The Slow Newscast
286 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsThe Slow Newscast from Tortoise takes the news slowly. We investigate, and every week we focus on stories that really matter in the UK and around the world. From the war in Ukraine, the downfall of Boris Johnson, to true crime and injustice and real life mysteries, The Slow Newscast team is devoted to narrative investigations. From a startup newsroom with a different approach to journalism.
For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app.
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If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable.
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Episodes
Pariah - episode 3
April 29, 2021 02:00 - 39 minutes - 91.1 MBHarvey Proctor was caught in the middle of a deadly serious police investigation, Operation Midland. How could he fight it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Pariah - episode 2
April 29, 2021 01:30 - 45 minutes - 105 MBIt’s tough to survive one huge, public scandal in your life. Two is almost unheard of. But that was about to happen to Harvey Proctor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Pariah - episode 1
April 29, 2021 01:00 - 47 minutes - 108 MBHarvey Proctor was a Conservative MP, notorious in the 1980s for his right-wing views. Until he was entrapped by a newspaper in a ‘gay sex scandal’ and his life started to unravel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lost at sea
April 21, 2021 23:01 - 44 minutes - 101 MBThe mysterious story of Gulf Livestock 1, a 12,000-tonne ship carrying 6,000 cows that disappeared without a trace in the Pacific Ocean. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The battle for truth
April 15, 2021 01:00 - 57 minutes - 133 MBWe're launching a brand new podcast from Tortoise called ThinkIn with James Harding. In this week's Slow Newscast, a preview. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What the RFK Jr?!
April 07, 2021 23:01 - 41 minutes - 95.2 MBThis week we introduce a new podcast, and re-up an episode from our archive on the hero lawyer turned anti-vaxxer who has spent the pandemic spreading medical misinformation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Cross stitch
March 31, 2021 23:01 - 38 minutes - 89.4 MBAn unlikely scandal... in the world of embroidery. How a highly-paid male CEO went to war with a group of embroidery-loving women, who decided to get together and fight back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Reasonable Case of Keir Rodney Starmer
March 25, 2021 00:01 - 49 minutes - 112 MBWho is Keir Starmer? There’s the basic answer: he’s the leader of Britain’s Labour party. But beyond that? We investigate his past. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Disaster at Camp 3
March 18, 2021 00:01 - 48 minutes - 111 MBReaching the summit of K2 in winter had never been done before. In January, a group of mountaineers – professionals, amateurs, social media adventurers – attempted it. It ended in triumph… and tragedy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Navalny Show
March 11, 2021 08:37 - 36 minutes - 84 MBAs he returned to Moscow after months recovering from a nerve agent attack, Alexei Navalny released a remarkable YouTube video – and with it, sowed the seeds for a new Russian revolution by meme. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
March of the mutants
March 04, 2021 00:01 - 49 minutes - 113 MBCovid-19 may be losing the vaccine battle, but as the virus evolves fast to form new variants, the war is most definitely not over... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A Very British Business
February 25, 2021 02:00 - 43 minutes - 98.8 MBSir Jim Ratcliffe is one of Britain's richest men. Since Brexit he's made a show of his patriotism. Is it for real? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A fairy tale on Wall St
February 18, 2021 02:00 - 39 minutes - 90.2 MBThe myth of Gamestop was that it was a David and Goliath struggle. The truth was very different. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
306 days
February 11, 2021 02:00 - 41 minutes - 96.2 MBGeoffrey Woolf spent longer in hospital after Covid-19 than almost anyone - 306 days. His son Nicky tells the story of what he went through, and how it changed everything. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Corinna & the king: The money hunt
February 04, 2021 02:00 - 59 minutes - 135 MBPower, greed, and a $65m 'gift': the story of King Juan Carlos of Spain and Corinna, his lover. They occupied a world of high-rolling hunting parties and complicated gifts – until it went seriously wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The money hunt
