Former President Barack Obama and rockstar Bruce Springsteen have launched a new Spotify podcast about their “unlikely friendship” titled “Renegades: Born in the USA.”
Spotify released the first two of eight episodes Monday. The podcast is drawn from a series of one-on-one conversations at Springsteen’s home studio last year about fatherhood, race, marriage and the state of America.
"On the surface, Bruce and I don't have a lot in common,” Obama says in the first episode. “He's a white guy from a small town in Jersey. I'm a Black guy of mixed race born in Hawaii. He's a rock n' roll icon. I'm ... not as cool.
“In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys,” he added. “We still share a fundamental belief in the American ideal. Not as an airbrushed, cheap fiction or an act of nostalgia that ignores all the ways that we’ve fallen short of that ideal. But as a compass for the hard work that lies before each of us as citizens.”
In a statement about the show’s debut, Spotify said, "It is a personal, in-depth discussion between two friends exploring their pasts, their beliefs, and the country that they love — as it was, as it is, and as it ought to be going forward.”
Springsteen, 71, endorsed Obama’s White House bid after the pair met in 2008. Obama, 59, gave Springsteen the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
The podcast was produced by Higher Ground Productions, a production company founded by Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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