The naughty child of NATO?

We've been glued to the Turkish elections over the past week. But what does Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's victory in the first round mean for the country, and for Europe as a whole? This week we ring up political scientist Ahmet Erdi Öztürk to find out. We're also talking about a big boost in Germany's support for Ukraine, a fake tan controversy, and the teeny tiny bridge behind the Mona Lisa.

You can follow Erdi on Twitter @ahmeterdiozturk.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: Cautionary Tales: 'The Man Who Bet His House on a Pop Song - A Eurovision Tale' and 'The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared' by Jonas Jonasson

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. 

00:22 Together again

03:31 Good Week: Is Germany's Ukraine 'turning point' actually here?

11:27 Red-faced over orange-face 

19:26 Interview: Ahmet Erdi Öztürk on the Turkish elections

28:23 Isolation Inspiration: 'The Man Who Bet His House on a Pop Song' and 'The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared'

33:19 Happy Ending: A Mona Lisa mystery solved?

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION - 00’22”

KATY: Hi Dominic, how are things over there?

DOMINIC: I'm here.

K: On the other side of the table.

D: Yeah.

K: We're together in Amsterdam, listeners, recording in the same physical place for the first time in a very long time. And it's very nice to see you, even if I have been banned from looking at you while we're recording because you find it off-putting, apparently.

D: I really appreciate that you're respecting my wishes.

K: Do you want me to go in the other room so it feels more like I'm in Paris?

D: Well, we did discuss that as an option quite seriously, actually, listeners. But no, I think I can deal with this, I can deal with you, just so long as you didn't look at me too much.

K: Good to know.

D: How have you been enjoying Amsterdam, Katy?

K: It's been lovely, thank you, yeah. Your city has been treating me very well this week. I went on a boat tour while you were away yesterday, and I was lucky enough to sail past your workplace, the Dutch National Opera. And the tour guide on the boat was incredibly rude about your building! She said it was the ugliest building in Amsterdam.

D: That's really uncalled for.

K: I didn't know what to say.

D: I mean, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing building from the outside. But actually, when you're inside in the foyer, it's really gorgeous, and it catches the light beautifully.

K: Well, you've actually got to get to that building, I believe, at some point this evening, so we should get on with the show. But first, tell me – you spent this weekend hanging out with the queen herself, Beyoncé, over in Brussels. Was it everything you dreamed of?

D: It was, and more. I had an absolutely wonderful time in Brussels seeing Beyoncé. She didn't dance quite as much as the last times I've seen her, and that might be due to a rumoured but not confirmed foot injury. But there was so much to take in – there was amazing voguing, she wore a bee outfit. She flew on a bejewelled horse. And she thought we were brilliant, too, in the audience. She kept saying we were the best audience so far on the tour, which I thought was very flattering, until I remembered that this was just her second stop on the tour. So Sweden was the first – sorry, Stockholm, she didn't like you.

K: You’re best of two, though! Go Brussels!

D: And talking of Beyoncé, I was probably one of only a few people in the stadium who was watching her and simultaneously anxiously refreshing my Twitter feed as the results to the Turkish election on Sunday evening started to come through. At the time, there was quite a bit of confusion about whether the results that the state run media were reporting were reliable or not. But the picture seems a bit clearer now, it seems that the Turkish presidential election is heading to a second round, and that incumbent President Erdoğan did somewhat better than many had predicted and certainly better than many of his critics at home and abroad had hoped. So this week, we're going to try and understand those results, and the parliamentary results, a bit better, diving into what it means for Turkey, what it means for Europe, what it means for the whole world, really, if Erdoğan is going to win the runoff election on May 28. And to help us with that we're going to be joined by Ahmet Erdi Ozturk, a specialist in all things Turkey. That's coming up later in the show, but first it's time for Good Week, Bad Week.

GOOD WEEK - 03’31”

D: Who are you giving Good Week to, Katy?

K: I'm giving Good Week to the leader of Germany, Olaf Scholz, after his government announced a massive package of aid to Ukraine over the weekend. It's worth something like 2.7 billion euros, and this is specifically military aid, weapons. So it includes tanks, but also things like some pretty fancy air defence systems and 200 or so drones.

D: This sounds pretty decisive, considering how hesitant Germany had been to offer military help in the past.

