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From Wisconsin roots to Luxembourg’s multicultural present, Kevin Wester and Jérôme Rouquié explore identity, migration and human connection. What do we reach for when the structures around us feel less certain? For Kevin Wester, the answer begins with ancestry, memory and a connection carried across the Atlantic for generations. Wester grew up in Wisconsin in communities shaped by Luxembourg immigration, where surnames, food, stories and even old Luxembourgish survived long after families had left the Grand Duchy. Today, as founder and CEO of Luxembourg Legacy and founding executive director of the Luxembourg American Cultural Society, he helps descendants trace that history forward. He says the option of reclaiming Luxembourg nationality has sparked a new “renaissance” among Luxembourg Americans, especially younger generations who see citizenship as a bridge to study, work and life in Europe. The striking part of Wester’s story is the scale of a diaspora that Luxembourg itself rarely sees. In his briefing for the show, he says nearly 23,000 adult Americans of Luxembourg descent have reclaimed nationality since 2008, with many more potentially eligible. He sees them as far more than passport holders. They are “small-a ambassadors”, people who travel back, rediscover villages and family names, build societies, share Luxembourg online and carry a modern image of the country home with them. His deeper ambition is to connect this community to Luxembourg’s future too, including what he describes as an underused pool of talent in medicine, education, research, technology, finance, the arts and sport. Across the studio sat Jérôme Rouquié, a French-born entrepreneur who spent more than two decades travelling the world before choosing Luxembourg as home. His project, COME TO LUX, grew from a frustration with the way the country is often flattened into a stereotype of finance and institutions. Rouquié sees something richer: a place where an extraordinary range of languages, cultures and life stories coexist within a few streets. After years of crossing borders to meet the world, he found the world concentrated in one small country. His guiding idea is disarmingly simple: understand people before doing business. Listen first. Notice difference without fearing it. Find the human connection. That becomes especially powerful when the conversation turns to migration. Wester looks back at his own ancestors, who left Luxembourg in the nineteenth century because opportunity was limited, and sees an echo in families moving countries today. Leaving home, he argues, is usually an act of risk, hope and necessity, not rejection. His experience with young people in Luxembourg led him to ask a deceptively difficult question: what makes an immigrant feel welcomed, and what invisible obstacles do our own biases create? Rouquié arrives at the same destination from another route. Difference, he says, is not a reason to withdraw. It is a reason to adapt, stay curious and learn how another person sees the world. For Rouquié, the network also has to do something. His “3 S” for Luxembourg are stability, security and serenity, but a fourth word now matters just as much: solidarity. Through Lux Tour Solidarity, the community around COME TO LUX turns cars, gastronomy, experience and connection into fundraising for vulnerable children. The 2026 event brought together nearly 200 rally participants and more than 380 gala guests, while supporting the Fondation Sarah Grond. The point is not simply to build a network. It is to make the network useful. Rouquié’s own phrase captures it perfectly: “United by the road, brought together by the heart.” Both men often returned to the same word: human. In an age of geopolitical anxiety, polarisation, algorithms and increasingly hard borders in our heads, their work is deliberately analogue. Meet, listen, travel, learn the story. Keep the relationship alive. Luxembourg is not perfect, and neither guest pretends it is. But its scale, multilingualism and constant history of people arriving and leaving make it an unusual laboratory for belonging. Perhaps that is the bigger story here. A country does not need to be large to have reach. A diaspora does not need to live within its borders to contribute. And identity can be strongest when it becomes an invitation to connect rather than a reason to close the door. GUESTS & LINKS Kevin Wester / Luxembourg Legacy
 https://luxembourglegacy.com/ Luxembourg American Cultural Society
 https://www.lacs.lu/ Jérôme Rouquié / LinkedIn
 https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerome-rouquie/ COME TO LUX
 https://www.cometolux.com/ COME TO LUX Instagram
 https://www.instagram.com/cometolux/ Lux Tour Solidarity / Lux Car Meeting Instagram
 https://www.instagram.com/luxcarmeeting/ Fondation Sarah Grond
 https://www.fondationsarahgrond.lu/

After a mini stroke changed his life, Nicholas Elliott set out to visit the world's parliaments. With daughter Julia, he asks why the young feel unheard. Three years ago, London teacher Nicholas Elliott sat down at home and suddenly couldn't speak. He felt dizzy, his left arm went limp and one side of his face froze. His daughter Julia, who was in the room, called an ambulance. It was a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), often called a mini stroke, and Nicholas says it made him a better person. He decided to see and do everything he could, from daytime game shows to something far more unusual: visiting parliaments. Since then he has independently toured more than 30 parliaments and legislatures across Europe, North America and the Caribbean, and this week he and Julia flew into Luxembourg to join me on The Lisa Burke Show. Why parliaments? For Nicholas, each one is a doorway into a country's politics, history and culture. He has a ritual too: the moment he lands, he jumps in a taxi and asks the driver about the country. Luxembourg gave him a lesson of its own. He paid 40 euros for a cab into the city, only to discover on the next bus that public transport here is free. "The taxi drivers always tell you about the country... and they don't hold back." Nicholas Elliott Over time, his travels have turned into a mission focused on young people. Nicholas remembers a school trip to Westminster at about 15 that felt like a museum visit, and he wants young people to learn, participate, get involved and, crucially, feed back. The standout so far is the Northern Ireland Assembly, which runs its own youth parliament rather than leaving it to an outside body. His next project looks to the Caribbean, where legislatures built on the Westminster model are trying fresh ideas, such as Trinidad and Tobago bringing young people from both islands together to discuss the national budget. Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Montserrat have agreed in principle to take part in his research, and Nicholas wants to show what the Caribbean can teach the UK in return. "They're not the future, they are the now." Nicholas Elliott on young people Julia, who studies Politics and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, brought the view from her generation. She asked friends studying engineering and maths how they take in politics, and the answer was almost always short-form social media, clipped, algorithm-driven and prone to echo chambers. To understand views she didn't share, she spent time watching right-wing American commentators and noticed her own feed drifting further and further in one direction. Many of her friends, she says, simply don't know who to vote for, because the parties seem to have drifted from their ideological roots. "I almost saw it happening to me." Julia Kubianka-Elliott on the pull of the algorithm Both believe the problem is fatigue rather than apathy. Nicholas misses "kitchen table politics", when families argued about the news together, while Julia argues that in the UK political education comes far too late, only for those who choose it at A-level. She would like it built into everyday life studies at school, so that politics stops feeling like a subject for the privileged. Luxembourg's parliament open day gave Nicholas hope: children wandering the building and deputies wearing "Ask Me" badges, chatting freely with visitors. "You've cracked it here." Nicholas Elliott on the Chamber of Deputies open day Their parting messages were simple. Nicholas urged parents to sit down with their children tonight and talk, and encouraged anyone feeling isolated to look beyond the phone for information, to clubs, teachers and community groups. Julia's advice was to listen with an open mind and turn everyday conversations, gently, towards the things that shape our lives. You can follow Nicholas's journey as The Parliament Guy on Instagram and on LinkedIn. And if you or someone near you shows sudden signs of a stroke or TIA, such as a drooping face, a weak arm or slurred speech, call 112 in Luxembourg straight away. As always, I'd love your thoughts: how empowered do you feel as a voter, and what do you make of youth parliaments? "Everyone is a political person." Julia Kubianka-Elliott Links Nicholas Elliott, The Parliament Guy on Instagram: https://instagram.com/the_parliament_guy Nicholas Elliott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-e-925677 About TIA (mini stroke) and its symptoms: https://nidirect.gov.uk/conditions/transient-ischaemic-attack-tia

Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez and Violeta Frank explore information, technology, memory and why our minds still need training. “I am a Cold War product.” Dagoberto Rodríguez Information used to be scarce. Now we are drowning in it. That contrast sits at the heart of my conversation with Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez and Violeta Frank, founder of Luxembourg-based VF Art Projects, ahead of Rodríguez’s first solo exhibition in Luxembourg, Broadcasting the Unknown. Rodríguez grew up in Caibarién, Cuba, in the 1970s. His father was an active member of the Communist Party, yet at night listened to the Spanish-language broadcasts of Voice of America. For the young Rodríguez, information felt precious. “At that time, information was really, really important for us,” he told me. “It’s not like now, that we are confused about the amount of information that we have.” That childhood tension between what we see, what we are told and what might exist beyond our field of vision has stayed with him ever since. From three toys a year to Los Carpinteros Rodríguez also grew up in a world where objects were frequently made rather than bought. He remembers Cuban children being allocated just three toys a year, one important toy and two cheaper ones. For much of the rest of the year, children made things themselves. Growing up beside the sea, surrounded by workshops repairing large wooden ships, he turned scraps of wood and cork into miniature boats. That physical relationship with materials later became central to his art. “That relation with my hands, as an adult, as an artist, provided me the security to do things with my own hands.” Dagoberto Rodríguez At art school, Rodríguez and