Spies, wolves and taxes
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
4.8 • 162 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's been a steady drip-drip of revelations for months now that an alarming number of people in Greece have had their phones tapped. Who is behind this mass snooping, and why are they doing it? This week we call up our favourite Greek-splainer Nick Malkoutzis to unravel a complicated scandal. We're also talking about oil and gas companies' bonanza profits, and the wolf that killed Ursula von der Leyen's pony.
Nick is the co-founder and editor of MacroPolis. You can find The Agora, his excellent podcast on Greek politics, here.
This week's Isolation Inspiration: Cunk on Earth and The Making of Modern Ukraine (on Youtube here and on Spotify here).
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
00:23 Duolingo fraud
02:22 Bad Week: Ursula and the Wolf
08:03 Good week: Filthy-rich oil and gas giants
18:35 Interview: Nick Malkoutzis on Greece's snooping scandal
30:48 Isolation Inspiration: 'Cunk on Earth' and 'The Making of Modern Ukraine'
34:25 Happy Ending: Hercules rises from the sewer
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I've decided to stage an intervention, Dominic. I'm very concerned about you. |
| 0:25.9 | Oh no, why? |
| 0:27.1 | So my husband's been using Duolingo to improve his French, and you and him are friends on this app. |
| 0:33.5 | Oh no. |
| 0:34.4 | And I don't even know what languages you're learning at the moment, but you seem to be |
| 0:37.8 | spending an alarming amount of time on this app. My husband says you're on a 57 days streak. What's |
| 0:44.3 | happening? I am actually just doing Dutch. Oh. I recently went back to it because I was like, |
| 0:50.3 | do they have advanced duolingo? Because little humble brag, I think I have like, in duolingo terms anyway, a bit advanced |
| 0:58.7 | to Dutch. |
| 0:59.3 | And it turns out they do. |
| 1:01.8 | And the reason why I've got that streak isn't because I have actually been doing duolingo |
| 1:07.0 | all of those days. |
| 1:08.1 | I joined a friend's family duolingo paid membership. Whoa. |
| 1:12.6 | And it means you can get loads of freeze streaks. So it's actually fake news. Oh, so you haven't |
| 1:18.1 | been practicing your Dutch at all? No. And actually I've kind of given up a bit in the last few weeks. |
| 1:23.2 | You know who we really need to intervene with is composer, musician of this show, Jim Barn. |
| 1:29.4 | Oh, yes. |
| 1:30.4 | Who has something like a 2000 day streak. |
| 1:33.4 | Jim's girlfriend is Brazilian, so he's been learning Portuguese on it for a few years now. |
| 1:37.1 | I think he's finished, duolingo. |
| 1:38.9 | He must be fluent by now. |
| 1:41.0 | If he's actually putting in the work and not cheating like some people, |
... |
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