K: It is pretty decisive, yeah. What they've announced is basically a doubling of Germany's existing military aid to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in February last year. So it makes a really big change from all the umming and aahing that there's been from Germany, somewhat notoriously, over what its role should be in the war, and its worries about antagonising Russia too much. If you haven't heard the episode that we released on February 2 this year, It was called ‘Germany's Gonna Germany’, and it's a really good one to check out if you're interested in trying to better understand the psychology of Germany's foreign policy, and where all of this hesitation comes from. But yeah, given that Olaf Scholz made this big announcement last year that he wanted Germany to take on this new leading role in Europe’s security and build up its military in the face of the threat posed by Russia – and then Germany basically didn't do that for months after that big announcement – given all of that, this feels like a win for Schultz. That speech that he gave last year was called the Zeitenwende speech. Zeitenwende means turning point. And it feels like that turning point might actually be starting to happen in a concrete way.

D: It's a very slow turn.

K: Famously, when you're driving you are supposed to take corners slowly, so…

D: That’s true.

K: Safety first.

D: This must all be quite a relief for Ukraine, presumably – they really need more weapons right now, right?

K: Yeah, so President Zelensky has been on a bit of a European tour over the past week, trying to rally fresh support and crucially weapons. He's been through France and Italy in recent days. France has also pledged to send some more tanks and provide more training to Ukrainian forces as well. And as we're recording this, Zelensky has just landed in London for talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But the push for weapons is seen as especially important at the moment because it is widely believed that Ukraine is preparing to launch a big counter-offensive against Russia. Some people think that this counter-offensive has already begun, even. The other reason why Zelensky is really keen to secure more weapons deliveries is because there's elections coming up next year on the other side of the pond, in the United States. And whoever ends up winning, there's a decent chance that US support is going to scale back. European governments seem a bit worried already that the presidential campaign could make Biden less interested in loudly supporting Ukraine, because it's something that the Republicans could attack him over, you know, like, ‘Why are you spending all of our American money on this war half a planet away?’ kind of thing.

D: Because the US has put an astonishing amount of money into defending Ukraine, right, so far?

K: Yeah, huge amounts. I mean, you know, look, the United States is obviously an extremely rich and extremely large country. But even if you take that into account, the value of the aid that has been sent from the US to Ukraine – weapons, humanitarian aid, financial aid – all of that put together, it's really impressive. In military aid alone, the US has sent about 37 billion euros worth of weapons and equipment.

D: Sounds like a lot.

K: It's a lot, yeah. If you compare it to Germany's 6 billion, for example, you might say there's a bit of a gap. Germany is just one European country, of course. But even if you take Europe as a whole, and you look at all of the different types of aid, overall the US has pledged like twice as much as the whole of the European Union. So it does make sense for Zelensky to push his European allies to give more right now, both because Germany, especially as the continent's economic powerhouse, probably could afford to give a bit more, and also because Zelensky might not be able to rely on the US as much in the months to come. And Zelensky actually joked about that over the weekend, he and Scholz gave this press conference together, and Zelensky said something like, Germany is now Ukraine’s second biggest backer, it's overtaken the United Kingdom to get into second place, but we're looking forward to bringing Germany into first place.

D: It sounds in general like Zelensky is getting on a lot better with Scholz than he was in the past.

K: Yeah, it was a surprisingly chummy press conference. They used each other's first names. Scholz called him ‘Lieben Volodymyr’, dear Volodymyr,  and he used the less formal ‘du’ form of ‘you’ when he was talking to Zelensky. And things really have got a lot better, when you think about how at the beginning of the war, Germany offered to send helmets to Ukraine just before the invasion – like, 5000 helmets – so that Ukraine could supposedly protect itself against the Russians. This is when other countries like the US and the UK were already sending weapons to help them prepare for war. And Ukrainians didn't forget the helmet thing easily. It seemed almost like a joke. But Germany has gone from that and all of this hesitation around sending the Leopard tanks, to becoming a really important ally that puts its money where its mouth is and is sending all of this sophisticated military equipment, including the tanks. I also read some sources saying that Ukrainians are getting on better with Germany's current defence minister, Boris Pistorius, than they have been with his predecessor. So for now, at least, this relationship is looking a lot more positive than it has done.

