The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
The Europeans is a fresh and entertaining weekly podcast about European politics and culture, recorded each week between Paris and Amsterdam with fascinating guests joining from across Europe. This multiple award-winning podcast fills you in on the major European politics stories and other European news of the week, as well as fun and quirky nuggets that have been missed by most media outlets. Hosted by Katy Lee, a journalist based in Paris, and Dominic Kraemer, an opera singer in Amsterdam, The Europeans covers everything from elections and climate policy to the best new European films and TV shows. We also produce investigative podcasts about everything from the European farming lobby to oat milk. Yes, oat milk. Katy and Dominic are old friends, and the warmth and intimacy of their conversations will soon make you feel like you’ve known them a long time too. They approach topics with a light and humorous tone that makes The Europeans stand out from other European news podcasts, while remaining journalistically rigorous and meticulously fact-checked. The Europeans has been recommended by The New York Times, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, The Financial Times, and many other outlets. Katy Lee, a British-French reporter, has written for major outlets including The Guardian, Politico Europe, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Foreign Policy and The New Statesman for more than a decade, covering French and European politics and more recently, climate change. Dominic Kraemer, a British-German opera singer, performs across Europe when he is not co-hosting The Europeans, with roles recently at the Staatsoper in Berlin, the Dutch National Opera and the Münchener Biennale. The Europeans’ team is completed by producers Katz Laszlo in Amsterdam and Wojciech Oleksiak in Warsaw. You’ll hear them joining Katy and Dominic from time to time, particularly during investigative episodes like ‘The Oatly Chronicles’ and ‘The Big-Agri Bully Boys’. The Europeans’ breezy, informal approach to covering European news has won awards such as a Covering Climate Now award for an episode about the Swiss women who sued their government at the European Court of Human Rights demanding more climate action; Germany’s prestigious CIVIS Media Prize for ‘Mohamed’, an episode that explores the everyday life of a young undocumented man in Amsterdam; and best LGBTQIA+ short at the MiraBan UK Film Awards for ‘Josh and Franco’, the coming-of-age story of a father and son, both gay. Our guests have included everyone from major figures in European politics such as Alexander Stubb, now the President of Finland, and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, to star chefs Asma Khan and Christian Puglisi, celebrated illustrator Christoph Niemann, and environmentalist George Monbiot. Since launching in 2017, we’ve talked about everything from elections in France, Italy and many more countries besides, to the politics of halloumi cheese in Cyprus, to why Donald Trump is so hard for TV interpreters to translate. We pride ourselves on covering European politics, European news and European culture from a pan-European perspective. You’ll often hear stories on The Europeans from parts of the continent that don’t usually receive enough attention from major international media outlets, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. You might enjoy The Europeans if you also enjoy one of these other podcasts: The News Agents, On the Media, Today in Focus, Inside Europe, The Journal, EU Confidential, The Daily, The Globalist, Reasons to be Cheerful, The Media Show, Power Play, and The New Statesman. Whether you’re already a European news nerd, or simply someone who’d like to be better informed about what’s happening across Europe, The Europeans is the podcast for you.
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Episodes
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
In 1932, Poland became one of the first countries in Europe to decriminalise homosexuality; today it's one of the most hostile on the continent when it comes to LGBTQ rights. This week historian Kamil Karczewski joins us to discuss Poland's little-known history as a queer pioneer, and what has changed since. We're also talking about France's crackdown on domestic flights and Ireland's amazingly successful experiment with the four-day week. Oh, and we pay a visit to the EU metaverse, so that you don't have to.
You can follow Kamil on Twitter here, and visit the EU's Global Gateway metaverse site here. Good luck, and let us know if you make it inside!
This week's Isolation Inspiration: Règle 30, TechTrash, and Inside the Mind of a Cat. You can follow the Savitsky Cats on Instagram here.
Don't forget to sign up to support the podcast this week if you'd like to join the live recording of our Christmas episode on December 12! We're hugely grateful to everyone who chips in so that we can keep making the show. You can join us at patreon.com/europeanspodcast, and many currencies are available.
Thanks for listening!
02:22 Good Week: France's crackdown on domestic flights
09:36 Bad Week: The EU's metaverse fiesta flop
22:23 Interview: Kamil Karczewski on Poland's little-known queer history
38:16 Isolation Inspiration: Règle 30, Tech Trash, and 'Inside the Mind of a Cat'
42:22 Happy Ending: Ireland's four-day working week is a roaring success
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
When reports emerged of Chinese 'police service stations' operating in Europe, alarm bells began ringing across the continent. But what exactly is going on at these sites, and how worried should we be about them? This week we ring Yuan Yang, Europe-China correspondent at the Financial Times, to get a better understanding of how China works beyond its borders. We're also talking about Viktor Orbán's controversial scarf and the right not to be 'fun' at work.
