Episodes
Lakes and dogs
Calming things are much needed this week, so we're talking about lakes and we're talking about dogs. Our guest is the poet and author Kapka Kassabova, whose latest book To The Lake is a beautiful account of life on the borders of Greece, Albania and North Macedonia. We're also celebrating cleaner skies, human-canine relationships, and putting booze to good use.
Postcards from Europe: Fanya and the Forest
This week, Katy heads to the forest in Lithuania. Ahead of International Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, we're talking about memory politics with a formidable 97-year-old.
What's going on in Malta?
“There are crooks everywhere you look now," Malta's top investigative journalist wrote on her blog in 2017. "The situation is desperate.” Half an hour later, Daphne Caruana Galizia was dead.
President of the European what now?
This week we travel to the heart of the continent to ask: who is Ursula, and should you give a damn about her?
Europe's colonial past and present
Europe's museums are facing growing calls to give back treasures stolen during the colonial era. But what about colonial hand-me-downs that can be found in ordinary households? Elliot Ross, who covers Everyday Colonialism for The Correspondent, is here to explain why this ugly part of our past is still very much a part of our present. We're also talking about a scandal that has been rocking Iceland and nuggets of good news for the planet.
The Other Europeans
This week we’re celebrating Europeans who refused to let boundaries get in the way of things. The historian Orlando Figes is here to talk about the continent-crossing lovers at the heart of his new book, the brilliantly-named ‘The Europeans’. The poet Christopher Hütmannsberger reads us a beautiful new work to mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Plus, wild borders and the Gentle Revolution.
A Polish teenage diarist
Renia's diary spent decades locked in a bank vault. Like many teenagers, she had used it to vent about stupid fights with her friends and to record the thrill of her first kiss. And when the war came, she used it to document the relentless killing of Jews in the town where she lived. Ania Jakubek is on the line from Warsaw to tell us the extraordinary story of Renia Spiegel, and why it stayed unknown for so long. We're also talking about promising signs that Europeans are becoming less bigoted. Oh, and there's a dog.
Back for your Görlitzening pleasure
WE'RE BACK, with a new look for a new season. This week we're catching up on the summer's Italian drama and tackling the delicate question of Nazi relatives. And we're heading to Görlitz, on the German-Polish border, to find out why why so many voters in eastern Germany are putting their faith in the far-right AfD.
Notes from Black Europe
What does it mean to be black in Europe? This week's guest Johny Pitts went on a five-month journey around the continent, interviewing black Europeans and exploring his own identity. The result is his brilliant new book, 'Afropean: Notes from Black Europe', which makes the case for a community that crosses borders. Also this week: the role of railways in the Holocaust; whether or not we should talk about Merkel; and a strange reward for good behaviour.
Sarajevo calling
This week, the increasingly worrying politics of a country with one of the most complicated governments in the world. We're talking to the Bosnian journalist Aleksandar Brezar about troubles that go ignored all too often in Europe and wartime scars that have yet to heal. We're also talking about European countries' varying approaches to regulating what women do with their bodies, and a transatlantic romance that has stood the test of time.
MEGALITHS!!!!
After the week it's been, we could all do with a break from the present. This week, we're venturing into Europe past -- about six thousand years ago, to a time when mysterious stone structures were springing up all around the continent. Today we call them megaliths, and there's a lot we still don't know about them. But one woman has been on a quest to work out how these extraordinary monuments spread around Europe. Archaeologist Bettina Schulz Paulsson is on the line from Gothenburg to talk about how early Europeans were exchanging knowledge and culture a good few millennia before the EU was invented. Also: a reverse art heist, a blow for the anti-vaxxers , and how to say no to big business.
A taste of the nuclear apocalypse
This week The Europeans are heading underground to the nearest bunker. Julie McDowall, Cold War writer and expert on all things atomic, is on the line from Glasgow to talk about how different countries in Europe planned for nuclear war and what it’s like to visit Chernobyl, three decades after the disaster. We also talk about the woman shaking up Estonian politics, questionable ethics in Italian opera, and Slovenian sandwiches.
