In April 2023, Andrea Papi became the first Italian in 150 years to be killed by a bear. Mauled while jogging, he became an unwitting victim of a well-meaning EU-funded rewilding program designed to reintroduce bears to the Italian Dolomites. This podcast explores where responsibility lies for his death and how it has exacerbated a growing divide in Italy and beyond about the wisdom, safety and management of rewilding large carnivores.

Meet Uganda’s first wildlife vet and expert on mountain gorillas, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. She’s not your average vet: her work has brought back Uganda’s wildlife from the brink of disaster and her winning formula is being adopted across Africa. She says: ‘I would like to be remembered as someone who went outside their comfort zone to change the world and somebody who was willing to challenge societal norms and cultural barriers and as somebody who championed a new way of promoting conservation.’

From the late 1800s onwards, many seamen and traders working between China and Liverpool settled by the Mersey, and on the eve of World War II the city was home to a thriving British-Chinese community of thousands. But the end of the war brought a mass deportation of Chinese men. We speak to the children and grandchildren of those men whose childhoods were blighted by the loss of their fathers and the secrecy and misinformation around the policy.

During World War II, one in seven merchant seamen in the UK was Chinese. When the war was over, many returned to the lives they had built in Liverpool. But instead of the hero's welcome received by British servicemen, they found themselves facing sudden deportation. In this episode, we speak to the families left behind to poverty, stigma and racism and hear how secrecy surrounding the policy from the British government has exacerbated the families’ suffering – and hampered plans to find lost relatives.

Businessman Stephen Perry grew up watching his father’s relationship with China - and followed him. Part of a deal that sold the first commodities from America to China, he witnessed ‘opening up’ and China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation and improved cultural relations, taking British football teams and musicals to China and encouraging musicals such as The Red Lantern to travel to the UK.

For more than 40 years, Michael Wood has brought history alive for viewers and readers all over the world. His recent Story of China films and documentary on Chinese poet Du Fu have charmed Chinese and international audiences alike – making him a household name in China.

In this podcast, we meet the Guo family – presented by son and London-based vlogger Toto, who describes himself as "a child of two heritages'. His father Guo Yi grew up in a musical family in China and is a renowned sheng musician and his British mother Manda is a professional garden designer.

Frances Wood studied Chinese at Cambridge and in 1971 visited China with a pioneering British youth delegation. She returned to China in 1975 on a year’s British Council scholarship – and the pinnacle of her subsequent career as a librarian and historian was to restore the revered Diamond Sutra manuscript.

London-born and Eton-educated, Alex Hua Tian was China’s first ever Olympic eventing rider. In this podcast, Hua Tian talks candidly about his dual-heritage upbringing and how it has shaped who he is today.

Renowned guzheng player Zi Lan Liao is one of the leading exponents of Chinese music. Her work includes Oscar-winning scores and modern fusion music – but her real passion is passing on her musical heritage to the British Chinese children of the Pagoda Arts Centre in Liverpool.

Our correspondents across Europe get up close and personal with their own garbage bins and make uncomfortable revelations about their own consumption. Then we take them on a journey of discovery to ask: If it isn’t recycled, where does our waste go? The answers take them to illegal dumps, incinerators and landfills across Europe. From the innovations in waste disposal which have earned Vienna the title ‘Greenest city in Europe’ to the eco disaster unfolding at a Bosnian dam, we look at the best and worst of Europe’s waste disposal solutions.

Taking a closer look at where our waste goes when we’re hoping it’s going to be recycled. When we throw our plastics, metals or paper into a special recycle bin, we expect it’s going to end up being reprocessed and ultimately reused… we hope. But waste disposal is a lot more complicated than many think – especially when it comes to plastics. For decades, plastics have been changing the way we live; we now see it all around us, but we also hear a lot about the destruction it causes if not disposed of properly.

We scour the continent to bring you some of the most ingenious new solutions for reusing and recycling waste as we unveil the best ideas for turning trash into treasure – from firehoses being turned into handbags, via PPE being used in road surfacing, to the band that has played the Albert Hall making music with waste materials.

We speak to zero-waste consumers, change-seeking chefs and 'dumpster divers' who save good food from supermarket dustbins; investigate apps which redistribute restaurant-surplus food; and visit the anaerobic digestion plant turning waste food into fuel and fertilizer.

Clothes. We all wear them. That's billions of items being worn every day, billions of items being made each year – and billions of items being thrown out. The environmental impact is huge – in the UK alone, 300,000 tonnes of textile waste ends up being sent to landfill each year. And that is a small fraction of the worldwide figure. Less than one percent of material used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing at the end of its life. In this episode, we meet all sorts of innovators, entrepreneurs, campaigners and businesses that have dedicated their lives to raising awareness, reusing or recycling clothes.

Death is the final act of our lives, and it can be environmentally devastating: every cremation uses the equivalent of about 40 backyard-barbecue propane canisters and creates one tonne of carbon dioxide, while traditional burials eat up the land and can leach chemicals into the soil. In this episode, we explore the increasing choice of alternative methods that are appearing for disposing of our mortal remains – from chemical-free 'natural burials' through organic reduction and 'water cremation' to burials at sea and even freeze-drying. But what are the ethical and ecological pros and cons of each method?

Join native Alpiner Johannes Pleschberger on his journey through this incredible mountain range at the heart of Europe. In this episode, he investigates some of the extreme changes facing the Alpine landscape – from shrinking glaciers and disappearing pasture to melting borders… and fallen timber repurposed into violins and harps.

Johannes Pleschberger highlights the Alpine natural world – going mushroom-hunting with his mum before introducing the majestic golden eagle, the worrying bark beetle, the region’s most famous indigenous flower – and the only 100% Alpine country.

Since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, the world has looked to the scientific community to find an effective treatment. The top minds in the pharmaceutical industry have been working at full speed on possible medical solutions - and the hunt for a vaccine that would normally take years has been fast-tracked to a matter of months.

As Europe slowly emerges from lockdown it’s becoming clear the pandemic has left a legacy that will mean long-term changes to business, the world of work and the global environment. But despite the devastating toll COVID-19 has taken, might it also have handed us the opportunity to build a fairer, more sustainable future, based on innovation, cooperation and technological progress?

In the third episode, CGTN Europe examines how workplaces are adapting to the new culture of social distancing.

Whether you are the boss in a company employing thousands or the newest hire in the office, COVID is changing how all of us earn a living.

Travel and tourism has felt the full impact of the COVID-19 crisis. In this episode we examine what holidays in the future may look like, and how better to balance the needs of supply and demand as tourism continues to rise along with income in new markets.

Climate experts speaking to CGTN say the COVID-19 outbreak was in part caused by environmental damage. They point to the believed origin of the virus and the breakdown of natural boundaries between humans and animals. In this final edition of Notes on a Pandemic, we look at the impact the coronavirus has had on the global environment.