D: I know in the past that sometimes the reluctance of German leaders to give military support is because it's not always that popular with the German public. How is this going down, this move from Olaf Scholz?

K: It's a bit difficult to tell, to be honest. A lot of the commentary that I read in the German press over the last few days sounded very positive and quite proud, to be honest, that Germany has committed to sending this aid. At the time of recording I haven't found any opinion polls that give an indication already of whether most Germans think they're sending too much aid, or not enough, reacting specifically to this new package, I mean. But previous opinion polls have been pretty mixed. As recently as January there was an Ipsos poll in which 75% of Germans said they thought Germany should avoid getting involved militarily in the war. And that had actually gone up significantly from a year ago. More than half of the Germans asked also said that Germany couldn't afford to help Ukraine, given, you know, the cost of living crisis and other economic problems at home. Make of that what you will, I guess. But since Germany agreed to send the tanks in February, there have been some opinion polls suggesting that the percentage of the population in favour of militarily supporting Ukraine is going up, despite, you know, all of Germany's historical baggage over going to war in general since World War II, and also things like this previous close economic relationship with Russia that Germany has. For what it's worth, Scholz’s office has defended its own approach to gently convincing the nation to get behind this really quite radically different military policy. The government has pointed out that clearly Germans need time to get used to this idea of Germany being an active player in Europe's military security. And they say that taking this slowly, slowly approach has given Germans the time to get used to that. But yeah, I'd be very interested to see how Germans take this latest announcement of a big surge in weapons being delivered. So German listeners, if you see any interesting commentary or opinion polls, please send them my way.

D: Well, I guess Scholz is already quite unpopular at the moment, so maybe that's a calculation he made – he can't be more unpopular.

K: What's there to lose. Who's had a bad week?

BAD WEEK - 11’27”

D: I'm giving Bad Week to the Irish Times, which is a newspaper in Ireland, because they published an opinion article that had been generated by artificial intelligence without realising that it had been generated by AI.

K: Oops.

D: They of course aren't the first outlet to publish an article generated by AI, but they may be one of the first, at least the first that we know of, that was duped into publishing an article thinking that it had been written by a real person.

K: I've been in some newsrooms on some very bad days for those newsrooms, but I haven't experienced anything quite like this, thankfully. What did the AI actually spew out?

D: It was an article titled ‘Irish women's obsession with fake tan is problematic’. And it made the argument that fake tanning amongst Irish women is a form of cultural appropriation, that when a white Irish woman puts on fake tan, she is wearing a costume that allows her to experience a fleeting taste of a more exotic identity. It was said to have been written by a 29-year-old Ecuadorian healthcare administrator living in North Dublin, but it was in fact written by ChatGPT, for this Ecuadorian healthcare worker was a made-up character. The article even included a photo of this made-up writer, which turned out to have been generated also by AI.

K: But there must have been an actual human involved in this at some point, right? Because, I mean, if robots are also pitching articles to newspapers, then I am truly out of a job.

D: Yeah, there was a human involved, you'll be happy to hear. It's not public knowledge who this person is yet, but the fake writer, this Ecuadorian healthcare worker who doesn't exist, does have a Twitter account, under their nom de plume Adriana Acosta-Cortez, and the person behind it did reply to some DMs from a Guardian journalist explaining a bit about why and how they did it. And according to those DMS to The Guardian, the prankster used ChatGPT to generate about 80% of the article, so not the whole thing. And they used another AI programme, DALLE-E 2, to create the profile picture of a typically, quote unquote, ‘woke’ writer. 

K: What does that look like?

D: They have blue hair.

K: I see. Yes, very woke.

D: And the person behind it is not an Ecuadorian healthcare worker, but told The Guardian that they are in fact an Irish college student, and that this whole thing was a bit of fun to make their friends laugh, but they also wanted to, quote, stir the shit about identity politics. They said, ‘I think that identity politics is an extremely unhelpful lens through which to interpret the world.’ And aside from those DMS, in a public tweet out on their timeline for everyone to see, they accused the Irish Times of degrading themselves in agreeing to publish this piece, which they described as ‘such divisive tripe’ in order to generate clicks and traffic for their website.

