Europe's anti-Elon
Back when Elon Musk was challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight, Eugen Rochko was building an open-source, non-problematic Twitter alternative, completely without fanfare. Last year, the Mastodon founder announced his departure from the head of the social media platform in a candid blog post, citing a growing discomfort with the role and an interest in preserving the site’s decentralised values. But Mastodon lives on, and – full disclosure – we’re all for it. This week, we spoke to Eugen about his dreams for the “fediverse” and about whether his vision for ethical, supervillain-free online communities has a promising future. In fact, we enjoyed the conversation so much that we’re releasing a longer version for supporters of the podcast.
Also in this episode: a compromise in Europe’s War on Veggie Burgers and the end of the decade-long Iceland-the-country-versus-Iceland-the-grocery-store dispute.
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DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Hello and welcome to the Europeans, the podcast where we sprint across the continent like caffeinated squirrels, stuff our cheeks with the juiciest news and then spit it all out in a gloriously messy 50-ish minute long audio buffet.
KATY LEE:
Do we really think that regurgitating squirrels are the metaphor that's going to keep people listening to this?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, I hope so. I felt like try something new.
KATY LEE:
Well done for trying.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Anyway, how are you, Katy?
KATY LEE:
I’m good.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Have you been squirrelling away over there in Paris?
KATY LEE:
I've been squirrelling away. Yeah, I feel like I'm just awakening from my hibernation. I've been enjoying the springy weather, even though spring doesn't officially start till next week.
That is a thing, by the way, that I learned from our very own newsletter. Do subscribe. It is great.
How are you doing, Dominic?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Also doing well. Been enjoying the spring, although I think it's past already. We're back in autumn.
KATY LEE:
Oh, the Netherlands.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And actually, I have big life news. I've adopted two cats.
KATY LEE:
So exciting. And they're huge.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
One of them is huge. One of them is tiny. They're half brother and sister, incredibly fluffy, lovely Turkish Angora cats.
Very beautiful cats. I'll post some pictures of them on our Instagram, @europeanspodcast.
KATY LEE:
That's very exciting. We have two new podcasts.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
We sure do. And actually, there's a fun story about their names. We didn't name them.
Their previous owner, who sadly died, did. She named them Cooper after the American anchor, Anderson Cooper. And the other one is called Finley, who is the editorial producer of Anderson Cooper's long running show, a journalist called Ben Finley.
KATY LEE:
Why?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I don't know. But I just love that I've accidentally ended up with cats named after journalists.
And I'm now thinking someone should name their cats after one of us and one of our producers like Lee and Childs or Lee and Laszlo, Kraemer and Oleksiak.
KATY LEE:
Love that.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Just planting a seed.
KATY LEE:
Oh, dear. Well, that is fantastic news, and we look forward to seeing your cats plastered all over our Instagram page. But what are we talking about this week?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, for Good Week, Bad Week, I'm going to be talking about some big developments in the European battle over what we're allowed to call our veggie burgers. What about you?
KATY LEE:
I'm going to be talking about whether a supermarket can trademark the name of a country and get away with it. Spoiler alert: No, they can't.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Fun. So it sounds like Good Week, Bad Week is food industry themed.
KATY LEE:
Yeah, I guess it is.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
After that, we'll be putting down our knife and fork and we'll be speaking to a very different kind of tech bro. We'll be calling up Eugene Rochko, the founder of the not for profit, open source, decentralised European social media platform called Mastodon. I can't wait for everyone to hear this conversation.
I found it really interesting to hear about what it's been like for him trying to create a social media platform with very different values to those of the big US tech giants. That's coming up later. But first, it's time for Good Week, Bad Week.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE:
Let's start with Bad Week. Who's had a bad week, Dominic?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, before I tell you that, I should mention that this is the segment of the show that is brought to you in collaboration with our radio partners at Euranet Plus. And yeah, once again, this was a week with a lot of options to choose from for Bad Week. I think it's fair to say there are a lot of people losing this week.
Check out our weekly newsletter, also called Good Week Bad Week, for some of the topics that we wanted to discuss but didn't make it into the show. You'll find a link to that in our bio.
But yeah, after that rather wordy preamble, in order to answer your question, Katy, I've decided for this week's bad week to give it to Europe's vegetarians and vegans.
Well, actually, I really want to call it Medium Week for Europe's vegetarians because things looked like they were going to be worse than they've actually ended up. But I'll start making my case and then maybe you can decide a bit later on if I'm allowed to rename the segment Medium Week.
KATY LEE:
Go for it.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So some listeners might be aware of a political battle that's been going on in the European Union around regulating what we call our vegetarian and vegan meat replacement products.
KATY LEE:
Is that what we call them?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Meat replacement products. Yeah.
KATY LEE:
Yeah. Okay. Right.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Sure. What do you call them?
KATY LEE:
I had a delicious vegetarian meat replacement product the other day.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well...
KATY LEE:
Well, I guess that's what this whole segment is about, right? Because I call them veggie burgers, I guess.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Exactly. And actually, I think it's that rare beast of a story about EU regulation that's been getting some cut through to normal people. I've had a number of friends mention it to me, friends who aren't people I would necessarily expect to know anything about the goings on in the corridors of Brussels.
But anyway, probably a lot of you have also not heard about this story. So very brief introduction. Essentially, it's a long battle that's been fought between Europe's meat industry and Europe's vegetarians.
It's a debate about whether you should be allowed to market vegetarian meat replacements with the names of the meaty things that they are imitating. So are we allowed to call a veggie burger a veggie burger? Or do we have to give it a confusing and anodyne name like a veggie disc?
KATY LEE:
Veggie disc. Nothing sounds more delicious.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, some right wing politicians would like us to be calling it that. But yeah, I'll get to that later. I was actually listening back through our podcast archives and saw that I was ranting about the threat to ban the use of these words on the podcast back in October 2020.
KATY LEE:
Oh, wow.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So yeah, that illustrates that it's a debate that really has been rolling for a long time. And I've wanted to talk about it on the podcast many times since then with all the twists and turns that have happened. But this week, I am finally talking about it on the show again, because we got news that the debate might finally be closed.
And I'm here to tell you that there is both good news and bad news for producers of vegetarian and vegan products in the EU. Hence why I would like permission to call this medium week.
KATY LEE:
What about medium-rare week?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Love that. Okay.
KATY LEE:
Um, well, you're officially breaking the rules. But go ahead, I guess. Tell me about this medium week or medium-rare week.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, the news this week is that a compromise in the meat replacement naming saga has been reached between EU negotiators. Finally, this compromise will still need signing off in the European Parliament and will also need the approval of the ministers from the EU member states. But the deal that has been negotiated will mean that the big generic catch all terms like burger, sausage and nuggets, words that could be used anyway for different kinds of meat, they are going to continue to be allowed to be used by producers of vegetarian alternatives.
