Good morning and welcome to the Europeans podcast.

Ooh, sexy morning voice.

We're recording quite early in the morning because I've got to go to rehearsal and I'm performing in the evenings.

So it's a bit wild, but we're really happy to be back here to talk to our wonderful listeners

once again. How are you, Katie? I'm good. Well, I'm a bit bummed out because all the C-word stuff

is getting pretty heavy again here in France. And the university where I teach in Paris has

reopened for two weeks and is now shut again, inevitably. So we're back to doing classes on Zoom. It feels like a bit of, yeah, deja vu.

But we're not here to talk about all of that stuff.

I think we should reinstate our reasonably strict ban on talking about all things pandemic.

I was going to suggest the opposite because where I am in the Netherlands, it's like it's not happening, except it is.

And you think that's the thought of this podcast?

I do.

I've been pretty shocked by the Dutch media over the last month as cases are rapidly rising and the fact that often the pandemic hasn't appeared in the top, like, page of the headlines for major news outlets.

So I have a feeling we might be going down the Sweden route sadly for this second wave which is a

little bit scary I'll be honest and I also think maybe we should drop our B word ban because we're not

talking enough about Brexit I never thought I'd say that certainly the rest of Europe is not talking

about Brexit at all and British friends are quite surprised when I tell them that nobody really cares

or is interested in it. But I don't want to talk about the B word and the C word, Dominic. I like

the fact that we talk about everything else. Okay, we'll keep it in place at least this week.

And this week we've got a very nice interview for you that has no mention of either of those

things, I think. We're speaking to Simon Strauss, who is a brilliant

writer and European thinker. He is seen as kind of the king of the new wave of literary

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