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The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

How to keep going when the world feels broken

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

News, Society & Culture, Politics

0.0 • 0 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we wanted to ask a question that has been in our hearts and on our minds for years: Is it possible to try to make positive change in the world, and still stay healthy and sane? Dutch writer, political philosopher, and “recovering diplomat” Nori Spauwen believes that the answer is yes – even if it’s not always easy to strike the right balance. We chatted with Nori about “healthy” activism and training yourself to feel empowered in response to difficult news. If you’ve been overwhelmed lately (has anyone not?), this is a conversation for you.

 

Also in this week’s episode: a successful European Citizens’ Initiative that will make it easier for European women to procure abortion across borders, and a very Bad Week for Greece’s former finance minister-turned-public intellectual Yanis Varoufakis stemming from a Kylie Minogue concert 36 years ago.

 

Resources for this episode:

 


 

This week’s Inspiration Station recommendations are this video recipe for Mezrab soup and Die Erweiterung by Robert Menasse.

 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER: Get more of what you like from the podcast, delivered to your inbox each Friday. Sign up for GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK right here.

 

This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number.

Produced by Katz Laszlo and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak
Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
Record scratch sound effect by luffy via freesound.org

 

The Europeans is proudly produced using Europe’s own Hindenburg.

YouTube | Bluesky | Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Substack | hello@europeanspodcast.com



Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Uranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news.

0:11.4

But this podcast would not be possible without the incredibly generous support of our amazing listeners who donate a little bit each month at patreon.com forward slash Europeans

0:22.8

podcast. Hey, this is the Europeans. What a horrible week for the world. I hope everyone and their loved ones are doing okay. We do have listeners

0:55.4

all over the world, including in the Middle East, and we are sending a lot of love to you.

1:00.7

This is Katie Lee in Paris, and I'm here this week with Katz Laslo over in Amsterdam. Hi Katz. Hi, Katie.

1:06.9

How are you doing? I mean, I'm fine and lucky and safe, but it's been really horrible to read the news the past few days. I mean, the news has been horrifying for several years now, but this weekend was particularly rough. And I'm thinking a lot about the roughly 1.4 million Iranian Europeans on our continent.

1:29.2

Yeah.

1:29.7

And I mean, at this point, people with loved ones all across the Middle East

1:33.2

who are understandably probably feeling pretty scared right now.

1:36.1

Yeah, it's very surreal.

1:37.5

I think in times like this, the world both feels really small.

1:41.3

And also, I feel like I'm living in a completely different universe,

1:45.0

like, as the news was breaking out of the first US and Israeli strikes on a run,

1:50.1

I was 40 meters up in the sky trying out the new cable car in the Paris suburbs.

1:54.5

What a contrast. Yeah, it was completely silent, and I was just admiring the views of my family.

1:59.6

And it is a really different reality

2:01.2

from what a lot of people are living right now,

2:04.1

for which I feel very, very fortunate.

2:06.6

But it's also less far away than it seems.

2:08.8

You know, at the time of recording,

2:10.1

Cyprus and EU country has been targeted with drone strikes.

2:14.0

This affects all of us.

...

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