K: I mean, I had a quick look just now. It's quite funny to read. I'm sorry, but as someone who grew up in a town that also had a culture of pale women dyeing themselves bright orange, I think it's quite funny. But you can see what they're aiming at, right? Like, it is intended to be this sort of caricature of somebody that has taken the fight against discrimination so far that they apply it to, like, quite ludicrous things.

D: Yeah. And I mean, maybe it's best not to get into the debate about whether or not this topic is ‘divisive tripe’ or something that should be argued because there are articles about fake tan being cultural appropriation that have been written by humans as well.

K: The robots want us to have this argument. I think we should steer clear.

D: Yeah, I don't want to get involved. One thing for sure is that it did generate clicks, because it was at one point the second most-read article on the Irish Times website.

K: There you go. This robot knows how to make some pretty effective clickbait.

D: Yeah, and the newspaper fell for it hook, line and sinker.

K: I don’t get it.

D: Fishing? Bait?

K: Oh. D’you know, if we weren't in the same room I wouldn't have known that was supposed to be a joke.

D: Should I cut it?

K: It’s very good. No, I think we should keep it. Very good joke.

D: But the newspaper did realise within a matter of hours that something was amiss. They started an investigation and took the article down. Then over the weekend, the editor of the paper published an apology saying that the paper had been the victim of a deliberate deception.

K: And have the Irish Times said they're going to, I don't know, like develop a policy to make sure that this doesn't happen again?

D: Yeah, something like that. According to the editor's statement, they are not taking the incident lightly. They acknowledged that it has highlighted a gap in their pre-publication procedures. And they promised to make those procedures more robust and to learn and adapt to this new AI reality. But they also stressed that they want to continue making space for new writers, not least those from underrepresented communities. And I guess that is potentially why they tripped up in this case, I imagine they might have thought, ‘Oh, we don't often get a pitch from an Ecuadorian health worker living in Dublin.’ On a topic like this, let's jump on it and give this person an opportunity and a platform. And maybe they just didn't quite do the Googling which would have helped them realise that this person was not, in fact, a real person. S,o rather embarrassing for the Irish Times. And I guess this is a warning to newspapers and newsrooms all over the world, to watch out for unknowingly publishing AI-generated content that is posing as real human content. And it came in the same week that the EU published its latest plans for their enormous AI legislation, the Artificial Intelligence Act, which aims to be the world's first comprehensive AI legislation. We are hoping to dig into that enormous law a bit more in the near future, so I won't go into it too much. Of course, newsrooms spotting AI generated opinion pieces is by no means the scariest of the potential risks from AI technology. But for now, let's leave it at that bad week for the Irish Times. Sorry, guys.

That Irish Times story was flagged up by one of our Patreon supporters, Daniel – thank you so much for flagging that story up. We've been getting so many good suggestions from our listeners lately, so keep them coming. You can contact us on Twitter @europeanspod, Instagram @europeanspodcast, or email us, hello at europeanspodcast.com. Or you can become a Patreon member. And the most direct way to get in touch with us and fellow patrons supporters is being on our Patreon Facebook group, right Katy?

K: It's a very nice group. It's the only thing nice left about Facebook, in my opinion. And it is one of the many perks of signing up to be an extremely generous person and supporting our podcast, which truly wouldn't exist without the people who chip in a little bit of money every month so that we can pay ourselves and our producers to keep it running. And this week, we have a few new people to thank for supporting the show. They are Eliska, David, Diarmid, Issei and Gabriella. Thank you all so so much!

D: You can head to Patreon.com/europeanspodcast if you like the show and have a bit of money you could part with to support us. You can give as little as two euros a month and you can pay in many different currencies. The more you give, the more you get back from us, so have a look and see if you can support us. Thank you so much!

INTERVIEW WITH AHMET ERDI ÖZTÜRK - 19’26”

K: We sometimes get asked when we're making this podcast, how far do you think Europe goes? Like, where does it end? Does it include Russia, does it include Turkey? Does it include Georgia or Armenia? And honestly, I don't think we know the answer to that question. I mean, do you know the answer to that question?

D: No. But I think we've always taken the approach to just, like, take the broadest possible definition, right? So if someone feels European, then let's let them be European.