Alexander Arrechea began making work from wood. People started calling them Los Carpinteros, “The Carpenters”. At first, Rodríguez admits, they wanted a grander name. Eventually they realised that the accidental name was almost perfect. It positioned them somewhere between craftspeople and artists, observers who could enter the art world from an unexpected direction. The collective would go on to work together from the early 1990s until 2018 and become internationally renowned. Rodríguez believes the restrictions they experienced in Cuba helped shape their creative language. “Sometimes censorship and limitation make you better,” he said, because artists are forced to experiment, search for different materials and find less direct ways of expressing difficult ideas. For Rodríguez, art requires something deeper than technique. “You need to have an obsession. You need to have a problem.” Dagoberto Rodríguez A lawyer jumps into the art world Violeta Frank arrived through a very different door. Born in Argentina, she studied law because she originally envisaged a diplomatic career. Once immersed in the subject, she discovered that she genuinely loved it. But by her thirties another world was beginning to pull. Friends working in major productions gave her a glimpse behind the scenes. Others introduced her more deeply to contemporary art. Slowly, the certainty of a legal career gave way to the possibility of something more creative. “I didn’t see myself forever being a lawyer,” she told me. Together with another lawyer, she founded the Melian Foundation for Latin American Art and Culture. Her description of that decision is one many career changers will recognise. “Let’s jump into the pool, even if we don’t know if there’s water there.” Violeta Frank Yet the lawyer never really disappeared. Negotiation, organisation, communication and the ability to hold her ground all became useful tools in producing increasingly ambitious art projects. Frank eventually moved to Europe, founded VF Art Projects in Luxembourg and began creating a bridge between Ibero-American artists and European audiences, while also taking Luxembourgish artists abroad. And how did she first approach Rodríguez? Instagram. He initially thought the message looked suspicious. From an Instagram message during the pandemic came studio visits, conversations about Jorge Luis Borges, friendship and eventually Broadcasting the Unknown. Satellites made from clay The Luxembourg exhibition seems almost uncannily suited to Rodríguez. Frank can see the historic RTL antennas at Junglinster from her gallery. Around 12 minutes away lies Betzdorf, home to one of the world’s great centres of satellite communications. One landscape contains the history and future of broadcasting. Rodríguez’s terracotta satellites sit directly inside that story. Clay, he points out, carries some of humanity’s earliest written messages. Now he uses that ancient material to recreate one of the defining technological objects of the modern world. His fascination with space also stretches back to childhood. Born in 1969, the year humans first walked on the Moon, Rodríguez grew up following the Soviet space programme from Cuba. Today his questions are less about conquest and more about dependence. Satellites shape banking, navigation, communication, surveillance and much of our daily lives, often invisibly. “We don’t have a real idea of the impact of these devices in our everyday life.” Dagoberto Rodríguez His landscapes similarly challenge the old idea of simply standing before a view and painting what the eye sees. We now see Earth through satellites, thermal cameras, digital sensors and machines orbiting hundreds of kilometres above us. Technology has acquired its own eyes. What book does your mind need? Then comes my favourite idea in the exhibition: The Gymnasium of Thought. Inside the former church at Al Kierch in Roodt-sur-Syre stands something resembling a gym or temple devoted to physical exercise. Rodríguez developed the idea after reading philosopher Byung-Chul Han and thinking about a society increasingly focused on the exterior body. We can calculate our calories. We measure our sleep. We know which supplements or exercises might build muscle. But what builds the mind? Rodríguez put it beautifully: “You know perfectly the amount of calories you need for living... but people don’t know what book you need to grow, to develop your mind.” His answer to becoming intellectually fitter is disarmingly simple. Read. His mother, a nurse who collected books in the hope of eventually finding time to read them, introduced him to Dostoevsky. Years later, her influence remains present in an installation encouraging others to rediscover literature. Rodríguez half-jokingly describes the work as “marketing for books”, a nostalgic defence of a world of knowledge increasingly pushed aside by screens. Art beyond the capital The exhibition also raises another important cultural question for Luxembourg: why should ambitious art remain concentrated in capital cities and conventional museums? Broadcasting the Unknown stretches across two unusual locations, the former church at Al Kierch in Roodt-sur-Syre and the Annexes of Château de Bourglinster. Frank deliberately champions projects in non-traditional spaces. “They have such a magic that you cannot find in a contemporary building,” she said. Rodríguez agrees. Artists, he argues, cannot spend their lives waiting to be discovered by museums. “We have a short life,” he said. “We cannot be waiting for a museum to discover us.” Perhaps that is the deeper message running through this conversation. Make things. Question things. Find another route. Read. Think. Collaborate. Look again. For Frank, art has become essential precisely because the world feels increasingly difficult. “Art brings us beauty, brings us light, brings us reflection. We talk about reality in a different way.” Violeta Frank And after leaving law for this uncertain new world? “I cannot conceive my life without art right now.” Broadcasting the Unknown Dagoberto Rodríguez 24 October to 29 November 2026 Locations: Al Kierch, Roodt-sur-Syre Annexes of Château de Bourglinster Opening hours: Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 7pm Guests and links VF Art Projects https://www.vfprojects.com Instagram: @vf.art.projects LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vf-art-projects/ Violeta Frank Instagram: @violetaafrank LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/violeta-frank-00050223/ Dagoberto Rodríguez Instagram: @dago_rodriguez_carpintero LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagoberto-rodriguez-9381933a/ VF Art Projects videos https://www.youtube.com/@vfartprojects1242/videos

Four Luxembourg voices explore how hope, self-esteem, belonging, purpose and meaning can protect us when achievement leaves us empty. Success is easy to display outwardly with money, promotions, degrees, the 'perfect' photos on social media; the polished biography, the child who comes first. Flourishing is harder to capture authentically but much more important to our lifelong health and ultimate sense of worth. It requires holistic work and thought and effort. Do we feel alive, connected and worthwhile? Are we constantly measuring ourselves against others or working with ourselves and our own unique situations? For World Mental Health Day, The Lisa Burke Show brings together Luanna Eroles, founder of Happy Kids Academy; neuroscientist and founder Dr Anita Chavan; HR and strategy professional Neha Verma; and Robert “Bob” Reuter, Assistant Professor and Head of the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Luxembourg. Our discussion revolves around one question: are we building successful lives, or lives in which human beings can actually grow? Luanna talks about five pots that must not be allowed to run dry: hope, self-esteem, belonging, purpose and meaning. “For me personally, it’s when you want to give back” Bob expands the idea beyond the usual language of control and self-optimisation: “You have to confront the fact that life is uncontrollable, and that’s part of what it means to flourish." Perhaps flourishing is not mastery over life at all, but the capacity to remain open to it - even when it refuses to follow our plans. Hope, in this conversation, is not decorative optimism. It is a direction of travel, and something that can be practised. Chavan describes the brain’s instinct to detect threat, but also the power of changing the internal story we repeat during upheaval. Her own route from India to Australia, the United States, Singapore and Luxembourg was shaped by setbacks as much as milestones. “Every experience counts. Every experience is shaping you, is helping you become the person you are today.” The useful question after difficult situations may therefore be less 'Why did this happen to me?' and more 'What can I carry from it? The discussion becomes more uncomfortable when it turns to comparison. Schools (in Luxembourg) rank children; workplaces rate adults; social media gives everyone a public scoreboard. Yet Bob asks, “Should we be productive all the time? Why should we be so?” He argues that pleasure, rest and even boredom belong to a psychologically healthy life. Neha reaches the same conclusion from years in corporate HR: “Is it that important to be the best at everything? Because we’re not.” Performance can be measured without allowing the measurement to become a person’s identity. A spreadsheet may record output; it cannot calculate a human being’s worth. Belonging is just as resistant to metrics. A person can sit in a classroom, office or country for years and still feel outside that social community. Luanna says she finally felt more at home when she stopped sanding down the part of herself that seemed too exuberantly Brazilian: “I belong more to Luxembourg when I manage to be in my Brazilian-ness.” Anita offers an equally elegant reversal for anyone waiting to be welcomed: become the friend another newcomer needs. Belonging can begin when we risk the first hello. It is not sameness but the freedom to arrive whole. Purpose gives us goals; meaning connects those goals to something larger than ourselves. Small achievements can keep the brain moving, but transcendence asks who benefits when we move. Our call to action is so modest that it's entirely achieveable: Anita’s advice is: “Just go and say hello to the next person you meet.” In an age selling optimisation, perhaps flourishing begins with attention to the small leakages of ourself: water the neglected pot, protect time with nothing to do but be bored, question whose rules you are living by, and notice the person beside you. Success may tell the world that we have arrived outwardly. Flourishing asks whether we are becoming fully ourselves, according to our own rules. https://www.linkedin.com/in/luannaeroles/ https://happykids.ai/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dranitachavan/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/m3trl-consultancy/home/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/neha-verma2000/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertreuter73/ https://www.uni.lu/en/

