer
00:01:57want to do it. So who will do it?
00:02:01"When that thing happened with Ann Leena
00:02:03and we asked some city social
00:02:07structures if they could help us, there
00:02:10was a phone line, the person on the other end of the line was silent for three
00:02:14seconds and said, 'Call a friend.'
00:02:18And nothing has changed, in my opinion,
00:02:21you still have to call a friend, and this
00:02:24doesn't let me go either, because we are now in a new
00:02:27situation. It's true, now there is no longer..."
00:02:31but there is another elderly lady, who was once Ann Leena's course mate
00:02:35at the Estonian State Institute of Arts, and she
00:02:38has no more children, her only child
00:02:41died. She is in about the same
00:02:44situation, and now my wife takes care of her.
00:02:48So this thing keeps repeating itself. At the time, when
00:02:50I brought up the eBay topic so well, the eBay topic, this is, by the way, one more thing that
00:02:54I am accused of,
00:02:57this old white middle-aged Estonian man. The man,
00:03:00precisely the man, raises some such
00:03:02problems. A man who no longer
00:03:06gives birth or is not considered a parent, he only expects
00:03:09from others. This accusation, which I reject
00:03:13in my case, that my raising of the eBay topic
00:03:16was not at all due to that, but precisely to the fact that society
00:03:20is aging, and in an aging society, we will eventually
00:03:23be in a situation where one half is bedridden, half
00:03:27of society, and the other half of society is then dealing with their...
00:03:30care, that we are moving in that direction, and
00:03:33state structures are completely unable to do anything about it. Well, then what
00:03:37happens, happens, that we had Ann Leena for four and a half
00:03:40years bedridden, and we
00:03:43didn't get any help, but there were very severe consequences for us
00:03:47personally, I won't say now what, because that would be
00:03:51too personal, but it left its mark, it didn't pass us
00:03:54by without leaving a trace. But let's talk about the social
00:03:58discussion that the article about Ann Leena
00:04:01created. One painful reaction was when
00:04:05an article appeared with the title: "My Life with Andrei
00:04:08Fostov", to which you replied with the article "I,
00:04:12Peeter Kreizberg's Envier". This was about
00:04:15euthanasia and mercy killing,
00:04:18and this is still a topic today, but what struck me in your previous
00:04:21answer was that you said that 13 years have passed
00:04:25and nothing has changed. Does this
00:04:28mean that when a journalist raises a very painful topic
00:04:32in society and gets
00:04:34reactions and it all goes on and
00:04:37lasts, that it doesn't lead anywhere
00:04:40in the end? Mostly it doesn't.
00:04:43The power of journalism is, it's an
00:04:45exaggeration. Here's again, excuse me, we are both
00:04:49journalists, I hold up a mirror to ourselves, that what was once taught
00:04:52at the University of Tartu, the fourth estate, some
00:04:56enormous levers of influence, it's
00:04:58hit or miss. Of course, there have been cases where a journalist
00:05:02removed a minister from office. Once, Postimees journalists succeeded
00:05:05in that. Now, my colleague from Eesti
00:05:09Ekspress succeeded, it seems, one could say.
00:05:12Or the removal of Ando Keskküla from
00:05:16his position. These were some so-called journalistic feats
00:05:20or great achievements, but generally, when we are not talking
00:05:24about certain specific individuals, but about some social
00:05:27phenomena or processes, then we are still relatively powerless
00:05:31to change anything. We look in the mirror, we say we are
00:05:34powerless. I would like to add another look
00:05:37in the mirror here. I read in your article how you were not yet
00:05:4160 and you looked... in the mirror in the swimming pool
00:05:44changing room, how the skin was aging and
00:05:47muscles were sagging. Have you come to terms
00:05:49with that by now? It goes, that one must age, it goes very
00:05:53difficultly, some things happen very, very
00:05:56suddenly. I even thought for a moment that I should
00:05:59start keeping an aging diary,
00:06:02and one of my younger friends, or at least he was a friend before
00:06:06the Gaza conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian, their
00:06:10different interpretations of events, came... my friend, he even really
00:06:14encouraged me to start keeping an aging diary, but that
00:06:18is again such a psychological problem, that all
00:06:22that I said before, that I would still like to stand in front of a mirror that shows me a little
00:06:25more beautiful, that also applies to myself, or well, I don't want to
00:06:28wallow in some physical ailments.
