Save the games! Preserve the bread! Guard your rabbits!
Welcome back! We’re easing back into the swing of things after our summer holidays with a bit of “cucumber season” fare. It’s our regularly scheduled programming, just a little bit…sillier.
This week, we take a peek into the world’s first “sourdough library” with Karl De Smedt, head of the Puratos Sourdough Institute. Karl gives us a taste of his unconventional career preserving breadmaking biodiversity and explains why the starters in his library are a little like Europeans themselves. Plus: we learn why the Aalborg Zoo in Denmark is encouraging people to bring in unwanted pets and how Dominic “gave” Daniel Radcliffe his career(!).
You can take a virtual tour of the Puratos sourdough library here and check out Karl on Instagram here.
And if you want to find out more about the Stop Killing Games campaign, watch this video.
Inspiration Station recommendations:
Patrick Radden Keefe’s spellbinding history of the Troubles, “Say Nothing”
The novel “Second Best” by French author David Foenkinos
Producers
Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering
Wojciech Oleksiak
Music
Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
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DOMINIC KRAEMER:
We're back. Hello and welcome to the Europeans, the podcast that gives you a snapshot of the weird, the wonderful, the depressing and the delightful news of this continent of Europe. The summer holidays may still be in full swing for many of you, but we decided it was time for another episode of the Europeans already. My name is Dominic Kramer. I'm in Amsterdam as usual and I'm speaking to today's co-host, our wonderful producer, Wojciech Oleksiak in Warsaw. Hi Wojciech.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Hi, hello.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
How are you doing over there?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Fine, fine. I had a very rainy holiday only to come back to a super hot, sizzling Warsaw which is kind of how it always works when you go on holiday in Poland.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, classic. Yeah. I had a lovely weathered holiday in the south of France, but was sick the entire time. So that's also classic, right?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I was sick too.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yay. Snap. There is something I really wanted to talk to you about Wojciech though, before we get going with the rest of the show. There's something Polish that has crossed my timeline over the summer, some big news. Actually, you could maybe describe it as a crisis. I've heard that there's this thing called strawberry pasta that people apparently eat in Poland, and it's setting the internet alight.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
What’s going on?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I’m not surprised strawberry pasta can set the internet on fire. So basically there is this Polish tennis player, Iga Świątek, who's one of the best tennis players in the world and she won Wimbledon, which is a big thing, everybody celebrated. And then somebody asked her about her comfort food or something during a press conference. And she said that it's strawberry pasta.
Boom, Italians offended, everybody shocked. And actually, it's not a shocking thing for Polish people. I think it used to be a thing during the communist era, like people ate a lot of strawberry pasta, also a strawberry soup.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, that sounds like a smoothie.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
It’s not a smoothie. It's warm and absolutely disgusting. So basically, Poles are divided. There are people who hate strawberry pasta like I do. There are people who love it like Iga. But you know, for others, it might be shocking, and I'm just sorry for everyone who was completely taken aback with this delight of Polish cuisine.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, I really appreciate that you're apologizing on behalf of Polish cuisine. Thank you. We have some other things to talk about in the show. So I guess we should move on. Although I kind of really just want to do a whole episode about strawberry pasta.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I can treat you with some if you come to Warsaw.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, very tempting. I'll be there next week, Wojciech. Anyway, there are a lot of very serious things happening over the summer as well in the world right now.
But we've decided to ease into our new season of shows this week and our August episodes are going to be on the lighter side. Despite the fact that the world seems to be in a very depressing state at the moment. We've got some rather diverting topics in Good Week, Bad Week to start the show with, and then we'll be joined by someone with maybe the best job in the whole of Europe.
We're going to be speaking to Karl De Smedt, the only person in Europe or in the whole world, actually, who has the job description of sourdough librarian. Yes, you heard me correctly. He runs a library collecting sourdough starters.
I hear some of you shouting why and what the hell does that mean? Those questions and many more will be answered later on in the show. In the meantime, grab yourself a slice of bread, sit back and enjoy our opening segment where we find out who's had a good week and who's had a bad week.
[MUSIC]
So as I just mentioned, we're going to be discussing some rather unusual topics in Good Week, Bad Week during the August episode. Some diverting stories, some overlooked stories. It's an August treat.
And one of the reasons we're doing this is because it's meant to be cucumber season. Now, cucumber season in many parts of Europe is what the newspapers use to describe this summer period, the kind of silly season when there shouldn't be any news happening. Politicians are all on holiday, nothing's happening.
Sadly, that's really not the case this year, mainly due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza that we read about and are horrified by every day. We're going to be talking about the EU's response to Israel's war crimes in a few weeks. But for now, we're stubbornly pretending that cucumber season is still a thing and talking about some other things.