Freedom, Flexibility... But Who Catches You When You Fall? Being your own boss promises freedom. But illness, unemployment and irregular income expose a very different side of independent work in Luxembourg. Being your own boss sounds rather wonderful. No manager. More control over when, where and how you work. And, perhaps most importantly, the chance to build something that actually belongs to you - true ownership and purpose. But independence has another meaning side. You are, often initially, the CEO, accountant, salesperson, administrator, marketing and IT department simultaneously. And when something goes wrong, you may also be your own safety net. This week, I spoke to three people living that reality: Daniela Clara Moraru, President of Luxembourg's Union of Independent Workers; Denton Lilley, an independent real-estate professional with HouseDream.lu; and Carrie Cannon MBE, nurse, public-health professional, health coach and co-founder of ThinkPinkLux. Are independent workers really independent? Clara made an important distinction at the beginning of our conversation. Independence gives people autonomy, but that should not automatically be confused with freedom. Independent workers remain dependent on clients, banks, invoices being paid and sufficient work arriving. And increasingly, becoming independent may not even be entirely voluntary. Clara pointed to research suggesting that around one third of new entrepreneurs in Luxembourg enter entrepreneurship through necessity, because they lack an adequate salaried alternative. As companies rethink employment and AI reshapes parts of the labour market, that distinction could become increasingly important. Denton, who moved from corporate life into independent real estate, described the attraction more simply: "It's us actually in charge of our own destiny." Although when I asked whether that made him mentally healthier, his answer was wonderfully succinct: "Depends on the day." What happens when you get sick? An employee who becomes ill normally has an employer standing between illness and the sudden disappearance of income. For a person whose business depends entirely upon their own ability to work, illness can simultaneously become a health crisis and a financial crisis. Carrie told us about an independent worker she knew whose business depended upon physically visiting clients. When illness prevented him from working, the income stopped too. "I don't think independent workers can afford to take sick days." Luxembourg's system does provide mechanisms for independent workers, including the possibility of joining the Mutualité des Employeurs for additional protection. But the discussion around the 77-day sickness-benefit mechanism exposed something many people may never consider until they need it: paying into a social-security system does not necessarily mean receiving protection in precisely the same way as a salaried employee. Freedom has a price There are other vulnerabilities. Independent income can be deeply irregular. A real-estate professional may work for months before a transaction produces commission. A consultant can spend hours marketing rather than earning. A health professional can find that doing the work they love is only one part of running the business that enables them to do it. Then there is the psychological dimension: no colleagues, no guaranteed monthly salary and sometimes nobody beside you when business goes badly. And yet none of my guests sounded as though they wanted independence abolished. Quite the reverse. Autonomy, creativity, purpose and control over one's work matter enormously. Is our social model keeping pace with our working model? Europe does not have one answer to the question. Different countries distribute the risks of self-employment differently between the individual, insurance systems and the state. But AI, automation, restructuring and changing employment models make the question increasingly urgent. If more of us become freelancers, consultants, creators, contractors, founders and one-person businesses, systems designed around the traditional employer-employee relationship may increasingly collide with the reality of how people actually earn their living. So perhaps the question is larger than how Luxembourg treats today's independent workers. If the future of work is becoming more independent, should the future of social protection become more independent of employment status too?

Four experts join Lisa to unpack why our attention has become the world's most valuable currency, and what that means for both our children and ourselves. Picture a baby in a highchair, eyes fixed on a glowing screen while the adult beside them tries to make contact. It is an ordinary scene, almost too ordinary to notice. Yet it helped prompt Luxembourg’s National Addiction Prevention Service, CNAPA, to launch its campaign Kanneräe liichten offline méi hell, or Kids’ Eyes Shine Brighter Offline. On The Lisa Burke Show, four experts examine what happens when digital technology enters human life before language, judgement or self-control have fully developed. Anouk Hinger, Tania Hemmer, Dr Andreas König and Dr Nora Schleich take the conversation from infant attachment to parental burnout, behavioural addiction, data capitalism and AI systems capable of detecting the precise moment when our resistance is weakest. The first battle is for a baby’s gaze Anouk Hinger, Director of CNAPA, describes “technoference”, the interruption of human contact by technology. When a caregiver’s attention repeatedly moves towards a device, a baby can lose some of the eye contact, responsiveness and reassurance through which security and trust begin to develop. Young children learn through movement, touch, language, facial expression and shared experience. Anouk argues that excessive screen exposure during the crucial early years can crowd out the experiences through which communication, empathy and problem-solving grow. “What children need most is their parents and the interaction with their caregivers.” Anouk Hinger, CNAPA The message is serious, although it is not intended to bury already exhausted parents beneath another layer of guilt. Parents are tired too Tania Hemmer works with parents through Eltereschoul Janusz Korczak and specialises in parental burnout. She knows the reality behind the rules: work, shopping, cooking, school messages, appointments, laundry and a child who needs attention just as the adult’s own energy disappears. A screen used briefly while a parent regains composure is very different from a device becoming the family’s permanent babysitter. Context matters. So does compassion. “It is better for your child to watch ten minutes of a video and for you, as a parent, to calm yourself before you break down.” Tania Hemmer, Eltereschoul Her advice is practical: remain curious about what children do online, avoid mocking their digital interests, create screen-free periods and keep the conversation alive through adolescence. Rules matter, although relationships carry more weight as children grow older. The slot machine inside the smartphone Dr Andreas König, Executive Director of Luxembourg’s Center for Excessive Behavior and Behavioral Addictions, explains why some digital habits become so difficult to stop. Social media feeds and games use variable rewards. Each swipe may reveal something funny, affirming, shocking or entirely forgettable. The unpredictability keeps us moving towards the next possibility. Dopamine, König explains, is closely linked to the expectation that a reward might be coming. Heavy use alone does not automatically amount to addiction. The warning signs include a persistent pattern, loss of control, the activity taking priority over other parts of life, and continued use despite harm to health, education, work or relationships. AI intensifies this machinery. It can study what we click, how long we pause, when we become frustrated and when we are preparing to leave. “The thing I find most troubling is that algorithms with AI are increasingly good at targeting you at your weakest moment.” Dr Andreas König, ZEV When your context has been chosen for you For philosopher Dr Nora Schleich, the issue reaches far beyond screen time. Digital platforms collect behavioural data, build psychological profiles and use prediction to shape the material placed in front of us. “Who has data has AI. Who has more data has more efficient AI.” Dr Nora Schleich, EwB asbl Our surroundings have always influenced how we perceive the world. The new difficulty is that much of our digital environment has been personalised to retain attention, provoke emotion and generate profit. We may believe that we are independently choosing what to watch, buy or believe while algorithms are quietly arranging the menu. This has consequences for individuals, families and democratic societies. When different groups receive increasingly different versions of reality, the common ground on which public conversation depends begins to shrink. Give boredom back to children One of Anouk Hinger’s most provocative recommendations is also one of the simplest: allow children to experience frustration. “Frustrate your kids. We live in a society where we are constantly entertained, and boredom has no space. We think it is important to give it back.” Anouk Hinger, CNAPA Boredom creates room for invention. Frustration teaches emotional regulation. Solving small problems develops self-efficacy, the belief that we can act, cope and influence what happens next. Tania tells the story of a parent using an app to calculate every element of her child’s food intake. The data said the child had eaten enough. The child was thin, hungry and waking at night. The human signs were present, although the parent had learned to trust the tool more than her own observation. “You have to watch your child to see your child.” Tania Hemmer, Eltereschoul Community may be our strongest defence The show closes with a reminder that social media succeeds because it draws upon a real human need. We want to belong. We want to be seen, heard and welcomed into a community. Digital platforms simulate much of this beautifully. A like resembles approval. A follower resembles a friend. Constant connection resembles company. The body, however, still knows the difference between a notification and another person laughing beside us. Nora Schleich calls for more room for meals, games, concerts, conversations, touch, humour and shared physical life. “All these moments create a much bigger energy than scrolling and posting. We need to make room for that again.” Dr Nora Schleich, EwB asbl The answer to digital addiction will require education, thoughtful regulation, responsible design and support for families. It may also begin with something wonderfully analogue: looking up, noticing who is beside us and giving them our full attention. Guests and organisations Anouk Hinger Director, CNAPA, National Addiction Prevention Service https://www.cnapa.lu Tania Hemmer Projects and Quality, Eltereschoul Janusz Korczak, Kannerschlass Foundation https://www.kannerschlass.lu Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Eltereschoul/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eltereschoul/ Dr Andreas König Executive Director, ZEV, Center for Excessive Behavior and Behavioral Addictions https://www.zev.lu Dr Nora Schleich Directrice, EwB asbl https://ewb.lu RTL episode link: https://perma.rtl.lu/a/2710427