KATY LEE:
Okay, so a veggie burger is still a veggie burger.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yes, the veggie burger is saved. And that is good news for the vegetarians. The less good news for the vegetarians is that a list of 31 words has been agreed upon, which are seen as being more specifically associated with a specific animal or cut of meat.
And they're going to be banned for the non meaty alternatives.
KATY LEE:
What kind of words are we talking about?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
There's things like steak, bacon, liver, drumstick, chicken.
KATY LEE:
Who is making vegetarian liver? Is that something that people want to buy?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Apparently. Anyway, that's the bad bit of news for the vegetarian producers.
KATY LEE:
Not to mix up all the food terms here, but it does sound like a classic piece of EU fudge coming to this kind of compromise.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yes, fudge was not on the list. So you can make a vegetarian fudge, you'll be happy to hear. Anyway, yeah, this all means that the so called veggie burger ban is not actually a veggie burger ban anymore.
But the French member of the European Parliament who had reignited this food naming debate a few months ago by drafting an amendment to an EU law on farmers and food chains, she is anyway hailing it in a statement to Politico as an indisputable victory for our farmers. She's called Céline Imart and she's a politician for Les Républicains and actually a cereal farmer herself.
KATY LEE:
Cereal farmers: she farms cereals, not she like starts farms and closes them again.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I think so. But actually, the fact that she put out this statement to Politico kind of surprised me because she said, yeah, it's an indisputable victory for our farmers. But it's not.
It's an indisputable victory for a specific subset of farmers, livestock farmers. And I think that's a really important distinction. I have to admit that I did just see she gave a statement to The Guardian where she did clarify that it was a good week for livestock farmers.
So I think she realised that that was a mistake. But it's just one of those things that rubs me up the wrong way because it goes towards entrenching the framing of the debate that I've often heard that farmers backed by the right are fighting against lefty vegetarian wokeisters, which I just find so simplistic. After all, the vegetarian products are also containing produce that is produced by farmers.
KATY LEE:
Right. Farmers like this MEP herself. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting stance that she's taken.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And many of those farmers presumably won't be celebrating this so-called victory.
KATY LEE:
Isn't part of the problem that a lot of these kind of processed veggie replacement meat type products that we can buy, a lot of them are heavily based on soy, right? And soy is something that we, well, a lot of it is imported, I guess, to Europe.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, you're right. A lot of the soy we eat here in Europe is farmed outside of Europe. I couldn't find out exactly how much of the food that is in vegan and veggie meat replacements is farmed in Europe.
And it's not only soy, by the way. But certainly in general, less of that food than the meat we eat is farmed in Europe. But that's also perhaps just a reminder that we need to transition our European farming industry to one that emits less.
Maybe we do have too much livestock farming, dare I say. And one of the reasons why we have so many livestock farmers in Europe is because of the European subsidy system. I saw some really shocking figures released a few weeks ago by the food justice charity Foodrise, saying that via the EU's huge farming policy, the Common Agricultural Policy, beef and lamb received an estimated 580 times more subsidies than legumes such as lentils and beans in 2020.
Wow. 580 times. That's astonishing.
It really is. And this is despite the fact that on average, beef causes an estimated 21 to 62 times more emissions compared with pulses per gram of protein.
KATY LEE:
This is really one of those examples of the EU doing one thing with the left hand and the other thing with the right hand.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Is it?
KATY LEE:
Just in terms of being like, climate change, we must do stuff on climate change then. But also, let's do loads to support the meat industry.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, you're right. So yeah, this attempt from right wing and far right parties in Europe to prove their support for farmers is actually, in my opinion, only proving their support for a certain segment of the farming industry, a segment who are already benefiting much more from the EU's subsidy system than the lower emitting protein source alternatives.
KATY LEE:
Honestly, I think we should scrap this whole medium rare week thing. This is just a bad week.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Fair point. I also think it's a bad week for consumers in general, because it's just going to create more confusion fast, not less. I just don't really understand why this issue has to take up so much political energy, why it's become such a cause célèbre.
Sure, every now and again, someone might buy a veggie liver pate and not realise it had the word veggie in it. But I would guess that that's quite a rare occurrence. And if it happens occasionally, is that really so terrible?
KATY LEE:
I do love the idea of like someone super French thinking that they're buying foie gras and just realising that they've bought some hideous vegetarian replacement.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Poor poor person.
KATY LEE:
Oh, the horror.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
The other significant part of this compromise deal that I haven't mentioned yet is that it also rules out the producers of lab grown meat from using these meaty terms. So I'm talking about cultivated meat, you know, that's grown in a lab using a small amount of animal cells.
KATY LEE:
So if you grew like a steak, a beef steak in a lab, you still wouldn't be able to call it a steak.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah. And that's quite a big decision to make considering none of this lab grown meat is actually on the EU market yet. It's an industry that's growing very quickly at the moment.
And I mean, I get it. It's seen as a bit intimidating and science fiction sounding for some people. But it's also seen by many as the future and a solution to our food security problems.
It could also help us with climate change. It produces considerably less emissions than livestock farming. The negotiator for the European Greens actually described this decision as sending a signal to the biotech industry to go abroad instead of building their industry in Europe.
I find it quite interesting to see that the Green Party are spinning this as an anti-innovation move. I mean, it's not necessarily what you'd expect a Green Party to be doing. But yeah, I can follow their reasoning.
They also quite pithily described the people behind the ban as the conservative word police.
KATY LEE:
I like that. Word policing is exactly what this is. On which note, the other thing that often comes up in this kind of area is oat milk.
You haven't mentioned like dairy replacement products. Is that a whole complete different set of regulation? Like the dairy industry have already kind of won that, right?
Like I literally just now bought a bottle of oat drink, I think it was called?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, the dairy industry are already protected from non-dairy alternatives using dairy associated words like milk or yoghurt for their non-dairy products. That regulation has been around for a long time already.
KATY LEE:
But you still won't hear anyone saying, I just had a delicious glass of oat drink.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
No, and again, it's just one of those things I find so confusing. One of the soy yoghurts that I buy in the supermarket is called Alpro Mild and Creamy. And I'm always like, mild and creamy what? Those are two adjectives. Like give me a noun so I know what I'm buying.
KATY LEE:
Now who's being the word police?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
What? No, I'm saying stop policing the words. Give me a word.
KATY LEE:
Will someone just give Dominic a noun?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
That said, I do think the case with meaty words is now looking like it's going to be less prohibitive than it is with dairy words, which is why I do think it's a medium week or a medium rare week. And I talked about the potential for the cultivated meat industry to grow in the coming years. But the plant based meat alternatives industry has already been growing massively over recent years.
