Three Rivers and a Sausage Fight

It’s our second week of “cucumber season” programming, and fair warning: we’re really leaning into the late-summer goofiness. This week, we go hard on German gastronomy, with a deep dive into Europe’s declining alcohol consumption and a recap of the utterly absurd row over the origins of Bratwurst.

Because we don’t want you to think we’ve totally lost the plot, we also had a perfectly civilised conversation with Robert Winder, the prolific author and sometime editor of The Independent and Granta whose new book, Three Rivers, comes out next week. Robert spoke with our producer Katz about the waterways that shape Europe as we know it—and about their future in a warming climate. You can purchase the book here on 28 August. 

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Inspiration Station recommendations:

• The Danish film The Guilty

• The audiobook recordings of Colm Tóibín’s novels Brooklyn and Long Island.

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OTHER RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE:

• Our Happy Ending comes from Helsinki, which managed to go an entire year with no traffic fatalities! You can read more about the milestone achievement in Helsinki here and how they did it here.

Producers

Morgan Childs, Katz Laszlo and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering

Wojciech Oleksiak

Music

Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

• Episode Transcript

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