Professor Emma Schymanski reveals what water carries, why bottled may offer no advantage, and how our daily choices flow back into every glass. We turn on a tap, fill a glass, make a cup of tea (many cups, in my case) dozens of times a day without thinking twice. But our water carries traces of everything around it: the medication we take, the cosmetics we wear, even the flame retardants in our sofas. Some of it is monitored closely. Some of it we're only just learning to detect. And water, of course, doesn't stop at a border. To unpack all of this, I sat down with Prof. Emma Schymanski, Head of Environmental Cheminformatics at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine, University of Luxembourg, and an FNR ATTRACT Fellow. Her work combines chemical detective work with high resolution mass spectrometry to find chemicals hiding in water that nobody knew to look for, and to trace them back to their source. The Water Cycle Ignores Borders Water moves the way weather does: without any concern for what is a political border. Rain falls, rivers carry it across countries, and it sinks into groundwater that doesn't recognise a map. For Luxembourg, sitting downstream of its neighbours, that means inheriting chemical traces long before they reach a Luxembourg tap. Even in the Alps, even in Antarctica, contamination that starts on one continent eventually cycles back down in rainwater on another. Your Water's Fingerprint When people hear "water contamination," pesticides usually come to mind first. But that's a small part of the picture. Emma's team also finds pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, flame retardants, anti icing agents and dyes, everyday traces of everyday life. During the pandemic, her team watched caffeine levels in wastewater drop as the working population stayed home, and medical imaging dyes vanish almost entirely as routine cancer diagnostics paused. Antidepressant levels rise every winter. Antihistamines spike every spring. The Detective Work So how do you find a chemical when you don't know it's there? Emma's team runs water samples through mass spectrometry and looks for anomalies: a signal spiking above baseline, or one that suddenly disappears (in one case, tracing back to a factory shutting down for a six week holiday). It's forensic work, applied to a glass of water. That same technique now underpins wastewater epidemiology, used across Europe to trace drug use, and even, in one memorable case, to work out how drugs were getting into a prison. Tap Water vs Bottled Water Now here's a way to save money and perhaps stress. Emma's own research compared tap and bottled water across Luxembourg and found no statistically significant difference between them. The only real difference was between filtered and unfiltered tap water, and even filtering introduced its own new, if fewer, unknowns. She drinks from the tap herself, no filter at home. Even reverse osmosis, often floated as the ultimate fix, has a catch. It strips out almost everything, including the minerals your body needs, meaning treated water then has to have things added back in. "If you're drinking snow only, it won't quench your thirst, because it will actually start to strip the salt from your body," Emma explained. What You Can Actually Do This isn't a call to panic. It's a case for informed, small choices: Let the tap run cold for a couple of minutes before drinking, especially in older buildings, to clear water that's been sitting in the pipes. Favour metal, ceramic or glass over soft plastics for reusable bottles and cups. Don't assume "eco" means chemical free. Some paper straws are treated with solvents to stop them going soggy. Wash new clothing before wearing it. The New Frontier: Data Centres AI and water is a massive discussion right now. Emma noted that the cooling systems have their own knock on contamination risks. This is perhaps a conversation for another episode. Where to find the show: The Lisa Burke Show airs on RTL Today, RTL Play, and RTL Today Radio, and is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Guest links Prof. Emma Schymanski, LCSB profile: http://www.uni.lu/lcsb ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6868-8145 PubChemLite for Exposomics: https://pubchemlite.lcsb.uni.lu/ NORMAN Suspect List Exchange: https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/ MassBank: https://massbank.eu/MassBank/ MetFrag: https://msbi.ipb-halle.de/MetFrag/ patRoon: https://rickhelmus.github.io/patRoon/

Physiotherapist Sarah Elmquist and Dr India Pinker explain why incontinence is treatable and empathy can transform healthcare. We prepare women extensively for birth. We discuss scans, nutrition, pain relief, breathing techniques and the safe arrival of the baby. Then, remarkably often, the conversation stops. The woman who has carried and delivered that child is expected to return to work, family life and household responsibilities, while the physical aftermath of pregnancy and birth remains largely invisible. On The Lisa Burke Show, physiotherapist Sarah Elmquist and healthcare communication researcher Dr India Pinker joined me to discuss two areas of medicine that are easily dismissed as private, awkward or somehow secondary: pelvic floor health and empathy. Yet both affect something fundamental, our ability to feel safe and understood within our own bodies and within the healthcare system. The great silence after birth Sarah works in postpartum rehabilitation and pelvic floor physiotherapy. She describes postpartum care as far more than the weeks immediately following delivery. “Postpartum is everything that happens after giving birth. Everybody is different and every body is different.” Sarah Elmquist Pregnancy and childbirth can affect the abdominal muscles, pelvic floor, internal organs and a woman’s entire perception of her body. Yet many women are quietly absorbing symptoms that should be discussed and assessed. They avoid trampolines, running, lifting shopping bags, laughing too freely or playing energetically with their children because they fear leaking urine. The most troubling part is that many do not consider this a medical problem. They assume it is simply the price of motherhood. “It’s almost normalised as part of motherhood. ‘It happens to me as well. It’s just how it is.’ It doesn’t have to be.” Sarah Elmquist Incontinence can affect women and men, and it can appear long before old age. Shame can gradually restrict exercise, intimacy, travel and social life. Because people rarely talk about it, the true scale of the problem is difficult to measure. It is never too late to seek help Luxembourg has an advantage in offering many women pelvic floor reeducation after childbirth, sometimes before any serious problem has developed. Sarah compares this to strengthening any other muscle group as protection for the future. For those who never received postpartum care, the message is equally important. “Things can be reversed. Just as you can retrain a leg muscle, the same goes for the pelvic floor. You can always train it again.” Sarah Elmquist Pelvic floor physiotherapy is not simply about preventing an embarrassing moment. It is about restoring choice. A woman who can laugh, jump, exercise or move without fear has recovered a degree of freedom. As Sarah put it, learning to sense and control this frequently ignored part of the body can itself be empowering: “If you can feel your own body and know how to engage those muscles, that’s empowerment as well.” The Empathy Gap Nobody Measures Dr. India Pinker, a postdoctoral researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Health working on healthcare communication in oncology, brought a different but connected angle: the taboo isn't just about what patients won't say to doctors, it's about what medicine itself doesn't know how to teach. Pinker's PhD research at the University of St Andrews looked at clinical empathy: not the everyday kind, but a trainable, boundaried skill doctors need to protect both the patient and themselves. "Empathy is arguably one of our most natural sort of elements of conversation, elements of connection as human beings. However, it's highly controversial, believe it or not, in medicine itself." Her research has found that empathetic communication correlates with higher diagnostic accuracy, better patient adherence to treatment, and, counterintuitively, lower burnout among healthcare professionals themselves. She pointed to universities like St Andrews and Leicester that now build communication skills training in from year one, producing measurably more confident clinicians by graduation. Where AI fits and where it does not One of the more striking threads of the conversation: patients increasingly turning to AI chatbots as informal counsellors. Pinker flagged the risk plainly. "AI is usually, depending on how you program it, essentially made to please you... it's not going to push back at key moments where you need pushback from a trained professional." She noted that AI is fairly predictable: patients, and good clinical care, are not. Validation without push-back can feel good in the moment, but it isn't the same as care. The Common Thread Whether it's a pelvic floor exercise a doctor never prescribed, or a diagnosis delivered without space to ask a second question, both guests circled the same idea: powerlessness follows patients who aren't given information, and communication, spoken or physical, is the cheapest, least-used treatment in medicine. As Pinker put it: Connect with our guests: Sarah Elmquist — Instagram: @liewenshaus.wormeldange | Website: osteopathie-greif.com Dr. India Pinker, PhD — LinkedIn: india-pinker-phd | Luxembourg Institute of Health | EACH – International Association for Communication in Healthcare Listen to the full episode on RTL Play, RTL Today Radio, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Four Luxembourg entrepreneurs tackle wasted energy, hidden disability, unaffordable housing and litter through the SIS model. Most companies begin with a product. My four guests began with an irritation they couldn't ignore: buildings leaking untracked energy, disabilities hidden from view, workers priced out of the housing market and pointless litter on streets, forests, rivers and coastlines. Their response was to build a business around the repair job. Luxembourg has a legal structure for precisely this kind of ambition. A Société d’Impact Sociétal, known as an SIS, remains a commercial enterprise, but its social or environmental purpose is written into the company itself. Its impact must be measured, reported and defended. At the time of our conversation, Luxembourg has 92 registered SIS companies working across 12 broad areas, including housing, health, education, climate, food and the circular economy. First, find out what the building is doing Virginie Ducommun, founder of Indoor Forest, calls her philosophy “efficient sobriety”. Her smart sensors can be installed in existing buildings without ripping through walls or replacing entire systems. They expose where energy and water are going, helping owners decide what genuinely needs changing and what can safely remain. Luxembourg has developed a habit of destroying and rebuilding, Virginie argues, even when buildings still contain decades of useful life. A pink wall can be repainted. A functioning heating system can be maintained. Demolition should require a better excuse than age. “Data is gold. Before you do anything, you need to know what’s happening.” Virginie Ducommun, Indoor Forest A sunflower that makes the invisible visible For Jana Degrott, founder of Real Impact Hub, the mission is deeply personal. Her brother has a hidden disability. Her company represents the Hidden Disability Sunflower programme in Luxembourg, allowing someone to wear a discreet sunflower lanyard when they may need greater patience, understanding or support. Jana spent two years pursuing the idea before securing Luxembourg Airport as her first major client. She then approached the international Sunflower organisation with a compelling entrepreneurial argument: the concept had already been sold, so perhaps it was time to answer her emails. Today, the programme is expanding into organisations including CFL. “I have something you don’t see with your eyes. Please be patient, understanding, don’t judge me.” Jana Degrott, Real Impact Hub The lanyard does not reveal a diagnosis. It asks the rest of us to pause before turning difference into judgement. That small pause could be one of the most valuable services any organisation provides. The housing crisis hiding inside Luxembourg’s success Joe Schmit spent more than 15 years in real estate before co-founding Simpact, Luxembourg’s first private social property developer under the SIS structure. Its model combines state support, private financing and long-term rental housing whose income is designed to cover costs. The need extends far beyond a narrow group. Young families, couples, single parents and much of Luxembourg’s working population can struggle to find secure, affordable housing. Simpact has signed a convention with the state targeting 250 units, Joe said, although Luxembourg will require many more organisations operating at that scale. “The housing market doesn’t follow the growth.” Joe Schmit, Simpact Housing exposes the full machinery of a country. Land, construction costs, interest rates, municipal permits, schools, transport and public infrastructure all turn together. Build 25 homes in a small commune and it may also need classrooms for 50 children. A housing policy is quietly a policy for almost everything else. One bag becomes a global movement César González Fernández began picking up litter in 2018 because it bothered him. Five minutes, one bag, one cleaner patch of ground. That private act became Clean Something For Nothing, an app recording cleanups through location data, time, volume and weight. At the time of recording, its community had collected approximately 926,000 kilograms of litter and was closing in on the one million kilogram mark. Its “Pick and Plant” programme also allows companies to fund one tree for every kilogram collected. “Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.” César González Fernández, Clean Something For Nothing His deeper target is behavioural change. Once somebody has bent down and picked up another person’s cigarette butt, plastic bottle or food wrapper, litter becomes harder to ignore and much harder to drop. Profit with proof attached An SIS must still sell, recruit, pay salaries, manage cash flow and generate profit. The difference lies in what happens next. Impact shareholders do not receive dividends, profits remain inside the company and the organisation must prove that its promised social or environmental value actually occurred. That makes the SIS label less of a halo and more of a discipline. These founders are asking Luxembourg to take impact companies seriously as economic actors, open procurement opportunities to them and help them reach the scale their missions demand. “Doing good business doesn’t mean not making any money.” Jana Degrott “There are so many returns on nature and society.” César González Fernández Four founders, four very different businesses and one provocative question: what might happen if every company had to describe what it repairs as carefully as it reports what it earns? Guest and organisation links Virginie Ducommun, founder of Indoor Forest, about smart sensors, energy waste and why Luxembourg should stop demolishing buildings that still have decades of useful life. Website: https://indoorforest.lu B Smart: https://b-smart.lu LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginie-ducommun-indoorforest-impactluxembourg Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indoorforest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bevakasha.bsmart/ Jana Degrott, founder of Real Impact Hub, about hidden disabilities, accessibility and the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower programme. Real Impact Hub: https://www.realimpact.lu Be Human: https://www.behuman-asbl.com Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Luxembourg: https://www.hdsunflower.com/lu Joe Schmit, co-founder of Simpact, about Luxembourg’s housing crisis and a new model for creating affordable rental homes. Simpact: https://simpact.lu César Gonzalez Fernandez, founder of Clean Something For Nothing, about behavioural change, global cleanups and the journey towards one million kilograms of litter collected. Clean Something For Nothing: https://cleansomethingfornothing.com/contact/ Entrepreneurs d’Impact Luxembourg: https://entrepreneurs-impact.lu Watch or listen through RTL Today: https://perma.rtl.lu/a/2710421 What should business be expected to contribute to society? Should companies measure what they repair as carefully as they measure revenue? Tell us what you think in the comments. #Luxembourg #SocialImpact #ImpactEntrepreneurship #AffordableHousing #HiddenDisabilities #Sustainability #CircularEconomy #TheLisaBurkeShow

Ferit Hoxha and Petras Auštrevičius on Albania’s rapid progress, EU reform, Kosovo, Bosnia and the security cost of delay. Last weekend, the first of my two conversations on the Western Balkans was released. This discussion examined the danger of leaving six European neighbours indefinitely in the EU’s waiting room. This conversation moved from the reasons for enlargement to the mechanics of making it happen. Billions of euros are being directed towards reforms, infrastructure and economic convergence, but money alone cannot build functioning institutions, settle historical disputes or manufacture political will. The European Union promised the Western Balkans a European future at Thessaloniki in 2003. Croatia joined in 2013, then enlargement largely stalled. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the strategic calculation. The region is now seen less as a distant policy file and more as a space inside Europe where Russian influence, Chinese investment, disinformation and organised crime can exploit political uncertainty. Albania and Montenegro have emerged as the front-runners, while North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia remain caught in very different political knots. My guests could hardly have been better placed to examine both sides of the process. Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, has spent more than 35 years in diplomacy. He has represented Albania at the United Nations, twice presided over the UN Security Council, and served as ambassador to the European Union, France and UNESCO. Beside him was Petras Auštrevičius, the European Parliament’s standing rapporteur on EU enlargement and the man who personally negotiated Lithuania’s accession as its chief negotiator from 2001 to 2002. From watching Europe to playing for Europe For Auštrevičius, membership changed Lithuania’s position fundamentally. A candidate country may align its legislation, contribute to European security and accept decisions made in Brussels, yet it still remains outside the room where those decisions are shaped. Joining that team is a formidable task. The body of EU law, the acquis communautaire, already ran to around 120,000 pages when Lithuania was negotiating. Accession, Auštrevičius stressed, is far more than a bureaucratic exercise in changing national laws. Governments must explain the process, secure public confidence, involve businesses and social partners, and prepare institutions to function within an entirely new system. The European Union can appear excessively complicated, but common rules also create common standards, consumer protections and access to one of the world’s largest markets. Auštrevičius described the EU as a globally exceptional project, imperfect and often cumbersome, yet still capable of turning former adversaries into partners. Albania’s 13-month sprint Albania has moved through the revised accession system at remarkable speed. It opened all six negotiating clusters within 13 months and has now passed the interim assessment of the Fundamentals cluster, covering the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security. That allows the country to begin the difficult final phase of closing individual chapters, with the ambition of concluding negotiations by the end of 2027. The European Parliament has praised Albania’s momentum while insisting that progress must remain strictly merit-based and that reforms must be implemented, not simply written into law. The country’s momentum is real, but the remaining work is extensive. Corruption, judicial effectiveness, media freedom, political pressure on journalists and environmental protection all remain under close scrutiny. Albania must show that reforms are durable and that its institutions can enforce the standards they adopt. Environmental rules are particularly demanding because protecting biodiversity, upgrading infrastructure and modernising public administration require time, expertise and considerable investment. Hoxha accepted that the list is long. “The negotiation is about the gap,” he said: where Albania is now, where it must reach and how the country intends to bridge the distance. Merit must work in both directions Auštrevičius described two possible models of enlargement. Under the “convoy” approach, every candidate moves at the pace of the slowest. Under the “regatta” principle, each country competes against the same standards and advances according to its own performance. “To be first is good, but you have to be the best. What is promised must be implemented.” Petras Auštrevičius That distinction matters because the Western Balkans are too often treated as a single political problem. Albania’s progress should not be slowed by another government’s failure to reform. Equally, geopolitical urgency cannot become an excuse to admit countries whose institutions, democratic safeguards or foreign-policy choices remain incompatible with membership. Hoxha agreed that the process must remain merit-based, but argued that reciprocity is essential