Europe Talks Back

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 consequences of this type of abuse go beyond the digital space, posing a threat to victim’s rights, health and safety both online and offline.

Join our host of Europe Talks Back season 3, Gail Rego as she has a conversati...

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 - but it’s not.”  What’s the point of breaking the glass ceiling if other women are left to pick up the pieces?

Join our host of Europe Talks Back season 3, Gail Rego as she has a conversation with our guest  French activist, feminist, journal...

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 worsening of the situation, these mobilizations don’t seem to have a real impact, as the situation on the ground remains catastrophic.

This leads our host Gail Rego to ask whether mobilization makes any difference. 

She discusses this with our guests ...

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 a migrant for her whole life, join our new host Gail Rego of Europe Talks Back as she unfolds the harmful and unreasonable expectations placed on people with a migration history and how this term is often used against people who migrate.

Tune in and join our guests Razan Ismail and Ha...

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 evacuate from their homes. This left people trapped in the crossfire without access to bomb shelters. In the first episode of the second season of Europe Talks Back, host Juli Simond tells the story of Tetyana Herasymova, who is one of the approximately 2.7 m...

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 how the European car industry has lobbied EU institutions to weaken Euro Seven, the next European Emission Standard.

Over the years, the EU has adopted progressively more stringent regulations on car emissions, but establishing this new standard is proving to be m...

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 the European car industry has lobbied EU institutions to weaken Euro Seven, the next European Emission Standard.

Over the years, the EU has adopted progressively more stringent regulations on car emissions, but establishing this new standard is proving to be more di...

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 decades since independence from the Soviet Union, Estonia started relaxing its forest management practices, and large-scale logging has boomed to meet the demand for renewable energy and has become one of the EU’s largest exporters of wood pellets.

As Liina saw the forests aroun...

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. Elmi started a new life in Poland's capital Warsaw and in 2007 established the Foundation “Good Start” in order to help newly arrived migrants with navigating the complex asylum process, translating official documents, arranging hospital visits, and organising Polish language course...

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 Brussels, moderated by Alexander Damiano Ricci and organized by Sphera Media Lab and Arty Farty.

Today, Alexander Damiano Ricci and his guests discuss how podcasts have increased the quality of information in the European media landscape and how to save them from misinformation. Als...

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 they improve the quality of the information in the European media landscape, but also how podcasting has changed the professional mindset of the panelists.

Today’s episode is the first part of the recording of a panel debate held on the 12th of October at Bozar...

Producer Alexander Damiano Ricci invites April Clare Welsh to discuss her work as a reporter and scriptwriter for the previous podcast episode “Porto, please don’t stop the music”. April Clare Welsh recalls how she got in touch with an underground music community and hub in Porto, called STOP. She also talks about the systemic deficiencies of public funding in the cultural sector in Portugal, highlighting differences and similariti...

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, artists, and shopkeepers association called Alma Stop. The association was set up to protect the interests of the people who use the spaces at CC Stop -or just Stop - a four-story shopping centre that has been sustaining Porto’s underground music scene for more than 20 years and is ho...

Producer Alexander Damiano Ricci invites Katie Jickling to discuss her work as a reporter and scriptwriter for a previous podcast episode, “Being trans in the Catholic Church”. The conversation explores the relationship between the Church and LGBTQ people, the polarization of such issue in politics, and examines what are the costs and challenges of activism at a personal level.

Also in the show, an interview with María Dios, p...

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 Leuven, Belgium. As a transgender and Catholic person, Phyla has had a rough relationship with the Church and the congregation she is part of, but she has managed to bridge cultural divides and challenge stereotypes about gender and faith through activism.

After the first ...

Producer Maria Dios invites journalist Pablo Jiménez Arandia to discuss his work as a reporter and scriptwriter for the previous episode, “Social media and mental health: How being permanently on Twitter can lead to self-destruction”. The conversation explores how platforms like Twitter and TikTok can foster unrealistic expectations and negatively impact self-esteem and self-perception, and the responsibility journalists and media ...

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 Personality Disorder (BPD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at age 23, Pit-Roig turned her personal battles into a mission, emphasising on mental health stigma dismantlement and open conversations that were once considered taboo. With an experience o...