Babiš is back

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been a busy week for European politics, European protests, and European wallabies. In the midst of the madness, we caught up with Kateřina Šafaříková of Czech news outlet Seznam Zprávy, who filled us in on the Czech Republic’s recent parliamentary elections. Is the probable next Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, likely to be an Orbán-esque thorn in the EU’s side, or does he just kinda wanna text with Macron? Kateřina shares her thoughts. We also catch up on the protests that Georgia’s democratic opposition has been staging against the country’s government in Tbilisi and a grassroots victory in Lithuania. If you’re moved to learn more about what’s going on in Georgia, check out our interview with Anna Gvarishvili in the episode “Is this the end of Georgia’s European dream?” You can also follow some of the initiatives and journalists Wojciech recommends: Project 64 https://x.com/64project_ George Melashivili https://x.com/geomel_ge Marika Mikiashvili https://x.com/Mikiashvili_M Anna Gvarishvili https://x.com/AnnaGvarishvili You can discover more of Kateřina Šafaříková’s work over here or follow her on Instagram here. This week's Inspiration Station recommendations are the documentary Pianoforte and the book Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, courtesy of Patreon member Pia. Brace yourselves if you decide you do indeed want to hear the now former Lithuanian minister for culture singing on an episode of the Voice. This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number. 00:00:47 Bentornato!00:04:08 Good Week: Lithuania’s cultural sector00:15:15 Bad Week: Georgian democratic opposition 00:28:11 Interview: Journalist Kateřina Šafaříková on last week’s Czech elections00:47:34 The Inspiration Station: The documentary Pianoforte and the book Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie00:52:40 Happy Ending: Massive Der Spiegel wallaby scoop!Producers: Morgan Childs and Wojciech OleksiakMixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Euronet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news.
0:11.3	But this podcast would not be possible without the incredibly generous support of our amazing listeners who donate a little bit each month at patreon.com forward slash Europeans podcast. Hello and welcome to the Europeans, the show where we nerd out about this delightful, confusing, and occasionally functional continent we call home.
0:59.4	I'm Dominic Kramer in Amsterdam and I'm speaking to Vojek-Olexiak in Warsaw.
1:04.7	Hi.
1:05.3	You're just back from Italy.
1:07.0	Bentornaito.
1:08.2	Yeah.
1:09.3	How was it?
1:10.2	Italy was awesome.
1:11.4	Me and Katz were invited to speak at the Internationale of Ferrara, and this is a festival
1:16.1	organized by a magazine Internationale.
1:18.6	And we just felt like it's a parallel reality.
1:21.8	People were so engaged.
1:23.0	They were queuing in like massive, long queues to get to a room where journalists would talk about their work. We would be stopped at streets saying, we appreciate your work. That was so interesting. Thank you for doing this. And Kat was like, and then in today's, I'm going to be back home and no one's going to care and no one's going to tell me I'm doing a great job and how am I going to survive. It felt like a dream, really. Amazing festival.
1:44.4	Go if you can.
1:45.3	Sounds like the vitamin shot that we all need in early October.
1:49.6	And I was wondering, did you notice anything of this general strike for Gaza whilst you were in Italy?
1:54.7	So I came pretty late and the strike was almost over when I came.
1:59.1	So it wasn't that visible for me, but I know Katz was stuck in the traffic for like three hours.
2:04.8	And also, you know, we talked about this in the afternoon and in the evening with people.
2:09.7	And it seemed like they were really proud that this happened.
2:12.4	And it made us very proud that, you know, Italians, they decided that if the Sumut Votilla was to be stopped,
	...

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