Lisa Burke Show

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 immi...

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...

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 Rod...

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...

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 y...

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, CNA...

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 so...

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...

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. Th...

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 makin...

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...

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, legall...

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 Betwee...

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 ours...

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 Vi...

As MUDEC's first Luxembourgish Executive Director retires after 24 years, Raymond Manes shares the love story behind Miami University in Luxembourg. For almost six decades, a slice of American university life has been quietly thriving in the Grand Duchy. The Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center, known to most simply as MUDEC, has welcomed students from Ohio to Luxembourg since 1968. T...

ALFI's Serge Weyland and McGill's Patrick Augustin on funds, Europe's pension time bomb, and why financial literacy may be its most urgent lesson. Luxembourg is known to many as the heart of European finance, yet the story of how it earned that title is one we rarely hear told plainly. On this episode, I sat down with two guests perfectly placed to tell it: Serge Weyland, CEO of the Association of...

Henrietta Orosz reveals how beauty became her business, moving from service-provider to judge, author and inventor. It was a genuine pleasure to host Henrietta in the studio. Her story is a reminder that the most interesting careers are usually the ones that require courage, and that Luxembourg is slowly becoming a place for beauty businesses too. “Beauty is not just surface. It is psychology, com...

AI, Talent and the Future of Europe: Why Universities Matter More Than Ever As AI reshapes jobs, health and society, University of Luxembourg Rector Jens Kreisel explains why universities matter more than ever. The future belongs to people who can learn, adapt and think critically. That was the central message from University of Luxembourg Rector Jens Kreisel when he joined The Lisa Burke Show for...

The man who helps finance Europe's defence: Robert de Groot, vice president of the European Investment Bank There is a particular kind of power that comes with someone who decides, quietly, which ideas get funded and which don't. Robert de Groot, and his team, holds that power over an extraordinary range of things: military bridges in Poland, rocket launchers in Spain, satellite-to-smartphone star...

From entrepreneurial burnout to authorship on realignment, Pascal Wiscour-Conter shares his learnings You know that feeling when someone speaks and every single word lands? Not because they're loud or made slick slides or rehearsed an elevator pitch to death, but because you sense they mean it? Pascal Wiscour-Conter calls this alignment and has spent three years building the science to prove it. P...

Boycotts, soft power, and sequined bodysuits - the definitive guide to Eurovision 2026 with two of Luxembourg's sharpest voices If you think Eurovision is nothing more than glitter, key changes, and strategic voting between neighbours, think again. Seventy years in, Europe's biggest song contest continues to be fun alongside the loaded messaging and controversy. Five countries are boycotting. The...

A film about bureaucracy, jazz, and the story of how three cities:Strasbourg, Luxembourg & Brussels, became the unlikely home of a continent's big idea. It's the founding question nobody thought to ask. Six nations sat down after World War II, determined never to fight again, and forgot to decide where they'd actually meet. In the middle of the night on July 23rd, 1952, exhausted negotiators gave...

Dirk Daenen, the man who brought TEDx to Luxembourg, reveals the science and the secrets behind becoming a truly confident speaker. You'd think the man who coaches Luxembourg's most compelling public speakers would have been born fearless on stage. You'd be wrong. Professor Dirk Daenen, communication expert, TEDx Luxembourg organiser, and the person quietly responsible for some of the most-watched...

Entrepreneur René Beltjens pedals 7,000km from Estonia to Gibraltar with 2Wheels4Purpose to raise €1 million for breast cancer research at Saint‑Luc. René Beltjens is a brilliant business man, co‑founder of Alter Domus amongst many more accolades, but as a young family man he had to endure the very hardest family situation. His young wife was diagnosed with breast cancer aged just 30 right after t...