Before Tortoise, Basia was news editor at HuffPost and worked on the foreign desk at the Guardian. She is on the board of The Student View, a charity trying to build a newsroom in every school.
Basia Cummings
Editor
“There has never been a more crucial time to expose the power gap, and build new and inclusive ways of telling stories that matter. I joined Tortoise to do just that.”
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Monday 22 November 2021
18:30-19:30 GMT
Vanity insanity: How far would you go to change the way you look?
Are we losing our grip on reality when it comes to the way we look?
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Tuesday 26 January 2021
13:00-14:00 GMT
Open News
Add your voice to the Tortoise editors’ weekly news conference. Bring story ideas and perspectives. Have your say.
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Thursday 7 January 2021
18:30-19:30 GMT
Why do we climb mountains? with Ed Caesar
Why are humans so obsessed with climbing mountains. We ask the expert, Ed Caesar
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Tuesday 28 July 2020
18:30-19:30 BST
Monetising the sisterhood: do toxic cultures thrive in ‘feminist’ companies
How do feminist businesses balance profit and purpose? Does ‘the sisterhood’ really work for everyone?
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Monday 22 November 2021
10 minute read
Sensemaker: British police culture
What just happened
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Thursday 15 April 2021
10 minute readSensemaker: The greatest good?
What just happened
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Tuesday 16 February 2021
Infodemic II
Super-spreader-in-chief
Robert Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaxx conspiracy theories are being shut down at last – but only up to a point
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Monday 21 September 2020
Long Covid
Long haul
Hundreds of thousands of people who thought they’d recovered from Covid-19 are still ill. Why?
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Tuesday 30 June 2020
Money & monarchy
Family misfortunes
Money is at the root of most of the royals’ problems
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Monday 23 March 2020
Infodemic-1
Fake news in the time of C-19
From miraculous cures to paranoid conspiracies, our investigation reveals how misinformation about coronavirus is going viral at a disturbing rate
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Thursday 22 September 2022
Secrets and lies
Two young children make horrific allegations in a London police station, lighting the fuse on one of the most serious British conspiracy theories in decades
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Thursday 22 September 2022
Ella’s list
Seized upon by conspiracy theorists, Ella’s list of alleged cult members spreads like wildfire across the Internet. Hampstead parents start receiving death threats and lives are torn apart
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Thursday 22 September 2022
The Avengers
The perpetrators of the Hampstead hoax meet their match in an unassuming mystery novelist, who is determined to expose their lies and bring them to justice
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Monday 8 August 2022
Hunt for the porn king: a reckoning
Last year, as women accused Pornhub of profiting from their abuse, we tracked down its intensely secretive owner. This week, we’re looking back to find out: what happened next?
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Monday 18 July 2022
Left to die: Return to the Amarula
Last summer our three-part podcast Left To Die told the harrowing story of 200 civilians trapped in a hotel in Mozambique under siege by violent extremists. This week, we’re looking back to find out: what happened next?
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Monday 25 April 2022
Mariupol
Two atrocities in the port city of Mariupol epitomise Russia’s violence in Ukraine. This is the story of those atrocities and of Mariupol’s truth
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Monday 7 February 2022
Unforgotten: Syria’s war crimes
How the chief of a notorious Damascus torture unit was put on trial thousands of miles away, in a German courtroom
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Tuesday 4 January 2022
CoolSculpting
How a lucrative fantasy collided with the reality of the body
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Monday 20 December 2021
2021: Our year in stories
As 2021 draws to a close, Basia Cummings looks back over a year of Slow Newscasts with her colleagues James Harding, the co-founder of Tortoise, and Ceri Thomas. What’s changed in the way we think about podcasts at Tortoise? And are there any you’ve missed which you might want to catch up on over the Christmas break?
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Monday 1 November 2021
Shamsa, the forgotten princess
The abduction of a young woman from the streets of Cambridge is the origin-story of how Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai treats the women in his life
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Monday 11 October 2021
Havana Syndrome
The mystery of the immaculate concussion
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Monday 13 September 2021
Beau and Biden
President Biden believes his eldest son’s cancer, which claimed his life in 2015, was linked to his time serving in Iraq. It is a belief that makes sense of the loss, and – as has become clear in recent weeks – shapes Biden’s world view
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Monday 6 September 2021
Orphaned by America
Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the US border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance†policy. This is the story of how, five years later, 300 remain lost in a system designed to swallow them
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Tuesday 31 August 2021
Smear
Grooming gangs, conspiracy theories and the lawless digital politics of Oldham
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Monday 23 August 2021
A son of Afghanistan
The story of Rohullah Yakobi, and a 20-year war
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Monday 26 July 2021
Boycott! The lost Olympics
With human rights groups demanding a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, we look back to Moscow 1980, and ask what’s the lesson of the most notorious Olympic boycott in modern times?