K: Yeah. And if something is happening, more or less on this continent, and it's interesting, we will talk about it. That is our official policy. Anyway, this week, we really wanted to talk about an election that we have been following very closely, not least, because it's in a country that our governments over here further to the west in Europe have a very complicated relationship with. And that country is, of course, Turkey. A lot of people were expecting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the man who has been president for more than a decade and reshaped the country – a lot of people were expecting him to lose this election. They had already started dreaming of Turkey turning in a freer, more democratic direction if he lost. To give you just one example of how people have been hoping things might change, right now you can go to jail in Turkey for insulting the president. Erdoğan’s main opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had promised to change that, he promised that if he wins, people will be able to criticise him freely. This election isn't over. Over the weekend, Erdoğan got more votes than any other candidate 49.51% of the vote at the latest count. But he needed 50% to avoid a runoff. And that second round of the election is now due to take place on May 28. But how are we supposed to make sense of what's just happened and what it means for the rest of Europe? To find out, we called up one of our favourite explainers of all things related to Turkish politics, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk. He is a senior lecturer at London Met University, and among his many publications, he is one of the editors of a volume on authoritarian politics in Turkey. We gave him a ring in Istanbul.

D: Before we go into analysing why it happened and what could happen next, I want to just ask you – how are you digesting these first round results? Is it what you thought would happen?

ERDI: I mean, since the last five days of the election, I thought Erdoğan will get a very easy victory. But last week, I have started to change my perception. Because Kılıçdaroğlu did an amazing campaign. I mean, his discourse is amazing. His team is great. And it's a kind of a diversity of the Turkey. But, at the end of the day I don't need to digest the election results, because when you look at the overall diversity in Turkey, Turkey is not following this pattern, and Erdoğan, in spite of everything, Erdoğan's policy of securitisation, policy of militarisation and creating a polarised society between different sects of Islam, and creating a discourse regarding the ethnicity, has ended up with this solution. So I don't need to digest, I need to scrutinise the reasons behind this result. But in spite of everything, I have to underline that there will be a second round, and nothing is ended yet.

K: Let's get to some of those reasons, then. I mean, Erdoğan went into this election in quite a precarious position. There was a slow response to the devastating earthquake in Turkey a few months ago, there's an enormous cost of living crisis right now. It was thought that he would face a backlash in the polls, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Why is he still so popular with so many people?

E: It is very surprising that the earthquake didn't make a huge impact on the electoral votes. I mean, when you look at the survey results, I mean like the polling results, the effect of the earthquake is just like ended in a month. This is the first reason. The second reason is that in a Western mindset, you can think that the economy of the household, the individual's future desires, is quite important for the voting, right? But right now what we can see is that the high politics is bigger than low politics. What is high politics? Security. I mean the global threat, terrorism. Erdoğan has managed to sell his discourse to creating that Turkey has been surrounded by the enemies. And okay, the economy's not very good, but I am the person who can solve it. Erdoğan, not this guy. And the other thing is that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu doesn't have any success story, but Erdoğan has.

D: And what about the election itself? Can we view this election as a free and fair election?

E: No. Turkey's a competitive authoritarian system, so you can't say any election is free, transparent, fair, no. Turkey has run all of these elections over the last 10, 15 years under a competitive authoritarian regime. So no, I wouldn't say that. I mean, you can make a campaign as an opposition group, you can do whatever you want. But for example, TRT, the national television, has been giving Erdoğan 95% of the their shows, 5% for the opposition. So this is not the equal chance to make a propaganda.

K: That's depressing.

E: This is the reality. I mean, Turkey is a Western country, obviously. But it's a Western country with an Eastern attitude. So this is the eastern part of this political attitude.

K: Tell us a little bit about the alternative vision of Turkey that the opposition was offering in this election. Or is offering I mean,

E: I mean, Erdoğan has created a system which is, I can easily define it as a neo-patrimonial system. And the opposition is offering, indeed a better economy, indeed a better future, while at the same time offering equal rights, rights of freedom, freedom of speech, so on andso forth. So their offers are very real, but individuals didn't buy it.

D: And what are your expectations for this next round the second round, which is coming up on May 28? Could Erdoğan still lose?

E: No. I mean, my expectation – I know, I'm making a very dangerous prediction right now – but my assumption is that the election will end at like 55% to 45% and Erdoğan will win.

K: And what does that mean for the country, if it happens?

