Young people today face rents that keep climbing, a pension system they'll pay into for decades with little certainty it will be there for them, and traditional parties that leave little room for new voices. So naturally, they want to find a way to actually make a difference and change their own conditions, as the traditional leadership structures let them down. Lukas Sieper, a German MEP, did just that.

Twenty active party members, 600 Instagram followers, three election posters and a €2,500 campaign budget for all of Germany. By every measure, he should not have won a seat in the European Parliament. But he did, by building his own party, the Party of Progress, after years of hitting a wall inside the CDU.

His story comes at a tense moment. In Saxony-Anhalt, the far-right AfD just won the largest share of the vote, while Germany's traditional parties keep losing ground.

Lukas and Samuel discuss how to navigate this landscape as a young person trying to make a difference, and debate the big questions: if the old parties won't make room for new voices, and the main alternative rising in their place is extremist, where do young people who believe in democracy go? Is starting your own party the only way in? And can the political centre change fast enough to stop protest votes from turning into real power?

Lukas argues that Germany's big traditional parties are "fundamentally fucked," and that democracy is still alive precisely because people like him can still win. They also get into dealing with the far right inside the Parliament, being courted by every political group on arrival, and who the GOAT (greatest of all time) rapper is.

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(Since we recorded, the AfD has won its first-ever state parliament presidency in Saxony-Anhalt, with votes from outside its own ranks, and its candidate Ulrich Siegmund plans to run for state premier in December.)

One in five European children report mental health problems, and those on social media three hours a day show roughly double the rates of anxiety and depression. Social media is clearly not good for our children.

At the State of the Union this week, von der Leyen finally announced the EU Kids Act: no social media under 13, and parent-chaperoned "mini accounts" to 15.

For older teens, it also promises "safe design." And that raises a bigger question: shouldn't those default protections shield the rest of us too? Because we're dealing with the consequences of these platforms as well – we lose sleep, lose more than 30 days a year on average to scrolling, and carry higher rates of anxiety and depression due to these platforms.

So how does the EU's new approach line up with that reality? Is it helping the kids, all of us, or neither?

To find out, Samuel sits down with Jean Cattan, former Secretary-General of France's Conseil national du numérique, who was advising the French government at the exact moment its own bid to bar under-15s collapsed. He has since become one of the sharpest voices in Europe arguing that the whole age-limit debate misses the bigger picture.

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For two years European streets filled in outrage and public opinion shifted, and yet Europe is no more serious on Israel today than it was when the protests began. At least, that is how it seems from the outside.

So where does Europe’s paralysis on Israel come from? Has the EU budged at all on Israel? And if so, why is there not greater action? Is it historical guilt, its trade dependency, the unanimity trap, the gravitational pull of Berlin? And who are Europe's elected officials actually trying to represent?

To find out, Samuel sits down with MEP Catarina Vieira, who sits on the Trade Committee, the Human Rights Committee, and the Delegation for relations with Israel. She holds a vantage point onto the conversations the rest of us don't see.

They get into why the EU can fund Palestinian life one day and watch it bombed the next, how the shock of October 7th shaped the Parliament's first year of debate, what ELNET – the self-styled "AIPAC of Europe" – actually buys with its trips and galas, why the EU’s association agreement's human-rights clause has gone two years unenforced, and how Germany and the centre right became the elephant in the room.

Comments, concerns or suggestions: samuel.dempsey@europeancorrespondent.com

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Recorded early September 8th, before the news broke that the UK, France, and Canada – backed by nine other European governments – announced coordinated bans on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

What does the truth offer us in a post-truth world? That is the question that weighs on the institutions built to safeguard it. Think tanks observe our present, predict our future, and archive our past, and yet today, they are under attack both directly by the Trump government, and indirectly via stakeholders who are shifting resources with the tides of political power.

So what are think tanks actually for anymore? Do they still matter for us – or only for the stakeholders behind them? To find out, Samuel sits down with Dr. Rosa Balfour, Director of Carnegie Europe and one of the sharpest observers of this political, cultural, and geopolitical moment.

They get into why think tanks keep struggling to reach the public, how Brexit and Trump ushered in an age of "foreign policy adventurism," the debate Europe still isn't having about who actually pays for its defence spending, why she thinks Europe should stop chasing past greatness and learn to be "small but cool," and what George Eliot's Middlemarch reveals about how differently each generation looks at its future.

Comments, concerns or suggestions: samuel.dempsey@europeancorrespondent.com

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This is the conversation taking over Brussels – the one that consumes my every coffee, every dinner, every meeting: what is Europe to do about its dependence on American AI and tech?

You're probably reading this on an American device, through an American browser, on an American platform. There are more tech lobbyists in Brussels than there are elected officials in the European Parliament. And our elected officials know there is a problem. MEPs voted overwhelmingly – 471 to 68 – to break free of US dependence. And yet there's no consensus on what that future should actually look like. What should Europe build in its place?

To make sense of it, Samuel sits down with Max von Thun, Director of the Open Markets Institute Europe and one of the sharpest voices in Brussels on this moment. They get into the Europe 2031 report, why Max calls today's tech billionaires "plutocrats," where von der Leyen is showing teeth and where she's bowing to American interest, and the three competing visions for Europe's tech future.

Comments, concerns or suggestions: samuel.dempsey@europeancorrespondent.com

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