February 04, 2021 02:00 - 59 minutes - 135 MBPower, greed, and a $65m 'gift': the story of King Juan Carlos of Spain and Corinna, his lover Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hidden Homicides - episode 4
January 28, 2021 07:51 - 30 minutes - 70 MBThe final episode of our special series. How do you fix a fatal problem no one is properly measuring? To learn more, go to tortoisemedia.com/hiddenhomicides Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hidden Homicides - episode 3
January 28, 2021 02:03 - 40 minutes - 93.2 MBThe astonishing case of Emily Whelan, and decisions and delays that cannot be undone. The third episode in our special series on the deaths that may be going unrecognised, and uncounted, by police. To learn more, go to tortoisemedia.com/hiddenhomicides Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hidden Homicides - episode 2
January 28, 2021 02:02 - 44 minutes - 101 MBThe second part of our new series, Hidden Homicides: the story of a killer twice missed. When Susan Nicholson died suddenly, her parents were immediately suspicious. Her partner was known to police to be a serious domestic abuser, but still they refused to investigate. It took six years before a proper investigation was launched. Why? To learn more, go to tortoisemedia.com/hiddenhomicides See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Hidden Homicides - episode 2
January 28, 2021 02:02 - 44 minutes - 101 MBThe second part of our new series, Hidden Homicides: the story of a killer twice missed. When Susan Nicholson died suddenly, her parents were immediately suspicious. Her partner was known to police to be a serious domestic abuser, but still they refused to investigate. It took six years before a proper investigation was launched. Why? To learn more, go to tortoisemedia.com/hiddenhomicides Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hidden Homicides - episode 1
January 28, 2021 02:01 - 44 minutes - 103 MBIn a new series by Tortoise, we tell the shocking stories of women whose possible homicides go unrecognised, and uncounted, by police. In episode 1: the life and death of 21-year-old Katie Wilding, and her mother’s remarkable fight for justice. To learn more, go to tortoisemedia.com/hiddenhomicides. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This was a coup
January 21, 2021 02:00 - 48 minutes - 112 MBWhat was really going on when President Trump's supporters invaded the Capitol? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Shot in the dark
January 14, 2021 02:00 - 39 minutes - 90.5 MBCoronavirus vaccines are a triumph for science, and an enormous gamble for the UK. They're all we've got left: our only hope of getting out of the Covid crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Crossing the Channel
January 07, 2021 02:00 - 47 minutes - 109 MBA former army base in Folkstone, Kent, is now the controversial epicentre of the Britain's immigration debate – a debate that hasn’t gone away with Brexit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Did it have to be this bad?
December 17, 2020 02:00 - 58 minutes - 134 MBBritain has one of the worst records in the world at dealing with the coronavirus. The country's death toll, and the economic damage it suffers, will be worse than most of its competitors; possibly worse than any of them. Over three days in November, Tortoise held an inquiry into why things have gone so wrong. Basia Cummings reports back on its findings - and on her own year coping, as we all have, with an unprecedented crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Is Covid cover for corruption?
December 10, 2020 02:00 - 29 minutes - 66.9 MBThe British government has spent billions tackling the coronavirus, and some of it has gone to friends and family of people in high places. Contracts for safety equipment or for testing for Covid have been handed out without the usual safeguards on public spending, and accusations of corruption and cronyism have flown around. Is that what's happening, or is the explanation more mundane? Would the government's actions be better seen as normal in the wildly abnormal situation of a pandemic? And...
The rise & fall of The Wing
December 03, 2020 11:18 - 40 minutes - 93.4 MBThe Wing was part co-working space, part feminist haven - a high-concept, big-money chain of women-only spaces, the brainchild of super-smart, ultra-connected New Yorker, Audrey Gelman. It was a child of Instagram which soon started to encounter severe difficulties in the real world. Did the way it treated its members, and particularly its employees, live up to its high ideals? Those problems knocked The Wing and the pandemic finished it off. How did a feminist vision become a corporate night...
