‘The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough…’
Keith Olbermann is a notorious American broadcaster mostly covering politics and sport. I had never heard of him before this podcast, but he is apparently kind of a big deal. And also incredibly rich. As he likes to remind us throughout this podcast. Ros Atkins is a much more understated (natch) British broadcaster who works for the BBC. The two struck up an unlikely kinship via the magical medium of text message, and Texting Keith Olbermann is the strange, surreal and compelling result.
I find political rhetoric to be absolutely unbearable no matter what side of the spectrum it is being spewed from, but happily, Olbermann forgoes his political sermons in favour of talking about his dogs -a method that pretty much every political commentator out there could learn from.
There are moments within Texting Keith Olbermann that offer a fascinating insight into broadcasting but, similarly, there are also moments that feel like two old men patting themselves on the back. As each episode is a skinny 15 minutes though the grating parts aren’t too grating.
Ultimately, Texting Keith Olbermann is unlike any other podcast I have listened to before and while it is probably the short running time that attracted me in the first place, I stayed for the bizarre relationship that develops between Olbermann and Atkins – which, in its self-conscious, awkward way is actually kinda beautiful.