So who has had a good week, Wojciech?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I just want to mention that this segment is part of our collaboration with Euranet+, the leading radio network for EU news. And I'm giving a good week to 1.4 million European gamers who, led by the Stop Killing Games movement, signed a petition defending older computer games.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So I saw this being reported on and my first instinct actually for quite a long way down to the article that I read about this was that Stop Killing Games was a movement that was like trying to stop killing games being made, you know, like to ban games that would harm kids' mental health because it's too much shooting and stuff. But that's not it, is it?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
That movement is yet to be born, I think. And I don't see why we shouldn't start it. Because I remember feeling kind of weird after slaughtering thousands of enemies in games like, I don't know, Unreal or Carmageddon or Quake when I was 10 or so.
But the movement we're talking about today should really be called Stop Publishers from Destroying the Games They Sold to You.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Okay, that's a clearer but less punchy name for the movement. Who are these publishers and why are they destroying games?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, so for those who don't really play games, publishers are like music labels, but for gaming. So they finance, market and distribute the product, which in their case is video games. Actually, I know that Katie was an avid gamer when she was a kid, but have you ever played any computer games?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I've never really been a gamer. I was a kind of kid that would go and watch my friends play Age of Empires or Sims. That was like the extent of my gaming experience.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
So that was pre-Twitch behavior. So I can tell you when I was a kid, I played a lot of computer games. And you know, at the time, if you wanted to buy a game, you'd just go to a shop with a fancy name like Computer Center or Software House or Game Universe.
And you just buy a game off the shelf in a physical form, a CD or DVD. You bought it and it was yours forever. But then broadband internet came along and the physical products started disappearing. It was replaced by license keys and downloads. And then, and this is the root of this problem that we're discussing today, the era of modern gaming arrived where playing a game feels more and more like a service. So often you have to be online to even play. You might have to be connected to the publisher's server. So, you know, offline gaming is completely off the table. You might need a subscription to use the server. And crucially, if the publisher decides to stop supporting the game, you're cooked.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
So what you're saying, a game can just completely die and disappear: does that actually happen?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, yeah. It happened many, many times. Actually, a study shows that only 13% of the games published before 2010 are still playable. 87% are dead. And these were some pretty big names like Overwatch, Darkspore or Matrix Online. So they're gone for good.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
OK. I mean, that doesn't sound great for people that paid for them. But as someone who's never played or even heard of any of those games you just mentioned, why should I care?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
You should care because this is the part of a broader trend where publishers of different sorts are redefining what buying something means. To me and for years, buying something meant you owned it from the moment on. You could use it forever or sell it to someone else.
That's what I did with my computer games in the 90s. But with intellectual property, that's less and less true because, you know, you can pay your 40 euro for a game thinking you're buying it for good. Only to realize a few years later, you can no longer access any of its parts.
And actually, what they don't tell you is that you're not buying it. You're just buying a license, which can be terminated at some point. Or an example for non-gamers, you know, I bought a few dozen e-books from Amazon Kindle.
And what if Jeff Bezos decides one day to shut down the book selling branch? Will I still have access to those books? I'm not so sure.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
OK, you're starting to win me over with the book example. But there's a petition to change this, right?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah. So there's a YouTuber. His name is Ross Scott. He runs a channel titled Accursed Farms, which features quirky offbeat deep dives into old school video games. I'm going to play you a snippet.
[AUDIO CLIP]
I guess if I was drunk enough, I might climb out the window here and pull some hang time on the electrified tram rail. That kind of reminds me of that squirrel that got caught between the power lines one day back at MIT. The thing caught on fire…
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
And Ross, for years, has been criticizing how games lifespans depend entirely on the publisher's will. But when he heard that the classic game The Crew was being killed, he decided to make a big fuss about it. And in April 2024, he posted an emotional video.
[AUDIO CLIP]
The video game industry has a lot of problems, like a lot of problems. But there's one problem in particular I've been hating for decades. And it's getting worse and worse. And that is destroying video games so that no one can ever play them again.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
There has to be a dry joke there, too.
[AUDIO CLIP]
And I don't mean your brother sticking a disc in the microwave so that your copy is destroyed. I mean, everyone.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
So Ross claims that this is yet another sign of the publisher's pursuit for maximizing profits. Not only are they not interested in sustaining servers that don't bring big money, but also he claims some publishers destroy the game's codes so that they couldn't be carried on by fan communities. And that, he suspects, is straight up illegal.
