Spring brings a refreshing sense of renewal and new strength. It’s a time for the new to sprout and the old to be revived. Much like this green season, EstoCast, the podcast produced by VEMU Estonian Museum Canada, its project Estonian Music Week, and Estonian Life newspaper, continues to grow, evolve, and thrive.
We have a healthy listener base that keeps on steadily expanding in size and reach, now truly reaching to every corner of the world. We make sure to introduce new individuals spanning all fields, such as the arts, history, language studies, as well as established Canadian and Estonian artists, musicians, historians, and more.
With the start of the year, we continued with our 3rd season, which has been our most successful to date. 2025 has been declared as the Year of the Estonian Book, to celebrate the passing of 500 years since the f irst publication to include Estonian texts was published. In celebration of this, we have brought the Year of the Book in as one of the overarching theme for this year’s podcast episodes. Two of the latest Estonian episodes have been with interesting, captivating individuals who have a strong connection to books and literature. At the beginning of February, we spoke with literary scholar, semiotician, and lecturer at the University of Toronto, Kadri Tüür. She told us all about how books came into her life, what she thinks of mandatory literature studies in school programs, how English is affecting how youth speak Estonian, and more. Our latest episode is with 98 year old Toronto-Estonian author Eerik Purje. He delves into how and why he found his true calling as an author of novels and memoirs later on his life what his creative process is like, which renowned authors he has had the pleasure to meet, among other topics. We have many more planned literary guests visiting the studio in the near future, so stay tuned!
For English episodes, we’ve had great guests come into the studio at the beginning of the year. We’ve spoken with filmmaker Karl Raudsepp Hearne about his latest film which premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and about his family’s Estonian diaspora legacy in Canada. Illustrator of children’s literature and author, Gerda Märtens, also visited us to talk about what the experience and process of creating a children’s picture book is like, and how Italy has influenced her work.
This May, Estonian Music Week festival in Toronto is celebrating it’s 5th anniversary and in celebration of this, we are promoting artists performing at the festival in the upcoming spring episodes. We are going to have many exciting guests, including a fascinating interview with Estonian musician Katariina Tirmaste and member of one of Canada’s premiere a cappella groups, Elora Burns.
The spring weather is calling all of us to spend more time out in nature, so why not take us with you on your next walk or commute to work? Keep your eyes and ears peeled for what we have in store, there’s something for everyone in our podcast. Happy listening!