The Western Bubble

Balder Hageraats & Dario Hasenstab
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Politics
  • Updated Weekly

The West is suffering from the "Western Bubble" and as a result, the world suffers from it as well. In this podcast, Balder Hageraats and Dario Hasenstab examine how Western countries are increasingly lost in their own delusions on the world stage and what must be done to bring them back to reality. Understanding and acknowledging this phenomenon is crucial. It allows both Western and non-Western actors to much better navigate the current era of global uncertainty. 🎙️ What we analyse: • Geopolitics & Global Power Shifts • Human Rights & Development Aid • Institutional Decline & Foreign Policy All analysed strictly through the lens of the Western Bubble. Executive Producer: Stefani Obradovic.

  1. 19h ago

    Autopsy #14 The Falklands, the Final, and Empty Nationalism

    In this week's Autopsy we react to the controversy that followed the England-Argentina World Cup semi-final, when Argentine players held up a sign referencing the Falkland Islands. We are not a football podcast, and this episode is not about football. It is about what happens when empty nationalism spills into international relations and makes a country look unreasonable to the rest of the world. Whatever the legal arguments of the early 19th century, 3,500 people have lived there for generations and do not want to be part of Argentina. Demanding they be removed is not a principled position on colonial history. It is empty nationalism that costs Argentina diplomatic goodwill, footballing support, and any claim to being a reasonable actor on the world stage, for a few rocky islands that will not fill a single Argentine stomach. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

    Autopsy #14 The Falklands, the Final, and Empty Nationalism

  2. 5d ago

    Trump vs NATO, Chat Control, and China's BIG Missile #151

    Three topics this week, none of them reassuring. Trump threatened to cut off all trade with Spain at the NATO summit in Ankara, apparently unaware that EU trade is negotiated through Brussels rather than individual member states. Mark Rutte sat next to him in silence. We discuss what that silence costs Europe in the long run, and why Spain, of all countries, is quietly emerging as one of the diplomatic winners of the current moment. The bulk of the episode goes to Chat Control 2.0, the EU directive that would mandate tech companies to scan private messages, including encrypted ones, for child sexual abuse material. The law was pushed through the European Parliament just before the summer recess using a procedural manoeuvre that required only the absence of an absolute majority to pass, rather than its presence. We go through the European Commission's own impact report, which acknowledges no clear link between the law and actual convictions and records a 30 percent drop in reported cases after Chat Control 1.0 came into force, a drop now being used to justify expanding the law to encrypted communications. Germany's largest child protection organisation has itself said the law undermines children's rights rather than protecting them. We discuss why it is still moving forward anyway. We close with China's ICBM test from a submarine, which the West treated as a provocation. The United States conducted two similar tests this year to no comparable coverage. France tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific until 1996. We make the obvious point, and note that Beijing's only real mistake was failing to give sufficient warning to neighbouring countries, which damages the very diplomatic image China has spent a decade carefully building. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

  3. Jul 10

    Autopsy #13 Count Binface vs Nigel Farage

    In this week's Autopsy we react to Count Binface, the satirical independent candidate and self-described space warrior, facing off against Nigel Farage in a local by-election. Count Binface, the alter ego of British scriptwriter Jonathan Harvey, has previously stood against Theresa May as Lord Buckethead and against Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Andy Burnham as Count Binface. His manifesto includes building one affordable house and tying ministers' salaries to those of nurses. He is, against all odds, the most honest candidate on the ballot. The reason Farage is facing a by-election at all is revealing. Having failed to declare a five million pound donation from a cryptocurrency billionaire living in Thailand within the required twelve-month window, he now faces a parliamentary inquiry. His response is to step down and immediately run again, using the popular vote as a shield against institutional accountability. The message is classic right-wing populism: the rules are the establishment's weapon against your democratic will, and as long as enough people vote for me, none of it applies. The other major parties declined to participate, correctly identifying the whole exercise as a stunt. That left Count Binface. We discuss what this moment says about where British politics has arrived: a world in which a member of parliament receiving five million pounds from a foreign entity is treated as a procedural question rather than a scandal, in which corruption has become so normalised that the electorate is expected to shrug, and in which the most coherent critique of the entire spectacle is delivered by a man in a bin-shaped helmet. We also make the case for local constituency democracy, and agree that bringing back Ceefax was genuinely ahead of its time. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