Later in the video, Ross announces the launch of the Stop Killing Games website and asks people to support protests in their countries.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And how has that gone?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
It didn't get much traction in the US, Australia or Brazil, but it set the Internet on fire in Europe.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, interesting. Why is that, do you think?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I think we really should praise Europe for that. We have an environment where we can petition for something like that. And basically how it happened is that the movement snowballed.
So people brought in expertise they had and apparently some savvy EU lawyers joined the pack. And eventually they decided to pursue a European citizens initiative. Do you know what that is?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Do I know what that is? So who do you think I am?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Of course.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
It's a bit more than a petition though, Wojciech.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
It is. It is. It is. It is a very nice mechanism that all of us can use. So basically, at least seven EU citizens from seven different member states must come together to create an official proposal on an issue. And within 12 months, they need to collect at least one million signatures from across the EU, hitting minimum thresholds in at least seven member states.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah. And then what's the next step again? I mean, I boldly claim that I knew everything that happened with the European citizens initiatives.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, I mean, everyone had to refresh their memory about that. So then the European Commission must consider the initiative and respond publicly, explaining what action, if any, it will take. Organisers may also be invited to present the case to the European Parliament.
And it has worked before. There was a right to water initiative, for example, and it pushed the Commission to strengthen public access to clean water across Europe. Another one I found really interesting was the Stop Vivisection campaign and it secured significant funding to reduce animal testing.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
They can also just ignore the initiative. I mean, they have to respond to it, but they don't necessarily have to do anything.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
No, it doesn't mean that the change is imminent, but at least they have to publicly respond. So, you know, in case they don't do anything about that, they would have to explain why will we allow publishers to kill games? Being a law school graduate, you know, I did some investigation into that. And it seems that, you know, deliberately killing games is actually illegal.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, so you think it's really about enforcement?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
It's a great thing that they, you know, made everyone talk about this and that they brought it to the European Commission's attention. So I think the answer should be pretty strong in this case.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And will they get an answer? Like, have they reached the threshold of one million signatures and all those minimum thresholds in all the different member states?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, apparently, you know, they've got exactly 1.44 million online signatures. So now the signatures, they are being verified by the European Commission. So with that surplus, they should easily pass the final step, forcing the Commission to respond.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
How realistic is this, Wojciech? Because like, if publishers are forced to support the games and servers forever, like, is that actually something that they can feasibly carry on doing, even if they're not like getting any money for it?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
No, no, it's not what the petition is all about. The petitioners, they want the publishers to come up with some sort of an end of life plan for games. Like, for example, handing them over to the community to keep them alive.
And there are success stories where games get second, third and fourth lives run by dedicated fans. Warhammer Online is a great example. It's an old game and it still has a massive fandom around it with thousands of people playing every day on servers run by the community.
Or publishers could archive games and make them playable offline. And Scott compares the deliberate mortifying games to book burning, you know, like destroying cultural goods. And I totally agree games are cultural goods.
I know people in the industry and have a sense of how many artists, writers, niche specialists and other big brains it takes to make a game. So I'm all for preserving those cultural goods and the older games having longer lifespan.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
OK, you've totally convinced me this is definitely a good week. Is there anything I can do to help?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yes, you can. So the movement's main job is done with the European Citizens Initiative, but you can still help. I'll post a link to Ross's wrap up video for anyone who wants to dive deeper.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Great. And meanwhile, I'm going to set up my alternative European Citizens Initiative to stop making games with lots of killing in them.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Great. I'm with you on that.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
More on that later.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
So now, who's had a bad week, Dominic?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, I wanted to discuss the fact that it's been a very bad week for the pets of Aalborg in Denmark after Aalborg Zoo asked local residents for donations in the form of unwanted pets that will be killed and fed to predators in the zoo.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Come on. Is this a really true story?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, honestly, when I first read it, I thought, oh, is it April? Is this an April Fool's joke? It's not. Aalborg Zoo really accepts donations of pets to feed some of the zoo animals. They've apparently done this for a while, but it's getting our attention now because last week the zoo launched a social media campaign to remind people that they run this scheme. The PR department might be regretting posting about the scheme, seeing as it's received quite a lot of fury online and internationally. But it's important to note that the zoo say they will, quote unquote, gently euthanize your pet for you.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
So this is to you a lighter, nice holiday? Sorry, Dominic. Congratulations?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Good point.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Great taste. OK, so, well, where do I start with this? What kind of pets do they want?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
On their website, they mention small pets such as chicken, rabbits and guinea pigs.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Guinea pigs?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, guinea pigs.