to its credibility. A candidate that fulfils an agreed condition must be allowed to move forward. Otherwise, public trust deteriorates and reformers struggle to explain why difficult changes bring no visible reward. Hoxha’s response is to move before the political opportunity closes. Can countries begin joining before they become members? One answer may be gradual integration, giving reforming countries access to parts of the European system before full membership. This could include the single market, the SEPA payments area, EU programmes and eventually roaming without additional charges. Such measures make enlargement tangible to citizens who might otherwise wait years for its benefits. Albania already aligns fully with the EU’s common foreign and security policy, Hoxha said. European sanctions become Albanian sanctions, and European missions become Albanian missions. His question was direct: if Albania accepts and implements those decisions, why should its representatives not attend relevant meetings as observers? This would also allow Albanian civil servants to understand how European decisions are formed before they must help administer them as members. Accession brings access, influence and funding, but also competition, obligations and responsibility. Preparation inside the institutions may ultimately be more effective than preparation from outside them. Europe is not a menu The sharpest part of the discussion concerned strategic alignment. Some candidate countries seek EU investment while also cultivating Russian political ties or Chinese involvement in infrastructure, telecommunications and other strategic sectors. Auštrevičius questioned whether a country can claim that Brussels is blocking its progress while its own decisions repeatedly pull it away from European foreign policy. Hoxha’s answer was unequivocal: For Albania, European alignment is the first test applied to foreign-policy decisions. This is increasingly important because enlargement is intended to strengthen the Union. If new members carry the strategic influence of hostile powers into European decision-making, the process could weaken Europe from within. Auštrevičius compared accession to “a responsible marriage”. A country cannot demand solidarity, market access and financial support while refusing the political responsibilities that accompany them. Kosovo, Bosnia and the unfinished history of the region Kosovo remains unrecognised by five EU member states: Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. Hoxha noted that practical relationships have nevertheless developed. Kosovo now has visa-free travel, its passports are recognised, and the five countries maintain varying degrees of contact. Yet the Serbia-Kosovo normalisation process remains slow despite dozens of agreements. The same tension is visible in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Dayton Peace Agreement stopped a horrific war and maintained peace, but the structure it created has also contributed to political blockages and competing centres of power. Hoxha argued that peace arrangements designed for an emergency should not automatically be considered permanent constitutional solutions. Yet Europe cannot simply impose unity upon a divided political system. “You cannot import a consensus. It has to be grown from within.” Ferit Hoxha The accession of Albania or Montenegro could provide the region with something it has lacked for more than a decade: visible proof that the door remains real. Citizens elsewhere may then exert greater pressure on leaders who use identity, history or institutional paralysis to avoid reform. The EU must also be ready to change Every stage of accession can be delayed by unanimity. Auštrevičius argued for qualified-majority voting on intermediate decisions, reducing the ability of one government to hold an entire country hostage to a bilateral dispute. This would not remove the final consent required for membership, but it could prevent accession from becoming an arena for historical retaliation. Hoxha went further, saying Albania would be willing to commit in its future accession treaty not to use a veto when it stood alone against every other member state. It was a striking promise from a country still outside the Union: Albania is already considering how to make Europe more functional once it enters. “Enlargement is our strength, not our weakness. Let us agree politically to do it on time.” Petras Auštrevičius Enlargement has always produced apprehension. Yet each previous expansion increased the Union’s population, market, influence and strategic reach. For Hoxha, Albania’s direction is no longer a question under discussion. The question is therefore no longer whether Albania wants Europe. It is whether E

North Macedonia has waited 21 years at the EU’s door. Zoran Dimitrovski and Linas Kojala ask what delay now costs Europe. Look at a map and the unresolved logic is striking. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia are almost entirely surrounded by EU and NATO members. These countries are not on some distant European frontier. They form an enclave within the Union’s own geography. In 2003, at the Thessaloniki summit, the EU promised the Western Balkans a European future. More than two decades later, Croatia remains the last country to have joined, back in 2013. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, enlargement has shifted from a slow technical process to an urgent geopolitical question: what happens when Europe leaves a space inside its own borders unfilled? My guests brought two unusually powerful perspectives to that question. Zoran Dimitrovski, North Macedonia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, spent 35 years as a journalist before entering government. He edited some of his country’s leading newspapers, reported from Washington, wrote more than 1,500 articles and investigations, and continues to teach critical thinking and analytical writing. Alongside him was Linas Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Vilnius and a lecturer at Vilnius University. A Fulbright scholar with studies at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, Kojala has written about Lithuania’s own journey into the European Union and has been ranked among his country’s most influential public figures. Twenty-one years at the front door North Macedonia became an EU candidate in 2005, around the same time as Croatia. Yet it still has not opened substantive accession negotiations. The country first faced a long dispute with Greece over its name, eventually resolved through the Prespa Agreement and the adoption of the name North Macedonia. That opened the way into NATO. A second dispute then emerged with neighbouring Bulgaria, involving language, identity, history and the recognition of a Bulgarian community within North Macedonia’s constitution. Zoran Dimitrovski did not deny the work still required within his own country. North Macedonia must continue aligning its laws with the EU, strengthening the judiciary and fighting corruption. His argument was that these shortcomings were not the principal reason the country had been stopped. This describes one of the demands that, in Dimitrovski's view, reach beyond the Copenhagen criteria governing democratic institutions, human rights, the rule of law and a functioning market economy. There is, however, responsibility on both sides of the border and both sides of the accession table. The European Parliament’s latest assessment expresses regret at North Macedonia’s lack of progress, calling for the constitutional amendments, stronger cross-party cooperation and deeper reforms. Yet that same resolution warns that bilateral disputes over language, culture and national identity should not be used to obstruct accession. This is the uncomfortable heart of the story: the EU must remain demanding enough for membership to retain meaning, while remaining fair enough for its promises to retain credibility. The rules were written for a different Europe Kojala argued that the enlargement machinery itself must adapt to a radically altered security landscape. The process still requires unanimity at critical stages, allowing one member state to hold up another country’s progress. Under normal circumstances, such caution might be defensible. These, he stressed, are not normal circumstances. The EU’s decision-making can be painfully slow because 27 governments must agree on decisions touching sovereignty, money and national interest. Kojala compared it to 27 friends attempting to choose a restaurant, except that several of them may not be friends and the decisions are monumental. The central question is therefore whether procedures devised 20 years ago are still adequate for a Europe facing war, cyber-attacks, sabotage, disinformation and growing competition from authoritarian powers. Railways, bridges and the architecture of security EU enlargement may sound abstract, but it rapidly becomes concrete. It is about railway lines, bridges, roads, energy systems and digital networks. Dimitrovski pointed to Corridors VIII and X, which cross North Macedonia and connect the Adriatic, Black and Aegean Seas with wider Europe. These routes matter for trade and daily life, but also for NATO’s ability to move personnel and equipment across the continent. A bridge too weak to carry military vehicles is simultaneously an infrastructure problem, an economic weakness and a security vulnerability. Kojala offered a useful challenge to the language of cost. Security spending is often discussed as money disappearing from productive use. Yet roads, schools, housing, communications and transport capacity remain in the communities where they are built. The same is true of enlargement: investment in the Western Balkans is not charity at Europe’s edge. It is investment in the resilience of the continent as a whole. A vacuum rarely stays empty Russia remains an influential force in Serbia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Chinese lending and infrastructure investment have expanded across the region. Dimitrovski was careful not to suggest that the Western Balkans would simply abandon Europe for Moscow or Beijing. His warning was more subtle. Prolonged uncertainty can produce weaker institutions, frustrated populations and a region increasingly exposed to financial pressure, political manipulation and disinformation. Europe therefore faces a choice that is larger than whether another flag appears outside the institutions in Brussels. It must decide whether the Western Balkans are genuinely part of its future, and demonstrate that belief through fair conditions, credible timelines and visible results. Kojala described the European Union as something close to a “boring miracle”: cumbersome, imperfect and endlessly predicted to collapse, yet remarkably capable of adapting and surviving. That miracle now requires another act of political imagination. The Western Balkans have spent more than 20 years hearing that their future lies inside the European Union. Europe may now need to ask a harder question of itself: how long can a promise remain credible before waiting becomes its own form of rejection?

