“I’m definitely not an activist,” says Jake Hanrahan at the start of this week’s episode of People Just Do Something, pushing back hard on this podcast’s tagline of being about people who might identify as one.
Either way, Jake, is a fascinating character. After deciding during his youth in the East Midlands that he wanted to be a journalist, he allegedly sent 100 pitches to the Guardian “before they even said no”. Still, he ended up being published there and by other major news outlets before landing at Vice, where he made his name during the mid-2010s covering conflict and civil unrest.
Since then he’s gone on to found grassroots conflict media organisation Popular Front, bringing an unfiltered taste of the frontline into people’s homes and headphones via podcasts, documentaries and magazines. His latest project Away Days delivers an “unapologetically ugly” look at underground subcultures such as bare-knuckle fighting and illegal street racing.
So what led Jake in his twenties to decide he wanted to be a war reporter? What does he see as rotten in the state of modern journalism and the way in which it covers the topics he dives into (if it does so at all)? And will he kick off at Priyanka when she compares him to “a gritty version of Louis Theroux”?
Join Priy and Isaac in conversation with Jake Hanrahan to find out, on the final episode of People Just Do Something for 2024. Our hyperactive hosts will be returning after they’ve had a little festive lie down, so stay tuned for when the series resumes in mid-January.
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