The Trawl

The Christmas break is barely a memory, Venezuela is threatening to become “the Greenland situation”, and Trump has kicked off January by delivering one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid geopolitical statements we’ve ever heard. Before Jemma and Marina get swept up in the next global meltdown, this episode rakes back over everything you might’ve missed while eating leftovers and avoiding your rela...

Marina and Jemma return from Christmas only to find that Trump has kicked off 2026 by bombing Venezuela and kidnapping its president - and the so‑called “rules‑based international order” immediately folded like a cheap camping chair, with Western leaders bravely choosing silence, caution, and the safety of not upsetting the big orange man. In this episode, they wade through the geopolitical sludge...

Clips of writer, podcaster and Instagram legend, Cody Dahler, have featured so many times on The Trawl, regular listeners will be completely familiar with his dulcet tones. What they may not know however is that Cody used to be a civil servant, working alongside and putting up with the Tory government and a comedy writer on shows such as Dead Ringers. Marina and Jemma find out how he's grown his h...

No clips. No editing. No guests. In this unedited end-of-year special, Marina Purkiss and Jemma Forte sit down and reflect on everything The Trawl has covered over 2025. They remember the stories that shocked them, the moments that made them laugh, and the news cycles that left them genuinely lost for words. They also indulge in a bit of nostalgia, recalling how they met and how the podcast began....

It’s Boxing Day on  The Trawl , which means Marina and Jemma are fuelled by cheese, chaos and the most baffling headlines Britain has to offer. Join them as they sift through the festive madness: reality‑TV absurdity, BBC lawsuits, and the government’s latest attempt to turn violence against women into a culture‑war chew toy. They dig into Jess Phillips’ new proposals, the backlash from the u...

It’s Christmas Eve at The Trawl HQ and the cheese is flowing, the Scrooged button is armed, and Marina and Jemma are doing their level best not to spiral. Instead, they unwrap some  unexpected festive joy  as a trio of bell-ends Tommy Robinson, Jake Paul and Andrew Tate, discover the true meaning of consequences via the noble art of boxing. (Spoiler: pink gloves, broken jaws, and interne...

Regular Trawl listeners will know that every Trawl episode ends with a clip ‘pudding’ a treat at the end of every show. Marina and Jemma select clips they find funny, poignant, stirring or entertaining for one reason or another and in this very festive edition of Trawl Meets the Trawl ladies welcome some of your very favourite puddings - Anthony Richardson from The Exploding Heads, Larry and Paul...

Love, Hypocrisy and a Rob Reiner Tribute  It’s the Friday episode and Marina Purkiss and Jemma Forte are running on festive fumes so prepare for rage, tears, laughs and a post Rob Reiner tribute snotty nose. It's a rollercoaster of an episode. The Trawl ladies start with the small lies we tell children (Father Christmas logistics remain shaky) before moving swiftly to Trump’s grotesque respon...

Marina and Jemma are back with a Christmas-adjacent scroll through the internet so you don’t have to. With the festive season fast approaching, they bring you  thrift tips  courtesy of Donald Trump (yes, really), as he explains why American children might have to settle for 'two dolls instead of thirty' all in the name of tariffs. Marie Antoinette, but make it MAGA. The Trawl ladies also...

This Trawl kicks off with a little bit of Cilla Black, just like the old days. Then Jemma and Marina take a festive detour to check in on how Rossid Woods is coping with the season (spoiler: not brilliantly), and enjoy a very relatable warning about over-committing to plans. Then… unable to put it off any longer, they dive into the political storm of the week. Reform UK has received a record-...

Jemma and Marina wade into a feed overflowing with colds, chaos and Christmas-level delusion and glide into today’s central theme: the most powerful man in the world being treated like an overgrown baby. From FIFA inventing a brand-new prize seemingly just to flatter the White House resident, to clips of Trump lashing out at journalists, the infantilisation of global politics is truly in full swin...

Trawlers - what a week! In this truly wild instalment which is the first of THREE episodes this week. Marina and Jemma dive into the geopolitical chaos unfolding as Elon Musk throws a tantrum over an EU fine, Donald Trump unveils a National Security Strategy that is strangely pleasing to Moscow, and Europe realises the US have become the enemy. We also check in on Melania Trump’s festive storytell...