They don't accept cats and dogs and they only want healthy small pets because otherwise they won't make for healthy food. You can drop them off on a weekday between 10 o'clock and 1 o'clock alive in a box that they won't return to you. You can submit a maximum of four animals at a time.
You don't get any payment for your pet, but you do get a tax deduction of 100 Danish kroner per animal donated if you give them your social security number. I'm actually going to show you the web page on the zoo's website that is about pet donation. I want you to see, Wojciech, what image they're using. What do you see?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Not very enticing. So there's a tiger devouring something.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
A carcass of some small, I think it might be a rabbit. Pretty brutal. And it gets more intense. They also accept horses, although they say on the website that you should get in touch first. Yes, horses.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Horses are not pets.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
No, they're not. So this doesn't count as one of the small pets. But they do say you should get in touch if you want to donate a horse because there may be a waiting list for the donation of a horse.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
OK, are these animals donations a normal thing for a zoo to ask for?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's honestly quite unusual for a zoo to target pet owners. But they justify it by pointing out that small animals play an important part in the diet of the zoo's predators, especially the European lynx, which needs whole prey to eat.
So they say that giving them a small pet is reminiscent of what it would naturally hunt in the wild. They say, quote, in zoos, we have a responsibility to imitate the natural food chain of the animals in terms of both animal welfare and professional integrity. And yet, in a way, I can kind of follow that logic.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, but it still does seem quite brutal to me.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, it is brutal, I think, and intense. But isn't it just bringing into focus what it means to keep carnivorous predators like European lynx and tigers in captivity outside of their natural habitat? The reaction online to these posts on social media has been pretty fiery, as you'd probably expect.
The zoo has actually closed the comment section on the Instagram post because of, quote, hateful and malicious rhetoric. But the comments are still up on Facebook, and people describe this scheme as perverse, degrading and unacceptable. But also some commenters do jump to the zoo's defense, saying that this seems to be a well-organized scheme.
I think people feel most squeamish about this because it's about pets. But that does beg the question, why do we feel more squeamish about feeding these carnivores pets as opposed to other meat? These animals have to eat meat.
And yeah, I guess there's an argument to be made that feeding them unwanted pets is, in fact, more sustainable than farming animals, often in terrible conditions, specifically for them to be slaughtered and used as animal feed. Don't cancel me. I did, however, read a quote from Clifford Warwick, a UK-based consultant biologist and medical scientist in The Guardian.
He seems skeptical of the claim that the zoo make that they can euthanize in both a safe and humane way. And he also pushes back against the claim from the zoo that the small animals are helping with giving the predators their natural diet. He says, lynx do not eat guinea pigs.
Where would they get guinea pigs from? Lynx would eat almost any small mammal, sure, but they can't turn around and say that's a natural behavior, which I think is a good point. He also thinks the scheme devalues the life of pets. And yeah, I think he's suggesting that it kind of gives owners too easy a way out if they've had enough of their pet. “Oh, I'm bored of you. Time for you to go and get eaten by a lion.” There is certainly that danger with a scheme like this.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
As you say, at least it gets us thinking about the fact that the meat the animals eat is other animals.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, it does. And I do think there is this thing that like, so long as animals don't have a name, apparently we're fine with eating them or with them being eaten by other animals. And yeah, the whole thing also makes me think about the complicated ethics of zoos in general, which, of course, have some great things about them.
They kind of inspire awe and wonder in kids and adults who visit them. They have really important educational value. Some are amazing centers for research and places to conserve and protect endangered species.
But there are also ethical questions about keeping animals in captivity outside of their natural habitats. And sometimes the conditions are really just not good enough.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, fully agree with that. My kids love zoos. I'm always like, suspicious of what's going on behind the curtains.
Okay, do we know actually how many pets get donated to Aalborg Zoo?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I haven't been able to fact check this, but I saw a figure in the Danish newspaper Dagens DK that said that this year alone, they'd received 137 rabbits, 53 chicken and 18 guinea pigs.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
137 rabbits. Don't guess you're a killer rabbit. Okay, this is quite a lot.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, I guess it is. And this is actually not the only animal killing controversy in a European zoo from the past few weeks. Did you see this story from Nuremberg Zoo, where they culled 12 healthy guinea baboons?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, exactly.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
They dismembered some of them and fed their body parts to predators. This was apparently due to overcrowding in the baboon sanctuary. The reaction to this has been even more intense than the Danish call for pets to be donated.
In Nuremberg, there have been protests at the zoo from animal rights activists, and there's actually a legal complaint against the zoo from animal rights organizations. The zoo says it was a, quote, legitimate last resort to preserve the population. But yeah, that's also quite intense.
