Europe Talks Back

Europe Talks Back shines a light on the stories that matter from across Europe. A new Europe Talks Back episode drops every two weeks, showcasing storytelling podcasts, based on real stories The second and ongoing season of Europe Talks Back is produced in partnership with Sphera Network, the first network of independent media in Europe to reinvent the media space and paint a new picture of the continent through impactful, unbiased, raw and authentic stories.

 

Season 4

November 28, 2025
COP30 ended with almost no attention to food systems, despite their huge climate footprint. In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri explores the climate...
November 25, 2025
Across Europe, traditional news is losing ground and creators are stepping in. From TikTok explainers to YouTube analysts and Instagram storytellers, a new generation of voices...
October 30, 2025
Across Europe, Millennials and Gen Z are working, studying and saving, yet home ownership is increasingly out of reach. Though housing is officially recognised as a...
October 17, 2025
Across Europe, a quiet movement is taking shape. From knitting circles in Helsinki to pottery workshops in Brussels, people are rediscovering the simple, grounding act of...
October 9, 2025
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, we take you on a journey through European cities to explore how the EU’s Cohesion Policy turns funding into...
September 16, 2025
Loneliness doesn’t stop at city limits or country borders. In this episode of Europe Talks Back,we explore how isolation takes root in both Europe’s bustling cities...
August 27, 2025
They call it Europe’s backbone: the rural heartlands. Covering more than 80 percent of the EU’s territory but home to less than 30 percent of its...
July 30, 2025
Work emails at night. Messages from your boss after dinner. The pressure to be “always on” has become the norm, blurring the line between work and...
June 25, 2025
What does it really mean to be a rainbow family in the European Union? In this episode of Europe Talks Back,we explore the promise, and the...
May 28, 2025
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, we explore how Europe’s so-called culture wars are used to divert attention from structural economic issues.  With insight from...
April 30, 2025
Abortion remains illegal in Malta and highly restricted in Poland, despite ongoing pressure from European institutions to uphold reproductive rights. In this episode of Europe Talks...
March 26, 2025
Femicide is not just a word. It’s a tragedy, and a manifestation of the deep-rooted inequality women face in every corner of society. It’s not just...
February 26, 2025
What if you could work fewer hours without losing pay? Some European countries are already testing the four-day workweek, and the results are in higher productivity,...
January 29, 2025
Fast fashion is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, more than aviation and shipping combined, and its environmental toll continues to rise. The industry thrives...

Season 3

September 26, 2024
Sexuality education can play a central role in equipping young people with the necessary tools to further enjoy their sexuality and ultimately their human rights. Education...
September 12, 2024
Zoos bring us much closer to wildlife, but their existence is a controversial topic. Go online and it’s easy to find groups that advocate for the...
August 1, 2024
The Cambridge dictionary defines fatphobia as the “unreasonable dislike or unfair treatment of people because they are fat”. Going deeper, Fatphobia equates fatness with ugliness, inferiority, and immorality. Subjecting people to fat phobia or weight stigma can be very harmful, not just to people who are fat but also...
July 11, 2024
In this episode we’ll be discussing the results of the recent French legislative elections, which defied the predictions of most analysts. More than that, we’ll be...
June 27, 2024
In this episode we’ll be discussing the the leading form of exploitation affecting persons who fall victim to human trafficking, that is: sexual exploitation. The term...
June 13, 2024
In this episode we’ll be commenting on the results of the EU elections and try to make sense of the results and what this could mean...
June 6, 2024
In this episode, we delve into the crucial role that the EU elections could have in combating racism across Europe. We’ll be speaking with two inspiring...
June 6, 2024
In this episode we’ll be speaking with 2 experts from the human rights space to unpack what we mean by our digital rights, how they are...
June 3, 2024
This episode uncovers the real threat trans- and non-binary persons face, often due to the actions of far-right groups and a climate of hate which can also...
May 23, 2024
In this episode, we delve into what unites far-right groups in Europe and how they have been capitalising on cultural tools like social media and aesthetics...
May 16, 2024
In today’s episode we’ll look into the new generation of student, university and worker led protests that are shaping up across Europe, from France to Poland....
May 3, 2024
In this episode, we’re going to tackle the rapid spread of gentrification. Let’s deconstruct this term and look at the human impact of taking from communities...
April 26, 2024
Artificial Intelligence is all the rage and most of us use it every day knowingly whether it’s to get music recommendations or unlock our phones. But...
April 2, 2024
According to the UN, 73% of women worldwide have experienced digital gender-based abuse: non-consensual intimate image-sharing, gender-based slurs or threats, online harassment, and unsolicited pornography. The...
March 19, 2024
White feminism is a self-proclaimed feminism shaped by the priorities of white, upper-middle-class, cisgender women. It assumes that all women experience misogyny in the same way...
February 27, 2024
In your opinion, can protesting change anything? Many protests have been organized in Europe and the UK to denounce the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Despite the...
February 6, 2024
What is integration? What does it mean to you and the people who are expected to “integrate” into our societies? Having been born and raised as...

