Hello, everybody. My name is Oliver G. This is the Earful Tower podcast, and I've been thinking a lot about the mayor of Paris, mostly because she's not the mayor anymore. We've got a new mayor, and I was thinking, we don't talk about politics on this show very much, especially because I want it to be sort of evergreen. You can listen to episodes years from now and

they'll still hit the same way. But then I thought, what if we get an expert in today who can talk

about the past, the present and the future of the mayor of Paris? So I started talking to Katie Lee,

who you might recognize her voice from the Europeans, a podcast about Europe.

You might read her substack already, which is called Milfei.

Or you might not know either of these things, and you'll be about to click on them in the show notes below.

Who knows?

But she's sitting across from me.

We're about to talk about the mayors of Paris.

We'll start with a bit of music, and here we go.

That music was from Pressman, and sitting in front of me is Katie Lee. How you doing?

Hi, Oliver. Nice to be back. Back is the right word. When was the last one?

2018. Shame on us. Can I just say, though, how amazing that we, you know, we first spoke when

our little baby podcasts were very small and very young.

And they're now both nearly a decade old. And like implausibly they're still running. How cool is that? You know what? A decade old podcast is in human years? No, no. Is it like a dog years type thing? I don't know. I think it must, I think it must be like... 150. I think it's... I think it's 100. Yeah, ish.

Right?

Do you know how many new podcasts have started in the time that since we last sat down in the studio? 50 gazillion million. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Firstly, I think back then we sat in the studio and we did back to back. I was on yours and you were on minds. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Have you listened back to either of them? No, but I want to. And I want to hear what my nervous podcast voice sounds like. You think? You're nervous?

You're nervous?

Yeah. Can we do a shout out to that straight away? Can I do a compliment? Do a compliment. Love the way you're right. Thank you so much. I really do. You've got a real good, I don't know, you've got to grasp on explaining things in a way that is, it's pleasant to read. Oh, well, thank you. That's kind of the idea behind it. So basically I make a podcast that is about the continent, so it's super zoomed out. Right. And I was feeling towards the end of the last year like, God, I feel really kind of out of

touch with local news. And I want to make something that explains just one news story, like a hard

news story that's been happening in the city of Paris every week to people who live here, maybe

people who visit a lot, and just explain it in a way that feels fun. So it's kind of like what I do

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