Why Ireland’s President Higgins is calling for citizens to protect libraries

Over the past year, Irish libraries have been faced with far-right protests at their doorsteps. One of the reasons they are being targeted is for holding LGBTQ+ reading material, or drag readings. In Hungary, a similar wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in reading material is underway. How close are we to living out the story of Fahrenheit 451? And what does this mean for the future of free speech and representation?

Europe, Day by Day is Europod‘s first daily podcast, in co-production with Sphera Network

The executive producer of Europe, Day by Day is Alexander Damiano Ricci. 

The host of Europe, Day by Day is Emma Belmonte. 

The researcher of this episode is Juli Simond.

This episode was produced and edited by Alexander Damiano Ricci.

Original soundtrack by Thomas Kusberg.  

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Other podcasts

Thirty-eight places worse than in 2021 and last in the ranking of EU countries, press freedom in Greece is undoubtedly in free fall. According to the annual report of Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), in a total of 180 countries, the country referred to internationally as the matrix of democracy has plummeted in just one year from 70th to 108th place in 2022. In the following six episodes, Greek journalists Konstantinos Poulis and Jenny Tsiropoulou will take us inside newsrooms to see the working conditions in the media, investigate the unsolved murder of a journalist at the door of his house, talk to journalists-victims of SLAPPS and journalists-victims of phone tapping, and they will talk to us about a completely opaque process of public funding to find out what the 108th place means in practice and to ask who benefits from journalism that is feared and silenced. We would like you to know that the present government has systematically failed to respond to requests from journalists from unfriendly media. In such cases, we report on it in our editorials. #108 is a co-production between the Greek independent media The Press Project and the podcast production agency Bulle Media. The podcast series is part of the Europod podcast network and was produced under the Sphera project. The original language of this podcast is Greek. There is also available an English version. The producer of 108 is Antoine Lheureux. Executive producers are Konstantinos Poulis and Alexander Damiano Ricci. Scriptwriting is by Jenny Tsiropoulou. Interviews by Jenny Tsiropoulou and Konstantinos Poulis. Editorial work by María Dios and Alexander Damiano Ricci. Sound design by Thomas Kusberg. Editing and mixing by Thomas Kusberg and Jeremy Bocquet.
Artificial intelligence is all around us. It has technological applications that save lives, but it can also affect them in ways we all too often ignore. It has created jobs that did not exist, but it also raises fears for the future of employment. Today, artificial intelligence can be used to make anything: a start-up, a cyberwar and even a work of art. This podcast is all about the A.I. revolution, amidst market bubbles, problems that the European Union is trying to correct, potential and dystopian scenarios, because algorithms replicate the distortions of the society that conceived them.