An award-winning independent media outlet that makes European current affairs feel both accessible and enjoyable.

About Us

Each week we bring you podcasts that break down European politics and culture in an entertaining and approachable way. We interview fascinating guests who help us make sense of life on this continent, from scientists and historians to artists and activists. And we try to correct the bias in most international news outlets towards Northern and Western Europe, digging into stories you might not have heard about. 

Our award-winning narrative and investigative podcast series, including ‘The Oatly Chronicles’, ‘This Is What A Generation Sounds Like’ and ‘Bursting The Bubble’, have been featured in the likes of the New York Times, The Financial Times and The Guardian. 

The Europeans was created in 2017 by long-distance friends Katy Lee, a reporter in Paris, and Amsterdam-based opera singer Dominic Kraemer. Their goal was to connect Europeans across borders by giving listeners a digestible way of learning about each others’ politics and societies; they also wanted to celebrate Europe's amazing culture, from conceptual art to Eurovision. Oh, and they wanted to work out how the hell the EU works.

Today, our podcasts make a vital contribution to European democracy by arming people with a better understanding of how decisions get made on this continent.

Our core team is based in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw, but we work with contributors across the continent to produce journalism that is rigorous, fair and editorially independent.

Our Team

  • Katy Lee is a reporter based in Paris, and co-host of The Europeans. These days she mostly writes about climate change when she’s not podcasting, but she spent many years covering French politics and society for major international news outlets. She’s reported from various European countries, from Spain to Lithuania. She used to live in Hong Kong and spends a lot of time in Chinese restaurants pretending she’s still there. Katy is proud to call herself a French citizen as of 2021. Her roots are in Essex, England, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

  • Dominic Kraemer is an opera singer and part-time political junkie living in the tourist-hating city of Amsterdam. He was born in London, delivered by a local midwife who was the mother of original UK Big Brother contestant, Melanie Hill. His singing takes him across Europe, performing roles recently at the Staatsoper in Berlin, the Dutch National Opera and the Münchener Biennale. Dominic recently ‘restored’ his German citizenship after it had been taken away from his grandfather during the Second World War.

  • Katz Laszlo is a producer and reporter with a special focus on our narrative episodes. She’s a roaming European who calls Avoncliff, Barcelona, and Amsterdam home. She spent three years in New York City, teaching science at the New School, learning how to hold a mic from Feet in 2 Worlds' John Rudolph, interning at WNYC's Radiolab/More Perfect, working at Caveat theatre, eventually ending up with the good people of Transom. She came back to Europe keen to make radio that asks what this place we call Europe is. She now works out of Amsterdam, hosting live events and making narrative radio about climate change and how politics affects people’s intimate lives.

  • Wojciech Oleksiak is a Warsaw-based producer and reporter working across Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on groups that trample on other people’s rights. He also often scores and sound designs our narrative episodes. Prior to joining The Europeans, Wojciech worked for a public broadcaster (politics kicked him out) and freelanced, with his work featured on networks such as NPR, WNYC, Worldwide.fm and PRI. A fun fact about Wojciech: he toured the world as a jazz drummer when he was young. Currently he’s not young, a realisation that dawned on him when an interviewer introduced him on their show as 'a seasoned reporter'.

  • Most of the music you hear on The Europeans was composed by Jim Barne. When he isn’t busy writing jingles that fulfil the difficult brief of ‘sounding like Eurovision meets Ode to Joy’, he is one half of Buchan & Barne, the London-based musical theatre writing duo behind the hit British stage show ‘Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York)’. He’s written music for many other mediums besides, including film and pop.

  • Most of our artwork is designed by Rosa ter Kuile, also known as RTiiiKA.

    Rosa works in Bristol, where she started the Bristol Mural Collective. Her career highlights include making the branding for the Bristol Beacon and going on a date with a cougar expert.

Media Coverage

  • ‘Joyously eclectic, intimate, quirky and invariably informative’

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  • ‘A buoyant take on European life… This is a warm and engaging podcast.’

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  • ‘Funny and extremely enlightening’

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  • ‘It's not often that a podcast is so hardwired with its audience.’

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  • ‘The Europeans tells vivid, exciting, dramatic stories from the continent, so that you understand why the life and politics of our neighbours are at least as relevant as those of the Americans.’

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  • ‘The kind of show that continues to amaze, a podcast that feels like new wave pirate radio.’

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  • ‘Refreshingly upbeat... Best of all, the one topic they don’t cover is Brexit.’

    Make It

Awards

  • Covering Climate Now logo

    Winner of a Covering Climate Now award for our episode 'The Biggest Climate Case That Ever Was'. The episode was described by judges as 'a great piece of explanatory reporting' with 'rollicking style'.

    2024

  • Winner of Germany’s CIVIS Media Prize for the visual version of ‘Mohamed’, our story about the experiences of a young undocumented man in Amsterdam, produced with our friends at Are We Europe.

    2023

  • Nominated for the Prix Europa, Europe’s most prestigious audio prize, for the visual version of ‘Josh and Franco’, the coming-of-age story of two gay men, father and son. 

    2022

  • Winner of Best LGBTQIA+ short film at the MiraBan UK Film Awards for ‘Josh and Franco’.

    2022

  • Winners of the Spinelli Prize, an EU award for projects that bring Europeans closer together.

    2019

  • Dutch winners of the Charlemagne Youth Prize

    2018

Live Events

Our team members have hosted a wide variety of debates and live events, from podcasting workshops and festivals to a takeover of the European Parliament by 2,000 young people. If you’re planning an event and think we’d be a good fit, get in touch.