According to a survey commissioned by the Good Food Institute think tank, in which they interviewed 16,000 customers across 15 European countries. The majority of people in all countries they interviewed, bar two, thought meat consumption in their country was too high. Guess which two meaty countries with the exception?
KATY LEE:
France?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yes. And the country of our producer Wojciech, Poland.
KATY LEE:
Poland, interesting.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
There was another study from the Good Food Institute, where they found that across Europe 39% of people self-reported as at least trying to reduce their meat consumption. And interestingly, it was highest in Germany and Austria, where they found a majority of people who said they were trying to reduce their meat consumption, which really doesn't fit with my image I have of Germany and Austria. But that was a nice surprise.
KATY LEE:
Go Germans and Austrians.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So yeah, even if the naming of meat alternatives has become almost a bit of a culture war issue in Europe, I think there is no question that meat alternatives are here to stay. Although, yeah, as you mentioned earlier, they are often highly processed.
So let's all try to be brave enough to try cooking with whole foods every now and again.
KATY LEE:
Get out those legumes.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Anyway, that was my medium rare week. Thanks for sticking with me. Who's had a good week, Katy?
KATY LEE:
Well, I was very tempted to give my good week to Pedro Sanchez, because he seems to have emerged over the past week as being kind of the moral conscience of Europe when it comes to standing up to Donald Trump over the war in Iran. What an interesting politician. So interesting, in fact, that I think we would rather try to find a guest to talk over the coming weeks about Pedro Sanchez. Why he does what he does, and where Spanish politics is at right now, because it's a very interesting time. So I'm not going to give to Sanchez, even though I was sorely tempted. I am going to say it has been a good week for the nation of Iceland, which has just won a hard-fought legal battle that has lasted a decade.
For most people, when we think of Iceland, we think of Iceland as the country, a place of amazing landscapes and a weirdly disproportionate number of incredible musicians. For people that live in the United Kingdom or grew up there, as you and I both did, if you say the word Iceland to them, they might not think first of Iceland, the country. Like the image that pops into their head might be the red and orange logo of Iceland, the supermarket.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
It's true.
KATY LEE:
Is that true for you?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Not really. I've actually never been in an Iceland.
KATY LEE:
Have you not?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Didn't they have that terrible slogan? “That's why mums go to Iceland.”
KATY LEE:
That's why mums go to Iceland. Do you know what? Now that I am a mum and I am the kind of person that wants to buy like large numbers of Capri Suns, I do kind of get that as a slogan.
Anyway, for the non-British people listening, just to clarify, Iceland is a country, but it is also the name of a major UK supermarket chain. It has been in business since 1970 and they have nearly a thousand stores across the UK.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And does it only exist in the UK?
KATY LEE:
They've actually had stores in various countries over the years that they've then had to close, including Ireland and the Czech Republic. They do still have, I believe, some stores in Spain and Portugal. And confusingly, they also do actually have a few stores in Iceland, the country, which must be quite fun to walk into.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
That is funny. Do we know if the supermarket was deliberately named Iceland as a reference to Iceland, the country?
KATY LEE:
Yeah, it's funny. I was actually reading an interview with the supermarket's executive chairman, who's a guy called Richard Walker. The chain was founded by his dad, Malcolm, and it was actually his mom, Rani, who came up with the name Iceland.
And Richard told the New York Times that at the time, his mom wasn't thinking at all about Iceland, the country. So he was just imagining like an icy land, ice land. This is a very important detail, actually.
As you will know, if you live in the UK, Iceland is primarily known for frozen food, although it does sell other stuff as well. Anyway, Rani was apparently a lovely person who raised loads of money for dementia research. But this was maybe a bit of a geographical oversight, because years later, it would go on to cause loads of legal trouble for her son.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Okay, so what exactly did this legal dispute between Iceland, the supermarket, and Iceland, the country, actually look like? You said it went on for a decade?
KATY LEE:
Yeah. So this whole fiasco begins in 2014. Britain is still part of the European Union. We are pre-Brexit. And Iceland, the supermarket, is finally granted a trademark that it has been wanting to get for years. It is a trademark that gives it the exclusive right to use the word Iceland across a bunch of different product types, including loads of different foods, ketchups, pizzas, ice lollies, all the major food groups, but also all kinds of packaging and fridges.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Veggie burgers.
KATY LEE:
Veggie burgers, vegetarian liver, all of the above. Basically, anything that you might find in a supermarket. Iceland, the supermarket, had been trying to get this trademark as early as 2002.
So they were really happy to finally have it. And they got it in spite of opposition from Iceland, the country, who were like, you shouldn't be able to trademark the name of our country. This is going to cause us problems.
Like if someone in Reykjavik opens a ketchup company, they should be able to proudly call it Iceland Ketchups, shouldn't they?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Iceland Ketchups? Why not Iceland Ketchup?
KATY LEE:
Different flavours available. But as of 2014, your ability to open a company called Iceland Ketchups was suddenly very legally shaky. Anyway, 2014, the supermarket wins the trademark.
Everyone kind of grumbles but gets on with things for a few months until 2015, when the supermarket tries to block someone from registering a new trademark. And that trademark is for the phrase, inspired by Iceland. Now, Iceland, the supermarket, wants to stop this phrase from being used on food products because they're worried that these products could get mixed up with their own products.
At the time, Iceland, the supermarket, thought that the applicant for this new trademark was like just a random company. But it was in fact an Icelandic government agency that was trying to get the trademark. The supermarket later said that if it had known that at the time, it would have tried to have some kind of out-of-court conversation about how the two could peacefully coexist.
But it was a bit too late. They put in an official objection. Iceland's government gets super mad about this, naturally.
I mean, they had opposed the supermarket being given this trademark in the first place. And now here is the supermarket trying to stop them from using the name of their own country. This is an outrage.
It is on. The Icelandic government are like, we're going to take you down. You should not be able to stop us from using our own country name.
This is ridiculous. So in 2016, the Icelandic Foreign Ministry launches legal proceedings against the supermarket, essentially arguing that they should never have been granted the trademark for the word Iceland in the first place. And because this is EU intellectual property law that we're talking about, everything happens quite boringly and slowly via hearings of the European Union Intellectual Property Office.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
You brought out your nice institutional robo voice again. I love it.
KATY LEE:
We love a bit of institutional robo voice. So this whole thing takes a while. But in 2019, there is a first ruling from the Intellectual Property Office, and it takes the side of Iceland, the country.
The Intellectual Property Office says, you're right, we should never have let the supermarket have this trademark. We hereby declare it invalidated. Iceland the supermarket is obviously furious.
They appeal the ruling. But again, the appeal ruling comes back in 2022, confirming the previous ruling. We hereby declare that the supermarket shouldn't own the word Iceland.
Iceland the supermarket still won't accept this.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
They should have just given in the amount of money they spent on legal fees.
