Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The UK’s leading romance fraud specialist

How did one detective take on an international network of romance fraudsters? This episode was written Stuart McGurk and read by Will Dunn. The commissioning editor was Melissa Denes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 

The great private school con

They no longer have a stranglehold on Oxbridge and would lose tax breaks under Labour. So what is elite education really selling?At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in October, the Independent Schools Council hosted a forlorn drinks reception: not one of the more than 40 ...  Show more

How Rishi Sunak became the first Silicon Valley prime minister

On 2 November 2023, Rishi Sunak closed his global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park by interviewing the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk. The mood was deferential (the PM towards the tech billionaire). Was Sunak eyeing up a post-politics job in San Francisco, some wondered, or ca ...  Show more

Has your AI therapist got your back?

In May this year, an American woman sought the help of a chatbot on an eating disorders website. The bot, named Tessa and running on an evolving, generative AI, advised her to start counting calories. Perhaps she should get some calipers, it suggested, to measure her body fat. Wh ...  Show more

How Britain became a dangerous place to have a baby

What are the roots of today’s maternity crisis? Recent research by the Care Quality Commission has found a “concerning decline” in England, with over half of maternity wards rated substandard. Donna Ockenden’s review of Shrewsbury and Telford maternity trust found that, between 2 ...  Show more