You can follow Yuan on Twitter here and read her reporting on China's offshore police stations here.
This week's Isolation Inspiration: 'The White Lotus', Season 2, and The Playlist. Our interview with newly-minted astronaut Dr Meganne Christian, from February 2019, can be found in this episode: The Most Isolated Place on Earth'.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
03:04 Bad Week: Scarfgate
08:09 Good Week: The right to not be fun
15:35 Interview: Yuan Yang on China's 'overseas police stations'
29:20 Isolation Inspiration: Season 2 of 'The White Lotus' and 'The Playlist'
32:22 Happy Ending: Europe's new astronauts
Producer: Katy Lee
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
The first episode of The Europeans aired five years ago this week! To mark this very special occasion, producers Katz and Wojciech join Katy and Dominic to look back on how Europe has changed in the half-decade we've been making this podcast.
Many thanks to the amazing people who've taken the time to speak to us over the years. In this episode you heard:
Franz Kubacyk - 'Translating Trump, Defending Deneuve', January 2018
Katz Laszlo - 'How the hell do you make an EU law?', February 2020
Tom Moylan - 'President of the European what now?', December 2019
Pasi Sahlberg - 'Finnish Lessons', April 2021
Andrei Popoviciu - 'Pushbacks', November 2019
Remco Yizhak Cooremans - 'It takes more than two, baby' - June 2022
Grace Ly - 'France's Invisible Asians', November 2020
Patrick Gathara - 'Eurafrica', February 2020
Natalie Lamprou - 'Cheese Diplomacy' - April 2021Sara (episode 3 in our series This Is What A Generation Sounds Like) - November 2021
And thank you for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
A video of friendly wolves can be found here.
04:10 Good Five Years: Solar energy
10:48 Bad Five Years: Western naivety
15:55 Good Five Years: Wolves
21:46 Bad Five Years: Media freedom in Central and Eastern Europe
33:42 An ode to governments that came and went
35:32 Franz Kubacyk on Translating Trump
38:46 Tom Moylan on the secrets of the European Commission building
39:53 Pasi Sahlberg on Finland's education system
42:14 Frontex and Fortress Europe
43:48 Remco Yizhak Cooremans on recognising rainbow families in the Netherlands
44:51 Grace Ly on France's Invisible Asians
45:45 Patrick Gathara on Eurafrica
47:34 Natalie Lamprou on halloumi diplomacy in Cyprus
49:47 Sara: trahana, and three Albanias
Artwork for this episode by our lovely listener, Luisa Balaban.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
As the COP27 climate talks wrap up in Egypt, we’re turning our attention to an issue that got less attention at the summit than you might expect: the growing number of people having to flee their homes as a result of climate change. What role does Europe have to play in all this, both in terms of finding solutions and as a major driver of climate change in the first place? This week we find out with the help of Alexandre Porteret of the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department, and François Gemenne of the Hugo Laboratory, the world’s first interdisciplinary research centre focusing on how climate change impacts migration.
This episode was supported by the European Commission, with coordination from Are We Europe.
Producer: Katz Laszlo
Scoring and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: BlueDot Sessions and Epidemic Sounds
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
Thursday Nov 10, 2022
This week we're wrestling with a big idea: time, and the lack of it. Most Europeans have experienced burnout, or felt close to it, at some point in their lives. What if we redesigned policies to give citizens their time back? To find out more, we called up Ariadna Güell Sans, one of the coordinators of the Barcelona Time Use Initiative, about how the city is using time to try to make life easier and fairer. We're also talking about incomprehensible euro-speak, and healing Franco-German relations with train tickets.
You can find Christian Rauh's study on the European Commission's unintelligible press releases here and Sarah Wheaton's reporting on it here in Politico. The European burnout survey can be found here.
This week's Isolation Inspiration: 'Something to Do' from Zadie Smith's 'Intimations', and Katy's Notion planner.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
02:35 Bad Week: Impenetrable euro-speak
10:46 Good Week: French and German young'uns
19:12 Interview: Ariadna Güell Sans on giving Barcelona's citizens their time back
34:57 Isolation Inspiration: 'Something To Do' by Zadie Smith, Notion and Rádio Olisipo
38:36 Happy Ending: The Netherlands' high school mayo dealers
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Last weekend, we took over the European Parliament (kind of) along with more than 1,000 young activists from across the continent. This week we hear from some of those activists as well as from President Roberta Metsola, in a conversation recorded live on stage inside the Hemicycle. We're also talking about Germany's plans to legalise cannabis, and how to steal a Polish tram.
