The Surprising Queer History of Poland
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
4.8 • 162 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1932, Poland became one of the first countries in Europe to decriminalise homosexuality; today it's one of the most hostile on the continent when it comes to LGBTQ rights. This week historian Kamil Karczewski joins us to discuss Poland's little-known history as a queer pioneer, and what has changed since. We're also talking about France's crackdown on domestic flights and Ireland's amazingly successful experiment with the four-day week. Oh, and we pay a visit to the EU metaverse, so that you don't have to.
You can follow Kamil on Twitter here, and visit the EU's Global Gateway metaverse site here. Good luck, and let us know if you make it inside!
This week's Isolation Inspiration: Règle 30, TechTrash, and Inside the Mind of a Cat. You can follow the Savitsky Cats on Instagram here.
Don't forget to sign up to support the podcast this week if you'd like to join the live recording of our Christmas episode on December 12! We're hugely grateful to everyone who chips in so that we can keep making the show. You can join us at patreon.com/europeanspodcast, and many currencies are available.
Thanks for listening!
02:22 Good Week: France's crackdown on domestic flights
09:36 Bad Week: The EU's metaverse fiesta flop
22:23 Interview: Kamil Karczewski on Poland's little-known queer history
38:16 Isolation Inspiration: Règle 30, Tech Trash, and 'Inside the Mind of a Cat'
42:22 Happy Ending: Ireland's four-day working week is a roaring success
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. You can find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Europeans podcast. |
| 0:25.7 | How are you, Katie? |
| 0:26.9 | Are you away from the toilet floor yet? |
| 0:30.3 | Don't tell everyone. |
| 0:32.3 | Yeah, thank you for sharing, Dominic. |
| 0:34.0 | I am freshly recovered from a winter vomiting bug, which has been deeply fun. |
| 0:38.3 | You could have made some pretty interesting... |
| 0:40.3 | Instagram content. |
| 0:42.3 | No, thank you. Moving on, how are you doing? |
| 0:45.3 | I'm fine, I'm just very cold here in Amsterdam. It's been so cold. |
| 0:51.3 | We were talking about how wet cold feels colder than dry cold. And you've got wet |
| 0:57.4 | cold over there. Yeah, it really feels, it's been like one or two degrees and it really feels way |
| 1:02.8 | colder than the minus six or minus seven degrees cold we had in Tallinn last weekend. Take me out of here. |
| 1:12.3 | Lucky I'm going to Italy next week. |
| 1:17.4 | Hooray. Well, that's something cheerful to look forward to. And hopefully the next half an hour is also going to cheer me up a bit after my fun week of illness. What are we talking about this week? |
| 1:23.3 | This week we're going to be talking about a rather surprising bit of European queer history. |
| 1:29.1 | When you think of the countries that have been pioneers with the rights of gay people, |
| 1:33.3 | you probably don't think of Poland as being at the forefront. But actually, Poland decriminalized |
| 1:40.1 | homosexuality in 1932, long before many other European countries did so. |
| 1:47.7 | So this week we invited someone onto the show who has spent a lot of time unpicking |
| 1:52.6 | how this decriminalization of homosexuality happened in a country that today is considerably |
| 1:58.6 | behind on recognizing the rights of LGBTQ plus people compared to |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.