Inside the battle for truth – with Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From ‘alternative facts’ to political lies to the disinformation that courses through social media, the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon threatens the foundations of democracy. Politicians and ideologues are ramping up mistrust in our institutions using unchecked digital media. How can we hold onto democratic guardrails in a world shaped by politically-driven deceit and manipulation? Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, the investigative journalism group specialising in the use of open-source intelligence in order to separate facts from falsehoods and disinformation. He joins Gavin Esler to discuss what’s at stake in the battle for truth. • This episode of This Is Not A Drill is supported by Incogni, the service that keeps your private information safe, protects you from identity theft and keeps your data from being sold. There’s a special offer for This Is Not A Drill listeners – go to Incogni.com/notadrill to get an exclusive 60% off your annual plan. • Support us on Patreon to keep This Is Not A Drill producing thought-provoking podcasts like this. Written and presented by Gavin Esler. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Original theme music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com. Executive Producer Martin Bojtos. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. This Is Not A Drill is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:18.5	more. Oh, that's my prime delivery.
0:21.7	Huh, already.
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1:18.8	you don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it.
1:31.3	In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats.
1:37.3	They're eating the pets of the people that live there.
1:43.1	And this is what's happening in our country.
1:45.0	One of them is on the side of this pass. We send 350 million to Europe. We don't. And you know we don't. No, we don't. You know we don't. Admit that that figure is grotesquely misleading at best. I won't. I won't. I won't. I won't. I tell you why not? that figure represents accurately the gross sum.
	...

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