From a young age, Takis knew he wanted to spend his life close to nature—surrounded by trees, birds, flowers, and, of course… bears. In the village of Skliro, where he was born, he built a cabin at the edge of the forest, right next to the country’s largest bear habitat.
This podcast is part of the Outcasts series.
Narrator: Takis Voglidis
Researcher: Athanasios Stratakis
Podcast production: Christos Georgoudakis
Sound design: Spyros Lymperopoulos
Sound editing: Nikolas Tsimplakis
Istorima is the largest oral history project in Greece. Over 1,000 young researchers have set out to find storytellers, to listen, to gather, and to preserve personal histories from all corners of the country—stories of place and belonging, of love and transformation, of past and present. These are stories that rarely make it into history books, stories at risk of being lost to time.
The project was founded by journalist Sofia Papaioannou and historian Katherine Fleming.