Four Africans living in Luxembourg share why the future of Africa-Europe capital is ownership, not aid, & the people structuring it are already in the room There is a moment in the conversation when Cheikh Ndiaye, a fund lawyer at Elvinger Hoss Prussen who was born and raised in Senegal, describes his job in one word: plumbing. He designs the structures that let capital move across borders, legally and at scale. It is an unglamorous metaphor for a profound idea, and it reframes everything the African diaspora in Luxembourg is trying to do. Around the studio table at RTL City sat four people whose journeys began in Cameroon, Algeria, Mauritania and Senegal, and converged in one of the world's largest fund centres. Burrel Ngatcha, founder of the African Luxembourg Community (ALC), brought them together. Sonia Brahmi runs a boutique tax advisory firm. Dr. Leila Kamara builds sustainable investment funds. What they share is a conviction that the old story about Africa and money has expired, and that they are the ones positioned to write the new one. Why all of Africa, not just the countries? Luxembourg holds roughly 700,000 inhabitants and an outsized share of the world's investment funds. Ngatcha arrived in 2023, joined Société Générale, and quickly noticed how hard it was to find people who shared a common history. So in May 2025 he launched a LinkedIn group. It has since grown into a network of more than 1,400 professionals. "Africa has 54 countries, from the north to the south, the east to the west. It was making sense for me to create something for all the continent, not only for Cameroon." Crucially, the ALC is not a closed door. Ngatcha is direct about who belongs: the point is not heritage but curiosity about the continent's dynamics. "It's not about being African who matters the most. It's about being conscious and curious about the dynamics that happen in Africa." The diaspora's real asset is proximity The sharpest idea of the conversation came from Ndiaye, who pushed back on the reflex to equate diaspora capital with remittances. Money sent home, he argued, is love, but it is not leverage. The leverage is something far rarer. "We're not standing outside of global finance. We are in the machinery, right here." There are people of African origin in Luxembourg structuring funds, running compliance and sitting on management committees who understand both European regulation and the reality back home. That double fluency, Ndiaye said, is the whole game. "The lever is turning that proximity into vehicles, people who can make an African asset legible to European capital and root it back as ownership, not aid." The numbers most investors are missing Ask anyone to picture African investment and they tend to picture risk. Ndiaye offered a corrective that should make any allocator pause: ten of the twenty fastest-growing economies in the world are African. He pointed to Niger growing at around 11 percent a year, precisely the kind of country most European investors would never consider. His point was not naivety about risk. It was that treating a continent of 54 distinct economies as a single block is itself the error, and that local knowledge is a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight. "If you have boots on the ground, if you know the country, there are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of success stories, but you don't know them." Blockchain as a bridge, not a buzzword Brahmi, who grew up in a third-generation Algerian family in France and now works heavily in crypto and tax, made the case for digital assets as practical infrastructure rather than speculation. Banking access across much of Africa is expensive and slow, and the continent's many currencies complicate even neighbourly trade. Stablecoins, she argued, lower the friction. She and Ngatcha recently ran a conference on exactly this, titled Digital Assets Without Borders. Her argument is that transparency, not hype, is the real promise, since transactions on a public ledger can be tracked and proven in ways paper never could. "We don't need ink signatures, because everything is documented. It should lead to better governance in the end." Sustainability as a financial strategy Kamara relocated from Paris five years ago, having grown up in Mauritania, and recently founded Kamara Advisory after three years of doctoral research into socially responsible investment. Her conclusion reshaped her career: the real gap is not in avoiding heavy emitters but in financing their transition. That insight became NZiFund, a Net-Zero Innovation Fund built to channel capital toward green technology and toward the high-emitting companies that most need to change. Her framing rejects the idea that sustainability is a compliance cost. "We really need to support them in their transition, rather than divesting from them when we are practising sustainable investment." She is candid that climate finance has a long way to go, a view shared by the wider industry. Private money, she and the table agreed, is still far from where it needs to be, and de-risking it remains the central challenge. The thread that ties it together What emerges across these four stories is a single argument made four ways. Identity is something you choose and carry rather than something assigned to you. Africa is plural, not monolithic. And the diaspora's true value is that it sits inside the machinery of global capital while understanding the ground back home. At 29, Ngatcha has built that bridge faster than most. As Brahmi put it, watching her younger colleague work, the energy and commitment to bring African voices to a platform is rare. The conversation has moved decisively away from aid and toward ownership, and these are some of the people doing the plumbing. Guests and links Burrel Ngatcha, Founder and President, African Luxembourg Community Sonia Brahmi, CEO, Kairō (LinkedIn) Dr. Leila Kamara, CEO, Kamara Advisory (LinkedIn) Cheikh Ndiaye, Counsel, Elvinger Hoss Prussen (LinkedIn)

From testicular cancer to children’s stories, book clubs and summer reads, this episode celebrates the healing power of books and community. Books can entertain us, educate us and carry us away for a few precious hours. But sometimes, they help us survive. In this edition of The Lisa Burke Show, Lisa is joined by writer, translator and lifelong bookworm Tom Weber, Mariana Mendes, founder of Between the Lines, and Maïté Ademes and Hendrik Dennemeyer from Luxembourg City Library’s children’s projects team. Together, they explore summer reading, Luxembourg’s open-air library D’Stad liest, the magic of book clubs and the inner strength that reading can give us when life turns serious. The conversation begins with Tom Weber’s courageous account of being diagnosed with testicular cancer very recently aged just 29. What began as pain and a visit to his GP rapidly became blood tests, a urologist appointment, emergency hospital care, surgery and confirmation that two tumours had been found. “Earlier this month, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. And that came a bit out of nowhere. I didn’t see this coming at all,” Tom's candour is striking. The surgery went well, scans showed the cancer had not metastasised, and he is now waiting to see whether chemotherapy will be needed. But his most urgent message is clear: men and boys need to check themselves. “If you do have testicles, do a self-check once a month. And if you feel any sort of hardening, or anything that’s unusual, you should immediately go to your GP.” What makes Tom’s presence so moving is the way he holds fear without being consumed by it. Having previously spoken on the show about his late autism diagnosis, he explains that his philosophy is to focus on what can be done, rather than spiral into what cannot be controlled. “There’s not really any point in worrying about things that you have no control over, because at that point, you’re just adding to it” From there, the conversation turns naturally to reading, as a way to make sense of life and emotions. Tom read voraciously as a child, then lost that habit during depression and personal struggle in his early twenties. After his autism diagnosis, therapists encouraged him to think back to what he loved before masking and social pressure took over. The answer was obvious: books. “I always have a book in my hand now. And it cured a lot of the things.” This is where the episode opens into its wider love letter to libraries. Luxembourg City Library’s D’Stad liest, meaning “the city reads”, began in 2021 during the pandemic years, when open-air cultural life became a way to gather safely. This summer, the open-air library moves to the Grund district, at Place St Ulric, where readers can settle into books and magazines from Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6.30pm. Hendrik Dennemeyer and Maïté Ademes explain that the library’s children’s mascot, Tuffi the fox, represents their mission to foster a love of reading among children, while multilingual storytelling sessions, author readings and workshops make the library feel alive for families. “Most kids still love books,” Hendrik says, adding that comics, manga and graphic novels remain a powerful doorway into reading. Maïté highlights Saturday morning storytelling sessions, including inclusive events and a new collaboration with the Centre de Logopédie, where stories will also be translated into German sign language. Community is also at the heart of Between the Lines, the English-language book club founded by Mariana Mendes. What began four years ago as an Instagram page, shared with a few friends, has grown into monthly discussions of around 20 to 30 readers. You can follow the club at https://www.instagram.com/betweenthelines.lu/. Mariana speaks about the sensory pleasure of physical books: the touch, smell, colours, covers and bookshop browsing experience that no screen can fully replace. She also organises book swaps, where the exchange becomes personal. “People bring the books that they like and they really want someone else to read it. And maybe it’s not life changing, but I think it gives you a piece of someone else.” In a world often accused of being too digital, Mariana also points out that BookTok and Bookstagram have helped make reading feel social, visible and even trendy again. Tom’s summer reading list brings the episode its intellectual sweep. The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins takes listeners into the Indonesian massacres of 1965 and 1966 and the political shadows of the Cold War. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama becomes, in Tom’s words, “like receiving a warm hug from a very dear friend”. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado explores psychological abuse in a queer relationship through an inventive literary form. Salt Houses by Hala Alyan follows a displaced Palestinian family across generations, with prose Tom describes as lyrical and deeply moving. Finally, Rob Hopkins’ From What Is to What If closes the show on imagination and possibility. “If we want to create a better future for all of us, we need imagination,” That, perhaps, is the perfect ending to an episode that begins with illness and moves towards courage, community and creative life. Books do not remove pain. But they can give us language, companionship and a way to imagine what comes next. Links Between the Lines Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betweenthelines.lu/ Luxembourg City Library website: https://citybiblio.lu/ Luxembourg City Library Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetzebuergCityBibliotheque/about/ Luxembourg City Library Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letzebuerg_city_bibliotheque/ D’Stad liest events with Between the Lines: https://citybiblio.lu/event/between-the-lines--d-stad-liest-2 https://citybiblio.lu/event/between-the-lines--d-stad-liest-3 Polly Dunbar at D’Stad liest: https://citybiblio.lu/event/polly-dunbar--d-stad-liest Audrey Martin at D’Stad liest: https://citybiblio.lu/event/audrey-martin--d-stad-liest Ville de Luxembourg newsletter: https://newsletter.vdl.lu/

