The People

People, today, I'm in Saudi Arabia! Saudi Arabia is a country of contrasts, where camels with Botox take part in beauty contests and luxury meets rigid traditions. Here you'll learn what you can be executed for, what rights women have and why polygamy is still considered the norm. I walked through shopping centers, changed into traditional clothes, tasted local dishes, visited a camel auction and talked to women from Russia who married Saudis. How do they live in a world where oil has brought untold wealth and where there are almost no poor people left? This is Lyadov and How People Live. Let's go! This is not just a travel channel. This is a collection of documentaries about the lives of people in different parts of our planet. Here you will not see beautiful staged images. This channel is about something else. About reality, honest and sometimes frightening.

People, today, we are at the most extreme point in Jakarta - at Asia's largest landfill, where people live, eat and die amidst mountains of garbage and toxic fumes. It is here, on the giant dump, that an entire village has been set up. And while some people dump garbage here, others literally live with it. Our reporter Stas Guryanov will dive into both worlds of the capital of Indonesia: from slums on garbage hills to neighborhoods for the super-rich. He also visited the dirtiest river in the world and tasted a delicacy not for the faint-hearted - cobra's blood. Jakarta is a city of extreme poverty and luxury, a place where people live, eat and die on garbage dumps under the shadow of skyscrapers. This is The People project from Jakarta, Indonesia!

People, today, we're in Colombia, a country torn by an endless dr@g war that’s still living in the lingering shadow of the late Pablo Escobar. We’ll take you to the seediest neighborhoods of Medellín. They are the very same areas where Escobar once recruited members for his cartel, which later grew into a massive drug empire. This episode was filmed for you by Vadim Cherepanov. Vadim is more than a traveler; he’s also a professional gemologist, an expert in precious stones. He has traveled across the globe in search of various gems — from the mines of Myanmar and Tanzania to the rugged terrains of Afghanistan. These expeditions often turn into absolutely wild, mind-blowing adventures. Why? Because to find precious gems, you have to go really deep —and that often means venturing into some of the most insane and dangerous places on Earth.

People, in our previous episode from Colombia we told the story of Jaime Ancancio, and Today, we’re going to Medellín, Colombia’s most dangerous city and the home town of Pablo Escobar. Today we meet our colleague from Medellín, Abram. The man knows the street and knows its laws. So he decided to take us on a tour of the city. Let's take a look. Show us around. Are you sure? Yes, let's go. You're going to see the creepiest thing. I've seen a lot, but this time I was impressed. I thought I'd seen it all, but no. This neighborhood is called the Bronx of Medellín. It’s the city’s most dangerous hood that literally looks like hell on Earth.

People, today we are in India. Our reporter Alex Pototski has spent a few days in the city of Varanasi, a place that shocked even me! Varanasi is a Hindu city where thousands of people dream of burning their bodies in a sacred bonfire on the banks of the Ganges River. Those born into a poor family - an overwhelming number - are condemned to a life of poverty for generations. Some people eat the leftover meat: they are considered sacred diviners. Alex went in search of one of them... but how that turned out... see for yourself. In any case, the episode is very nice. Overall, it's very cool. This is Lyadov and How people live from India. This is not just a travel channel. This is a collection of documentaries about the lives of people in different parts of our planet. Here you will not see beautiful staged images. This channel is about something else. About reality, honest and sometimes frightening.

People, today we set sail for Antarctica. Our mission is to sail from a small town at the southern tip of Argentina in South America to the coldest continent in the world. We’re going there on a small yacht that can take up to 13 people. And we’ll have to cross the Drake Passage on it. Just so you know, the Drake Passage is considered one of the most treacherous voyages for ships to make because this fairly narrow and deep passage is the place of the most powerful convergence of seas due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It will take us five days to reach Antarctica on this ship, and there we’ll see how people live at the Antarctic stations.

People, today I'm in Vorkuta, a place with insanely harsh weather just north of the Arctic Circle. A while back, the USSR had a need to develop this land, so they built a full-scale city and mining towns around it. Decades later, all of them have turned into ghost towns, crumbling like this. Yet, some people are still stranded here, and they’re desperate to leave.

People, today, we’re in Thailand — but not the Thailand you’ve seen in a million videos. We’re about to show you the most unusual islands in this country—like an island that is closed to tourists for six months per year, and an island that never existed in the first place. This video was filmed by our project’s director and cameraman Stan, who nearly got washed off into the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean trying to get the perfect shot. And to make his debut as a film author, he even asked a monk for his blessing. This is Lyadov and How people live from Thailand.

