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Hosted by News24 · news · EN
Acclaimed businessman Mark Barnes and senior editor Tim Cohen discuss the biggest news items of the week.
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
25%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchListen Up! is hosted by News24. The show has published 35 episodes to date.
Recent episodes include "The cradle of war" (2 March 2026, 22 minutes), "A soft budget and a hard Johannesburg mayoral race" (23 February 2026, 25 minutes), and "There must be better ways to choose our leaders" (17 February 2026, 23 minutes).
Listen Up! publishes roughly weekly, with episodes averaging 22 minutes across 35 episodes.
Booking probability for Listen Up! is 25%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Listen Up! requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Listen Up!'s contact route on record: verified email.
News24 hosts Listen Up!, a news podcast with 35 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Episode #35
Once, Iran was the cradle of civilisation, but now it’s the cradle of war. The US/Israeli invasion could play out in multiple ways, some good, mostly bad. But the larger question is what war ultimately achieves in the...
A strong gold price, lower interest rates, stronger consumer spending and marginally higher economic growth suggest a smoother national budget, particularly compared to last year when a surprise VAT increase sparked a...
Beer and national debt, which is the most important? Barnes and Cohen discuss this crucial question. But more importantly, how are we choosing our government ministers and their entourages? Shouldn’t the ministers...
Episode #32
NOTE: We apologise for the poor audio quality in this edition. Should South Africans spend some time after graduation working for the government? Well-known businessman Mark Barnes thinks they should – in certain...
Episode #31
South Africa’s economy might be moving forward, but the public sector is sliding into a kind of casual anarchy. Almost every robot in the country is now regarded as a suggestion, not an instruction. Is this fixable? How...
Episode #30
The biggest question, when it comes to gold, is whether you say “all that glitters is not gold” or “all that glisters is not gold”. The formally accurate version from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is “glisters”...
Episode #29
Floods in the Kruger National Park but drought in the Karoo – weather problems abound. This week, the formidable duo that is Barnes and Cohen discusses the storms all over the world, including Greenland, which US...
Listen Up!
It’s been quite a start to 2026, but what does it mean that the US has abducted the leader of a foreign power? What happens to international relations now and what has this got to do with the Peace of Westphalia? Mark...
Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss the year 2025 - the ups, the downs, and the potholes. It was a bewildering year, which went faster than any previous year. Well … not really. But I felt like it did. In South Africa...
The joys and dangers of ambition. South Africans are drowning in debt, but is that due to poor investment decisions or a lack of investment opportunities? Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss whether South Africa should...
Listen Up!
International comparisons suggest that South Africans work pretty hard - around 42.2 hours a week on average. That’s higher than Brazil and Mexico, and only a little less than China. It’s about double the total hours...
The G20 was simultaneously a grand success and a disappointing failure, and the key, according to Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen, is that there is an insufficient intersection of priorities and a lack of common purpose...
Listen Up!
It's been a great week for South Africa, not least on the sports field with international wins in soccer, rugby and cricket. And then there is the unexpected S&P ratings upgrade. And the JSE hitting yet another record...
Listen Up!
US president Donald Trump says no US officials will be attending the G20. Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen ask the crucial question: does that make the G20 in Johannesburg later this month a bit of a talk shop? Was it a talk...
October was an extraordinary month for stock markets around the world. Every single major stock market around the world hit record highs last month, other than the Chinese CSI index which is still a long way off its...
Change is, as they say, the one constant. In this podcast Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss the efficacy of rail transport, South Africa’s departure from the Financial Action Task Force greylist, trade negotiations and...
We live in an era of being overwhelmed and disorientated, so now more than ever there is a value in the distilled essence. In this podcast Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss the genius of simplicity in the midst of a...
Listen Up!
October is turning out to be a big month for enquiries into what happened to the money, with the continuing Madlanaga commission into allegedly corrupt police tenders, the spat between Lucky Montana and SARS, and the...
Everything is united - except it’s not! In this podcast, Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss the prospects of Unite for Change, comprising GOOD, Rise Mzansi, and Build One SA, and wonder why they are uniting rather than...
It was a big sporting weekend, but also a contrasting one. Rugby, well known for its calm, quiet, subdued supporters, who were out in force in Durban to see South Africa thrash Argentina 67-30 to top the table with...
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