Culled from their recent podcasts, Renegades chronicles President Obama and Bruce Springsteen's substantive conversations on things they care about: personal life lessons, working towards improved race relations, justice, raising children, music and basketball. Important things to most of us (switch b-ball with baseball for me).
Both men had absentee fathers--Obama's was not physically present, while Springsteen's dealt with mental health issues. As Bruce notes, his dad was, "an unknowable man with a great penchant for secrecy." Barack ties this into his theory that, "we haven't taught our boys the ability to share and connect." To illustrate, he says that he and his buddies talk perhaps 30 minutes before they eventually begin playing a game or turning on electronics, while his wife Michelle can talk to her friends, "for ten hours."
And forget for a moment the obstacles Bruce and Barack encountered on the way to fame and inspiring a generation or two; in their own lives, the pair found that their own psychological roadblocks required strong life/marital partners who insisted that they become better versions of themselves. I learned much about Patti Scialfa, the mother of Bruce's three children and more about Michelle (mother of two).
Renegades collects a flurry of photos covering Obama and Springsteen's lives from youth to the present. There are also lyrics from the latter and documents like Obama's eulogy for civil and voting rights leader John Lewis as well as Lincoln's Inaugural Address of 1865--and a Billboard Top 40 chart from 1971 that includes the Stones and Aretha right down to Helen Reddy and Donny Osmond.
The section that breaks my heart is the list of performers who played at the White House from 2009 to 2015--nothing like that has happened since. For in the Obama era, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hosted nights dedicated to jazz, country, classical, blues, Broadway and more. America used to be the land of unity and a great appreciation for the arts; I wonder about that now.