Season 2

December 15, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Gail Rego continues to dig into the investigation by Stefano Valentino published by the pan-European online media, Voxeurop, on...
November 29, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Gail Rego takes us inside the investigation by Stefano Valentino published by the pan-European online media, Voxeurop, on how...
November 15, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Gail Rego tells the story of Liina Steinberg and her fight against the Estonian booming biomass industry. In the...
November 1, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Gail Rego tells the story of Elmi, a 60-year-old man who emigrated to Poland twenty-seven years ago from Somalia....
October 25, 2023
This special episode of Europe Talks Back is the second part of the recording of a panel debate held on the 12th of October at  Bozar in...
October 18, 2023
In this special episode of Europe Talks Back, Alexander Damiano Ricci and his guests discuss how podcasts incorporate alternative and independent points of view and how...
October 4, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Juli Simond tells the story of Bruno Costa, a Porto-based musician who has become the president of a musicians,...
September 20, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Juli Simond tells the story of Phyla Kupferschmidt, a 36-year-old trans woman originally from Canada but now living in...
September 13, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Juli Simond tells the story of Pit-Roig Vinyals, a German language teacher based in Barcelona, Spain. Diagnosed with Borderline...
August 23, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Juli Simond tells the story of Charlotte, a resilient mother who battles through the post-separation abuse she endured for...
August 9, 2023
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Juli Simond tells the story of Filippo, a geologist and environmental guide, living in Como. Filippo discusses the impact...
July 27, 2023
The number of depopulated villages in Greece in growing, but Dimitris Mystakidis, a well-known Greek musician, is using the power of music to fill them once...
July 12, 2023
Mohammed Bouzghaia is a young man who arrived in Spain from Morocco irregularly in 2021 in search of a better life. At the age of 24...
June 28, 2023
In France, young people are the undisputed protagonists of climate action and protests, but many older people participate too, are willing to take risks for the...
June 14, 2023
The Netherlands is internationally seen as a progressive country, but the reality that many ethnic groups experience daily looks very different from the inside. Marisella de...
May 31, 2023
Once the Russian invasion of #Ukraine started, people with #disabilities suffered tremendously. And amid the panic and chaos that followed the invasion, many were unable to...

Other Podcasts

Thirty-eight places worse than in 2021 and last in the ranking of EU countries, press freedom in Greece is undoubtedly in free fall. According to the annual report of Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), in a total of 180 countries, the country referred to internationally as the matrix of democracy has plummeted in just one year from 70th to 108th place in 2022. In the following six episodes, Greek journalists Konstantinos Poulis and Jenny Tsiropoulou will take us inside newsrooms to see the working conditions in the media, investigate the unsolved murder of a journalist at the door of his house, talk to journalists-victims of SLAPPS and journalists-victims of phone tapping, and they will talk to us about a completely opaque process of public funding to find out what the 108th place means in practice and to ask who benefits from journalism that is feared and silenced. We would like you to know that the present government has systematically failed to respond to requests from journalists from unfriendly media. In such cases, we report on it in our editorials. #108 is a co-production between the Greek independent media The Press Project and the podcast production agency Bulle Media. The podcast series is part of the Europod podcast network and was produced under the Sphera project. The original language of this podcast is Greek. There is also available an English version. The producer of 108 is Antoine Lheureux. Executive producers are Konstantinos Poulis and Alexander Damiano Ricci. Scriptwriting is by Jenny Tsiropoulou. Interviews by Jenny Tsiropoulou and Konstantinos Poulis. Editorial work by María Dios and Alexander Damiano Ricci. Sound design by Thomas Kusberg. Editing and mixing by Thomas Kusberg and Jeremy Bocquet.
Artificial intelligence is all around us. It has technological applications that save lives, but it can also affect them in ways we all too often ignore. It has created jobs that did not exist, but it also raises fears for the future of employment. Today, artificial intelligence can be used to make anything: a start-up, a cyberwar and even a work of art. This podcast is all about the A.I. revolution, amidst market bubbles, problems that the European Union is trying to correct, potential and dystopian scenarios, because algorithms replicate the distortions of the society that conceived them.

Stay tuned!
Subscribe to
our newsletter