People, today, I'm in Scotland. I am headed to what might be Scotland’s most mysterious location. It’s on the A70 road. This is where what’s widely known as an alien abduction of two people allegedly occurred. Two men claimed they were driving down this very road when a UFO resembling a two-tier flying saucer hovered right above them. This spot is still believed to attract extraterrestrial activity. I’m not sh*tting you. In fact, the UK Ministry of Defence investigated the case. The incident happened in 1992, and when documents were declassified in 2012, it became known that they took it extremely seriously, conducted a full investigation and issued an official report.

People, you’ve never seen a country like this. There have NEVER been a single election here. One man has been in power for all the 30-something years of the nation’s entire existence. None of the social networks, like WhatsApp work here properly. With VPN or without VPN, you can’t open them up. Locals are not allowed to leave the country. They’re not allowed to buy US dollars. You can’t even freely buy some fuel and drive around the country - that requires a permission. Yet bizarrely, it’s very safe and clean, and you won’t see here the endless slums like in most other African countries. Foreigners can safely walk around here, and locals greet them with a smile. This is Lyadov, and today we’re in Eritrea, the most closed-off country on our planet after North Korea. The poverty here is staggering, and the nation is ruled by one of the world’s most extreme authoritarian regimes. And yet, local people here are astonishingly, unbelievably kind.

LA is one of the most fascinating places on our planet. Just think about it: it is the largest city in California, and even Americans say that California has a special standing among all other states, it’s almost like a country within a country. Can you wrap your head around just this one fact that California’s GDP is higher than almost any other country’s on the planet? So the fact is that only the United States in their entirety, China, and Germany are wealthier than California. And no one else. However, California also knows what poverty is. And we’re not talking about just a handful of homeless people here and there. We’re talking about entire streets and neighborhoods of homeless people. This is the city where luxury and poverty exist side by side, where glamorous communities are door to door with poor hoods where visitors are advised not to go. All life is literally hanging there by a thread. And today, our reporter Alex Malakhov is taking you there to show you how people live.

People, today, I'm in Transinistria, the country that doesn't exists on the map. So what is Transnistria? In simple terms, it’s an unrecognized breakaway republic backed by Russia. It declared its independence some 30 years ago. Transnistria was part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, which, in turn, was part of the Soviet Union. Once the USSR got dissolved in 1991, many of its former republics went on to claim independence as new nation states. However, in Moldova, an internal conflict developed between the two parts of the republic separated by the Dniester River. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Moldova - then part of the USSR - declared independence. But the region on the left bank of the Dniester refused to be part the new Moldovan state. The standoff quickly escalated into an armed conflict. Today I will show you how people live in an unrecognized country on the border with Ukraine. This is Lyadov and How people live from Transinistria.

People, today, we’re in Malaysia, in the city of Kuala Lumpur. A city that, thanks to smart economic policies and natural resources, has grown into one of the world’s top 40 major urban agglomerations. Like any big city, it also has its homeless people, street beggars, sex workers... and migrants who come here from less developed countries and often end up effectively enslaved. But at the same time, it’s a super safe city. It is vibrant, loud day and night, fragrant, and exotic. This is Lyadov and How people live from Malaysia. This is not just a travel channel. This is a collection of documentaries about the lives of people in different parts of our planet. Here you will not see beautiful staged images. This channel is about something else. About reality, honest and sometimes frightening.

This is Lyadov, and today I'm in a city that's literally sinking into the ground. It is still a home to 145,000 people, and many live in apartment blocks built directly above abandoned potash mines. Because of the unique geology of these mines, parts of the city keeps falling into massive sinkholes that swallow roads, vehicles, and even entire buildings. Today I'll show you what life is like in Berezniki, Perm Krai, Russia. This is Lyadov reporting on the ground. This is not just a travel channel. This is a collection of documentaries about the lives of people in different parts of our planet. Here you will not see beautiful staged images. This channel is about something else. About reality, honest and sometimes frightening.

This is Lyadov, and today’s episode comes to you from Singapore. We generally think of Singapore as a very advanced city with a high standard of living, super clean streets, perfect order, exorbitant prices, fintech HQs, an ultra-modern port, and so on. And yes, all of that is true. But this place has a darker side to it as well. Today, The People’s project reporter Alex Pototsky will to talk to some of the former bosses of the triads, the Chinese transnational organized crime syndicate, visit a place where you can get anything illegal and investigate the crime situation on the streets of the world’s most law-abiding country. This is The People project and Alex Pototsky exploring the dark side of Singapore.

People, today I am in Nigeria, on the white-sand beach of the Gulf of Guinea. Nigeria is nothing like Eritrea or Somalia. Nigeria is a huge country with a population larger than Russia's. With a total of 230 million people, Nigeria has about 90 million more than Russia does. And while for some time, the Gulf of Guinea was associated exclusively with pirates who attacked international vessels, today Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. Really, it's one of the countries that produces a lion’s share of the entire continent’s GDP.