This week's special guest Michaela Moua, vice-chair of the Anti-Racist Forum and former national basketball player, talks about life as an Afro-Finn. We also delve into the myth of Finnish honesty and look at how social isolation plays into the Finnish "päntsdrunk" me-time phenomenon, which means sitting at home alone in your underwear drinking. Lars Leemann of Finland's National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) tells APN that unemployed people are three times more likely to say that they sometimes or constantly feel lonely compared to those in the workforce.
APN listeners challenge the notion of honesty as an innate component of Finnish identity. This week Finns Party MP Laura Huhtasaari's academic plagiarism was back in the spotlight as news emerged that she blocked Jyväskylä University from using plagiarism-detecting software to review her Master's thesis. We also discuss a corruption case in Turku, where the city overhauled its parking meter system after employees stole nearly one million euros from the machines.
In our dose of weekly news we take a look at Finland signing up to a defence coalition led by France, the Foreign Ministry re-opening an embassy in Baghdad after 30 years, and the curious case of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses seeking asylum in Finland.
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The All Points North podcast is a weekly look at what's going on in Finland. Subscribe via iTunes (and leave a review!), listen on Spotify and Yle Areena or find it on your favourite podcatching app or via our RSS feed.
This week's show was presented by Denise Wall and Mark B. Odom with guest Michaela Moua. The show's reporter and producer was Zena Iovino, and this week's sound engineer was Tuomas Vauhkonen.