E: If it will end like 55 to 45, I have a new name for Turkey, if you don't mind. You can call Turkey easily Erdoğanistan. Because he will be a strongman, he will stay five more years, there will be no elections and he can do whatever he wants. This doesn't mean that Turkey will be a huge authoritarian country like Russia or Azerbaijan or North Korea. No, because one of the main characteristics of the Turkish society right now is Turkey's a polarised society. One like 50% to 55% is pro-Erdoğanist. They can do anything for Erdoğan, but the second biggest part is still anti-Erdoğanist.

D: For now, Turkey is still officially an ally of the European Union and of the West.

E: An ally of the European Union, a member of the NATO…

D: Absolutely. And what do you think would be the biggest implications though, for geopolitics if Erdoğan is reelected?

E: I've been defining Turkey as a naughty child of NATO. In spite of everything, he will stay as the unique political actor, a unique political leader who can still speak with Ukraine and Russia at the same time. Geopolitically, Turkey is an extremely important country in terms of the Middle East, for the Balkans, for North Africa and so on and so forth, and if you would like to make positive results in the region as a Western country, you have to make Erdoğan happy. And within these fragile economic conditions, with these shrinking economic conditions, you can make these things very easily by using scrutinising the economy.

K: All of our attention – well, a lot of the world's attention – has been on the presidential election, but there's also been parliamentary elections. Erdoğan's coalition did pretty well in those as well, right?

E: Yes. They got the majority, so this is quite a big indicator, because Erdoğan will create that kind of discourse: if you want stability, vote for me, because I'm controlling the parliament. If you want instability, vote for Kılıçdaroğlu. And people will go for stability. Trust me.

K: Thank you so much to Erdi for joining us. You can find him on Twitter @ahmeterdiozturk; the link is in the show notes.

ISOLATION INSPIRATION - 28’23”

K: what have you been enjoying this week?

D: Well, obviously I enjoyed Beyoncé and I enjoyed the Eurovision grand final. Did you enjoy the Eurovision grand final?

K: I did. You and I had some very strong differences of taste and opinion, I feel, about who was good on the night.

D: Yeah, it’s true, we really did. I found it quite striking how different. But were you happy with Loreen winning? Sweden?

K: Er… It was quite a boring choice in the end. I was Team Finland.

D: Typical. I found myself thinking of Loreen and Sweden as this, like, very competent, technocratic-like figure, she was kind of like the Mario Draghi or the Joe Biden of Eurovision. She's someone we've all known before, she won before about 11 years ago…

K: A safe pair of hands.

D: Absolutely. Whereas Finland, this bonkers act in a green bolero, was chaos, and… 

K: He was wonderful.

D: It really made me think of Trump and populism and Berlusconi and these kinds of figures.

K: I don't think either of these acts, Finland or Sweden, would be happy with the way that you've just presented them.

D: No, I think my analogy really doesn't work and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. Also because, like, being ridiculous in art like Finland were, is not anything like as bad as being ridiculous in politics. Art is allowed to be ridiculous and… ugly, dare I say it?

K: Are you saying that the… 

D: Musically.

K: Oh, musically ugly.

D: I mean, it was musically ugly. Come on.

K: I liked how Graham Norton, the UK Eurovision commentator, described him as ‘an angry Brussels sprout’.

D: It's very accurate. But I also wanted to mention one other thing I've enjoyed this week. Around this time of year, around the Eurovision Song Contest, I always end up thinking about my politics teacher at school, Mr. Gould. A man who quit teaching to become a full-time Eurovision gambler. He was one of my favourite teachers at school and we actually interviewed him in our first ever Eurovision episode on the show, I think back in 2018. He is sadly no longer with us. I heard this incredibly sad news that he died a few years ago via some other fellow ex-students. But without any idea of what really happened and why he died so young – he was only in his 40s. And then a strange thing happened this week, a listener of this show recommended a podcast episode to us on Instagram from a show called Cautionary Tales, saying that we might enjoy it, seeing as we're Eurovision addicts. And the episode is titled ‘The Man Who Bet His House On A Pop Song’. And without even clicking on the link I had chills, because I knew immediately that this was an episode about my former politics teacher, Mr. Gould. And indeed it was, and it was an excellent episode. It is co-hosted by an old friend of Daniel Gould, and among other things, I finally found out what had happened to him and why he had died so sadly, so young. It weaves together the stories of his health and his Eurovision gambling job really beautifully. So I really recommend it to everyone, it's really well constructed. It's called ‘The Man Who Bet His House On A Pop Song’, and it's on the feed of the Cautionary Tales podcast. Katy, that's your phone going off.

