The Trawl

The Trawl ladies are off to Tory conference and Kemi Badenoch has found a headline-grabbing pledge in scrapping inheritance tax on family homes. But who actually benefits, what might it cost, and what happens to everyone else? Jem has some thoughts, including a memorable encounter with a very wealthy former Dragons’ Den investor. Plus, the Conservatives’ plans for Reform defectors, a spectacularly...

It’s our first ever Trawl Drop In! A slightly less structured, more spontaneous outing in which Jemma and Marina tackle the stories that didn’t make the main pod. And blimey, there’s plenty to get stuck into. Has Zack Polanski’s party spectacularly misjudged its controversial conference motion on Zionism? Marina and Jemma get into the fallout, the leadership questions and what it all means for the...

The Trawl ladies are still looking for the bit where it gets better, and this week it's hiding behind a potential outbreak of pneumonic plague in Russia. Don't panic, Trawlers, Jemma and Marina have a plan, and it's mostly denial. Then there's Pete Hegseth's guide to who gets into the armed forces, which Marina reworks into some dating advice for Jemma's Hinge profile. And...

This week on The Trawl, there are… dare we say it… reasons to be cheerful. Andy Burnham is talking public ownership, electoral reform and a closer relationship with Europe, and suddenly the future doesn't seem quite so bleak. Marina and Jemma revisit the highlights from Labour conference, including plans to bring empty high-street buildings back to life, and ask: could hope actually be making...

Content warning: this episode discusses rape and sexual violence. Marina and Jemma open with some hope. Between Macklemore, Ed Sheeran's bad week, and the Andy Burnham effect, is the tide turning? Then they switch gears. In 2024, a Cornell student alleges she was drugged and then raped and sexually assaulted for seven hours at a fraternity house. A group chat of 57 people were made aware of it...

Two episodes in two days, because Marina couldn't sleep. Trawlers, this one's a tasting menu of the week's finest nonsense. The Trawl ladies start with GB News being crowned "most trusted news channel" by its own viewers (custard is the favourite custard among people who eat custard), then pay homage to a homegrown delusional wally who lasted 49 days and still gets the odd LB...

Jemma and Marina hit Labour conference with Andy Burnham's speech: social care, "Your First Home" and the triple lock. Both have opinions and neither can quite agree on how many pensioners will turn up with pitchforks. Plus Shabana Mahmood reads the room, and Jemma and Marina ask whether this is actual hope or just adrenaline and conference biscuits. Then to Reform, where a council h...

Columnist, bestselling author, Guardian journalist, broadcaster and one of the most prominent voices on the British left for well over a decade, Owen can always be relied on to say exactly what he thinks, no holds barred. He’s also someone who has never been particularly troubled by the idea of annoying people which, frankly, is one of the reasons Marina and Jemma like him. He’s fiercely critical...

Ed Sheeran is crying on stage after the backlash over Macklemore being dropped from his tour, while Macklemore remains remarkably clear that this isn’t about him, or Ed. Marina and Jemma get into the row, the strange spectacle of a global superstar discovering the politics of Palestine in real time, and why having “FU money” might occasionally mean having the courage to say - no. Then there’s the...

It’s another beautifully normal week on Planet Trawl. Europe is quietly preparing for war, we’re being told to stock up on tins and Trump is threatening to annihilate Iran while simultaneously floating a peace deal. So that’s nice. Marina and Jemma discuss Trump’s increasingly bonkers attempts to control the press, a House of Representatives that has essentially buggered off until after the midter...

Buckle up, Trawlers - the Trawl girls are finally doing the AI special they've been promising for two years but haven't got round to. Until now because the news has forced their hands. From Sam Altman and Elon Musk suddenly (suspiciously) calling for a "slowdown," to Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton leaving Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire lost for words, to an ex-Anthropic researcher quitting over f...

Sydney Sweeney has bosoms, Trump has a $5,000 promise, and somehow the FBI is having a conversation about bestiality. So yes, it’s been another perfectly normal week on Planet Earth. In this Trawl, Marina and Jemma get stuck into Sydney Sweeney’s gambling ad and ask whether “my body, my choice” also means “please don’t criticise my choices”. Trump, meanwhile, is promising Americans $5,000 if Repub...

Ed Sheeran dropped Macklemore for saying Free Palestine, and now the support acts have since been dropping Ed Sheeran. Turns out "apolitical" is a position, and it's not a popular one. Andy Burnham finally did something and slapped a trade ban on Israeli settlement goods and US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee is furious about it. Excellent work.  An Israeli newspaper is reporting Netanyah...