00:06:32Of course, aging is a serious, serious such a serious
00:06:36concern, that I can no longer attend my
00:06:40Defense League exercises, for example. "At some point, I
00:06:43realized that after two days of exercises in the forest on the weekend,
00:06:46I would be completely sick for four days afterwards. I can't
00:06:49do it anymore, the body no longer keeps up
00:06:53with the vibrant spirit.
00:06:57Sonar,
00:07:05today we have as a guest journalist, essayist, and writer Andrei
00:07:08Fostov. Your article about the German
00:07:11right-wing protest party AFD's election victory
00:07:15in one federal state was just published
00:07:19in Eesti Ekspress, and in it was also your prediction
00:07:22that old parties and promises have outlived their time, and voters want
00:07:26something attractive and new and fancy. Why
00:07:30in European countries, is Germany the one that has garnered your greatest
00:07:33attention over the decades?
00:07:36Why not France, why not
00:07:38Great Britain?
00:07:41But here we must go back to university, because
00:07:44during my history studies, we were still required to learn German
00:07:48and master the German language for perfectly understandable reasons,
00:07:51because all our older documents are generally either
00:07:55in German or Russian. These are two languages that an Estonian historian simply
00:07:59must be able to handle. So
00:08:02alongside such language studies, came the knowledge that,
00:08:06generally, if we examine Estonian history or the Estonian people, the Estonian
00:08:10cultural space, God forbid, it falls between Russia and Germany,
00:08:13not, well, not between China and France,
00:08:17not between Turkey and Italy.
00:08:20On one side is Russia, and on the other side is
00:08:23Germany, both of which have not only physically, but also mentally
00:08:27very, very strongly influenced everything that happens
00:08:29here. So therefore, to deal with Estonian history,
00:08:33one must also deal very intensely with the history of both Russia
00:08:36and Germany, and that is what I have done throughout
00:08:40my life. "It's like two
00:08:44blind spots, of course Germany, Germany interests
00:08:47me very much, but as for
00:08:51Alternative for Deutschland, Alternative
00:08:53for Germany, it is a very, very
00:08:57important phenomenon in that, first,
00:09:00Germany is also a central country for Europe, with the largest
00:09:04economy, and it is geographically located
00:09:07in such a place that, if God forbid, if serious
00:09:11problems with Russia should arise here, I don't
00:09:14want to use the word war, but if something
00:09:17like that happens, then all the aid that has to reach here
00:09:20comes through Germany for geographical reasons. So if
00:09:24lunatics come to power in Germany, excuse me, but that's what I'll say, for me they are
00:09:28lunatics, Alternative for Deutschland, which is
00:09:31emphatically Kremlin-friendly, then that also makes our geopolitical
00:09:35situation extremely difficult. You
00:09:38have communicated with immigrants in Germany, what
00:09:42do they... Now you mean immigrants
00:09:45of what kind, those who came to Germany during Mama Merkel's time and sought
00:09:49asylum and received it. I can't say that I have communicated with them massively,
00:09:52but well, there was once indeed a study trip and, well, I
00:09:56have encountered them.
00:09:58Oh, I can't say that it was during some sociological
00:10:02research, but in that sense, they are very
00:10:06understandable people to me,
00:10:08that those countries or
00:10:11those geographical points. "From where they have
00:10:14fled, life cannot be lived very well there in our sense. Civil
00:10:18wars are happening there, there are natural disasters, there are droughts. If
00:10:22we lived in similar conditions, if we thought, 'Why
00:10:25should I, if I have my hands and feet, if I can move,
00:10:29maybe I would move several hundred kilometers, either west
00:10:32or north, and reach a place where
00:10:35I have heard that I can get
00:10:39social assistance, and where I might be welcome, and most importantly, where
00:10:42there is no civil war, no drought, no
00:10:45hunger.' So in that sense, when I communicate
00:10:49with them, it's very easy to scorn these people, but
00:10:52now let's look in the mirror of our history again."
00:10:55"Our boat refugees, when they crossed the Baltic Sea, went to
00:10:58Sweden, went further west,
00:11:02eventually reaching Canada, America, Australia,
00:11:06it's the same logic, well, do we blame them for
00:11:10fleeing from here, when life had truly become almost
00:11:13impossible, and it's just that Baltic refugees
00:11:17in their new host countries did not cause
00:11:20such great protest
00:11:22in those societies.