K: I'm so sorry.

D: I asked her before we started recording, ‘Have you turned your phone off?’

K: Yeah but normally we're not in the same room so it doesn't matter! I would have muted at this point.

D: What have you been enjoying this week, Katy?

K: I've been getting stuck into a very enjoyable Swedish novel that came out a full decade ago, so apologies once again for being very late to the party with one of my cultural recommendations. It's ‘The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared’. Do you know that book?

D: No, but it's a great title. 

K: Yeah, we’ve got a lot of ‘The Man Who Did This Thing’ recommendations this week. It's a great book, I'm enjoying it very much. If you don't know it, it’s is a dark comedy about Allan Karlsson, who is a Swedish man who decides to run away from his old people's home on his 100th birthday, which leads him to a very unexpected adventure. The book is also in large part a retelling of Allan's life story, which just so happens to intersect in major ways with a bunch of the biggest events in 20th century history, from the Spanish Civil War to the Cold War. And it's very, very funny. I really like how this book manages to keep this jaunty tone up while retelling this completely insane life story. Yeah, it's not new at all, but it is a really good read if you're looking for a book that zips along at a good pace, and also has some darkness to it. It's perfect reading for my holiday in Amsterdam.

D: Sounds great. Yeah, time to read a book but no time to see me.

HAPPY ENDING: 33’19”

D: My happy ending goes to a small town in Tuscany where they received some very exciting news this week. An Italian art historian called Silvano Vinceti believes he has solved one of the great mysteries around the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. He claims to have identified the bridge that is in the background of Da Vinci's painting. He announced that he has no doubt that the bridge is the Romito di Laterina bridge in the province of Arezzo. He used historical documents and drone images to make his case to reporters last week. One of the keys to cracking this case was the number of arches of the bridge, which seems to tie up with how many arches there were in this bridge perfectly. Unfortunately, only one of the arches of the real0life bridge still exist. But Vinceti did meticulous work to deduce that there were originally the same number of arches as there are in the painting. Anyway, all of this seems to have caused quite a bit of excitement in the local town, there are now calls from locals to protect what remains of this bridge. The news will inevitably lead to an influx of tourists wanting to come and see the remaining arch. So it's all very exciting.

K: This is going to sound really bad, but I didn't even know there was a bridge in the background. And I'm just looking at her now on Google – I had to squint really hard to see it. But there is indeed a little bridge there.

D: There is. I'd also never noticed it either.

K: Beautiful bridge

D: Beautiful bridge. The only downside to this news is that up until now one of the most compelling theories about the bridge had been that it was the bridge in a neighbouring town, Ponte Buriano. They even had a poster of the Mona Lisa next to that bridge, they were really happy about it. So it's a bit sad for them that this historian seems to be discrediting their claim on the Mona Lisa bridge. But it is a happy ending. So let's just, like, sit with the happy feelings of the people that live near the other bridge. Congratulazioni. Is that how you say it? 

K: Sure. 

K: We've got a special episode for you next week, we are taking you to Switzerland. I will say no more, but do not miss it. In the meantime, come find us on the internet: we are on Instagram @europeanspodcast and Twitter @europeanspod. And if you want to join the many people who've been sending us the lovely emails recently, you can do that at hello at europeanspodcast.com.

D: You can. This week's episode was produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak, thank you both. Thank you, Katy.

K: You're welcome.

D: I can say that to you and look you in the eyes for once.

K: Am I allowed to look at you now?

D: You are allowed to look at me. You did really well!

K: Thank you. If anything, you were eyeballing me a little bit intimidatingly. 

D: It’s true. And actually, I wanted you to be more in the end. Like, ‘Why is she not looking at me? It feels weird.’ So maybe the whole looking thing – I was just feeling shy that last time we did this.

K: I can’t win. Well, I'm staring at you right now.

D: Stop it!

K: See you next week everyone!

D: Güle güle.

K: Bye.