Здравствуйте и добро пожаловать … Hello and welcome to the very first 'Questions and Answers' edition of A Spoonful of Russian Podcast. Coming to you from a small home studio in beautiful Charlotte, North Carolina. Instead of trying to find time to get back to each and everyone of you individually through email, I decided to start accumulating the questions and answering them in a podcast. I am thinking of getting one out once a month maybe. I am getting questions sporadically. Sometimes several a day, sometimes nothing for days in a row. My hope is to have a large pool of questions to pull from. That way you can count on regular Q&A sessions. Ways to get your questions over to me: - contact form on my site: speakrussian.blogspot.com - Leave a quick voicemail calling: 209-980-7877 (209-980-RUSS) - email: [email protected] - twitter: @russianspoonful (with hashtag #askNataliaW ) - YouTube: youtube.com/spoonfulofrussian I am aware that many of you prefer to listen to podcasts rather than go to my YouTube channel and view content there. I myself am an avid listener of a handful of podcasts. When I am cooking in my kitchen or lifting weights in my garage I do not really want to look at a video. Truth is we all consume media in different ways depending on our activities. So, hopefully you, guys, will find this format useful and enjoyable. This would typically be a time in a podcast where I'd share with you a quick word from my sponsors, but I don't have any sponsors! I've been podcasting since 2005 when the whole podcast phenomena was rolled out by Steve Jobs. Since then several companies approached me, but none of them seemed like a good match for the content of this podcast. So, I'm still waiting for my advertising 'prince' … for the business marriage made in Heaven. Make me an offer I can't refuse, and you will not be 'sleeping with the fishes'. So if you are a huge corporation with lots of spare change in your pockets listening to me now, reach out by emailing me: [email protected] ### What do you think about the Hollywood actors' Russian accent? MOSFILM (Мосфильм) has been the largest and oldest film studio in Russia. It was founded in 1920 and its output includes most of the widely-acclaimed Soviet-era films. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosfilm https://www.youtube.com/mosfilm Some of my favorites: -  1968 War and Peace (Война и Мир) -  1968 The Diamond Arm (Бриллиантовая Рука) -  1973  Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (Иван Васильевич меняет профессию) -  1975 The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy your Banya! (Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!) -  1977 Office Romance (Служебный Романс) -  1979 Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears (Москва Слезам не Верит) -  1985 Love and Doves (Любовь и Голуби) Here's the interview with Andrei Tarkovsky, a critically acclaimed Soviet film director: https://vimeo.com/2963155 ### In the age of instant information exchange and assimilation of cultures do Russian emigrants still hold on to some "Russian-only" traditions and ways? That is a great question. Very well-constructed I might add:) I agree that today cultural borders are getting less and less defined. Internet, I think, is mainly to thank for that. I remember times when the only way I could get info about foreign countries was through the hand-written letters of my pen pals. Back in the 1980s our TV had only 2 channels and both of them were run by the government. Radio was a bit different. One could catch BBC World Radio service or Voice of America station and get news that way. But being a little girl that was not my thing. Now Russians are very much cosmopolitan and have adapted the ways of the West into their everyday lives. But when a Russian moves