Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective composed of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists, all united by a shared fervour for open-source research. Established in 2014, the collective has blazed a trail in the realm of open-source research methods, investigating a vast array of topics of public interest. The subjects they have probed into span from the shooting down of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine to police brutality in Colombia and the unlawful wildlife trade in the UAE. Their meticulous research frequently finds mention in international media and has been quoted by numerous courts and investigative missions. In this interview, I speak to Eliot Higgins, the Founder & Creative Director of Bellingcat. Eliot was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Thinkers in 2019 and one of Politico Europe’s top 28 most influential people in Europe in the “Disrupters” category in 2021. He was also awarded the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award for excellence in journalism in 2015. In 2022, he was awarded the Swedish based Monismanien Prize for freedom of speech. He is the author of ‘We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency for the People‘ (paperback -2022), a Sunday Times best seller.

Thought Economics

Hamish McKenzie is co-founder of subscription publishing start-up Substack and author of Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil (November 2018). In recent years, he has been the lead writer for Tesla, an advisor to Kik, a tech reporter, and a freelance journalist covering everything from the World Beard and Moustache Championships to the world’s most comprehensive face transplant. In this interview, I speak to Substack Co-Founder, Hamish McKenzie. We discuss the failures in traditional media, the genesis of Substack, and how it’s grown to become one of the world’s fastest-growing media platforms.

Thought Economics

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