Katy and Dominic were hosting Level Up!, a two-day activism bootcamp organised by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Youth Forum, whose president Silja Markkula also spoke to us on stage.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
This week's Isolation Inspiration: Greta Thunberg in conversation with Björk on the New Statesman's World Review podcast, and Adam Buxton in conversation with the Irish novelist Marian Keyes.
02:58 Good Week: Germany's plans to legalise cannabis
09:44 Bad Week: Poland's stolen tram
15:03 Our takeover of the European Parliament with 1,000 young activists
34:20 Isolation Inspiration: Greta Thunberg and Björk in conversation; Adam Buxton and Marian Keys in conversation
37:50 Happy Ending: The upside-down Mondrian
Producer: Katy Lee
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find the first chapter 'Mohamed' here, and more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Can we find ways to live happily alongside people with radically different values than our own? This week, we journey to one of the most isolated corners of Europe for the sixth installment in our series ‘This Is What A Generation Sounds Like’.
A beautiful visual version of this podcast will be available soon. In the meantime, you can find the first visual podcasts in this series here.
This series is co-produced with Are We Europe and made in cooperation with Allianz Kulturstiftung, an independent not-for-profit cultural foundation committed to strengthening cohesion in Europe using the tools of art and culture. Find out more at kulturstiftung.allianz.de.
Producers: Wojciech Oleksiak and Kinga Goc
Mixing, mastering and sound design: Wojciech Oleksiak
Editorial support: Katz Laszlo, Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
Music by Casletila. Theme music by Jim Barne.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few euros / dollars / pounds a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast. You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review.
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
What does it feel like to know that your government has been able to access every single message on your phone? Last year, the Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi found out that he'd been hacked using Pegasus spyware. This week we hear about his latest investigation, which looks at how the Orbán government managed to get hold of this incredibly powerful surveillance tool in the first place. We're also talking about last weekend's mysterious German train sabotage and growing European protests against World Cup hosts Qatar.
You can follow Szabolcs on Twitter here and read the inside story of how Pegasus was brought to Hungary here via Direkt36. A background read on the spyware scandal currently rocking Greece can be found here.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
This week's Isolation Inspiration:
The latest visual episode in This Is What A Generation Sounds Like, our series with Are We Europe: Denisa
Scottish crime drama Karen Pirie
'Les années' (The Years) by Annie Ernaux
00:22 Welcome!
02:49 Bad Week: The Great German Train Sabotage Mystery
10:22 Good Week: Europe's growing World Cup protest movement
24:39 Interview: Szabolcs Panyi on being hacked by the Hungarian government
36:06 Isolation Inspiration: 'Denisa', 'Karen Pirie', and 'The Years' by Annie Ernaux
40:39 Happy Ending: Waxworms, gross but good
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
With fourteen governments and a three-person presidency, Bosnia and Herzegovina's political system is often described as the most complicated in the world. It's a system that was designed to keep the peace after a devastating war. But three decades on, is it still working? This week we give Aleksandar Brezar the near-impossible task of untangling the weekend's elections for us. We're also talking about Malta's golden passports and a chess scandal involving anal beads. Yes, you heard that correctly.
Aleksandar is a journalist mostly covering the Western Balkans. You can find him on Twitter here.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
This week's Isolation Inspiration:
'Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War', by Howard W. French
The ZOE podcast: 'How to control blood sugar spikes', with Jessie Inchauspé
02:42 Good Week: A challenge to Malta's golden passport scheme
09:33 Bad Week: Anal bead scandal strikes the chess world
18:44 Interview: Aleksandar Brezar on the Bosnian elections
30:46 Isolation Inspiration: 'Born in Blackness' and Jessie Inchauspé on the ZOE podcast
34:41 Happy Ending: The power of cow poo
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
This week saw a political earthquake in Italy — albeit one that had been widely predicted. With Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy poised to lead the new government, just how scared should we be? We ring up the philosopher Lorenzo Marsili to help us understand what just happened. We're also talking about fair pensions for Swiss women, and a Spanish lagoon that can now call itself a person.
Lorenzo is the founder of the progressive civil society movement European Alternatives. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
This week's Isolation Inspiration:
'Flying to LA' by Maro feat. Lisa Oduor-Noah
'I'll Come Too' by James Blake
'Broken Greek' by Pete Paphides and the accompanying Spotify playlist
02:18 Good Week: The Mar Menor
06:43 Bad Week: Swiss women
13:57 Interview: Lorenzo Marsili on the Italian elections
28:16 Isolation Inspiration: Maro and Broken Greek
32:07 Happy Ending: We can't wait for Rail Baltica
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com