Sorry, this was meant to be a lighthearted, good week. Anyway, that's all the zoo news I have for you today. I think it's been a bad week for the pets of Aalborg and for the baboons of Nuremberg.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Yeah, but a good week for the Danish lynx or his friends.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Yeah, apparently.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
This podcast is still continuing only thanks to the wonderful, marvellous generosity of a chunk of our listeners who voluntarily donate a bit of money each month to keep this podcast going. It really wouldn't be happening without your support.
If you think you can spare a bit of cash to keep us going, please do. On patreon.com forward slash Europeans podcast, you can pledge anything from a dollar to a pound. From as little as three euros a month.
It's like a relatively reasonable priced cappuccino in Amsterdam these days. But our podcast is and will remain free at the point of use. But we are so grateful to those of you who are helping us out.
I'm going to give Wojciech the honours to thank all our latest supporters. Take it away, Wojciech.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Our thanks this week goes to Gabriela, Hanna, Lisa and Mary. Thank you so much.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Thank you all so much.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Now it's time to talk about bread. And unless you're a celiac or have a gluten intolerance, I would guess that most of our listeners have by now eaten a piece or two of that tangy, chewy sourdough bread.
Although maybe I'm living in my Amsterdam bubble. If you haven't knowingly eaten sourdough bread before, or haven't even come across it, then do please send me a message on our Instagram account at Europeans podcast. I'd be really interested to hear.
Are you a sourdough fan, Wojciech?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I mean, yes, but also it's a bit different in Poland because sourdough bread has been a staple of every breakfast in Poland for ages. So like, I'm not part of the craze because it's like, you know, it's not very hip, something that we've been doing for hundreds of years. But yeah, I like sourdough bread.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I also love it. Have you ever baked it yourself?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Not really. Although my best friend is very good at it. So I can put him on the line if you will.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Okay, well, maybe we'll save that for another episode. Honestly, I'm too lazy to learn how to bake it myself. Although I hear it's actually quite straightforward once you get into it.
This method of bread making, which uses a fermented starter of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria, absolutely exploded during the pandemic as one of those activities that people could do from their house during lockdown. And whilst a lot of those home bakers I think have now since given up, the sourdough craze continues across a lot of the continent. I probably should get into doing it myself, to be honest, because I'm currently spending a ridiculous percentage of my monthly income on buying loaves of sourdough from the stupidly hip bakers of Amsterdam.
It is so expensive here. But as you say, sourdough baking has been around for a long time. It's actually one of the oldest methods of baking bread.
And our guest today is someone who is doing everything he can to preserve the heritage of this ancient tradition of bread baking. Karl De Smedt is the head of the Puratos Sourdough Library in Belgium, an institution where they preserve and study sourdough starters. It's a nonprofit and it is a totally unique thing in the world. There is nothing like it anywhere else.
Now, there's a little surprise for you with this interview. You will hear that I did it with Katy. We recorded it just before she went off onto maternity leave. So for all of you missing her dulcet tones, enjoy a little bit of Katy, a little bit of me and a lot of the fascinating and charismatic sourdough librarian, Karl De Smedt, as he explains exactly what it is he is doing over there with all that bread.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Hi, Karl, thanks so much for joining us today at the Europeans.
KARL DE SMEDT:
Hi, Dominic. Thanks for having me.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I can see a library of sourdough behind you. But for the listeners who can't see what I'm looking at, could you tell us what is a sourdough library and what does a sourdough librarian do?
KARL DE SMEDT:
Wow, that's already like a couple of questions. So I'm surrounded by fridges where we keep the sourdough samples that we have here at four degrees. And actually what we do in the sourdough library is that we do three things. We collect sourdoughs from all over the world in order to preserve their biodiversity for the future.
That means that we will isolate the dominant strains of lactic acid bacteria and yeast that we find in there and we will freeze these at minus 80 degrees Celsius. That's actually the real sourdough library project. It's a freezer to preserve these microorganisms and their biodiversity for the future. Next to that, when we collect sourdoughs, we document them as good as possible with all the information the owner can share with us, like how was it made, who made it, what kind of flour do you use, what do you bake with it, everything we can know about it.
And then last but not least, you see that we have physical samples of all these starters that we feed every two months with the original flour that the owners provide us once a year. And by having this physical sample here, we are able to offer a backup to the owners so that in case something would go wrong due to a fire, due to a human error, whatever that can happen in a bakery with a sourdough, they can ask us to get a piece of their original sample back. These are the things we do with the library.
KATY LEE:
So you have traveled the world searching for unique sourdoughs. What exactly is it that you're looking for? What kind of sourdoughs get your pulse racing and make for exciting discoveries?