KATY LEE:
They take it up a notch. They take it to the EU General Court, which is the second highest court in the EU. And last summer, this court also ruled for a third time that the supermarket was being ridiculous.
I mean, it didn't actually say that in the ruling, but it did say we confirm what all of the lower courts have told you. You shouldn't have this trademark. And generally, for the record, we don't think that geographical place names should be trademarkable because it causes problems like this one.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
But you said that the supermarket took this to the second highest court in the EU. So could they appeal it again, like to the first highest court?
KATY LEE:
Yeah, I mean, there is a higher court, the Court of Justice. That is the top court of the European Union. And yes, they could.
They could appeal it again. But Iceland, the supermarket announced this week that they have decided after a full decade of this dispute that they're going to drop it. The supermarket boss, Richard Walker, he announced this very Britishly.
He told the New York Times, going to the highest European court would cost us thousands more in fees. So I thought, sod this. I just don't see the point anymore.
It's quite funny. The New York Times actually had to translate sod this for its American readers. They explained that this is, quote, a British phrase to express extreme frustration, which I find very charming.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
That's brilliant. But I mean, what are the implications to this ruling? Does Iceland, the supermarket have to change its name now?
KATY LEE:
No, it doesn't. And that is largely why they have decided to drop the legal case. They are a bit worried that this means there's not much stopping other food shops from calling themselves Iceland.
But they've decided that, you know what? We are a massive supermarket chain. We would probably survive a village store calling itself Iceland.
And probably customers are smart enough that if they go to a village store called Iceland, they will probably realise that they're not walking into a branch of Iceland, the mass supermarket chain. As a nice final gesture for drawing a line under this very, very bitter dispute, I mentioned earlier that Iceland, the supermarket, actually has three stores in Iceland, the country. The supermarket announced last week that it would offer 50% discounts on a range of products in its Icelandic stores while stocks of these items last.
I kind of think these discounts should be extended to Icelandic people living in the UK, where there are like a thousand stores that they could walk into. But that doesn't seem to be part of the plan, at least not yet.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I like that you're suggesting more alternatives for how Icelandic people can benefit from the legal loss. I mean, they should.
KATY LEE:
This whole thing has been an outrage since the beginning.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I agree. But this case does make me wonder like how many other companies are named after places and have they also run into these kind of disputes before?
KATY LEE:
You know, I did actually spend an unreasonable amount of time yesterday, like racking my brain trying to think of other examples. Patagonia, the outdoorsy clothes brand is a good example. So full disclosure, we have actually run an ad for Patagonia, the brand, once in the past.
But it's also, of course, the name of a region in South America.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, I know about this. There's like a drag queen called Pattie Gonia, a really cool, progressive drag queen who does loads of political stuff. And didn't Patagonia take her to court?
KATY LEE:
Yeah, there's been this legal dispute brewing between Patagonia, the brand and Pattie Gonia, indeed the drag queen in the last couple of months. Pattie Gonia, the drag queen, has sold merch that riffs off the Patagonia logo. And Patagonia doesn't like that very much.
So they have indeed launched a lawsuit against this drag queen. But it does seem a bit off brand to a drag queen, I think.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
It really does. I thought the whole point was that like Patagonia, the company, was trying to be like the best business in the world, like the most ethical. And this just doesn't seem like it fits with that.
KATY LEE:
It leaves a bad taste, doesn't it? But so there is a dispute with the drag queen. There hasn't, as far as I've seen, been any dispute between Patagonia, the clothes brand, and any like regional authorities in Patagonia or tourism boards, like trying to stop them from calling themselves that.
There is one other example that I could think of, and that is, of course, Amazon.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, of course.
KATY LEE:
Yeah. It's a bit depressing that when I hear the word Amazon these days, I absolutely think of the company before I think about the world's largest river or the world's biggest rainforest.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah.
KATY LEE:
But it's a bit late for that now. There was a dispute between Amazon, the company, and the eight South American countries that contain the Amazon rainforest. And it was specifically a dispute about website address names.
Back in 2012, Amazon, the company, applied for the right to use .amazon as a website ending. It was around the time when the list of possible website endings was expanding a lot beyond things like .com and .org. And the countries around the Amazon were like, hang on a second, like our land was here a long time before Jeff Bezos. Does this mean that no one who lives here will be able to use .amazon at the end of their website address, you know, for maybe promoting a tourism thing, tours.amazon, something like that? Amazon, the company, actually won that dispute, although they did promise to give a handful of domain names ending in .amazon to countries in the region. Very generous of them.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
This does actually remind me that there was another example that's kind of connected. It's not about a place name, but it's about an animal name. Do you remember the veteran rock act The Eagles briefly launched trademark infringement lawsuit against a non-profit foundation that was dedicated to saving eagles?
KATY LEE:
It's just not a good look.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
No, really not good look. Anyway, they did drop it eventually.
KATY LEE:
Good, because the court of public opinion is definitely not going to side with them. Anyway, I'm not sure what the moral of this Iceland versus Iceland story is. I guess it's that if you are starting a company, maybe don't name it after a place.
You never know what kind of trouble it might land you in.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I don't mean to like drop us in it, but isn't this podcast named after a place?
KATY LEE:
Yes, yes, it is.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
We're now joined by Wojciech, producer of the show. What are you doing here, Wojciech?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
It's a background check on both of you. I'm the new head of the HR department that I just started. So how about your education? Any degrees?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, yeah. I studied academic music and then did a master's in voice.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Fantastic. And Katy?
KATY LEE:
I studied politics at university and then got a master's in broadcast journalism.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Fantastic. And your professions?
KATY LEE:
These days, I call myself a journalist and podcaster. This is a surprisingly large part of my week, this podcast, so it seems valid.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I guess I'm an opera singer and podcaster.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
So none of you are exactly business people. I am not either. I was trained in jazz drumming and law. And I've been doing journalism for more than a decade now.
And yet running this show, even though it has never made a profit, is essentially like running a small business, right?
KATY LEE:
It really is. I grew up as the daughter of two small business people, and I always swore I would never follow in their footsteps. And yet here I am having a working day that looks weirdly similar to theirs.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Oh, I can relate as the son of a 1990s businessman in Poland. But basically what we do is we learn, we experiment, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to run this whole thing better. And also every now and then we reach out for help.
And recently, me and Katy jumped on a call with the amazing media business savant, Peter Erdelyi.
KATY LEE:
He's so great. He's like a kind of godfather of Hungarian independent media. Can we call him that?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, I think that's legit. I got to know of him through his fantastic newsletter, Media Finance Monitor. And if the media business interests you, even a little bit, you should absolutely subscribe.
And I don't know about you, Katy, but I have two main takeaways from this conversation. When we told Peter our listener to supporter ratio is 8 to 10 percent, he was actually absolutely, genuinely amazed. Normally, it should be between 1 and 5 percent.
