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The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 162 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Vinyl records, coffee table books, low-maintenance pot plants: from Dublin to Dubrovnik, all good hipsters have the same stuff. The Italian writer Vincenzo Latronico captures this boring international aesthetic beautifully in his hit novel ‘Perfection’, while skewering millennial life in general. Do you like hearing about Lisbon food, the internet vs real life, and everything that’s wrong with the word ‘expat’? Then you’ll love our inaugural book club conversation, even if you haven’t read the book. We’re also talking this week about a fugitive Polish politician’s transatlantic dash, and the questionable Frenchness of a celebrated giraffe. Listen to the end if you want to know why we are launching a side-business importing sun loungers.

Our book club is brought to you in collaboration with the European Review of Books, featuring the magazine’s co-founder Wiegertje Postma along with Portuguese bookworm Teresa Bandeira de Carvalho. The latest issue of the European Review of Books is out today!

You can subscribe to Teresa’s excellent Substack here, and read her viral post on the word ‘expat’ here.

This week’s Inspiration Station recommendations are the Zenodot website, where you can check if a book has been translated into your language, and the European Press Prize shortlist.

NEED MORE BOOK CHAT? Subscribers of The Europeans have access to an extended version of our book club conversation – twice as long and packed with thoughtful observations about everything from whether or not this story has a happy ending, to... how to run a book club. If you’re not yet a supporter of the podcast but you’d like to hear the longer version of the conversation, you can sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast.

The Europeans is made possible by listener contributions – 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 on Patreon in many different currencies, or you can gift a donation to a superfan. You can also donate via our website if you prefer. And finally: we'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number.

Produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak

Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

The Europeans is proudly produced using Europe’s own Hindenburg.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Europeans, coming to the Europeans, coming to you on the only day in May that is not a public holiday in Europe.
0:29.4	At least that's what it feels like.
0:31.4	Have you been enjoying all of this work-life balance, like a good European, Dominic?
0:35.0	I mean, I think I've had about half the number of bank
0:37.9	holidays that you've had. It seems a bit ridiculous in France. I did actually look up how many
0:44.1	public holidays there are in every EU country in the month of May. And you're right, it's not actually
0:48.8	that crazy in most countries. Most EU countries have one or two public holidays in May. Five countries have
0:55.4	three public holidays. And France is the winner with four public holidays this month. Every
1:01.8	week is a four-day week, effectively. And, you know, I feel bad for saying this because
1:07.9	I want to like public holidays. I think it's great for us all to have
1:11.3	time off together and enjoy each other's company, but I am a freelancer and also a parent. So
1:16.9	having a load of public holidays in the space of one month just means I have less time to do all of the
1:21.4	work that I still need to do and also no child care. Yeah, that doesn't sound easy. And it does mean we're rather getting behind on our admin at the Europeans podcast,
1:30.7	because Katie's usually our admin machine.
1:33.2	Admin will have to wait until June.
1:34.8	But haven't we always been proponents of the four-day week?
1:37.0	Yeah, but not doing five days of work in four days.
1:41.3	It's true.
1:42.2	I need to learn to just switch off and enjoy it. And I have been doing that,
1:46.2	despite all of the chaos that it's been causing in my professional life. It has been nice,
1:50.7	if totally insane. But I finally have both of my children in childcare so I can talk to you today.
1:56.2	Wow, it's a small miracle. And we've got a lot to talk about this week. We're going to be
	...

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