Spotlight on France

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Spotlight on France

Interested in France? Let us be your ears and eyes on the ground. Hosts Sarah Elzas and Alison Hird introduce you to the people who make France what it is, and who want to change it - to give you a fuller picture of this country at the heart of Europe. Spotlight on France is a podcast, in English, from Radio France International, out Thursdays.

  1. 14/09/2023

    Podcast: France's heatwave legacy, 15-minute city conspiracies, the first TGV

    How France shifted its approach to heatwaves after nearly 15,000 people died in the summer of 2003. An urban planning concept gets picked up by conspiracy theorists. And the first TGV that started France's expansion of high-speed rail travel.

    29 min

  2. 13/07/2023

    Podcast: A deeper look at urban and police violence in France's banlieues

    As the dust settles on a week of intense urban violence triggered by the police shooting of a young man in the northern working-class suburb of Nanterre, we look at the causes and what, if anything, has changed in these poorer, multi-racial neighbourhoods since the 2005 riots. What role has police violence played in the worsening relations between the state and banlieues residents? And the life and music of singer-poet-anarchist Léo Ferré.

    35 min

  3. 29/06/2023

    Podcast: wheat on the Seine, denim goes home to Nimes, forgotten first woman filmmaker

    How Rouen, a city on the Seine, far from the open sea, became France's largest grain port; denim production returns to its place of birth in Nimes; and the story of Alice Guy, the world's first woman director, forgotten by history.

    32 min

  4. 15/06/2023

    Podcast: New Caledonia dialogue, homophobia in French football, moonlighting novelists

    How to get New Caledonians talking to each other; the incompatibility of being gay and a football player in France, and the naval officer who turned his world travels into fiction.

    34 min

  5. 01/06/2023

    Podcast: Conserving a martyred village, abortion drug shortages, identifying HIV

    The village of Oradour-sur-Glane continues to memorialise the massacre of 643 of its inhabitants by the Nazis in 1944. Are shortages of an abortion drug in France linked to the anti-abortion movement in the United States? And the French doctor who helped identify HIV in the early days of the Aids epidemic.

    34 min

  6. 04/05/2023

    Podcast: French union paradox, Tintin today, first Miss France

    Why French unions are so prominent despite record low membership. How Tintin defied critiques of racism, sexism and anti-Semitism to remain one of France's favourite comic strip characters. And the 1920 beauty pageant that evolved into Miss France, watched by millions each year.

    28 min

  7. 20/04/2023

    Podcast: holding multinationals to account, Agent Orange on stage, ten years of gay marriage

    France's pioneering 2017 law that made French-based multinational companies responsible for human rights and environmental violations wherever they do business. Also, a Franco-Vietnamese theatre director brings Vietnamese history to life on stage. And the first same-sex marriage remembered 10 years after it became legal.

    33 min

  8. 06/04/2023

    Podcast: France and China, menstrual leave, the 'Picasso Papers'

    France's evolving relationship with China; allowing women time off for period pain; and why artist Pablo Picasso never became French.

    27 min
See All (24)

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Interested in France? Let us be your ears and eyes on the ground. Hosts Sarah Elzas and Alison Hird introduce you to the people who make France what it is, and who want to change it - to give you a fuller picture of this country at the heart of Europe. Spotlight on France is a podcast, in English, from Radio France International, out Thursdays.

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