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Slow news stories designed for listening
Our audio journalism invites you into our newsroom, and takes you deeper into the stories.
The Slow Newscast covers our biggest stories and investigations of the week; the Editor’s Voicemail reveals what’s on co-founder James Harding’s mind; and in Sensemaker Daily our journalists serve up one short story every day to make sense of the world.
The Slow Newscast
Our biggest stories, given voice
Boycott! The lost Olympics
26 July 2021
44 minutes
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?
More episodes
The porn headmaster
In the internet age, anyone with a camera can make and sell porn. But what happens when a shoot goes wrong? In the second episode in our
#PornPlanet series investigating online pornography, we look into the world of porn production
Genesis: The mystery of where Covid began
The truth of an origin story has never mattered more: did Covid cross to humans from an animal, or did it escape from a laboratory? The arguments between science, politics and, now, the intelligence services have only grown fiercer. And in the fog of war, the World Health Organisation lost its way
The Arms Race: vaccine failure at Carbis Bay, the G7’s deadly sin
Last month the richest nations on the planet squared up to its greatest public health challenge, how to vaccinate every adult everywhere against Covid. They failed. The story of how and why they came up catastrophically short is a litany of political parochialism, low ambition and poor organisation – with potentially dreadful consequences
DIY justice
How one woman was asked to deal with an allegation of rape by herself
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The people vs Harvey Proctor
Pariah
What lessons does the story of Harvey Proctor – the twice-disgraced former Conservative MP with extreme anti-immigration views – hold about the way society deems it acceptable to treat those who we cast as hate figures?
Intolerance
Harvey Proctor’s political star burned brightly in the 1980s. He was the anti-immigrant heir-apparent to Enoch Powell, until a tabloid sting exposed him as a gay man who paid for sex
Incredible
To suffer one shattering public scandal in a lifetime is hard enough. Harvey Proctor has endured two. In the second episode of Pariah, one of the highest profile police investigations of the past decade – Operation Midland – comes knocking on his door
The high wire
For the second time in his life, Harvey Proctor was being battered by a storm of dreadful allegations. His lawyers advised a safety-first approach. He had other ideas
Mixing and merging
It seems important for all of us to understand the meaning of what’s happened to Harvey Proctor. What was it which liberated the media and the police to behave as they did; to create or fuel the two scandals which wrecked his life?
tHINKIN WITH JAMES HARDING
The Battle for Truth
“What we’re going to do in this series of podcasts is take a big idea and look for the moments that shine a light on it.”
Rhodes Must Fall and the battle for truth
Cancel culture and the battle for truth
Grenfell Tower and the battle for truth
Dominic Cummings, Barnard Castle and the battle for truth
Sensemaker Daily
One story every day to make sense of the world
Audio essays
Matthew d’Ancona investigates
Over the last year, Tortoise editor Matthew d’Ancona has been investigating the UK government’s management – and mismanagement – of the pandemic, reporting what he’s learned in a series of audio essays.
After Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’ wedding, there are now two powerful married couples in Number 10. Meet the other: Munira and Dougie
Covid may be losing the vaccine battle. But, as the virus evolves fast to form new variants, the war is most definitely not over
The vaccine is an incredible scientific achievement. But some of the political decision-making behind its rollout is rather less impressive.
Fear, delays, mistakes and recrimination. On 31 October, we looked to Boris Johnson’s government for certainty – they served up a nightmare
a four-part podcast series
Hidden homicides
How many women are killed – but not counted?
Editor’s Voicemail
James Harding dials in
The Arms Race: Many miles to go
This week, Tortoise launched its campaign to help spread vaccinations around the world. Here’s what we’re planning to do next
In other news
Tortoise was set up to tell the stories that weren’t being told anywhere else, the news that is brought to us by you – our members. In that respect, this week’s Open News meeting was one to cherish
The arms race
We’re putting together a public campaign to vaccinate the world by the end of next year. How might it work? While it’s still early days, here’s our current thinking
V is for vaccine
We’re starting a campaign to make sure that the promise Boris Johnson made ahead of the G7 Summit wasn’t an empty one – and that the UK leads the drive to vaccinate the world
Behind the News
What we’re working on
Episode 11: Covidcasting
19 December 2020
32 minutes
It’s the last episode of Behind the News for 2020, the podcast that takes you inside our newsroom – although, this week, we’re actually taking you inside another newsroom. TWiV (This Week in Virology) is a podcast that launched in 2008 but found a really large audience this year, due to the pandemic.
What have its creators learnt about the coronavirus during 2020? And what knowledge can they pass on to us?
More episodes
Episode 10: Cultural influence
Is the government filling the UK’s cultural institutions with people it believes will do its bidding? And, even if it is, is this anything new?
Episode 9: Clause Corbyn
Labour has once again descended into civil war. What does the decision to suspend Jeremy Corbyn say about the direction of the party and its leader, Keir Starmer?
Episode 8: What’s the deal?
Securing a trade agreement with the EU has proved harder than initially suggested. Is politics in its current form equipped to deal with the complex reality of globalisation?
Episode 7: Our Covid Inquiry
There are urgent questions to ask – of the government and the public sector. But also of ourselves – the media.
My mother’s murder
My Mother’s Murder is an investigation by Paul Caruana Galizia into the life and killing of his mother, the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Voices of Evin
Listen to those who’ve experienced the prison first hand
Former inmates of Iran’s notorious Evin prison tell their stories.
This report contains descriptions of torture, rape and execution.
