Three Rivers and a Sausage Fight

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s our second week of “cucumber season” programming, and fair warning: we’re really leaning into the late-summer goofiness. This week, we go hard on German gastronomy, with a deep dive into Europe’s declining alcohol consumption and a recap of the utterly absurd row over the origins of Bratwurst. Because we don’t want you to think we’ve totally lost the plot, we also had a perfectly civilised conversation with Robert Winder, the prolific author and sometime editor of The Independent and Granta whose new book, Three Rivers, comes out next week. Robert spoke with our producer Katz about the waterways that shape Europe as we know it—and about their future in a warming climate. You can purchase the book here on 28 August. This week's Inspiration Station recommendations are the Danish film The Guilty and the audio recordings of Colm Tóibín’s novels Brooklyn and Long Island. Our Happy Ending comes from Helsinki, which managed to go an entire year with no traffic fatalities! You can read more about the milestone achievement here and how they did it here. This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number. 00:00:47 Welcome back to cucumber season!00:03:09 Good Week: European livers00:16:29 Bad Week: Bratwurst ensnared in national feud00:31:16 Interview: Robert Winder reconnects us with the poetry of rivers00:44:00 The Inspiration Station: the film The Guilty and Colm Tóibín’s novels Brooklyn and Long Island 00:49:11 Happy Ending: Helsinki successfully stamps out road deathsProducers: Morgan Childs, Katz Laszlo, and Wojciech OleksiakMixing and mastering: Wojciech OleksiakMusic: Jim Barne and Mariska MartinaYouTube | Bluesky | Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Uranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU News.
0:11.8	But this podcast would not be possible without the incredibly generous support of our amazing listeners who donate a little bit each month at patreon.com forward slash
0:22.6	Europeans podcast, the only podcast with this central mission. We want to talk about Europe and we don't want
0:59.5	to bore our listeners to sleep. So here goes. I'm Dominic Kramer in Amsterdam and I've got my pal
1:06.5	Voishek-Olexiak in Warsaw down the line. Hi, VyCech, what's funny? You're a pal. Thank you. It's nice to hear that. Oh, yeah, I thought I'd step up our game. You're not just my colleague anymore. You're my pal. I'm very glad to hear that. It sounds weirdly Australian to my non-native ear, but maybe that's just me. Yeah, no, there've got a point. It does probably sound a bit weird coming out of my British mouth, but nice to be back. Yeah, and actually, I'm going to try and be more energetic this morning at the top of the show, because when I listened back to last week's episode, I thought I sounded pretty sick and tired, which I kind of was...
1:45.0	Holiday isn't good for you.
1:46.0	No, apparently not, but I'm going to try a bit harder to sound energetic and healthy today.
1:52.0	You sound better already.
1:53.0	Thank you.
1:54.0	Okay, so tell me what's coming up.
1:57.0	I'm a bit in the dark when it comes to what we have prepared for today.
2:01.2	Really?
2:04.4	Check the Google spreadsheet, boy, check.
2:07.1	I was busy doing other stuff for us.
2:07.9	Fair enough.
2:14.7	Well, later on in the show, our producer Katzlaslo is dropping by for an interview with the writer Robert Winder to talk about three of Europe's rivers that he argues made Europe.
2:20.3	Three rivers that all originated from the same geographical cradle in central Switzerland.
2:27.0	Can you guess which three rivers, Robert and Katz, are going to be talking about Vojc?
2:32.8	Well, I think I have a sense, but if you could help me
2:36.0	at this very early hour, I'd be really very gracious. Yeah, it wasn't a kind question. Sorry,
2:42.4	I'm putting you on the spot. The three rivers are the Rhine, the Rhone and the Po. It's a chat
2:48.7	about how our landscapes define us as people and as Europeans, and I for one,
	...

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