Happy ending: multilingualism and ageing study

If the winter blues have got you down, these two things might lift your spirit: (1) the Christmas section at your local Lidl, and (2) the news that a same-sex marriage in one EU country must be recognised in another. But how this ruling is going to be implemented across the bloc—especially in the countries where there are no civil partnership rights—remains to be seen. This week, we unpack the manifold questions raised by this big-step-in-the-right-direction decision. We also examine the Louvre’s controversial new ticketing policy. Is giving cheaper tickets to Europeans a form of discrimination?

Our guest this week is Angéla Kóczé, chair of the Romani Studies programme at Central European University. Angéla recently wrote a compelling article for Verfassungsblog in response to a troubling new Hungarian law. We caught up with her to discuss Europe’s long history of anti-Roma discrimination, including decades of forcible sterilisation of Roma women.

This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. An extra incentive to support us this week: on December 15 at 2030 CET, we'll be recording the final episode of the year on Zoom at a very fun live show just for our supporters. We'd love to have you with us!

This week’s Inspiration Station recommendations are the 2022 film Woman on the Roof and the very cool website Mapping Diversity, which reveals just how many streets in your European city were named after women (spoiler: probably very few).

ICYMI: We’ve launched a newsletter! Get a fuller picture of who’s had a good week and who’s had a bad week in Europe each Friday in GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK. You can sign up at europeanspodcast.substack.com.

Other resources for this episode:

• “How significant was an EU ruling on same-sex marriage?” – RTÉ, 30 November 2025
• “Poland will implement EU court order to recognise same-sex marriages, says justice minister” – Notes from Poland, 26 November, 2025
• “L’établissement public du musée du Louvre et son fonds de dotation” - French auditors’ report on the Louvre’s finances, 6 November, 2025
• “Contrat à 15 000 euros, commanditaires « à l’accent slave », van blanc… Les secrets du casse du siècle au Louvre” - the juiciest French reporting on the investigation into the Louvre heist. Le Parisien, 25 November, 2025
• “Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries” – Nature Aging, 10 November 2025 

Produced by Katz Laszlo and Morgan Childs
Editorial support from Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak
Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

00:46  Two radically different solutions for beating the winter blues
04:52  Good Week: A landmark gay marriage ruling in the EU
17:32  Bad Week: The Louvre's new ticketing system
33:08  Interview: Angéla Kóczé on how Roma people are experiencing the rise of the far-right
48:54  The Inspiration Station: 'Woman On The Roof' and MappingDiversity.eu
52:46  Happy Ending: Duolingo could protect you from ageing

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