    Autopsy #13 Count Binface vs Nigel Farage

  4. Jul 6

    The Planet Can't Wait for the Next Election #150

    For our 150th episode we set aside the week's news cycle and talked about still does not get the attention it deserves: climate change, and why our political systems are structurally incapable of dealing with it. The problem is not a lack of information. The Club of Rome warned about unsustainable economic growth in 1972. Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius wrote about it in 1908 in his book "Worlds in the Making". Average heat days in Central Europe have risen from three per year in the 1950s to ten to twelve now. Two hundred thousand people died in Europe from extreme heat in the last four years alone. The science has been clear for decades. The political will has not followed, and the reason is straightforward: governments operate on four-year election cycles, and climate change in centuries. There is no political glory in prevention, and no visible enemy to fight. We discuss why climate change is psychologically harder to mobilise around than COVID or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, why the masses and their leaders share responsibility for the inaction, and what the interaction between tribal politics, neoliberal managerialism, and the collapse of intellectual leadership has done to our collective ability to respond. We also talk through Dario's experience bringing an energy efficiency proposal to his Berlin apartment block, which produced a 95 percent vote in favour and a useful microcosm of every obstacle that climate policy faces at every scale. As Naomi Klein put it: our economy is at war with many forms of life on Earth, and only one of those sets of rules can be changed. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

  5. Jul 3

    Autopsy #12 Is Ukraine behind the NordStream Sabotage?

    In this week's Autopsy, we react to a DW News segment reporting that German prosecutors have concluded Ukraine ordered the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. You can watch the full segment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXy4wMdE1Hc. We analysed this in episode 27 back in February 2023, when a stakeholder analysis based purely on capability and motive pointed away from Russia and towards Ukraine and the United States as the most likely actors. Now we have a little more certainty. The story is not just about who did it. It is about Germany's response, which is essentially no response at all. Nord Stream 2 was an eleven billion dollar infrastructure project and the foundation of Germany's strategic energy model for decades. Its destruction is a direct cause of the industrial crisis that German manufacturers, workers, and citizens have been living with ever since. The perpetrator has now been identified, and it is the country that Germany has been arming and financing for four years. The reaction from Berlin is closer to awkward silence than accountability. This is the Western Bubble at its most revealing. Ukraine gets away with an act of war against a core NATO ally because the narrative of defeating Russia cannot be interrupted. Germany cannot hold Ukraine to account without undermining the entire political framework it has built around the conflict. So it does not. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

    Autopsy #12 Is Ukraine behind the NordStream Sabotage?

  6. Jun 29

    Stuck in the Cycle: Ukraine, Iran, US Politics #149

    This week now news story is exploding and everything is on fire. Ukraine, Iran, US politics: three stories, three cycles, all stuck. Also, we recorded four years to the month since our first episodes on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which felt like the right moment to take stock. On Ukraine, the war of attrition is slowly shifting. Ukrainian strikes deep into Russian territory, including a refinery fire producing a visible black cloud over Moscow, are making the conflict impossible for the average Russian citizen to ignore. Crimea is under pressure, Lukashenko appears to be distancing himself from Putin, and Putin's image as an invulnerable strategic mind has taken serious damage. At the same time, Zelensky is showing his tendency to overplay a strong hand, most recently by honouring a Ukrainian nationalist battalion responsible for killing tens of thousands of Polish civilians during World War II, antagonising one of his most important European allies for no clear strategic gain. On Iran, the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran is mostly symbolic, and the situation is worse than it was before the attacks began in February. The Strait of Hormuz is at roughly 90 percent of pre-war traffic but oil prices remain elevated, months of supply chain disruption have not been undone. JD Vance told Israel it cannot kill its way out of every security problem and that it is attacking its only remaining powerful ally. He is correct, and it is painful to say so. We close with the Democratic and Republican parties, both rudderless, both in identity crisis, and a country that has apparently settled on ranch dressing as its one remaining point of national consensus. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

