The Slow Newscast

By Tortoise Media

Arts

What's The Slow Newscast about?

The Tortoise Podcast takes news slowly. What’s really going on in the world, in politics, business, climate, culture, technology? Just as importantly, what’s driving it? Basia Cummings, once of the Guardian and HuffPost, and Ceri Thomas, former Today Programme and Panorama editor, take stock with the help of colleagues from the ‘slow news’ publisher, Tortoise.

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LAST EPISODE

The white gold rush

05.12.2021

The story of a dying lake, a forgotten community and the hunt for a green future. Host Basia Cummings is joined by reporters Miranda Green and Lucy Sherriff to investigate. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Slow Newscast episodes:

05.12.2021 The white gold rush The story of a dying lake, a forgotten community and the hunt for a green future. Host Basia Cummings is joined by reporters Miranda Green and Lucy Sherriff to investigate. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
05.06.2021 What happened to Shukri Abdi? When A 12-year-old Somali refugee drowned in the River Irwell in 2019, suspicion and rumour soon followed. In this episode, Basia is joined by reporter Nimo Omer to investigate what happened to Shukri Abdi. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out ...
04.29.2021 Pariah - episode 4 A life like Harvey Proctor’s has lessons for the police and the media. And for all of us: what are we prepared to do to people we turn into hate figures? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.29.2021 Pariah - episode 3 Harvey Proctor was caught in the middle of a deadly serious police investigation, Operation Midland. How could he fight it? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.29.2021 Pariah - episode 2 It’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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.29.2021 Pariah - episode 1 Harvey 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.21.2021 Lost at sea The mysterious story of Gulf Livestock 1, a 12,000-tonne ship carrying 6,000 cows that disappeared without a trace in the Pacific Ocean. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.15.2021 The battle for truth We're launching a brand new podcast from Tortoise called ThinkIn with James Harding. In this week's Slow Newscast, a preview. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
04.07.2021 What the RFK Jr?! This 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
03.31.2021 Cross stitch How an embroidery charity – beloved by its members – tore itself apart at the seams. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
03.25.2021 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? We investigate his past. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
03.18.2021 Disaster at Camp 3 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
03.11.2021 The Navalny Show As 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out ...
03.04.2021 March of the mutants Covid-19 may be losing the vaccine battle, but as the virus evolves fast to form new variants, the war is most definitely not over... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
02.25.2021 A Very British Business Sir Jim Ratcliffe is one of Britain's richest men. Since Brexit he's made a show of his patriotism. Is it for real? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
02.18.2021 A fairy tale on Wall St The myth of Gamestop was that it was a David and Goliath struggle. The truth was very different. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
02.11.2021 306 days Geoffrey 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
02.04.2021 The money hunt Power, greed, and a $65m 'gift': the story of King Juan Carlos of Spain and Corinna, his lover See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
01.28.2021 Hidden Homicides - episode 4 The 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
01.28.2021 Hidden Homicides - episode 3 The 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 See ...
01.28.2021 Hidden Homicides - episode 2 The 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 ...
01.28.2021 Hidden Homicides - episode 1 In 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. ...
01.21.2021 This was a coup What was really going on when President Trump's supporters invaded the Capitol? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
01.14.2021 Shot in the dark Coronavirus 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
01.07.2021 Crossing the Channel A 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
12.17.2020 Did it have to be this bad? Britain 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 ...
12.10.2020 Is Covid cover for corruption? The 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 ...
12.03.2020 The rise & fall of The Wing The 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 ...
11.26.2020 The split A 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? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
11.19.2020 Boris Johnson's horror show On 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 ...
11.12.2020 China takes down a superstar Jack 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 ...
11.05.2020 JK Rowling and the Unfinished Business In 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 ...
10.29.2020 The (un)Christian president From 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 ...
10.22.2020 Recession 2021 It'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 ...
10.17.2020 Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 3 If 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 ...
10.16.2020 Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 2 If 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 ...
10.15.2020 Happy - the elephant in the courtroom: episode 1 If 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 ...
10.08.2020 Tested: How test and trace became a national disaster The 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
10.01.2020 The golden egg The 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
09.23.2020 The endless virus Coronavirus 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 ...
09.17.2020 Florida: The punchline state We 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 ...
09.10.2020 Inside Evin Evin 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 ...
09.03.2020 Beat police Drill 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 ...
08.27.2020 How the world filled a hole - and saved itself Something 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 ...
08.20.2020 Trailblazer Michaela 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 ...
08.13.2020 The slaver who stayed put The 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, ...
08.06.2020 What the RFK Jr?! From Camelot to conspiracies How a member of the Kennedy political dynasty has become the most prolific super-spreader of conspiracies connecting anti-vaxxers, 5G and coronavirus See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
07.30.2020 The hopeful Chancellor: is Rishi Sunak the right man for the job? Chancellor Rishi Sunak is diligent and decent, but is he really the right man for the job of saving the British economy? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
07.23.2020 Silenced in China: the price of protest As 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
07.16.2020 "How are you?" Mental health in lockdown "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 ...

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