Every Friday we run a longer interview in our programme with people who have been in the news, done something odd, funny, passionate, quirky or noteworthy. But we also tell stories of personal challenges and victories.

The Swedish National Agency for Education and the School Inspectorate published a report Thursday, which concluded that the performance gap between the best and worst schools in the country has widened dramatically. Pupils with better off parents have on the whole benefited from the Swedish model of school choice, it says, a choice opened up by the introduction of free schools, which are publically funded, privately run education establishments.

Besides Minecraft, Spotify and Skype, this country is also the birthplace of the notorious file-sharing site the Pirate Bay. There’s widespread fast Internet, but will the infrastructure handle the shift to mobile services?

To find out about Sweden’s online world, we talked to the editor-in-chief of Computer Sweden Jörgen Lindqvist.

Gudrun Schyman, one of the most colourful politicians in recent Swedish history has made a comeback this week. Once the outspoken and controversial leader of the Left Party she quit after a tax scandal and helped start a new political movement called Feminist Initiative about a decade ago

Radio Sweden's Friday guest is a man who has plenty of courage. In fact he's co-written a courage calendar which honours 365 people who in someway or another have shown exceptional courage. Former Harvard professor Brian Palmer is a social anthropologist who is now a Swedish citizen and lecturers at Uppsala University. His Raoul Wallenberg calendar was released to tie in with last year's centerary celebration of the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.   

She only took up singing a couple of years ago but a lot has happened in a very short space of time for Gothenburg singer Miriam Bryant who has been tipped for stardom in 2013. The 22-year-old's soulful voice has been compared to that of UK star Adele in the Swedish press. Her debut album "Raised in Rain" is out next week and she joined Dave Russell at Broadcasting House in Stockholm as Radio Sweden's Friday Guest.

This week Stockholm saw the first state visit by a Turkish head of state since the days of the Ottoman Empire. President Abdullah Gül and a 200-man strong delegation was here to strengthen ties between Sweden and Turkey and move negotiations for Turkish membership of the EU forward.

Radio Sweden's Friday guest today is writer/director Lisa James-Larsson. The 34-year-old Swede, who grew up in London, has enjoyed success here with the release of her debut feature film "Ego" which has been riding high in the Swedish charts since it was released at the end of January.

Our Friday guest this week is Robert Hårdh, Executive Director of the Swedish-based human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders. They work primarily to help human rights activists who are facing persecution themselves. And incidently Robert Hårdh is one of the few real people to be mentioned by name in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.

A photo of Gazans carrying two children and their father killed in an Israeli air strike has won the 2012 World Press Photo award for Swedish photographer Paul Hansen. Radio Sweden speaks to him about taking this picture and life as a photographer.

Radio Sweden's Friday guest is Stockholmer, Stefan Nilsson, a professional trendspotter, who has been predicting what will be popular in Sweden and abroad for over a decade, reveals what he thinks will be hot in 2013.

Among his predictions are that minimalism will make a comeback, that urban farming will be popular, and that watermelon will be the big fruit this year.

In this part of the world, dying suddenly is pretty rare. The vast majority of us, about one in five, will be able to prepare for it. Should we be allowed to speed up the process? Should we have the right to decide when to call it quits - when to die?

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" is the debut novel by Ransom Riggs, an L.A based writer and filmmaker. The book tells the Gothic tale of a 16 year old boy, Jacob Portman, who follows clues from his grandfather's old photographs which lead him to an abandoned orphanage on a Welsh island. The story mixes fiction and photography which the author found at swap meets in Florida.

She has appeared in over 100 hardcore porn movies since making her debut in America as a 27-year-old glamour model from Sweden.

Now 36, Johanna, better known in the adult entertainment world as Puma Swede, has written a book about her experiences and what she calls the "myths and reality" of working in pornography. 

"My life as a porn star" has been released in Sweden and Puma Swede dropped into the Radio Sweden studio for a chat.