Immigration is an often misunderstood area of the law. In this episode, we outline the French immigration regime and discuss how it differs from that of the United States.

At its height, the French colonial empire was the second largest in the world. One of its legacies is Overseas France — parts of France scattered around the globe, from Tahiti in the South Pacific to French Guiana on the South American mainland. In the first of a series of episodes on this strange geographic anomaly that makes France the country with the most timezones in the world, we dive into the islands of the French Antilles: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, and Saint Barts.

On our first-ever crossover episode, we discuss the recent conviction of Marine Le Pen and several MEPs on charges of embezzlement, as well as the controversy surrounding her ineligibility to run for public office, with Marlon and Olly from the Flep24 Podcast. We explore whether this conviction amounts to "lawfare" and consider the potential impact it may have on French politics, particularly for the far-right in the 2027 presidential race.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the Flep24 (French Legislative Elections Podcast 2024) wherever you get your podcasts and consider finding them on patreon.

On this episode, we sit down with Jathan Sadowski from the podcast This Machine Kills to discuss his latest book, Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. We explore data capitalism, the impact of AI on labor and decision-making, rentierism, and whether Europe should join the tech hype cycle—as so many of its leaders seem eager to do.

Upset over illicit sports streaming websites, Canal+ petitioned a French court to order Google, Cloudflare, Quad9 and Vercara to no longer resolve queries to domains like antenasports.ru. We discuss whether the court's decision to side with Canal+ amounts to "internet censorship" and whether it will have any effect. Check out our accompanying article at royalpalacemedia.com

A few precisions/corrections:

- Canal+ Groupe has been recently restructured such what we said about Vavendi is not longer up-to-date (the firm remains nonetheless under the control of the Bolloré family).

- The acronym for the Inter-planetary File System is "IPFS" but Patrick mistakenly says IFS because interplanetary is arguably one word.

- Our website does not have a certificate issued by Cloudflare, but rather Google Trust Services which is one of the five certificate authorities Cloudflare uses to issues SSL certs.

History tends to forget the Minitel experiment or dismiss it as a system that suffered from over-centralization, heavy state censorship, and a lack of openness. However, in an era when Google, Amazon, and Microsoft control the vast majority of internet infrastructure, with corporate and state censorship on the rise, might these criticisms reveal more about the “free” internet than they do about 1980s France?

Although more ideologically diverse than the American media, French newspapers and television distinguish themselves in another way: their ownership by right-wing billionaires. On this episode, we discuss with our friend Sam the many newspapers, magazines, TV channels and radio stations that make up the French media landscape -- as well as their owners.

Less than two hours ago, the French National Assembly passed a motion of no-confidence against the right-wing Barnier Government. How did it happen? What does this mean for France and President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron's political project? Who stands to benefit -- the far-right or the leftist New Popular Front? What does it say about French democracy and the future of the Fifth Republic? Join us as we discuss these questions and more on our first "emergency episode" of the Royal Palace Podcast.

Minitel, launched by France's Ministry of Post, Telegraphs, and Telephone (PTT), brought the networked age to the French public nearly a decade before Americans encountered the commercial web in the early 1990s. Offering services like online directories, messaging, shopping, and access to news, Minitel’s innovative pay-by-minute kiosk system ensured that payments were divided between the PTT and the service providers, enabling publications like Le Monde and Libération to thrive in the emerging online landscape. Minitel terminals were handed out for free at Post Offices, and existing telephone customers enjoyed access with no monthly service fees. The Minitel experience suggests that the flaws of today’s internet—dominated by advertising and data capitalism—were not inevitable. At once a testament to the centralized ambition of the postwar welfare state and a product of the shift toward neoliberalism in the 1970s, Minitel embodied both the promise of public infrastructure and the forces that would ultimately undermine it through privatization and austerity.

Our credits to Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll for their book Minitel: Welcome to the Internet, published by MIT Press, which provided invaluable insights into Minitel's history, as well as the examples of Minitel services and their modern equivalents.