The new podcast from Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, Renegades: Born in the USA, raises interesting questions, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. For example: “how did we get to the point where being a podcaster was an occupation deemed worthy of a rock ’n’ roll superstar and a political giant?” There is something “discombobulating” about listening to two of the world’s most famous men swapping “banter, anecdotes and homespun wisdom”, while reflecting on the “cracked reality of the so-called American dream”. Still, their conversations are “fun and enlightening”. Both have a “folksy” manner well suited to the “fireside intimacy” of the medium, and they combine levity with deep thinking and seriousness. It is Springsteen whose eloquence is the more “poetic, rendering the political as the personal”. A highlight comes when he gets out his guitar: indeed, more songs and a fraction less earnestness would usefully lighten the mix.
Bellingcat is the UK-based citizen journalism project which uncovered the identities of the Salisbury poisoners, confirmed Bashar al-Assad’s use of cluster bombs in Syria and revealed the truth about the downing of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine. Its founder, Eliot Higgins, has just published a book about it, so I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with his podcast, said James Marriott in The Times. In some ways, The Bellingcat Podcast is an unlikely proposition. “All narrative journalism…