  7. Jun 26

    Autopsy #11 Mark Rutte the Trump "Whisperer"

    In this week's Autopsy, we react to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's visit to Donald Trump at the White House. Dario calls him the Trump brown nose. Balder, as a Dutch person, feels a particular kind of shame. The visit features Rutte presenting Trump with a poster, in Trump gold and red, showing European defence spending going up. The numbers are accurate. The framing is not. European rearmament is happening because the transatlantic alliance has fractured and Europeans no longer trust the United States as a security guarantor, not because Trump successfully pressured them. Rutte knows this. He presents it differently anyway. He also describes the US war against Iran, in which at least 150 schoolgirls died in a single strike, as something to be celebrated and admired. He calls Trump the leader of the free world without apparent discomfort. We discuss what this kind of politics actually costs in the long run. Rutte's defenders argue he is sacrificing his ego for the greater good, managing a difficult relationship to keep NATO functional. We argue the opposite: by cheerleading this war, by refusing to signal even basic moral disapproval, he tells the world that this behaviour is acceptable. Europe and NATO lose the moral standing they would need to argue against future aggression, by anyone. The managerial mindset that defines this kind of politics only sees tomorrow. It does not see what it is giving away. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

    Autopsy #11 Mark Rutte the Trump "Whisperer"

  8. Jun 22

    In Defence of Economists #148

    This week Balder defends his own people. A YouTube video titled "Economists are full of shit" and the hundred-plus likes underneath it sparked this episode, and the underlying complaint is understandable: a generation that was promised growth has watched that growth show up everywhere except their own bank accounts. But the target of that anger is wrong. Economists study economic behaviour. Politicians decide what to do with that knowledge. The neoliberal consensus that dominated policy from the 1980s onwards was a political choice, not an inevitable conclusion handed down by the discipline of economics itself. The data makes the disconnect impossible to miss. GDP and median household income moved together until the 1990s, then diverged sharply. Productivity and hourly compensation tell the same story from 1970 onwards. Nearly 40 percent of Americans could not cover an unexpected expense without significant strain on their savings, despite a quarter century of consistent GDP growth. None of that is a failure of economics as a science. It is a failure of politics to ask economists the right questions, namely how do we improve human wellbeing, rather than how do we maximise growth and assume the rest follows. We also dig into Gary Stevenson's viral critique of how economics is taught, which gets the methodology problem mostly right while building an oversimplified enemy out of an entire profession, and a Novara Media clip on China that shows exactly the same instinct from the opposite political direction: reaching for a tribe instead of an analysis. Economics is a soft science. It will sometimes get things wrong. That does not make it worthless, and confusing the discipline with the politicians who misused it is its own kind of Western Bubble thinking. This podcast is an individual project between us, Dario Hasenstab and Balder Hageraats. We are supported by our producer Stefani Obradovic from Western Bubble Insights & Strategy. If you would like to get in touch with us, write us an email at thewesternbubble@gmail.com.

See All (183)

Trailers

About

The West is suffering from the "Western Bubble" and as a result, the world suffers from it as well. In this podcast, Balder Hageraats and Dario Hasenstab examine how Western countries are increasingly lost in their own delusions on the world stage and what must be done to bring them back to reality. Understanding and acknowledging this phenomenon is crucial. It allows both Western and non-Western actors to much better navigate the current era of global uncertainty. 🎙️ What we analyse: • Geopolitics & Global Power Shifts • Human Rights & Development Aid • Institutional Decline & Foreign Policy All analysed strictly through the lens of the Western Bubble. Executive Producer: Stefani Obradovic.

Information

  • Creator
    Balder Hageraats & Dario Hasenstab
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    183
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Balder Hageraats & Dario Hasenstab
  • Show Website
    The Western Bubble

You Might Also Like