00:11:25"Actually,
00:11:27as much as we know about the situation in Sweden, our
00:11:30intellectuals were not offered jobs in Sweden in the 40s
00:11:34that they would have deserved based on their qualifications. Our
00:11:38intellectuals, our conductors, were also
00:11:41told to go and work in the forest,
00:11:45and as far as I know, from relatively recent
00:11:48times, this attitude persisted in Sweden for a very long
00:11:52time, by the way, one of my schoolmates once
00:11:56worked as a senior teacher at a gymnasium in Stockholm, or well, an assistant,
00:12:00in short, a senior history teacher,
00:12:02and the fact that he reached such a high position, then
00:12:06one Swedish newspaper once, was
00:12:09it even Svenska Dagbladet, but I won't
00:12:12say that for now, but anyway, wrote an success story about him, saying, 'Look, if you
00:12:16accuse Swedish society of how refugees are excluded from
00:12:20good and important jobs, then look, we have such an example, where an Estonian
00:12:22person has
00:12:25come, an Igor, he was also
00:12:29on the borderline, a borderline phenomenon, he was
00:12:32half-Estonian, half-Ukrainian, he was fully Ukrainian,
00:12:35but very gifted linguistically, it's a shame he went to
00:12:38Sweden. 'Look how high a position he has
00:12:42reached.' So in relation to Estonians, the
00:12:45behavior in some societies was also a bit
00:12:48dismissive, but secondly, what I want to say is that now we come back to
00:12:52the cultural space. I still like to use
00:12:56that phrase, that term, then the Estonian
00:12:59cultural space is still relatively close to the cultural space of the countries
00:13:03where Estonians emigrated, unlike
00:13:06refugees from the Middle East or North Africa or wherever they come from,
00:13:10and that is still such a huge change for them. They cannot
00:13:14cope here, they don't understand what the rules of the game
00:13:17are here, they try to behave as they behaved in their
00:13:19old homeland, and then our mistake is that, I'm now making a very
00:13:23broad generalization, based on Germany, that this
00:13:26multiculturalism and multiculti concept
00:13:29assumed that they would come from there and with their
00:13:32own customs, which may
00:13:35be very different from our customs, but they would somehow still find their
00:13:39niches and then live a somewhat parallel life, enriching
00:13:42at the same time the German-speaking and light
00:13:45culture, light culture is such a close concept to cultural space,
00:13:49they enrich the cultural life of the old
00:13:52European nations, and this was such an
00:13:55idealistic, naive expectation, because
00:13:58reality shows that these things do not go so
00:14:01smoothly, and since these things do not go smoothly at
00:14:05all, then such populist movements
00:14:09like MAGA in America and the AFD in Germany,
00:14:12they gain momentum, and I understand
00:14:15the roots of this phenomenon
00:14:18very well. By the way, I now emphasize to the listeners
00:14:22that understanding does not mean approval.
00:14:25"Although sometimes it's thought that these are synonyms, that if I understand something,
00:14:28it doesn't mean I approve of it. But well, I am
00:14:31such a societal observer, I consciously sometimes put myself in the
00:14:35position of an outsider. It's a little more comfortable and creates some
00:14:39distance. Even with Estonian phenomena
00:14:42and processes, I consciously sometimes take an outsider's
00:14:45position. It's easier for me too.
00:14:49I never miss an opportunity to listen to your comments
00:14:53on Vikerhommik about the Russian-Ukrainian
00:14:56fronts. It seems to me that your information channels are somewhat
00:15:00different from those on which we hear information every day.