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Wednesday 23 June 2021
Left to die: Escape from the Amarula – Part 3
Nick Alexander tells the story of his torturous escape from the ambushed Amarula Hotel convoy – and the question left lying in the dust of the attack: who, really, abandoned them all?
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Tuesday 22 June 2021
Left to die: Escape from the Amarula – Part 2
In the second part in our series investigating how 200 civilians were left to die at the Amarula Hotel in northern Mozambique, we tell the story of their harrowing escape
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Monday 21 June 2021
Left to die: Escape from the Amarula – Part 1
In March, Islamist militants attacked the town of Palma, in northern Mozambique – the site of a $20bn gas project. They besieged a hotel, where more than 200 civilians were taking shelter. Help would soon be on its way, they were told. But the rescue never came. Why? In our new three-part series, we investigate what happened
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Monday 17 May 2021
Nail house: At home with the German far right
In the East German city of Chemnitz, political extremists aren’t just present – they’re organised. And they’re trying to spread their creed from ramshackle buildings to the rest of the country
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Monday 10 May 2021
White gold rush
California’s largest lake was a giant mistake created by an accidental flood more than a century ago. Today, the Salton Sea is an environmental disaster. But could the communities around the shore of the dying lake be saved by the quest for green energy and the hunt for one of the most sought-after elements on earth?
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Tuesday 4 May 2021
The cause: what happened to Shukri Abdi?
The death of Shukri Abdi in 2019 has become a cause for campaigners who believe that something unlawful happened. But is that the truth?
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Monday 19 April 2021
Lost at sea
The mystery of Gulf Livestock 1, a 12,000-tonne ship that disappeared without a trace.
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Monday 22 March 2021
The reasonable case of Keir Rodney Starmer
Who is Keir Starmer? There’s the basic answer: he’s the leader of Britain’s Labour party. But beyond that? Gaby Hinsliff delved into his past to find out more.
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Monday 15 March 2021
#Savagemountain
Reaching 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
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Monday 22 February 2021
A very British business
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is one of Britain’s richest men. His decision to move to Monaco after receiving a knighthood has angered those who recommended him and raises questions about how this country’s honours system works
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Monday 15 February 2021
Fairy tale finance
A myth has been made: a tale of wolves on Wall St; a pack of principled amateurs biting the legs of greedy financial giants and bringing them down. But almost everything you think you know about wallstreetbets, GameStop and Robin Hood is wrong.
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Wednesday 13 January 2021
On the run from the United States
Can the American government get its hands on Julian Assange, one of its most wanted?
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Monday 11 January 2021
7 shots in the back – in self defence?
Jacob Blake was shot 7 times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin last August – another high-profile victim of police violence. But now the district attorney has decided not to press charges against the police. How can that be?
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Monday 23 November 2020
The Split
Is Scotland on an unstoppable march to leave the UK?
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Monday 9 November 2020
Hero of the financial revolution
Can the Chinese Communist Party learn to live with Jack Ma?
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Thursday 29 October 2020
Blessed are the deal-makers
Evangelicals have been key to Donald Trump’s presidency, and to his bid for re-election
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Monday 14 September 2020
Florida: The punchline state
“Weird shit happens every single dayâ€
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Wednesday 26 August 2020
The hole in the sky
Just two years after scientists discovered we were destroying the ozone layer, the world worked together to fix it. Listen to the thrilling story of a race against time…
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Monday 3 August 2020
What the RFK Jr?!
From Camelot to conspiracy theories
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Tuesday 23 June 2020
The longest wait
Football is back. Liverpool can finally win their title. We met the man who revived the club and the city
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Thursday 4 June 2020
Inside Amazon: A superpower in a pandemic
What’s in the Amazon box? We open up the world’s biggest company and take a look inside
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Monday 25 May 2020
What if they don’t turn up?
Every year, millions of students migrate around the world. How will university towns survive if they stay at home because of COVID-19?
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Thursday 7 May 2020
Undercrowded and overfunded
What the empty super-hospitals tell us about the UK’s handling of Covid-19
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Thursday 16 January 2020
The man who counts trees
Trees are vital in the fight against climate change. Why was counting them so controversial?
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Thursday 9 January 2020
The new superpowers: Apple
The big technology corporations are more than companies, they’re global powers. It’s time we treated them that way