KARL DE SMEDT:
Well, you know, when we opened the library, when we inaugurated, we had already 43 sourdoughs coming from five countries. And those were mainly linked to research we had been conducting on sourdoughs. And the thing was that we were triggered and we got then the idea of making a library.
And then whatever, when we inaugurated, I wanted to have one sourdough, like a little kid that goes fishing and that wants to catch one fish. And then the collection was growing and growing and we were always looking for more sourdoughs. And we were mainly looking for sourdoughs who were made from a spontaneous fermentation.
So that's the most important because you can find sourdoughs in a country like Germany, for instance, every bakery has a sourdough or even up to five or six sourdoughs. But mainly they always use what they call in German Anstellgut. And the Anstellgut is a sourdough starter culture that you buy from a commercial instance.
And that is going to inoculate the sourdough with that very specific life of microorganisms. When you have spontaneous fermentations, the sourdoughs are more wild and unpredictable. And so that's what we were looking for.
And so today we are looking for very specific sourdoughs. Like when you go fishing for, I don't know, a blue marlin in that spot, or you want to buy it to catch that perch or this kind of eel. So we became more keen because we have so far 157 sourdoughs in the collection.
And so we do not accept as easy as it was in the past these days.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
And do you see regional differences in the kind of sourdough starters that you collect? Like is a European sourdough different from one from Latin America or South Asia?
KARL DE SMEDT:
Well, that's hard to say because I do not have enough samples from the four corners of the world. I do have 89 sourdoughs from Europe, coming from 18 countries. Now, if we look at those, they are already very diverse.
We have sourdoughs made from wheat flour and within wheat we have whole wheat, but we have also durum wheat, we have soft wheat, we have rye flour, whole rye, we have rice, we have one sourdough made from rice flour from a bakery in Germany that is using it for gluten-free products. We also have spelt, einkorn and barley in this collection from European sourdoughs. We discovered 10 species of yeast and 22 species of lactic acid bacteria.
Now, we can say that already the sourdoughs within Europe are very diverse. And even within a country like Italy, just to give you an idea, we isolated so far 1419 strains of lactic acid bacteria and yeast that we keep in the freezer. So even within a country there is already a big diversity.
And we cannot say, oh, that sourdough... Sometimes people ask me, oh Carl, can you tell where a sourdough is coming from just by looking at it? It doesn't work like that.
Each and every sourdough we have here is unique. There are not two sourdoughs that have the exact same combination of exact same species at the exact same ratio. And this is what makes the project so nice, is that we discover so many things about the biodiversity of sourdough.
It's just amazing. So saying that this one is from there or that one is from here, it's not working.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
But it sounds like it's a bit like being European, really. It's a metaphor for our European-ness.
KARL DE SMEDT:
Yes, absolutely. I have done, out of curiosity, twice my DNA analysis in two different companies. And I'm like the biggest bastard you can find. I have blood from everywhere. But I also feel European. I'm from Belgium. I'm a Flemish boy. I grew up in Brussels, but I feel more... I feel European because I have influences from everywhere. When I'm in Greece, people ask me if I'm Greek. When I'm in Turkey, they ask me if I'm Turkish. When I'm in Spain, they say, where are you from in Spain? So I do have that thing that in a sourdough, you have so many things living together that it's always a melting pot, a big, big, big melting pot. I always joke. I say in sourdough, nobody is illegal.
KATY LEE:
I like that. Do most of the sourdoughs in the collection come from sort of famous bakeries? Are they from normal people? Who are they from?
KARL DE SMEDT:
Normal, normal. I wouldn't call... sourdough bakers are definitely not normal people. Taking care of a sourdough is sometimes even worse than having a pet. People get stressed. People, they send me messages like, “Ah, Karl, I think I killed my mother.” Because in a mother you call a mother and, oh, Karl, I did this and I did that. We have sourdoughs from the biggest bakeries in the world. We have sourdoughs from the most famous artisan bakers. We have sourdoughs from amazing pizzerias. We have sourdoughs from crazy home bakers. I have sourdough from my own Christensen. She was a great, great, great granddaughter of one of these first gold rush people looking for gold in Yukon. And she was the first female senator of Yukon. So it's very diverse. As the sourdoughs are diverse, the people and the bakeries or places where the sourdough comes from are also very diverse.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
When you acquire a new sourdough that might be said to have many years of history, maybe even 100 years of history, is there anything you can do to verify that history?
KARL DE SMEDT:
No, unfortunately, I cannot. I have to believe what people tell me. There is no such a thing as a birth certificate for a sourdough. They do not come with a birth certificate. Neither there is a test that would exist that you could just dip a stick in the sourdough and you could see a color code with the age. That's not working.