00:15:04What channels do you follow to keep
00:15:07yourself informed about events in Europe or
00:15:11Ukraine? After the outbreak of this full-scale
00:15:14war, many Russian journalists, decent Russian
00:15:18journalists, immigrated to the West. And now
00:15:21they have created their own media channels there. It's
00:15:24not only Dozhd or "Rain" in Estonian, but
00:15:28there is also Alexander Plyushchev, he was once
00:15:32one of the prominent figures at Ekho Moskvy, and he has now created his own
00:15:35podcast
00:15:37channel, "Breakfast Show" in the mornings,
00:15:40by the way, and there are a lot of those, well,
00:15:44again, people who have emigrated from Russia, and there are those
00:15:47people declared wanted, who then
00:15:51widely provide, well, analytical
00:15:54material for thought
00:15:56on what is happening in Ukraine. Why do I trust them? Firstly,
00:16:00they are in sharp
00:16:03confrontation with Putin's regime, and
00:16:06secondly, because it is still their own, so to speak,
00:16:10society or former homeland that is at war, they are extremely
00:16:13interested in monitoring these processes, and
00:16:17in some sense, it is still their personal matter, which cannot
00:16:20be said about German, American, French
00:16:24analysts. And
00:16:26by following these sources and channels, I have come to understand an
00:16:30interesting paradox concerning our own
00:16:33media coverage of the Ukrainian war. I have come
00:16:37to the conclusion that most of what is said here
00:16:41is Ukrainian propaganda. Now please take
00:16:43it easy, let's take a deep breath in, take a deep breath
00:16:47out, and I will now explain
00:16:49my
00:16:51thought. It's that old joke about the difference between a scout
00:16:54and a spy. A scout is our guy, a spy is the enemy's
00:16:58guy. What's the difference between a journalist
00:17:01and a propagandist? A journalist is our guy, a propagandist is their
00:17:05guy. Since we sympathize so much with Ukraine,
00:17:08we tend to convey some information or make such
00:17:12conclusions that somehow
00:17:15show that, firstly, we are on Ukraine's side, that we want Ukraine to win, and
00:17:19then we again start glossing over reality. At some point,
00:17:23I actually decided that I would no longer participate in this. I also wrote
00:17:27those war diaries, which we have on Delfi media,
00:17:29and for about a year and a half, I played
00:17:33along, but then I realized that
00:17:36it's impossible to endlessly predict the imminent
00:17:40collapse of Putin's regime. It's impossible to
00:17:43seriously talk about Ukraine inevitably winning,
00:17:46because truth and justice and everything,
00:17:50God himself is on Ukraine's side. The war has now dragged on for the fifth
00:17:53year, no solution is in sight, and all those
00:17:56optimistic stories from back then, in which I myself also participated
00:18:00a little, they retrospectively become,
00:18:04well, what were we doing then, fooling ourselves
00:18:08to make ourselves feel better,
00:18:10and the same thing is happening now with the Middle East conflict, because I very, very
00:18:14closely follow what the BBC or The Guardian, two
00:18:18publications that were once my favorites, write about the Middle East
00:18:21events, then they have become propagandists in the same way,
00:18:25who have then quite clearly taken a pro-Palestinian
00:18:28side, as if that would alleviate
00:18:31the suffering of the people and help
00:18:35change something. I don't know if I answered your
00:18:38question, this is again what we started our conversation with, namely,
00:18:42that we look in the mirror wanting to see what we
00:18:46like, or what we want to believe. Now, are these
00:18:49your sentences? You are what you read,
00:18:53and our first 100 books are more important than the next
00:19:02and Vladimir Putin read in childhood? What
00:19:05books?
00:19:08"Now regarding Lenin, I was left without
00:19:12an answer, but one of Adolf Hitler's
00:19:13favorite writers
00:19:16was Karl May, who wrote amazing
00:19:19stories about Wild West adventures. There was a character called Old
00:19:23Shatterhand, and in my opinion, his companion was
00:19:26Winnetou, and interestingly, that Estonian
00:19:30children's literature in translation didn't really make waves
00:19:34in our region, it seems they only started republishing
00:19:38them during the re-establishment of independence. Some books have come into my hands, but
00:19:41Karl May was in his time at the beginning of the 20th
00:19:45century, he was a very well-known children's author,
00:19:49adventure writer, and Adolf Hitler had probably read all his
00:19:53works, and this led to an interesting consequence,
00:19:56that Hitler during World War II, when things
00:19:59on the Russian front began to go very badly, and he often
00:20:02barked at his generals, German generals, that they didn't know how
00:20:05to fight, then... there's a legend, but perhaps more than a legend,
00:20:09that he gave each general a copy of Karl May's
00:20:12story collection about Old Shatterhand, and said that if they now read
00:20:16these books, they might actually learn how
00:20:18to fight. So in that sense, well, even as an old
00:20:22man, he was essentially 15 years old, he was a teenager, he
00:20:25thought like a teenager. All his projects of building a grand
00:20:29Berlin, rebuilding Linz, rebuilding Linz, his
00:20:33former hometown, one of his hometowns, architecturally,
00:20:36he began... to admit it at the age of 15, and then when he was
00:20:39finally the dictator and ruler of Germany, he wanted to fulfill his
00:20:4215-year-old boy's dreams,
00:20:46well, completely like a person with developmental delay.
00:20:52In front of us here on the studio table is your
00:20:54book, which talks about books that
00:20:58keep you awake at night, and as far as I've
00:21:01heard, this is the first book in a longer
00:21:05series of reading diaries. And I understand that
00:21:08it's not just that you read it and write down your impressions,
00:21:11but you compare
00:21:14translations with the original,
00:21:18you look for recurring
00:21:21patterns with other authors, other
00:21:24works, and you say that this makes reading
00:21:27a slow and demanding
00:21:30task, so it's not a reading diary, it's
00:21:33still work. It's a very interesting
00:21:35idea to read a book, but
00:21:39so deeply that it becomes work.