Four women, three missions, one artist and a comet parked in space. Inside the Asteroid Day Festival episode of The Lisa Burke Show. For the Asteroid Day Festival in Luxembourg, four remarkable women came into the RTL City studio, three scientists and one artist, each travelling through heat, early flights and long journeys because they care deeply about how we explore, understand and protect ourselves from objects in space. My guests were Dr Stefania Soldini, Associate Professor in Space Engineering at the University of Liverpool and Director of the new Zero-G AstroLab; Sabina Raducan, planetary scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Royal Observatory of Belgium; Professor Kathrin Altwegg, Professor Emeritus in Space Research and Planetology at the University of Bern; and Aura Satz, a London based artist working with film, sound, performance and sculpture. What asteroids are, and why we chase something so small and so far away An asteroid, as Stefania Soldini explained, is a small rocky object that never became a planet. That is exactly why it matters. These bodies preserve information from the birth of the Solar System more than 4.5 billion years ago. They may carry clues about planets, water and perhaps even how the building blocks of life came to Earth. “We scientists are interested because they retain some clues of maybe how life has been brought to Earth.” Stefania worked at Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, on the famous Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu. Hayabusa2 is still working and will fly past a new asteroid on 5 July 2026. Sending a spacecraft to a body around one kilometre across, about 100 million kilometres away, with a communication delay of around 40 minutes, is engineering on a scale that is hard to hold in the human mind. Hayabusa2 collected material twice: once from the surface and once from below it after creating a crater. Those samples were then returned to Earth, giving scientists access to material from a world we could never touch with human hands. “When you see the object for the first time, you think, oh wow, it’s nothing like we thought it was.” That sentence captures the drama of asteroid exploration. The maths can take you there, the engineering can keep you alive, but the asteroid itself still has the power to surprise you. Hayabusa2 and DART: touching an asteroid, then deliberately hitting one From Hayabusa2, we moved to Sabina Raducan and NASA’s DART mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. This was the world’s first real attempt to deflect an asteroid by deliberately crashing a spacecraft into it. The target was Dimorphos, a tiny moon around 160 metres across, orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. The spacecraft was moving at more than six kilometres per second and had to find its target autonomously. The main asteroid became visible only about an hour before impact. The actual target appeared only minutes before the spacecraft hit it. “It was a complete success. So we can all feel safe. So far.” It is an extraordinary thing to hear. Humanity has tested a way to move an asteroid. It was real planetary defence, built on decades of maths, modelling, engineering and international collaboration. “The actual target became visible only a few minutes before the impact.” Hera: the European mission going to inspect the aftermath Because DART was destroyed on impact, we still do not know exactly what happened to Dimorphos. Did it leave a crater? Did it reshape the asteroid? How much material was thrown out? How did that ejecta change the momentum of the system? That is the job of Hera, the European Space Agency mission now on its way to the Didymos system. Both Sabina and Stefania work on Hera, which will inspect the result of DART and help turn a successful test into knowledge we can use if Earth ever needs protecting. “We know the asteroid was not completely destroyed. But we don’t know what the crater looks like. If there even is a crater.” Whatever happens in geopolitics, science continues to show what collaboration can look like at its best. Rosetta and the comets: an archaeologist in space Professor Kathrin Altwegg then took us from asteroids to comets. A comet, she said with characteristic humour, is cooler than an asteroid in every sense. It is much colder, around minus 240 degrees, and it contains ices preserved from the early Solar System and beyond. As Principal Investigator for the ROSINA instrument on ESA’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P, Kathrin helped analyse some of the most pristine material we have ever encountered. Rosetta found water, gases, organic molecules and amino acids, the building blocks of life. She was very clear: this is prebiotic material, not life itself. But the implication is enormous. “It’s archaeology, but with a lot of zeros in the years.” For Kathrin, cometary science reaches into the great questions: where do we come from, where are we going, and are we alone? She explained that some of the material found in comets is older than our Solar System. If it is universal, then what happened here on Earth could have happened elsewhere. Her answer on life beyond Earth was characteristically direct: almost certainly yes, but probably microbes rather than life as we are. “A comet is just a more cool asteroid.” Rosetta was also a lesson in human commitment. This was a mission measured in decades: 10 years of planning, 10 years of building, 10 years of cruise through space, two years of measurements, then many more years of data analysis. When I asked how anyone stays committed for that long, her answer was unforgettable. “You get high on comets.” Apophis in 2029, and an honest answer about the risk In 2029, an asteroid called Apophis, around 300 metres across, will pass extremely close to Earth, at roughly the distance of geostationary satellites. Once considered a possible risk, it has now been ruled out as an impact threat. It will not hit Earth. Still, the conversation gave us an honest and useful way to think about risk. Dinosaur scale impacts are extraordinarily rare. Smaller objects, around 30 metres and under, are usually dealt with by Earth’s atmosphere. The objects that deserve real attention are around 100 metres across: big enough to cause serious local damage, but small enough that we may be able to act. “These are the ones that we can do something about.” Kathrin would not offer false comfort for the truly enormous asteroid scenario. Planetary defence is therefore not about panic. It is about seeing early, understanding properly and acting in time, if we can. The artist in the room: how we listen to warnings Aura Satz came into the conversation from a different direction. She is not an asteroid scientist, but her work on sirens, sound and emergency listening felt unexpectedly central to Asteroid Day. Her film Preemptive Listening explores how we hear warnings, how we respond to alarm and whether emergency signals can do more than frighten us. Her work asks a question that belongs in planetary defence too: how do we listen to danger before it is too late? “Does an alarm have to be alarming?” Aura described a siren as a call to attention, something that gives an instruction and points to a possible future. In that sense, an asteroid warning system is also a kind of siren, one aimed not at panic, but at survival. “It points to the possibility of survival.” Her film installation is currently on display as part of the exhibition état bruit at Konschthal Esch in Luxembourg. This is exactly the kind of outreach the scientists said they need. The science is extraordinary, but it has to be heard, understood and felt by the public. Advice for anyone who loves space but fears the maths One of the most encouraging parts of the conversation came when I asked whether there is room in space science for people who are not brilliant mathematicians or engineers. The answer was yes. There is room for communicators, artists, outreach specialists, technicians, geologists, chemists, programmers, observers and people who can help translate difficult science into public understanding. “You don’t have to be very good at mathematics. There are ways around it.” From Stefania and Sabina came advice that applies far beyond space: follow your passion, take opportunities when they come and keep going. In missions that last years or decades, perseverance matters as much as brilliance. One last image: a spacecraft parked in space, waiting My favourite image came from Kathrin. The next comet mission, Comet Interceptor, is planned for launch in 2028 or 2029. But it will not fly to a known target. It will park in space and wait, sometimes for years, for a brand new comet entering the inner Solar System for the first time. A spacecraft, waiting patiently in space for a comet that has not yet arrived. A target that does not yet have a name. “It depends on the patience you have. I told you it’s a fun mission.” So we will keep watching that little parked spacecraft. We will think of these four women, and of everything they have given to science, space engineering, art and public understanding. Asteroid Day is about rocks in space, yes. But it is also about us: how we listen, how we collaborate, how we imagine the future, and how we learn to defend the only planet we currently call home. Links and further reading Stefania Soldini, Zero-G AstroLab at the University of Liverpool: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/research/space/space-robotics/ Stefania Soldini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-stefania-soldini-42524651 Sabina Raducan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabina-raducan-bb511a71/ ESA Hera mission overview: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/Hera_mission_overview Kathrin Altwegg and ESA

Fred Neuen, Annabel Schoellen, Daniel Klautsch and Monica Serban on the LVGA, indie hits, cosy science games and why everyone is secretly a gamer. Video games are now the biggest entertainment economy on the planet, bigger than music and film combined, and Luxembourg is quietly building its corner of it. I welcomed four guests who each see it differently: Fred Neuen, president of the Luxembourg Video Game Association (LVGA) and the Luxembourg Film Academy; Annabel Schoellen, Secretary of videogames.lu; indie developer Daniel Klautsch of Team Iota; and game developer and environmental economist Monica Serban. I began this interview a reluctant gamer and left convinced I had simply never noticed I was one (in a very tiny capacity). Fred founded the LVGA in 2024 on three pillars: developers, education and the events and e-sports scene. Expecting a handful of local names, he found a thriving ecosystem. Some Luxembourg studios already succeed abroad: Rooftops and Alleys has sold hundreds of thousands of units across PC, PS5 and Switch, while retro specialist Sebastien Kotzka sees his work in Japanese arcades. If Fred is the structure, Annabel is the heartbeat. Through videogames.lu she runs the GamingCafé, a free, near monthly event built around the motto "spill mat," Luxembourgish for "play with us." She was candid about the abuse women still face online, recalling comments like "go back to the kitchen" while leading raids in Guild Wars 2. Yet the room she describes is the opposite of the stereotype: wide ranging in age, increasingly female, and visibly welcoming to its queer crowd. Daniel offered the founder's view. With BTS Game graduates Julie Fies and Steven Van Dorp, he formed Team Iota and released Sacrifice For Sale on Steam, then Switch, PS5 and Xbox. His hardest lesson was that making the game is the easy part, and that zero budget marketing is the steepest climb. The breakthrough came from collaboration, not cash. On AI in coding, he offered a framing worth keeping: "Treat it as a very enthusiastic intern. They will make progress fast, but the accuracy of it will not always be there." Daniel Klautsch Monica made the case for games as a force for change. A screenwriter and lifelong gamer, she uses the cozy live sim format, in the spirit of Stardew Valley, for real scientific communication. In Scarletto Beetle and the Unseen World, built with the Museum of Natural History, the player is a ladybug learning how pollination and ecosystems work. After a Climate Futures game jam, she is now in a French German accelerator and heading to Gamescom in August. What united all four was a sense of standing at a frontier, from gamified education, with professors already using Assassin's Creed to teach history, to the harder questions of addiction and manipulative design. Fred's boldest dream is a curated, Cannes style festival for games, hosted in Luxembourg, possibly next year. "We are all pioneers right now. It's like the Wild West, something to explore." Fred Neuen His definition of a gamer is wide enough to include his own mother, who plays daily Sudoku on her phone. On paper, he admitted, she games more than he does, and I suspect the same is quietly true of many of us. Links and where to follow the guests LVGA (Luxembourg Video Game Association) https://www.lvga.lu Fred Neuen, president of LVGA and the Luxembourg Film Academy Radar: https://thisisradar.com FDI Group: https://www.fdi-group.eu Luxembourg Film Academy: https://filmakademie.lu Annabel Schoellen, Secretary of videogames.lu https://videogames.lu/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/videogameslu Daniel Klautsch, indie game developer, Team Iota Team Iota on X: https://x.com/TeamIotaGames Team Iota on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/teamiota.bsky.social Press kit: https://team-iota.klautsch.lu/press/ Sacrifice For Sale on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2809090/Sacrifice_For_Sale/ Monica Serban, game developer and environmental economist LinkedIn post on the Science Center event: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maria-monicaserban-2a085419_climatechange-euclimatepact-biodiversityactivity-7435435012902039552-QABg