Lifestyle
'The Bachelor,' Ukraine edition, features a veteran who lost both legs in the war
Oleksandr Budko, a 28-year-old Ukrainian war veteran, whose military call sign is Teren, poses for a portrait in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. Budko, a double amputee, participated in the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
KYIV, Ukraine — Oleksandr Budko looks like a leading man. He’s sandy-haired and blue-eyed, with muscular tattooed arms and the chiseled face of a movie star.
“I’m a military veteran, an activist and writer. And I’m also The Bachelor,” he says in this season’s Ukrainian edition of the popular reality TV franchise.
The Bachelor, or Kholostiak in Ukrainian, is produced by Starlight Media and Warner Bros. International Television, and it airs on STB, a Ukrainian channel. This season, its 13th, premiered on Nov. 1.
Inna Bielien, 29, a German language translator, poses for a portrait at home in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 13. She is one of the female contestant of the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
In one episode, Budko is on a rock-climbing date with a wholesome translator named Inna Bielien.
“Oh my God,” she says, as she hangs off the cliff.
“Don’t worry, I will be very close, right behind you,” he says, as he helps her scale the rock face.
What goes unsaid is that Budko is doing this on prosthetic legs, clearly visible because he’s wearing shorts. He’s a double amputee. He represents the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have lost limbs since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. An adviser to Ukraine’s Sports and Youth Ministry put the number at around 100,000 last year.
Oleksandr Budko, with the call sign Teren, lost both legs on the front line in Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Their visibility — in fashion magazines, on catwalks and now a popular reality TV series — shows how much the war has affected Ukraine.
“Still,” he tells NPR in an interview, “there is still a problem with stigma. I went on The Bachelor to help address it.”
“I realized then I would lose my legs”
Budko, 28, grew up in western Ukraine and was working as a barista in a coffeeshop in Kyiv when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He enlisted and was soon on the front line. That summer, his unit had stalled while trying to push Russian troops out of northeastern Ukraine. During a lull in the fighting, the unit decided to rest. Budko lay down in a trench.
“Then something hit that caused the trench to crumble,” he says.
Russian troops had shelled the trench. Budko was buried in earth, twisting in pain as his fellow soldiers dug him out.
“I was conscious the entire time,” he says. “And I also realized then that I would lose my legs.”
Budko recovered through intensive, and often excruciating, physical therapy. He threw himself into sports, even competing in swimming at the 2023 Invictus Games. He also wrote a book and performed in a modern ballet.
“There was no point in me being angry at anyone or anything about what happened,” he said. “It was better to do something good instead.”
Oleksandr Budko tries to ride a unicycle at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. He goes to rehabilitation centers to share the information on the process of his recovery, logistics to obtain prosthetics and about the possibilities for injured veterans.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
In the opening to The Bachelor, he jumps on a motorcycle, tucks a red rose into his leather vest-jacket, and speeds away. Each episode features beautiful young women vying for his attention, often with the built-in melodrama typical of reality shows.
“I wanted to show the possibilities,” he says. “I wanted to give people faith.”
“You are examples of courage and heroism”
The people he’s talking about are fellow wounded veterans. Budko visits them often, and they’re a tough crowd — exhausted, skeptical, emotionally distant.
“They never allow themselves to show any feelings of failure,” he says.
On a recent afternoon, he stops by a hospital in Kyiv where dozens of veterans are recovering from amputations. He cringes when he hears their screams of pain during physical therapy.
Injured soldiers at the Recovery rehabilitation center listen to Oleksandr Budko, a 28-year-old veteran, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. During his visits to rehabs, soldiers ask Budko lots of practical questions about things like prosthetics and health care.
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko walks into a room filled with wounded soldiers in wheelchairs and sitting on beds. He introduces himself with his military call sign, Teren. It’s the name of a thorny wild plum. In Ukrainian folklore, it symbolizes obstacles and overcoming them.
“Do not focus only on your injury, because remember — you are examples of courage and heroism,” he tells the soldiers. “You are not disabled.”
Rostyslav Andrusenko, a doctor helping the men recover, says many are depressed. They fear they will no longer be useful to their families or society.
“They ask me if they will ever walk again or play football with their friends or help their kids, all the everyday things that they did before,” Andrusenko says.
Oleksandr Budko, whose military call sign is Teren, talks to injured soldiers at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko gives a pep talk to the soldiers and also cracks a few jokes that don’t quite land. The men politely clap when he finishes and then ask a lot of practical questions, like where to get the best prosthetics.
Mykola Kovalenko, a married father of two, badly injured his leg on the front line after a mine exploded and may have to have it amputated. He asks Budko how to navigate medical bureaucracy, which he equates to “passing through the seven circles of hell.”
Budko promises to help, and Kovalenko finally cracks a smile. He says his wife and two teenage daughters love this season of The Bachelor.
Ukrainian war veteran Oleksandr Budko (right) talks to an injured soldier, Mykola Kovalenko, 36, at the Recovery rehabilitation center in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
“What he is doing is very helpful,” Kovalenko says. “He is showing guys like me, guys who are injured, that all is not lost, that we shouldn’t give up, that we should keep trying.”
Budko says soldiers rarely discuss their feelings about relationships and self-image with him. He does offer his number, though, in case they do want to talk at some point.
“Everyone has their own sensitive topics that they’re ashamed to talk about,” he says, including intimacy and the fear of being pitied by potential partners.
Love and war
Inna Bielien, 29, German language translator who is a contestant on the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor, shows a photo from behind the scenes of show, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 13.
Oksana Parafeniuk/for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk/for NPR
The war has also touched the women on the show. One is a widow whose husband was killed on the front line. Another is a soldier. Inna Bielien, the translator on the rock-climbing date, is also a humanitarian volunteer who sources and sends supplies to Ukraine’s troops.
NPR meets her in her stylish apartment in a Kyiv neighborhood that’s often hit by Russian drones. She talks about a soldier, Vadym, she loved who was killed early in the war. She says she was still holding out hope when she got the call about him.
“I remember thinking, Lord, I hope he’s alive, even with no arms and no legs, because it is better to come back without limbs than not come back at all,” she says.
Even so, she says, many Ukrainians struggle to talk to wounded veterans.
“I was told that if you see a soldier, you say thank you and put your hand to your heart,” Bielien says. “Asking about amputations, whether that crosses personal boundaries, that is still new for us.”
Oleksandr Budko talks to a participant at the Donbas Media Forum conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 18. Budko, a Ukrainian veteran who lost both legs on the front line, stars in the Ukrainian version of the TV show The Bachelor.
Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
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Oksana Parafeniuk for NPR
Budko says the series helped show that it’s OK to ask questions, especially when it comes to intimacy.
“Like, ‘Does it hurt when I touch your limbs there?’ and so on,” he says.
Budko says he feels he has done some good on the show. And he now has a girlfriend, but won’t say if it’s Bielien, who says she fell in love with him, or someone else.
He can’t reveal anything, he says, until the season finale on Friday.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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