KATY LEE:
Whoa, thank you, listeners. Turns out we have a super nice listenership, like way more generous than the audiences of most podcasts.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, Peter said it's hard to believe and that we should be very proud of it. And we are. But more importantly, we're incredibly grateful.
And this is a moment where I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who supports the show. Day in and day out, we try to give back for the generosity by making the best show we possibly can every single week. I also want to say a massive welcome to our newest members, Sandra, Leslie, Aleska, Quillspring, Marco, Jorge, Nikolaj and Matej.
Thank you so much for joining us.
KATY LEE:
Thanks, guys.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
But the second thing Peter absolutely loved about our slightly unusual business model is this. If you become a 12 euro a month supporter, you get something quite special. Katy and Dominic will record a personal mini episode about you or someone you pick.
KATY LEE:
I don't think you could call it a mini episode. It's like a two minute voice memo.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
No, no. No fudging of this thing. Like no downplaying. It's very cool.
KATY LEE:
It does have the jingles.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
And Peter's reaction was basically, how cool is that? And honestly, he's right again. It's a perfect gift for someone you love. It's a perfect gift for yourself. It might even be better than a T-shirt from your favourite rock band because it lasts forever and has a much smaller carbon footprint.
KATY LEE:
We have done them for people's birthdays before. We could also do weddings, bar mitzvahs.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
And now the conversation with Peter did end on a slightly less optimistic note. He helped us realise that we're still quite a long way from our dream of making this show fully sustainable.
But if you're in a position to help us get a little closer to that goal, please consider supporting the show at patreon.com forward slash Europeans podcast or at europeanspodcast.com. We'll leave both links for you in the show notes.
And just imagine this. Someone presses play at the birthday party and suddenly a mini episode of the European starts about the very person whose birthday it is. That's basically a rom-com scene waiting to happen.
KATY LEE:
What kind of a rom-com?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Thanks for listening. Sorry, it's been a bit long today. Back to the show.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE:
One of the ways in which social media has changed over the last couple of years is that there seems to have been this kind of splintering. Like seven or eight years ago, it felt like everyone was on Twitter. Governments were posting statements on Twitter.
That still happens quite often. Protest movements were on Twitter. They still are to some extent.
Celebrities posted jokes on Twitter. That happens less and less these days. And there were political analysts posting insightful nuanced threads about news developments.
That also happens less and less. Where has everyone gone?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Maybe some people are having conversations in the real world and have decided to leave the virtual world.
KATY LEE:
Oh, real life conversations. Don't be ridiculous, Dominic.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I guess a lot of people are still on Instagram. But yeah, it isn't really the home for actual conversations that Twitter once was before it became a kind of bot-ridden, alt-right wasteland. Some people are apparently on LinkedIn, but I just refuse.
And Facebook is still massive in some parts of the world, but it's been on the decline here in Europe over recent years. There's also Blue Sky, but it hasn't really taken off in a huge mainstream way. And our experience there hasn't been entirely thrilling.
KATY LEE:
Yeah, BlueSky's been a bit lacklustre. One platform that we think deserves a lot more attention is Mastodon. And I think it deserves more attention both for the kind of stuff that's getting posted there and for the story and the principles behind this website.
If you've never heard of it, that is probably because Mastodon is relatively small compared to some other social media sites. It has about three quarters of a million active users. Instagram has two billion.
Mastodon's user base is quite nerdy. There are a lot of programmers there, people who work in tech, and there are plenty of other people besides, of course. But it does have this kind of geeky leaning to it.
And that is partly because of the way that Mastodon was founded. It is open source software, which means that anyone can see the code that is used to run this website, and they can use that code to build their own projects. Mastodon is also proudly part of the Fediverse.
And I am scared of explaining what that is. Do you want to explain to people what the Fediverse is?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, thanks for leaving the most complicated bit of this conversation to me. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, honestly, I think in the interview that everyone's about to hear, the Fediverse gets explained in a much more eloquent way than I could.
But basically, the dream that it's built on is that you should be able to use your social media account to talk to people on other social media platforms. The whole thing should be open. I realise that probably sounds still a bit abstract.
So to give you an example, say you had an account on the text-based social media platform You can interact, comment, like, etc. with everyone else's posts across the Fediverse. So you can also see posts from people who are on another platform on the Fediverse, like Pixel Fed, which is a bit like an Instagram image-based service.
You could follow someone's Pixel Fed account from Mastodon, and if you move from Mastodon over to Pixel Fed, you'd keep your followers. Does that make sense?
KATY LEE:
Yeah, wasn't so hard, was it? Um, the other thing that makes Mastodon stand out is that there is no for you algorithm built on, like, really invasive knowledge of your interests that is pushing you content on your homepage.
And that makes using Mastodon a really different experience from using something like Instagram, where there's all of this content just designed to keep you scrolling and scrolling.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, and crucially, it's a non-profit founded here in Europe, although Germany annoyingly withdrew its non-profit status a couple of years ago. So it's currently a for-profit company. They're in the process of setting up a new non-profit in Belgium, and they also have a parallel non-profit in the US, which they use mostly for fundraising.
KATY LEE:
Suffice to say, Mastodon is built on a lot of principles that feel ethically quite different from the sites that have been set up with much more cynical intentions to squeeze as much money out of us as possible and keep our eyeballs locked on it for as long as possible. The founder of Mastodon is an extremely interesting person. His name is Eugene Rochko.
He was born in Russia, but his parents moved the family to Germany when he was 11. And he started building websites when he was a teenager. Eugene launched Mastodon in 2016, and it developed in a very low-key kind of way in the years that followed.
But it did see a surge in users after Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022. Now, this website is still not massive, and it still feels really different from bigger social media sites. And Eugene himself seems utterly unlike the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.
He is this really kind of modest Russian-German coder who is not a billionaire, and he doesn't seem to have any dreams of becoming one. He also isn't someone who has particularly enjoyed even the limited amount of limelight that being the CEO of even a relatively small social media platform has brought him. In November, he announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Mastodon and moving to more of an advisory kind of role.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And he made that announcement right in a blog post that was very clearly written by someone who is not at all like the brash tech bros running Twitter and Meta.
KATY LEE:
Yeah, it's a really striking statement. I'll just read you a short bit of it. He wrote, I remember somebody jokingly suggesting that I challenge Elon Musk to a fight.
This was during his and Mark Zuckerberg's martial arts feud. And quietly thinking to myself, I am literally not paid enough for that. I also remember some Spanish newspaper article that for some reason concluded that I don't dress as fashionably as Jeff Bezos, based on the extremely sparse number of pictures of myself that I have shared on the web.
