Matt has worked at the BBC across a range of programmes including Newsnight and Radio 4’s World at One and PM.
Matt Russell
Producer

“Tortoise’s focus on narrative journalism allows us to cover stories that otherwise get missed.”
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Monday 9 October 2023
Killer mountain: Abandoned on K2
It’s been a dangerous year in the world of extreme mountaineering. Has the focus on record-breaking gone too far?
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Tuesday 29 August 2023
Putin v Prigozhin: A story of mutiny and death
In late June, Yevgeny Prigozhin marched on Moscow with a small army of mercenaries. Exactly two months later, he was dead. This is the story of what really happened on the road to Moscow
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Monday 21 August 2023
Spotted: snooker’s fight against match fixing
In June a scandal erupted that threatened the future of snooker after ten elite players were banned for match fixing. It all starts in a small snooker hall in Sheffield, but ends on a journey through a several hundred billion dollar a year black market in south-east Asia. This is the story of the biggest British match-fixing scandal in over a decade
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Monday 24 July 2023
Genocide hunters: on the trail of a mass murderer
How one of the most wanted men on earth was caught after three decades on the run
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Monday 10 July 2023
Modern family: I had my dead son’s baby at 68
Spanish celebrity Ana Obregón shocked the world when she announced that she had a child via surrogate, using a donor egg and the sperm of her deceased son. Her story takes us to the new frontiers of fertility, where technology challenges our ideas of family, motherhood and the law.
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Friday 9 June 2023
Frank Cottrell-Boyce: “We are letting our children down”
After the controversy around changes made to Roald Dahl’s stories, Tortoise speaks to author Frank Cottrell-Boyce about whether children’s books are taken seriously enough.
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Monday 5 June 2023
The Dishonours List
Boris Johnson is not a man who has much care for institutions or conventions. So what does his forthcoming resignations honours list mean for the future of the House of Lords?
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Tuesday 23 May 2023
Beastly: the stories of David Walliams
What do you do with a star children’s author who can’t stop pushing the boundaries?
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Monday 24 April 2023
Rogue Lawyer: Power, money and a scandal at a London law firm
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Monday 27 March 2023
Boris the brand
Boris Johnson seems incapable of living within his means – but talented beyond measure at finding people to help him live beyond them. So just who is funding the ex PM? In the fourth and final episode, Boris: the brand
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Monday 20 March 2023
R&R
Boris Johnson seems incapable of living within his means – but talented beyond measure at finding people to help him live beyond them. So just who is funding the ex PM? And how does he get to all his exotic holidays?
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Monday 13 March 2023
The enablers
Boris Johnson seems incapable of living within his means – but talented beyond measure at finding people to help him live beyond them. So just who is funding the ex PM? This is the story of the enablers
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Monday 6 March 2023
Family money
This is the story of a politician incapable of living within his means but talented beyond measure at finding people to help him live beyond them. It’s the story of how that dependence on others sullied him and them. All of which leads to one simple question: just who is funding Boris Johnson?
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Monday 5 December 2022
Octopus: The allegations against Crispin Odey
One of Britain’s richest and most powerful men was cleared of sexual assault last year. Four more women have come forward with similar allegations that Crispin Odey, a major donor to the Conservative party, sexually assaulted them. Other women allege that he sexually harassed them at the offices of his Mayfair hedge fund company
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Monday 7 November 2022
Egypt’s bad cop
The story of one man, fighting to his last breath, to reveal the darkness that lies behind this year’s UN Climate Change Conference
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Monday 31 October 2022
Mutiny: The undoing of Liz Truss
The inside story of how the shortest premiership in British history came to an end
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Monday 3 October 2022
Toxic: the making of Andrew Tate
What happened when social media platforms banned Andrew Tate, whose misogyny netted him a fortune and millions of online followers?
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Tuesday 30 August 2022
Thank the Lord
Peter Cruddas is a self-made billionaire, a Conservative party donor and now, a Lord. His rise reveals a lot about Boris Johnson’s battle with parliament
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Monday 22 August 2022
Myanmar’s forgotten coup
More than a year after Myanmar fell to a military coup, Ali Fowle investigates the growing resistance movement. Is there hope of a different future?
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Monday 15 August 2022
Hostile environment: Inside the Home Office
The making of the modern Home Office
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Monday 25 July 2022
America at the crossroads: abortion in South Bend
The fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse abortion rights is reverberating across America. Arguably nowhere more so than in South Bend, Indiana, a small city in the heart of the Midwest
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Monday 16 May 2022
Revealed: Stormy Daniels and her battle for truth
Who is the real Stormy Daniels? Hattie Garlick meets arguably one of America’s most misunderstood and misrepresented women
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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 11 April 2022
Greg Barker: the lord’s work
The days of the Russian oligarch in London are numbered. What fate awaits the enablers – those well-connected people who worked for and provided services to wealthy Russians? This is the story of one of them
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Monday 28 March 2022
The trials of Alexei Navalny
What does the story of Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia Navalnaya tell us about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the state of opposition?