The split
November 26, 2020 03:00 - 37 minutes - 87.2 MBA story centuries in the making that is building an unstoppable momentum. This week we are going north of the wall and asking: is Scotland on a march to independence? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Boris Johnson's horror show
November 19, 2020 02:00 - 41 minutes - 96.3 MBOn Saturday October 31st, the British government was forced to announce a second national coronavirus lockdown. We know the announcement itself was mishandled; the reasons why are fascinating. In this special episode of the Slow Newscast Matt D'Ancona goes deep into a day of political drama and intrigue in Downing St which helps explain so much about where this government is going wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
China takes down a superstar
November 12, 2020 02:00 - 31 minutes - 72.8 MBJack Ma set up the Chinese online giant Alibaba. It made him hugely rich, and perhaps too powerful for comfort for China's ruling elite. Last week his plan for the biggest-ticket stock market launch ever came to a crashing halt when the authorities in Beijing pulled the plug on it. Did Jack Ma fly too high? Have his wings been clipped forever? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
JK Rowling and the Unfinished Business
November 05, 2020 02:00 - 33 minutes - 76.5 MBIn June 2020, JK Rowling sent a Tweet which took her to the heart of the bitter debate about trans rights and women's rights. A few days later, with an online storm gathering around her, she published a 3,600-word essay explaining her position. She'd set off a ferocious argument which alienated many of her young fans; led some of the stars of the Harry Potter films to distance themselves from Harry's creator; and which ran like a lightning-strike through the worlds of film and publishing whic...
The (un)Christian president
October 29, 2020 02:00 - 34 minutes - 78.3 MBFrom the first moment of his presidency, Donald Trump has courted - and largely won - the votes of white, Evangelical Christians. For a famously profane and worldly president it's a striking achievement and, in recent months, Trump seems to have doubled-down on the Christian vote with talk of 'miracles' while people around him have described the Democrats as 'atheists'. Has a President with a genius for spotting groups with a grievance and for exploiting division identified a new fault-line i...
Recession 2021
October 22, 2020 01:00 - 32 minutes - 74.1 MBIt's not that our economies haven't already taken a hit because of the coronavirus, it's that what's coming may be much worse. Politicians, and people in finance and business, can see it, but there are no prizes for talking openly about it. So we've gone back to two people who really understand the depths of the trouble ahead. Alastair Darling was UK Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 2008 financial crash, and Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England. When they look around the corner, ...
Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 3
October 17, 2020 01:00 - 36 minutes - 84.6 MBIf animals share many qualities with humans - if they're self-aware, if they communicate, and grieve for their dead, as we know they do - do they deserve human-like rights? Next month, the case of Happy the elephant comes before the New York Supreme Court. Happy's lawyer (yes, she has one) will argue that her long incarceration in the Bronx Zoo has breached her right to bodily freedom. The case will get a respectful hearing; it's not inconceivable that Happy will win. But even if she loses, t...
Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 2
October 16, 2020 01:00 - 35 minutes - 81.5 MBIf animals share many qualities with humans - if they're self-aware, if they communicate, and grieve for their dead, as we know they do - do they deserve human-like rights? Next month, the case of Happy the elephant comes before the New York Supreme Court. Happy's lawyer (yes, she has one) will argue that her long incarceration in the Bronx Zoo has breached her right to bodily freedom. The case will get a respectful hearing; it's not inconceivable that Happy will win. But even if she loses, t...
Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 1
October 15, 2020 01:00 - 36 minutes - 83.2 MBIf animals share many qualities with humans - if they're self-aware, if they communicate, and grieve for their dead, as we know they do - do they deserve human-like rights? Next month, the case of Happy the elephant comes before the New York Supreme Court. Happy's lawyer (yes, she has one) will argue that her long incarceration in the Bronx Zoo has breached her right to bodily freedom. The case will get a respectful hearing; it's not inconceivable that Happy will win. But even if she loses, t...