Over an entire decade, these tiny things chip away at you slowly. Eugene is a fascinating person to talk to, and we were really grateful that he made some time to talk to us last week. We had such a good conversation, in fact, that we thought, you know what? Let's make a longer version of this conversation available to supporters of this podcast. So if you support us on Patreon, you'll find a longer version of our conversation with Eugene over there.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
If you support us via our website, so not via Patreon, and you'd still like to hear this longer version, email us and we'll send you over the MP3. But for everyone else, here's a nonetheless excellent snippet of this conversation with the founder of Mastodon, Eugene Rochko.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Hi, Eugene, thanks so much for joining us today.
EUGENE ROCHKO:
Hi.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So you stepped down from the CEO role at Mastodon late last year, and it was a year in which the visibility and celebrity of tech leaders was arguably greater than ever before. We saw people like Elon Musk at the head of a department of US government, Mark Zuckerberg re-envisioning Facebook in the image of X and remaking his own image too.
And we watched Jeff Bezos practically rent out the city of Venice for his wedding, which was a star-studded display of extreme wealth. Did any of that influence your feelings about being at the helm of a major tech platform?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
Maybe to some degree, it influenced it negatively, in the sense that I didn't want to be like those people. That being said, there is kind of a big gulf of difference between me and those people in the sense that most of the people you've described are billionaires, and I'm not. And I've never made much money from doing what I do.
But also, let's be honest, there's been a lot of burnout for me in the past 10 years. When you're a billionaire and you're making a lot of money from leading a company, there is a big wall between you and whatever is happening. You're always kind of insured against people being unhappy with you or just the success of what you're doing.
And for me, it's always been different because I've always been on the front lines, kind of exposed to everything. It's different also because being CEO of a business-facing company is different to being CEO of a public-facing company, especially a social media company, where basically your whole thing is that you're giving a voice to millions of people. And a large chunk of them will use that voice to tell you exactly what they're thinking if they're unhappy with what you're doing and have a different opinion.
There is a bit of a similarity between that and being a retail worker, like being behind a counter and having customers in your face all day. But also there's like millions of them, right?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Sounds like a lot.
KATY LEE:
Doing a retail job times a million at once. That is my idea of a nightmare. You wrote in the blog post announcing the change in your role at Mastodon that you steer clear of showing vulnerability online.
But in fact, you were really, really vulnerable in that post. Why did you choose to be so open with people about the more personal factors that went into your decision to leave?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
I think it's the fact that I've been so closed off for so many years. Indeed, the feeling of overwhelming and burnout has been with me for a couple of years now. It kind of happened with the Twitter acquisition by Musk in 2022.
It brought a lot of success to Mastodon and the Fediverse. It brought it into the limelight. But with it, it raised the stakes by so much.
It raised the visibility of the project and of me by so much. It made it so much harder to keep going on a personal level because of all of this extra pressure. And I've been struggling with this and over time came to the conclusion that I wanted to step down and find some way back to my personal freedom.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
As you say, the stakes feel pretty high and they've got higher since Mastodon launched, especially since Musk took over Twitter in 2022. I was wondering, who else has joined you since you started Mastodon in trying to counter the influence of some of these billionaires? Has it felt like a bit of a lonely undertaking?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
No, I wouldn't say necessarily that it was a lonely undertaking because when I first started building Mastodon, the Fediverse already existed and had a different project. I think Mastodon was leading the way in gaining adoption from a mainstream audience. We were bringing the users in and other open source projects around the space were springing up, trying to fill other niches.
If there was a feeling of loneliness, perhaps it's in the fact that Mastodon was the only platform that was really meaningfully trying and succeeding in bringing new users in from other places, from other platforms, from people unfamiliar with the concept of the Fediverse. And that's totally cool, but it didn't mean that there was even more pressure on me to sort of lead the charge and actually bring new people in versus just recycling the same people over and over, if you know what I mean.
KATY LEE:
Yeah, I can imagine. It does feel like loads and loads of people have joined Mastodon, including us, and we love it there. We've got a really, really nice audience on Mastodon.
Having said that, I still probably wouldn't describe it to my friends as mainstream. A lot of the people who follow us there are people who work in tech, they're coders. Do you think it matters that it isn't mainstream in the sense of, I don't know, influencers being there?
And do you think it will ever change? Do you think it will eventually become a platform where there are people from all walks of life posting their content there?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
My perspective on this is that even before a lot of people joined back in 2022, after Twitter was acquired by Musk, that Mastodon had accrued a certain amount of momentum where being on there was interesting in its own right. It had not the same famous people, not the same influencers, not the same kind of volume as other places like Twitter or Facebook, but it had its own unique community, its own unique feel, and so it was worth it to be on there, to be part of this. Of course, it has exploded in popularity.
You know, a lot of people joined from Twitter, fleeing that ship, and it made it even bigger, added some more traditionally known names to the list of accounts. Whether it's mainstream or not, I mean, all of this is relativistic, right? Also, my perspective as someone who is no longer the CEO and does not have to pretend that growth is always the best, I will say that I enjoy to some degree the fact that the Mastodon community and the Fediverse community is a little bit smaller in the sense that volume always brings with itself certain downsides, like the quality of conversations almost always goes down as communities grow.
And Mastodon is in that sweet spot right now where the quality is really high to the point where we can have the tagline Mastodon, where conversations happen, because it is known for being the place that uniquely across different platforms from Twitter, Instagram, and whatever, where people can go and actually talk to each other instead of just screaming into the void and having a bunch of bots respond.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, and I really experienced it like that. I have to say I was quite reluctant to invest time in Mastodon.
KATY LEE:
I kept telling you how good it was. You wouldn't believe it.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
You did, it's true. And I was just like, I have enough social media in my life, I don't need this. And then Katy went on maternity leave.
So I had to take the reins of our podcast Mastodon account. And yeah, I really found it to be the nicest place online where I can talk to people. And we get so much more engagement, so many more thoughtful responses to our podcast as well there than we do on any other platform.
So I'm really happy it exists. The one thing that I sometimes find frustrating, and I wonder if you also find frustrating, is that there are just so many alternatives. Like some people say it on X, some went to Threads, Blue Sky, and now there's another one, W, on its way.
Like, is that something that bothers you?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
Yes and no. There are two answers to this. One is that the internet is not supposed to be just five large corporations, right?
So having more websites is actually good. But of course, the frustrating part is that the vision behind Mastodon and the Fediverse is that you have this network that uses a common protocol that allows different platforms that may look different and even work different to talk to each other so that people can connect from one to the other seamlessly. If you have a phone provider, you don't really care if your friends are on the same one or not.
And it would be wild to suggest like, everyone I know and all my family has to be on Vodafone, otherwise I cannot talk to them. But that is the situation with social media right now. Like, oh, this person's on X, so I have to get an X account.