00:21:42There are such books, the reading of which is indeed work and hard and tough
00:21:45work. For example, Hitler's Mein Kampf,
00:21:49reading it is not exactly a pleasure, but I have
00:21:52somehow managed to get through it. I have never
00:21:56understood Karl Marx's Das Kapital. And I have
00:21:59a feeling that most people haven't read it at all, not even our
00:22:02our diligent leftist theoreticians. They
00:22:05simply know some chapter and then constantly refer
00:22:09to it, and no one has actually read that brick
00:22:12through. But of course, there are books whose reading is pure pleasure, and pleasure in the sense
00:22:16that, well, if you just asked me, that...
00:22:20seeking parallels, that seeking means such a thing
00:22:23as you take a flashlight and then start
00:22:26rummaging in some dark corners and then searching. It's not
00:22:30quite like that for me. During reading, certain parallels just
00:22:33arise in my mind.
00:22:36When did I notice that? I guess when the publisher, it was
00:22:40Päike ja Pilv, asked me to
00:22:44write an afterword for "The Dairyman of Mäeküla,"
00:22:47Vilde's "The Dairyman of Mäeküla." And
00:22:51I gladly took on this task, and then I suddenly discovered
00:22:55that, well, I started
00:22:58seeing "Prillupimari," the red skirt,
00:23:02the red color, which the writer refers to, that it's not
00:23:05just there. The same motive is in one of Leo Tolstoy's
00:23:08short stories, in one of Leo Tolstoy's short stories, which was published
00:23:11earlier than "The Dairyman of Mäeküla," that there is also a
00:23:15farm woman who has a relationship with a landlord, and her characteristic color is red.
00:23:18"And I wrote it down
00:23:21just like that, and then I discovered that when
00:23:24I analyze literary texts,
00:23:27then these connections start
00:23:30forming, and why not use that in future
00:23:34work, in the current book, "Books that keep me awake at
00:23:38night." I have simply followed this method, not that I
00:23:41would have painfully acquired the method, it just
00:23:45came naturally.
00:23:48and this this..." searching for parallels and
00:23:51finding some patterns or partly perhaps
00:23:54inventing them, just like I, well, maybe I really
00:23:58invented a connection between Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Duve
00:24:02Jansson's Moomintrolls, but this is not
00:24:05an academic text. I just take the position
00:24:08of a simple reader, and what rushes through my mind
00:24:12while reading, well, who can analyze that,
00:24:15but if it brings
00:24:17joy to readers and... they said they read these
00:24:21things with great pleasure, then that's great. The fact that you don't
00:24:25have an academic approach makes your
00:24:28reading diaries very charming.
00:24:32That was an interview with Andrei Fostov. Thank you very much. I am
00:24:35Kaja Kärner, and we will meet the listener next week. Until then!
00:25:01When spring quickly again so tenderly
00:25:05warms I
00:25:08my bed stays empty at night my bed stays empty
00:25:11the bed cannot hum
00:25:14no when the gentle wind caresses
00:25:18and the birds sing. joy songs
00:25:21great,
00:25:23from my soul, peace, suddenly comes, suddenly
00:25:27comes, a clear
00:25:29sound,
00:25:33high in the blue sky endless
00:25:36year after year a cloud after
00:25:38sails,
00:25:40I know that you, my cloud, can also
00:25:44see,
00:25:48come to me now, it's not so good, I
00:25:51don't ask for anything more,
00:25:55but I want to give you
00:25:58everything.
00:26:03"when a flame burns in hearts and great
00:26:05happiness still
00:26:08feels,
00:26:10when a kiss burns my mouth and
00:26:13a warm hand caresses me again
00:26:17and again, then flowers
00:26:20on my path again peace finds
00:26:23me again,
00:26:27high in the blue sky fragmentation scrapes
00:26:31a cloud and' still sails,
00:26:35I know that you, my film, can also
00:26:38see,
00:26:42come to me now, be so
00:26:45peaceful, I don't ask
00:26:48for anything more, but I want to
00:26:52give you
00:26:53everything,
00:26:58when a flame burns in hearts and great happiness
00:27:01still
00:27:03feels,
00:27:05when greatness burns my mouth and
00:27:08a warm hand caresses me again
00:27:11and again, then flowers bloom on my
00:27:14path again peace finds
00:27:18me, ni wewe.