Christmas is coming, and so is the unhinged consumerism. Jemma and Marina kick off with Quality Street meltdowns, £9 hot chocolates and the most pointless gifts known to humankind, before swan-diving into the  real  seasonal horror: politics. Meanwhile, across the pond, Trump’s week has been a carnival of chaos. From Oval Office rants and sexist jabs at reporters, to killing-without-tria...

It’s been a week of karaoke meltdowns, pleather-skirt floor-crawling and  a  rusty saw nightmare… and yet Marina and Jemma are more determined than ever to get behind the mic to discuss the latest batshittery from the world of news and politics. They dive into the spectacular chaos of Your Party, and ponder the  finally-we’re-saying-it-out-loud  national acceptance that Brexit...

Marina and Jemma meet actress, Loose Woman and all round legend Nadia Sawalha. The Trawl ladies couldn’t wait to chat to Nadia and to find out what it’s been like using her huge Instagram platform to speak out about Gaza and to advocate for the Palestinians. They talk about juggling life as a Loose Woman whilst having a political voice, the consequences of speaking out and what her guilty pleasure...

In this  Trawl , Jemma and Marina dive into the political earthquake shaking Reform UK after former Welsh leader Nathan Gill was jailed for taking bribes linked to pro-Russian interests. With the party insisting there’s no need for an internal investigation, social media has been left... unconvinced. We pick through the online reaction, the disbelief, and the dark humour as Westminster scramb...

Brace yourselves, trawlers... Marina and Jemma are back and flailing through another chaotic week online. In this episode they dive into  everything : Musk’s unhinged Grok responses, the bot-farm MAGA fiasco, and a Musk appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast that is so painfully sad it should come with a health warning. Then it’s onto the budget: the leak, the playground antics from Kemi Ba...

It’s beginning to look a lot like chaos, Trawlers! In this 'starting to feel' festive-but-feral episode, Jemma and Marina wade through glitter explosions, Christmas tree catastrophes and a BBC News bauble-gate blooper before heading straight into the most unexpected love story of the season: Donald Trump going full  heart-eyes  for New York’s new Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani. What was mea...

Jemma and Marina are back, sifting through another load of digital debris so you don’t have to. Luckily, the weekend is in sight… though Christmas is also looming, the cosi-livs crisis continues to chew through bank accounts, and the UK's politicians? Well, they’re arguing amongst themselves as usual. The Trawl ladies check in on the incoming budget, beautifully skewered by Cody Dahler, before plu...

This is Part 2 of an Epstein emails Trawl deep dive. Once again, Marina and Jemma dive into the online storm surrounding newly unsealed Epstein-related documents and the political reactions that have set social media ablaze. From Megyn Kelly’s widely-shared comments to the way his most cultish followers are handling it, the Trawl ladies explore how the discourse spiralled, who said what, and why t...

This Trawl comes in TWO PARTS because there was simply too much to cram into just one episode. This episode has Jemma and Marina diving face-first into the internet’s latest swamp: the Elon–Trump–Epstein–AI hell-spiral nobody asked for but everybody is talking about. From Grok’s “alternative facts” rewriting reality in real time, to the newly released Epstein emails, which are lighting u...

In this episode of The Trawl, Jemma and Marina dive head-first into a planet-sized pile of billionaire bullshit — starting with the news that Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s  first trillionaire . Yes, trillionaire. As in: “bigger than the GDP of Saudi Arabia” trillionaire. They roll out a brand-new listener-made jingle for the “Trickle Down Update of the Week” and a...

From baked potatoes to pension raids, it’s another rollercoaster week in the weird and woeful world of UK politics. Jemma and Marina pay tribute to the glorious Pauline Collins, salute a life well lived, and then plunge straight into the nation’s latest highs and lows, including the latest (Not Prince) Andrew news. It involves a late night snack and what amounts to culinary cat...

This week on  The Trawl , Jemma Forte and Marina Purkiss are knee-deep in the latest wave of outrage from poppy politics to a BBC in apparent crisis. As Remembrance Sunday came and went, the usual suspects found new ways to weaponise the poppy, turning a moment of reflection into yet another battle in the culture war. Jemma and Marina unpick the hypocrisy, the viral clips, and the veteran bei...

It’s a week of whiplash on  The Trawl . Marina and Jemma begin with words - literally - as they find the perfect Susie Dent–style term to capture the emotional chaos of the moment. From there, it’s a hard swerve into horrors too big to scroll past: Netanyahu’s meltdown over leaked footage from a detention centre, the ongoing genocide in Sudan, and why it's practically impossible to absorb it...