We neither can carbon data sourdough. So we have to believe, we have to trust what people tell us. But now having this library, we know exactly. I can tell you sourdough 43 is a sourdough that we collected in 1989. Sourdough 157 is one that we collected last year. And as such, we have the exact collection date of each sourdough, which in the future might help us. Or at least we know that they have at least x amount of years within the sourdough library.
KATY LEE:
And you've talked about how the overall mission of the library is to protect the biodiversity of sourdough.
KARL DE SMEDT:
Yes.
KATY LEE:
Why is that so important?
KARL DE SMEDT:
Well, because I think if we look around us and we look at climate change, if we look at deforestation, if we look at the wildlife that is disappearing, there's so many things that we can link to loss of biodiversity. Not only from animals, not only from plants and trees, but in our case, it's all about microorganisms. The project of the library is a bit like the Svalbard Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, where we keep all these grains and seeds that we can find on the planet.
Well, what we do in our very humble corner and very niche baking world, we try to preserve that biodiversity for sourdough because it's the oldest ingredient that probably has been used since humans started fermented baking or baking of breads that have been rising. We know from the Egyptians that they were the first one to write it down that they were fermenting, but it's probably much older than that. Well, trying to contribute to the preservation of this biodiversity and keep that heritage alive. That's why it's important that we do this.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
For people who are listening, who've never dived into the sourdough world, what would be your number one tip for someone who might be looking to get into sourdough baking?
KARL DE SMEDT:
If you want to get into sourdough baking, I think it's simple. It's mixing flour and water. Now the thing is that when you start doing that, after three, four days, the smell of the sourdough is going to be bad because that's a natural phenomenon that happens when you make sourdough.
At a certain moment, the balance between the yeasts and the lactic acid bacteria is going to be established. And in the beginning is the yeasts, they act much faster and they start to ferment and they feel good and they multiply. And then the lactic acid bacteria, they take off and they start producing organic acids.
And if there is one thing that yeasts do not like, it is acids. And that is giving an off flavor where many people say, oh shit, I did something wrong. If my sourdough has gone bad, I need to start over.
Don't worry about that smell. You just continue to feed your sourdough and you will see that after five, six, seven days, you have something that will smell like green apple, yogurty, milky, creamy, whatever. And then your sourdough is ready and you can start making waffles or pancakes or brownies or banana bread.
And then if you want to go one step further, you enter in the world of pizza, crusty rolls, baguette, breads, whatever. Churchill said, if you're going through hell, keep on going. That's a bit what you have to do with sourdough.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
I was not expecting Churchill to be quoted in an interview about sourdough, but I love it.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Well, I'm going to go out and buy an expensive loaf of sourdough immediately. Well, first, we have to finish the show, I guess. If that interview has tickled your sourdough appetite, you can actually visit the sourdough library virtually online via their website, sourdoughlibrary.puratos.com. I'll put a link in the show notes. You can also follow Carl on Instagram for fun videos about sourdough. He's @sourdough_librarian.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Time to step into the inspiration station, the segment in the show where we talk about some European cultural delights that we've been enjoying. What have you enjoyed lately, Wojciech?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
I might get a slap on the wrist for my inspiration station, but I can't resist recommending an American book.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Wojciech!
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Come on, come on, wait for it.
The book is all about the history of Ireland. It's a very European themed book. It's Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing: A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland.
I'll admit it before saying anything else, anything more, I'm a full on Patrick Radden Keefe fanboy. There's just something that I find inimitable or irreplicable about the way he weaves his stories. And I'm giving myself permission to mention this American journalism giant.
And so the book is about the troubles of that period of the facto, you know, Eastern National Civil War in Ireland that lasted for over 30 years. Basically, what I loved about it is that through snapshots from the lives of leaders of the infamous IRA, the book reads almost like a treatise on the role of violence in politics. And you know, like that's something almost unkindly relevant today.
What I think is very valuable is that the book is really full of humanity. And it shows true sympathy for all sides of conflicts without, you know, easy answers or lazy blame. Absolutely fantastic. If you are like me before reading it, and the Troubles are just something you vaguely remember from high school, I cannot recommend this book enough.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Sounds really interesting. I'll check it out.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
And what have you been enjoying, Dominic?
Well, yeah, as I said, at the top of the show, I was also sick for most of my holiday, which sucked. But it did mean that I read loads of wonderful European books.
I totally regained the reading bug whilst away. And one of the books I read whilst in France was a French book, a very easy read that I read in almost one day called Second Best. It's by the popular French novelist David Foenkinos.