Oh, this person's on Instagram, oh, I have to get an Instagram account. And the vision behind the Fediverse and Mastodon is that, okay, so you have a Mastodon account and here's a different platform called Flipboard. Oh, I can just follow Flipboard accounts and they appear in my Mastodon feed.
I can just follow Pixel Fed accounts. They just post images, but they appear in my Mastodon home feed and they can follow me back and we can send comments back to each other and we can favourite stuff and like it and whatnot. And that to me is a very promising vision.
I want to see the internet be like that. I don't want people to have to choose, oh, do I go on this platform or that platform? I want people to make one account that they can stick with and then talk to anybody in the world that they want to talk to.
And then if that platform goes bad for some reason, because inevitably platforms do go bad, you can just take your account, move to a different platform and nobody else has to move. You just make the decision for yourself and you can make that decision at any time without the costs of having to give up on all of your social connections.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
There's been so much debate in recent years about how manipulative social media algorithms can be in terms of determining the content that we see and as a result shaping what we think and feel even. And one of the refreshing things about Mastodon is that it doesn't have this kind of algorithm determining what you see. Like you can change the settings of your timeline to see various hashtags, for example, but you're in control of what you see, which I found very refreshing.
But at the same time, I do occasionally miss things that the algorithm might have thrown at me on sites like Twitter or Instagram that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. Do you think a social media site can ever be algorithmic and ethical at the same time?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
That's a complicated question because obviously it all depends on the details, right? What is the algorithm? How does it work?
And Mastodon as any programming application has lots of algorithms inside it, but the algorithm for the whole feed is very simple. It is chronological in reverse order. That is also an algorithm, but a very simple one.
We do have a trending feed, which is how you can find stuff that you wouldn't normally come across, but it is the same for everyone. It is kind of divided by language. So you see trending posts in your own language and somebody who speaks a different language would see a different post in their language.
If we're talking about algorithmic feeds like they are on Instagram, they are kind of addictive. You can't really tell when you've caught up since the last time you looked at it. So you have to scroll and scroll and scroll and you might not stop until you realise, oh, I'm doing scrolling versus if it is the same every time you load it and it is in the order you can predict, then you can scroll through it, see the new stuff, then see, okay, I've already seen this and then you can just stop scrolling.
And this is one way that Mastodon saves you time because it doesn't try to get you to stay on for as long as possible. It's just like, okay, here's what you want to see. Now you can move on with your life.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Even though you've stepped down as CEO, you're staying at the company and I wanted to ask you before you go, what's next for you? Where are you going from here? I see you're also an amazing photographer.
Are we going to see more of you in the non-digital world, maybe?
EUGEN ROCHKO:
Yes, to some degree, I have been transitioning to a non-digital world because as a software developer, as a programmer, you are really engaged with the digital and I have been since I was a teenager. I started playing around with 3D modelling software and game engines when I was a kid. And it meant that I've been kind of overexposed to the digital and there is a certain sense of longing for something physical, for something tactile.
Having a camera that makes like a thud when you press a button because there is a mechanical shutter that goes off and vibrates throughout the whole mechanism that has a really heavy feel to it because it's made of metal. And then having a picture that also comes with a physical artefact that it really did happen out in the real world. Like these photons, they bounced off of this object that really was out there in the world and they landed on this chemical emulsion and left a mark and I am holding it in my hand.
But having that, it's calming and it's therapeutic.
KATY LEE:
Well, I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk so beautifully about photography before. So thank you very much for that, Eugene. And we wish you luck with everything that's coming next.
And yeah, we're still gonna be hanging out on Mastodon a lot and we hope that a lot of our listeners will join us there.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE:
What an extraordinary person. I don't think I've spoken to anyone who seems less like the idea I have in my head of the boss of a social media platform.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I can totally understand why he wouldn't want to do it anymore, especially if he's being held to account by some people as if he is a tech billionaire, but not actually making the billions or even the millions.
KATY LEE:
It goes without saying, if you haven't tried Mastodon yet, you should give it a go. We are there and we like it a lot. You can find us there just by searching for The Europeans and the link will also be in the show notes. You can also follow Eugene there.
Just a reminder, a longer version of this conversation is available on our Patreon page and it is well worth your time. We would love it if this was the little nudge that you have been needing to sign up to support this podcast.
It just takes a few clicks and a few coins at patreon.com/europeanspodcast.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Time to head into the Inspiration Station and share some of the culture from Europe that we've been enjoying over the past week. What do you want to recommend, Katy?
KATY LEE:
I started a new TV show this week and even though I've just started it, I am so in. Have you heard of Drops of God?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
No, I have not.
KATY LEE:
So it's on Apple TV. Season one came out in 2023, so I'm a little bit late to the party, but it does feel like Apple TV does basically nothing to promote its often excellent TV shows. So it's not my fault.
I didn't hear about it either.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Is anyone watching any of it?
KATY LEE:
I mean, I think they are. They just don't feel like they have to advertise it. I guess Apple TV to Apple is just like a weird vanity project where they're like, let's just put out some amazing TV.
Anyway, Drops of God, it is a show about this legendary French wine expert dying, leaving behind the world's finest wine collection worth about $150 million. And in his extremely cruel will, he decides that the person who inherits this extremely valuable wine collection will either be his daughter Camille or his protege, who is a Japanese guy called Issei. This is quite a silly concept, but it is also really intriguing.
The silliness, I think, comes from the fact that this TV show has been adapted from a really successful Japanese manga series. And I don't know if you've read any manga, but they're often based on like slightly ridiculous concepts that are so fun that you're maybe a bit more willing to suspend disbelief than you might be for a film or a TV show. Apparently, the manga books were even more goofy than this TV show is.
But the series was also apparently quite accurate in some respects, especially in its depiction of the wine industry. And actually, sales of certain French wines rocketed as a result of being mentioned across loads of different Asian countries.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So some people are reading the manga comics, even if no one's watching the TV series.
KATY LEE:
Well, the series has actually been very well-reviewed. It's just me and apparently you who haven't heard of it yet. The TV show does make major changes to the plot, including the fact that one of the main characters has been changed from being a Japanese man in the manga series to a French woman in a TV series.
And it is a really interesting show in that it is a predominantly French production, but it feels really multilingual, actually. I mean, maybe a third of the dialogue is in French and the rest is in English and Japanese. And I think that's very cool.
It's something that TV producers seem to be willing to do more and more of, because more and more of us are used to watching subtitled TV.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Sounds really good. I really want to watch this.
KATY LEE:
It's so fun. I mean, like I say, it's ludicrous. It's about people that care way too much about wine.
But it is also really fun. It is beautifully shot. It takes us to beautiful vineyards and fancy houses in Tokyo.
And I cannot wait to get deeper into it. Season two just dropped in January. And like season one, it's been getting very good reviews.
