Hungary's Pride crackdown, Ukrainian sleuths, and 158 barrels of poop

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We've got a veritable smörgåsbord for you this week on The Europeans, from human rights in Hungary to the sorry tale of two Danish sustainability influencers whose eco-resort business went spectacularly wrong. We discuss why Viktor Orbán is concentrating so much effort on bullying the LGBTQI community at a time when Hungary has major problems to fix, and whether anything can be done to stop him. Plus, Daria Verbytska calls in from Kyiv to explain how an army of volunteer online sleuths helps Ukrainian authorities use open-source intelligence to fight back against Russia. Daria is the executive director and cofounder of the Molfar Intelligence Institute. You can find out about the wider Molfar company on their website and read their investigations here. This week's Inspiration Station offerings: LA NIÑA and Den stora älgvandringen ('The Great Moose Migration' on Sweden's STV). Thanks for listening. If you enjoy our podcasts, we'd love it if you'd consider supporting our work. You can chip in to help us cover the weekly research and production of The Europeans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (many currencies are available), or gift a donation to a super fan here. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast! Other resources for this episode 'Hungary's ban on Pride has little to do with being gay' - BalkanInsight, March 27, 2025 https://balkaninsight.com/2025/03/27/hungarys-ban-on-pride-has-little-to-do-with-being-gay/ 'Anti-spying phone pouches offered to EU lawmakers for trip to Hungary' - Politico Europe, April 16, 2025 https://www.politico.eu/article/lawmakers-offered-anti-espionage-phone-pouches-in-hungary/ 00:00:46 Welcome to Europe, land of toxic eggs and tomatoes00:06:50 Bad Week: Hungary gives constitutional backing to its Pride ban00:22:59 Good Week (?) for Guatemala-bound tourists00:44:51 Interview: Daria Verbytska on how OSINT is being used to help Ukraine's fightback against Russia00:59:55 The Inspiration Station: LA NIÑA and Den stora älgvandringen ('The Great Moose Migration')01:03:07 Happy Ending: The amazing cross-border teenagers tackling antibiotic resistance Producers: Morgan Childs and Wojciech OleksiakMixing and mastering: Wojciech OleksiakMusic: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina YouTube | Bluesky | Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Euronet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news.
0:11.4	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 europeans podcast Hello and welcome to the Europeans, the show that helps you digest at least some of what is going on on this vast and vibrant continent of Europe. I'm Dominic
0:56.5	Kramer, one of your hosts speaking to you from my home in Amsterdam, and I've got a Katie Lee
1:01.0	down the line in Paris. Hi, Katie. Hi, how you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. And this is an exciting
1:07.2	week, isn't it? Because we aren't just a podcast this week. No, we're also on the radio.
1:13.7	So a special hello if you're listening to this via NPR in the United States, RTE in Ireland,
1:19.2	CBC in Canada or ABC in Australia, among other places. Thank you so much for joining us.
1:25.0	And thank you to our friends at the Inside Europe show from
1:28.1	Germany's Deutsche Vela, who have very kindly gifted us their weekly slot this week and let us hang out
1:33.8	with you instead. And because there's quite a lot of people listening this week who might not
1:39.2	have heard the Europeans before, we should probably spend a minute explaining what this podcast is,
1:45.0	shouldn't we?
1:46.0	We probably should, yeah. You can probably tell that we are both British by background. That's
1:51.5	where we both grew up. But we actually both don't live in the UK and have citizenship of other
1:57.0	countries. Katie is also French. I'm also German, but I live in the Netherlands. And we started
2:02.5	this podcast after Brexit happened because we were a bit confused as to like why people had made
2:09.0	this decision to cut the UK off from Europe. It felt like something that was kind of irrational.
2:16.8	But we also thought it was maybe because people really didn't know what was going on in Europe.
2:21.0	People really didn't understand the European institutions.
2:23.8	And there was very little coming through our regular news sources that told us about what was happening in countries on the other side of the English Channel.
2:32.5	And seven and a half years later, we're still here
2:35.1	talking about Europe every week. And miraculously still friends. Somehow we are still friends.
	...

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