Lisa Burke Show

RTL Today
RTL Today

A place for conversation that spans life in Luxembourg and beyond. Each week an international guest list will reflect on the week’s news, plus a whole host of other topics: politics to pollination; education to entrepreneurship; science to singing. Luxembourg sits in the beating heart of Europe and its diverse population provides a global perspective on a number of world issues.

  1. 6 days ago

    Pelvic Floor Health, Postpartum Care and Empathy in Medicine, 01/08/2026

    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.

  2. 6 days ago

    Can Business Repair Society? Inside Luxembourg’s SIS Impact Economy, 31/07/2026

    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

  3. 25 Jul

    Albania’s EU Accession Sprint: Will Europe Keep Its Side of the Bargain?, 25/07/2026

    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

  4. 17 Jul

    Western Balkans EU Enlargement: How Long Can Europe Keep Its Neighbours Waiting?, 17/07/2026

    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?

  5. 11 Jul

    African disapora in Luxembourg & global finance, 11/07/2026

    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)

  6. 7 Jul

    When Books Become Lifelines, 07/07/2026

    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/

  7. 30 Jun

    Asteroid Day in Luxembourg: How Scientists Are Learning to Defend Earth, 30/06/2026

    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

  8. 27 Jun

    Luxembourg's Video Game Industry Levels Up, 27/06/2026

    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

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About

A place for conversation that spans life in Luxembourg and beyond. Each week an international guest list will reflect on the week’s news, plus a whole host of other topics: politics to pollination; education to entrepreneurship; science to singing. Luxembourg sits in the beating heart of Europe and its diverse population provides a global perspective on a number of world issues.

Information

  • Channel
    RTL Today
  • Creator
    RTL - Lisa Burke
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © CLT-UFA S.A.
  • Show Website
    Lisa Burke Show

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