Tested: How test and trace became a national disaster
October 08, 2020 02:00 - 35 minutes - 82.5 MBThe serial failures of the UK's test and trace system will never be a footnote in the coronavirus crisis. In fact, they're the headline. Matthew d'Ancona reports on how it got so bad. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The golden egg
October 01, 2020 02:00 - 42 minutes - 97.7 MBThe fertility industry is booming, but there is a tightrope to walk between what is possible, ethical and harmful. Reporter Claudia Williams and host Basia Cummings investigate the rise and rise of IVF. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The endless virus
September 23, 2020 16:09 - 35 minutes - 80.8 MBCoronavirus can kill, or pass through a body unnoticed. Its effects in the short term are wildly unpredictable. But as we learn to live with this new virus we're discovering more of its grisly secrets. One of them is that the damage it does to the body in the long run might leave a dreadful legacy. This is the story - as much as we know it – of Long Covid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Florida: The punchline state
September 17, 2020 01:00 - 42 minutes - 97.1 MBWe went to the perennial swing state where Trump won narrowly in 2016. Four years later, is Florida ready to flip again? Will it be an election about Covid and competence, law and order or racial justice? Will it be a referendum on the character of Donald Trump or just further evidence of a hopelessly divide nation? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Inside Evin
September 10, 2020 01:00 - 46 minutes - 107 MBEvin Prison is one of the most secretive places on earth; the heart of Iran's oppression of its own people. We've spent months getting inside its walls through the testimony of people who've been detained there over the past 40 years. Together, their accounts are not simply the story of the prison, they're the story of what Iran has become. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Beat police
September 03, 2020 01:00 - 23 minutes - 32.4 MBDrill music styles itself as a tough and uncompromising representation of life in poor communities in cities like Chicago and London. Police forces have clamped down on it in the belief that it provokes violence, but the evidence for a causal link is thin. Not for the first time, an innovative, anti-establishment Black voice is being quietened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How the world filled a hole - and saved itself
August 27, 2020 01:00 - 25 minutes - 58.3 MBSomething which is now almost unimaginable happened between 1974 and 1989. The world spotted a massive problem; the fix required action by consumers, businesses and governments; and they came together to pull it off. This is the story of the discovery of what man-made emissions were doing to the ozone layer and mankind's brilliant response. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Trailblazer
August 20, 2020 01:00 - 25 minutes - 35.4 MBMichaela Coel's TV drama I May Destroy You has just finished playing on the BBC and HBO. Based partly on her own experience it's an unsettling, sometimes harrowing, examination of sexual assault, consent, friendship, and the experience of growing up Black and British. It may come to be seen as a watershed moment in British television, and it's not Coel's first. Basia Cummings talks to journalist and critic Yomi Adegoke about Michaela Coel's remarkable talent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/...
The slaver who stayed put
August 13, 2020 01:00 - 31 minutes - 71.4 MBThe story of the toppling of Edward Colston's statue in Bristol became a prominent chapter in the global response to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. Those events were the reasons the statue came down, but the more intriguing question is why it stayed up for so long. Why did a monument to a prominent slave trader remain standing for decades in spite of a local campaign to have it moved to a museum? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What the RFK Jr?! From Camelot to conspiracies
August 06, 2020 02:00 - 36 minutes - 83.5 MBHow a member of the Kennedy political dynasty has become the most prolific super-spreader of conspiracies connecting anti-vaxxers, 5G and coronavirus Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The hopeful Chancellor: is Rishi Sunak the right man for the job?
July 30, 2020 02:00 - 28 minutes - 66.2 MBChancellor Rishi Sunak is diligent and decent, but is he really the right man for the job of saving the British economy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Silenced in China: the price of protest
July 23, 2020 05:32 - 33 minutes - 77.2 MBAs president Xi uses the pandemic to crack down again, we speak to Dr Teng Biao and Simon Cheng about their treatment in China's battle to control its people Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
"How are you?" Mental health in lockdown
July 16, 2020 01:00 - 42 minutes - 97.7 MB"How are you?" used to be a throwaway question, but the pandemic has given it new meaning. Former spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, now a prominent mental health campaigner, asks high-profile people from sport, politics and entertainment how they've coped with life's new realities. Their answers have something to say to all of us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Death at the ministry: a very British injustice
July 09, 2020 01:00 - 37 minutes - 86.2 MBLate every evening in London at the Ministry of Justice, dozens of poorly-paid workers slip into the offices to begin their night-time cleaning jobs. Many - maybe most - have recently arrived in the UK. Economically, their lives are precarious. But when coronavirus struck life itself became precarious. Emanuel Gomes and Luis Eduardo Veintimilla are two of the cleaners at the Ministry who carried on working there as the virus took hold around them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for ...