Young people today face rents that keep climbing, a pension system they'll pay into for decades with little certainty it will be there for them, and traditional parties that leave little room for new voices. So naturally, they want to find a way to actually make a difference and change their own conditions, as the traditional leadership structures let them down. Lukas Sieper, a German MEP, did just that.

Twenty active party members, 600 Instagram followers, three election posters and a €2,500 campaign budget for all of Germany. By every measure, he should not have won a seat in the European Parliament. But he did, by building his own party, the Party of Progress, after years of hitting a wall inside the CDU.

His story comes at a tense moment. In Saxony-Anhalt, the far-right AfD just won the largest share of the vote, while Germany's traditional parties keep losing ground.

Lukas and Samuel discuss how to navigate this landscape as a young person trying to make a difference, and debate the big questions: if the old parties won't make room for new voices, and the main alternative rising in their place is extremist, where do young people who believe in democracy go? Is starting your own party the only way in? And can the political centre change fast enough to stop protest votes from turning into real power?

Lukas argues that Germany's big traditional parties are "fundamentally fucked," and that democracy is still alive precisely because people like him can still win. They also get into dealing with the far right inside the Parliament, being courted by every political group on arrival, and who the GOAT (greatest of all time) rapper is.

Comments, concerns or suggestions: samuel.dempsey@europeancorrespondent.com

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(Since we recorded, the AfD has won its first-ever state parliament presidency in Saxony-Anhalt, with votes from outside its own ranks, and its candidate Ulrich Siegmund plans to run for state premier in December.)