François Hollande will release a radio podcast, franceinfo learned Thursday November 7 from the former President of the Republic. The podcast is called A president should listen to this. The first episode, approximately 45 minutes long, will be broadcast on Saturday. Its subject will be the American elections, with Amy K. Green, specialist in the United States, as the first guest.
The podcast is produced in partnership with the production company Sonique. It will be available on major online listening platforms, such as Spotify or Deezer. For each episode (the aim is to publish one per month), one or two specialists will discuss with François Hollande. “I’m the one asking questions.”specifies the former head of state to franceinfo. “It’s not me who answers,” he adds, not forbidding himself “to intervene sometimes”. “My interest is to have a little humility, to say to myself that I myself am trying to understand and that I am inviting people that I have been lucky enough to be able to ask because I am in this situation and which I make available to others”.
With this podcast, François Hollande wishes to reflect on the major issues, reach a category of people who only obtain information through the podcast format, an audience who does not listen to traditional media, “reach a certain number of people who would not necessarily come to listen to me when I hold meetings, conferences”, explains the former head of state. François Hollande hopes to reach a young audience“because I know that many follow me and they are always interested when I go to high schools or universities”.
In addition to allowing “a debate”, “a contradiction”so that the “democracy can infuse”the deputy for Corrèze also hopes to have, with this podcast“an audience expansion of people who spontaneously would not listen to politics.” But there is no question of seeing “a means of propaganda” for 2027, assures François Hollande. “I have enough opportunity to express myself in all media, I have written numerous books,” lists the deputy. “I am now in the National Assembly, I can speak or give my feelings on important subjects. I do not need to have an additional vector.”
Regarding the title, which refers to the book A president shouldn't say thatby journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, François Hollande lends himself to self-deprecation, specifying all the same that “the book itself was not negative, even though it was used negatively”. A title “fallen into the public domain”, believes the deputy from Corrèze who thinks on the contrary that “yes, a president should say things”. “I think it’s important to transmit, but above all to listen,” he continues. “The criticism that we most often level at political leaders and, more generally, at politics, is that they ignore part of the reality, that they are far away, distant, haughty. And there, A president should listen to this, it's good for everyone. We must listen if we want to act.”
