Germany’s Gonna Germany
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
4.8 • 162 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Germany’s government has faced international criticism in recent weeks for dithering over whether or not to send tanks to Ukraine. The Leopard 2s are finally on their way — but why is Europe’s richest country so reluctant to look like a military leader? This week we’re diving into the psychology of Germany’s foreign policy with Sophia Besch, Europe fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. We’re also talking about Czechia’s anti-populist new president, and a bitter row over wine labels.
You can follow Sophia on Twitter here and find out more about her work here.
This week’s Isolation Inspiration: Stromae’s Tiny Desk Concert and ‘The Door’ by Magda Szabó.
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00:00 Good Week, Fast Week
02:50 Good Week: Bye-bye Babiš
11:08 Bad week: The Great Wine Label Row
22:00 Interview: Sophia Besch on how Germany sees its place in the world
39:27 Isolation Inspiration: Stromae’s Tiny Desk Concert and ‘The Door’ by Magda Szabó
41:33 Happy Ending: Sharks in Liverpool
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What the hell was that? |
| 0:16.6 | I decided to speed up the opening theme tune. |
| 0:19.9 | Why? |
| 0:20.7 | Because it's what all the kids are doing on TikTok, |
| 0:22.5 | and you should know that Katie as our resident TikTok expert. |
| 0:26.3 | Love TikTok, haven't come across this. |
| 0:28.5 | So speeding up music to make it sound horrible, any reason in particular? |
| 0:32.4 | Well, whether it sounds horrible or not, that is a subjective opinion. |
| 0:37.0 | But apparently it's like a huge trend on |
| 0:39.9 | TikTok and all the young people are doing these like dance things. Is that what people do on TikTok? |
| 0:45.3 | Dance moves to sped up songs. And there are all these Spotify playlists as well of sped up music. |
| 0:52.2 | And it's becoming a real industry and artists are even releasing tracks at normal speed and then at sped up music. And it's becoming a real industry and artists are even releasing tracks at |
| 0:56.9 | normal speed and then at sped up speed. I actually quite like it. I've been listening to some |
| 1:01.3 | Spotify playlist that is sped up in the gym and I think I'm training way better. I hate it. So I guess |
| 1:07.4 | I'm an old person. I actually found you a nice French one that's apparently popular at the moment. |
| 1:12.6 | It's a French rapper called PLK. Have you heard of him? |
| 1:16.4 | I think I actually have heard of PLK. Let's hear this. This sounds like places where I want to shelter at home. |
| 1:40.1 | Oh, I find it really energizing and that's why I wanted to play at the beginning of this podcast to get everyone all energized for what's coming up today. Woo! What is coming up? Well, today we're |
| 1:50.6 | going to be calling up, this is like totally inappropriate segue. Today we're going to be talking |
| 1:57.7 | about European defense and foreign policy. Nicely done. Yeah, we're going to be calling about European defence and foreign policy. |
| 2:02.0 | Nicely done. |
| 2:05.5 | Yeah, we're going to be calling up Sophia Besh, who's a specialist in this area, |
... |
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