And apparently it takes us to Georgia to the wine scene there. So I've got to hurry up and get through season one. I want to go to Georgia.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, I'm going to buy myself a bottle of Georgian wine and turn it on.
KATY LEE:
And an Apple TV subscription. What have you got to recommend this week?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, it's nice you followed on from our food and drink theme from Good Week, Bad Week. And I'm following on from our tech theme of our interview. And I wanted to recommend an app that has been developed by a Swiss sociologist, Dr. Yves Jean-Renaud, an app that can help you detect whether someone in your vicinity is using smart glasses. You know, those glasses like Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, which mean you could be being secretly filmed.
KATY LEE:
Yeah.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
The app was suggested to me by Patreon supporter Britta. Thank you, Britta. It's called Nearby Glasses, and it scans the area for the distinctive Bluetooth signals that indicate someone is wearing smart glasses near you and sends you a push notification.
Now, what you do with that information when it happens is an open question.
KATY LEE:
You're going to go up to them and say, what are you doing?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, exactly. And in the app, it acknowledges that there might be false positives and be careful, someone might just be wearing glasses. The app also states in big letters that, quote, harassing someone because you think they're wearing a covert surveillance device could be a criminal offence.
Do not harass anyone at all, which frankly seems like great advice for life in general. I don't know how, like, practically useful it is to know that someone nearby is wearing smart glasses and potentially filming you. But on the other hand, I do think I want to know.
I was actually at the theatre recently sitting behind someone and I noticed there was a small light in his glasses. And at first, I thought it was just a reflection from the stage lights. And then I realised, oh no, he's wearing smart glasses and he is filming some of this performance.
KATY LEE:
Which is not permitted, I assume.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
No, it's totally not allowed. And I mean, especially this performance, it was quite like a vulnerable show, semi-autobiographical about the performer themselves and they were semi-naked in it as well. And yeah, I'm actually kicking myself for not having reported him to the theatre staff at the end.
But yeah, the developer Yves Jean-Renaud says that he created this technology because he considers smart glasses an intolerable intrusion, that they neglect consent and are, quote, a horrible piece of tech that is already used for making various and tonnes of equally truly disgusting content.
KATY LEE:
Oh, is it used for a lot of kind of pervy content, I guess?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I think so. And sorry to be a dummy downer, but things could be about to get a lot scarier. The New York Times recently reported that Meta plans on adding facial recognition software to their smart glasses because they just couldn't resist levelling up this dystopian hellscape we now live in.
Anyway, as the developer himself acknowledges, this is an imperfect solution to surveillance tech and privacy intrusions, but it is at least something and its mere existence has forced me to think a bit more about the implications of this scarily fast developing tech. The app is called Nearby Glasses and it's currently only available on Android, but an Apple version is on its way.
KATY LEE:
You know, I think there are so few people currently wearing this kind of device that I would use this app just to locate them so I could go up to them and be like, what are you doing with it? Like, what's your deal?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Absolutely. If you're a journalist trying to make a piece about people wearing smart glasses, then this is your in.
KATY LEE:
Why have you decided to do this with your life?
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
It was International Women's Day this past weekend. So for my happy ending this week, I'm coming back with an update to a story that we discussed in Good Week, Bad Week back in the heady days of March 2024. In that episode, I talked about a Danish initiative to address the huge gender inequality in statues in public space in Denmark.
Do you remember?
KATY LEE:
Yeah, I remember.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
One of the most striking statistics I found out back then was that there are more statues of mythical figures than of real women in Copenhagen. Anyway, back then the Danish government had announced an initiative to correct that inequality, an initiative which now has the Danish kroner equivalent of 1.35 million euros behind it. So more statues of women are definitely coming.
And a report has been published by an expert committee with a list of 100 women who deserve a public monument in Denmark. That list includes women like the Danish poet and author Tove Ditlevsen and also the pioneering silent film actress Asta Nielsen. But the reason I wanted to talk about it again today briefly was because in the meantime, Danish women are keeping up the pressure on the authorities to quickly sort out this inequality in an eye-catching and incredibly playful way with a creative protest movement that sprung up pretty organically from the wonderful community of knitters and crocheters in Denmark.
KATY LEE:
Okay.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Because it's not only that there are very few women portrayed in statues in public spaces or that many of the female figures are mythical, but also a tonne of them are naked.
KATY LEE:
Right, there are women that are naked.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, so women across Denmark have started knitting lovely outfits for some of these statues.
KATY LEE:
To keep them warm.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
To keep them warm and covered up. The first protest knit that kicked this all off was a beautiful multicoloured halter neck dress made by a woman called Louise for a statue of Venus in a park in Copenhagen. That dress has actually since been removed by the authorities because they were worried that the dyes in the dress might damage the bronze.
But the Museum of Copenhagen has asked Louise if she would like to donate the dress to their museum collection.
KATY LEE:
Wow, that's cool.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
It is. And this dress kicked off a huge visible protest movement that has spread all across the country and has been really successful in keeping up the pressure on the authorities to sort out the statue problem as soon as possible. It was actually even mentioned in the Danish parliament.
So yay to all the wonderful Danish women who have been knitting for equality and yay to all the wonderful women in our lives, including the three women of this female majority run podcast.
KATY LEE:
Aw, yay to us.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE:
We are going to be away next week, listeners. We are taking a little break, but you'll still be able to find us on social media, both on Mastodon and on less nice, but bigger social media platforms where a bunch of us still hang out. We are on Instagram, we're on YouTube and we're on BlueSky. You'll find the links right there on your screen.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, Good Week Bad Week, on Substack.
KATY LEE:
Absolutely. This show was proudly produced using Hindenburg Pro, which is, like Mastodon, a nice European computer thing. And that production was done by Morgan Childs in Prague and Wojciech Oleksiak in Warsaw.
Thanks, guys.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, next week is going to be our first week off the show this year. Can you believe that?
KATY LEE:
Oh, yes, I can, because I definitely need a break. But we'll be back in two weeks, by which time I hope to have got to season two of Drops of God. I can't wait to talk to you all about it.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Enjoy your week off, Katy.
KATY LEE:
You too. Bye. Bless bless.
Inspiration Station recommendations:
The Apple TV+ show Drops of God
The Swiss Android app Nearby Glasses
Other resources for this episode:
“‘Veggie burgers’ are here to stay. Lab-grown ‘steaks’ never will be.” – Politico, 5 March 2026
“European consumer insights on the alternative protein sector” – The Good Food Institute Europe, 25 November 2025
“My next chapter with Mastodon” – Mastodon blog, 18 November 2025
“The Statues Were Mostly Men or Nude Women. So These Knitters Got to Work.” – The New York Times, 5 March 2026
Producer
Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering
Wojciech Oleksiak
Music
Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
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