Chess City: A Monument to an Impossible Dream

(Daniel as Contributor) 

Radio producer Gary Waleik and I had so much fun working together on the Gaddafi piece that we later collaborated on a story about Chess City, the fantastical vanity project of the former president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Iliumzhinov. Gary did a great job tracking down people who had actually played chess there, as opposed to myself, who simply turned up one day and gazed into an abyss of abandonment.

Listen here