If you’ve ever wondered where all the affordable night trains are, or struggled to book tickets for an international journey, or spent hours of your one wild and precious life petitioning for compensation for a significantly delayed trip (*takes deep breath, collects self*)... let us introduce you to Jon Worth. This prolific train watcher and commentator is behind a new European Rail Passengers’ Union that is pushing for easier cross-border transit and may even help to resolve some people’s personal cross-border nightmares. Jon thinks Europe’s train travellers deserve better, and we tend to agree.

Find out about the European Rail Passengers' Union here. Subscribe to his newsletter here, and check out his posts on Mastodon here.

Also in this week’s episode: the latest in all those big moves to get European youth off of social media, and an Olympics opening ceremony broadcast debacle for the ages. And some crime-fighting llamas. This week’s Inspiration Station recommendations are Rosalía making a tortilla de patatas and the Spanish TV series Los Años Nuevos.

Resources for this episode:

“'I feel free': Australia's social media ban, one month on” – BBC, 9 January 2026
“Children should be at least 16 to access social media, say MEPs” – European Parliament, 26 November 2025
“France: TikTok still steering vulnerable children and young people towards depressive and suicidal content” – Amnesty International, 20 October 2025
Winter Olympics chaos at Italian broadcaster RAI (in Italian)
Mariah Carey’s performance at the opening ceremony in Milan
“Herd of crime-fighting llamas ‘make citizen’s arrest’ of man fleeing police” – @itvnews, 11 February 2026

Talk of social media bans getting you down? Keep the screen time going with our newsletter, GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK. We recommend it for anyone over the age of 16 looking to level up their scrolling. Subscribe here; it’s good for you!

This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number.

Produced by Katz Laszlo and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak
Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

When will Europe get the trains it deserves?

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Jon's favourite route: Belgrade to Bar

The AI-powered Podcast Player