This week, Marina and Jem start in America — where Trump calls 18 dead soldiers "small potatoes," posts AI-generated videos of himself beating world leaders with a hockey stick, and explains trade to a room of adults too scared to tell him he's wrong. Rinse, repeat, somehow getting worse. Then they come home to Blighty — where things are going brilliantly. Hundreds of men in matching black balacla...

Trump reinvents 9/11 with himself as the hero, fireman-carried, fist in the air, saving the day from... four miles away. Meanwhile, it's all happening at the Reform conference, Farage lays out exactly how he'd neuter the House of Lords if it gets in his way, a woman protester gets her hair pulled and is hit with a crutch by livid OAPS and Robert Jenrick "resigns" from a job he doesn't have ov...

Jemma and Marina wade through the wreckage of Reform UK's worst week yet. A year-long undercover sting by investigative outfit Verbatim catches Nigel Farage's closest aides, head of policy James Orr and confidante Dan Jukes, on tape discussing how to secretly fund Reform's own polling through a fake American donor, all while a fictional $500,000 donation dangles in the background. Farage himself c...

Trump is renaming lakes, posting increasingly deranged AI images and apparently gearing up to declare the midterms rigged before they've even happened. Meanwhile, the US is reportedly threatening Britain over the Falklands, Trump's CIA director is making mysterious trips to Moscow, and democracy feels increasingly like it's being held together with Sellotape. Then there's Israel and Gaza, where th...

It’s been a busy week in politics. Andy Burnham is back, delivering a barnstorming speech attacking the legacy of Thatcherism and Brexit… before promptly getting himself into a spot of bother over a Sainsbury’s work-experience scheme, political donations and a rather fetching supermarket fleece. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer quits as an MP, James Cleverly quits the Shadow Cabinet to spend TWO YEARS camp...

Builders openly bragging about dodging tax at a trade show, Trump quietly admitting his own tariffs backfired by striking a deal to import cheaper beef right after telling ranchers he had their backs and an American food safety crisis.  Jemma and Marina have a lot to talk about what with food recalls stacking up in the US. There are dodgy eggs, blueberries, cheese and lettuce, as regulators g...

Marina and Jemma start by paying tribute to the utterly irreplaceable Dolly Parton, celebrating her extraordinary talent, generosity and legacy and remembering how she managed to reach people across political and cultural divides with warmth, compassion and a whole lot of rhinestones. Then it’s back into the grubby world of Trump. The Trawl ladies dissect his bizarre comments to a teenage lifesave...

This week on the Trawl, the rain finally arrives and apparently that's the cue for the water companies to start dumping sewage, for the right-wing press to blame Muslims for our water shortages, and everyone to start shouting about everything. Marina and Jemma look at Reform's recent setbacks, its curious approach to free speech, Andy Burnham's surprisingly punchy trip to Ukraine, and the extraord...

Right, buckle up, trawlers... Trump's crypto company has been rubber-stamped as an actual bank (by his own government no less!) and Marina and Jemma wave a cheery bye Felicia to his press secretary Caroline Levitt (left to perish on the decoy plane while Trump and a "very very very close aide" swanned off on the catering flight). They boggle at the Tates' Temu lawyer, a shouting salami in sunglass...

In this powerful episode of The Trawl, Jemma Forte and Marina Purkiss unpack the tragic death of Jason Arday. Arday was Cambridge’s first black professor, who endured an extraordinary media storm in the final weeks of his life. The Trawl ladies examine the 188 articles published about him in just nine days, the racist and hostile commentary that fuelled the story, and the wider questions it raises...

In this episode, things go from bad to worse before finally getting a little bit hopeful. Marina Purkiss and Jemma Forte dive into Trump’s latest chaos, the increasingly bizarre state of US politics, vaccine decisions that have them seriously worried, and the extraordinary rise of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Trump's obsession with the Michigan Senate candidate offers a rare glimmer of hope, p...

The Trawl is back from holiday, and unfortunately the world hasn't sorted itself out while Jemma and Marina have been away. This week: Britain is hot, dry and heading for a seriously dodgy harvest, while data centres are springing up demanding vast amounts of energy and water. But don't worry, apparently the answer, according to one journo at The Telegraph is to embrace Mediterranean life and crac...