The skies over Skopje
Flavia and the Machine
A special show marking A WHOLE YEAR OF THE PODCAST! Extra brilliant guests are here to help us mark this very narcissistic edition of anniversary annexe/commemoration corner. Flavia Kleiner, whose Operation Libero has been waging a quietly successful war against rightwing populism in Switzerland, calls in from Zurich with some lessons for the rest of Europe. And Andrea Chalupa is here to discuss her new film Gareth Jones, about a courageous Welsh journalist's battle to tell the truth about the famine her grandfather survived in Ukraine 85 years ago. Plus: vote-buying, espionage, and a few splashes of prosecco.
The black soldier's lament
A hundred years on from the end of World War I, we wanted to look at an aspect of the conflict we don't often talk about: the role of millions of troops of colour who fought for European powers. The excellent Christian Koller, professor of modern history at Zurich University, is here to help us explore what life was like for African and Asian soldiers who were often dismissed as 'savages' while risking their lives for European governments.
Also: France faces its past, European conservatives face their future, and Dominic faces a lifetime of incessant church bells.
Greece and Fabrice
This week we're talking about a couple of journeys. Greece has gone from the depths of despair to something a little less like despair; Nick Malkoutzis of Macropolis (@NickMalkoutzis) is on the line from Athens to explain. And Frenchman Fabrice Pothier is here to tell us about his fun (?) 700-kilometre cycle from Foie Gras country to Santander, hoping to learn a thing or two about Europe. Also: an artistic mishap, virulent success, and a discordant initative by Berlin transport authorities.
The traces they leave
This week, something a little different: Deborah Cole, a Berlin-based reporter since 1995, reads us her beautiful piece about the race to collect the memories of elderly Germans who lived through some of the most tumultuous events in modern history. Follow Deborah on Twitter @doberah, she's our favourite person tweeting from Merkel Land.
Also: an airborne mishap, an ingenious Spaniard, and irony, Slovenian-style, explained with the help of the brilliant Aljaž Pengov Bitenc (aka @pengovsky).
Sticks and stones and dandruff
We couldn't have two more different interviews for you this week: we're talking anti-Semitism in Germany and the art of remaining zen on a beach in Scotland.
After two German rappers sparked national outrage with lyrics about the Holocaust, Human Rights Watch Germany's chief Wenzel Michalski is on the line to talk about his all too personal experience of Europe's rising anti-Semitism problem.
Why throw stones when you can turn them into art instead? Scottish photographer Andy Buchanan brings us the weird, wonderful and unexpectedly hilarious story of the European Stone Stacking Championships.
Plus, Macron Does America and Bulgaria Does It Wrong. And why not stick around and Take A Chance On Dominic's happy ending this week?
Keep your bitcoin close and your botany closer
A treasure-themed episode for you this week: the natural treasures of Poland's ancient Białowieża forest, hidden treasures in rural France, and buried treasure on a German island. Dominic's been chatting to Agata Szafraniuk of environmental lawyers ClientEarth about their battle with the Polish government to protect Białowieża, one of the few remaining patches of the primeval forest that covered Europe 10,000 years ago. Also heading into the countryside are Parisian podcaster Oliver Gee of The Earful Tower fame and his fiancee Lina Nordin, on a quest to discover the real France through a heart-shaped (awwwwww) tour of the country.
Plus: Strict Belgian gyms, 10th century bling and a bitcoin heist.
Olympic gold, Dominic is old, Katy has a cold
We've got two birthdays to celebrate this week. Independent Kosovo is officially 10, and your host Dominic Kraemer is officially old. Congrats to both!
As Kosovo marks 10 years since declaring independence from Serbia, we give our man in the Balkans Andrew MacDowall a call to explain the challenges that lie ahead for Europe's youngest country. Meanwhile, Katy's been huddling under a duvet in Paris with a cold this week -- a great excuse to obsess over the Winter Olympics, not least that amazing Scottish invention, curling. Team Finland's Oona Kauste is on the line all the way from South Korea with a staunch defence of the sport against allegations that it 'looks weird', and how she manages to juggle the Olympics with her career as a hairdresser and make-up artist.
Plus: out and proud LGBT Olympians, happy news for German commuters, and political truth, Dutch-style. Oh, and a mysterious Finnish tongue-twister. Anyone that solves the mystery gets a gold medal of their very own.