It's translated into English by Megan Jones. I'm not good enough at French to read in French. And it tells the story of a boy from North London called Martin Hill, who almost gets cast as Harry Potter in the movies. And it describes how this close shave at superstardom completely ruins his life basically. And yeah, it's a really fun read, a page turner that kept me highly entertained even when I had a fever.
But yeah, am I going to admit this? Yeah, I guess I will. The weird thing about this book is that I share something with the fictional protagonist. In fact, when my sister saw this book in the bookshop, she sent me a photo of the blurb and said, has someone written a book about your life?
Fortunately, my life hasn't been anything like as tragic as that of Martin Hill in the book, but I was in the running to play Harry Potter in the films as a child.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
And you're telling me now?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Did I never tell you this?
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
No, I've known you for like five years or something. You never told me about that.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Funny. Well, yeah, I'm coming out as an almost Harry Potter. Unlike Martin in the book, I wasn't down to the last two. But I was in the audition process for I think almost a year. I was actually too old, especially by the end of that process, to play Harry. And Daniel Radcliffe's about a year younger than me. But they did keep inviting me for callbacks anyway, because I guess they liked something in me. And I was quite young looking for my age. And I think they thought there was a chance that I would hit puberty a bit late and still be okay with the filming schedule.
Anyway, in the end, I didn't get the role. Although I did get cast in a role in a movie called The Tailor of Panama around the same time and had to pull out of that due to scheduling with an opera I was singing in at the time. And the person who stepped in for me in that film was a boy by the name of Daniel Radcliffe. And I think it was his first big movie role before Harry Potter. So I'm not saying I gave Daniel Radcliffe his career, but I think he could at least send me a thank you note or something.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
You never met?
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
We never met. No, not that I know of. Maybe we were sitting in the audition waiting room together. I do remember sitting in this audition waiting room and there being like the beginning of the process and there being like some ginger twins and Hermione lookalikes and it was really fun.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Oh my God, that's big news to me. Yeah, I have to say I'm a bit shocked. So yeah, let's move on with the show. I'm going to ask you a million questions later.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Oh, I've got a good happy ending for you this week. I have news reported in the British Wildlife magazine that a jellyfish, Depastrom sciathiforme, I never know how to pronounce these Latin names, which was believed to be extinct since its last sighting in France in 1976, has been discovered on an island in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, the island of South Uist.
The jellyfish is very unusually shaped. It's stalked and kind of resembles a thistle. And it behaves a bit like a sea anemone. It uses a sucker to attach to rocks or seaweed. And the most delightful thing about this amazing rediscovery of the jellyfish back from presumed extinction is that they were discovered just by someone on holiday, a guy called Neil Roberts. I should mention he's the kind of guy that goes on holiday with an underwater camera. And he knew what stalked jellyfish were. But anyway, he was a tourist. And he found these rather striking looking jellyfish under a rock in a rock pool and thought they looked a bit unusual.
So decided to try out his new underwater camera and took some photos. When he got home, he compared the jellyfish to some images online and thought they looked like this extinct species. Now, when I say he compared them to images online, he could only compare them to drawings because up until this point, nobody had ever taken a photo of these jellyfish. They'd only ever been drawn. They appear in some key marine biology texts of 19th century naturalists. And they were always quite scarce.
But they did used to be found all the way from northern France up until Norway and in many different parts of the coast of the UK. Now, Neil's photos were taken back in 2023. But when they came to the attention of Guy Freeman, editor of British Wildlife magazine, he just couldn't resist going up to see if he could find them too and to confirm this sighting.
So this June, Guy went up to South Uist and after only two hours of hunting, he found the rare jellyfish again and took some underwater pictures himself, which suggests that the population is doing pretty okay if they've survived the past two years and are found in just the space of two hours. So for now, South Uist is the only place where these jellyfish survive. But there is hope that the discovery will lead to more people looking out for these spectacular jellyfish across Europe.
So next time you're on a rock pool in northern Europe, have a look out for a thistle shaped stalked jellyfish.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
That's all we've got time for this week. Great to be back on the Europeans with you Wojciech. Thank you for joining me.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Likewise. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
This week's episode was produced by Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak. You can find us on social media. If you miss us over the next week, we're on Instagram at Europeans Podcast, BlueSky, Mastodon and YouTube. Most importantly, go and check us out there. Next week's episode will be coming out on Friday, rather unusually, due to some weird scheduling of mine, but we will be there. Don't worry. Have a great week, everyone.
WOJCIECH OLEKSIAK:
Don't get sick on holiday.
DOMINIC KRAEMER:
Do not.
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