The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

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From the archive: The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming

2/12/2025 • 33 min

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2021: Between accidents, disease and bad weather, farm animals are prey to so many disasters that dedicated professionals are called out to dispose of the casualties. It’s a grim task, and one that’s only getti… Play episode

‘Bring me my tariffs’: how Trump’s China plan was 40 years in the making
Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future?
From the archive: The false positives scandal: how thousands of innocent C…
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disap…
Endless work, little money, occasional UFOs: my father’s five decades driv…
From the archive: How one man spent 34 years in prison after setting fire …
The man making a business out of China’s burnout generation
Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s stranges…
From the archive: Inspired by nature: the thrilling new science that could…
‘Look, they’re getting skin!’: are we right to strive to save the world’s …
Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process
From the archive: ‘A deranged pyroscape’: how fires across the world have …
The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank
The ‘mad egghead’ who built a mouse utopia
From the archive: Cold comfort: how cold water swimming cured my broken he…
Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentist grandmother
The brain collector: the scientist unravelling the mysteries of grey matter
From the archive: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
The rollercoaster king: the man behind the UK’s fastest thrill-ride
Best of 2024: ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: ho…
Best of 2024: As a teenager, John was jailed for assaulting someone and st…
Best of 2024: ‘It comes for your very soul’: how Alzheimer’s undid my dazz…
Best of 2024: Nairobi to New York and back: the loneliness of the internat…
Revisited: Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who s…
10 years of the long read: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers (2024)
10 years of the long read: ‘All that we had is gone’: my lament for war-to…
A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than t…
Revisited: Too much stuff: can we solve our addiction to consumerism?
The scandal of food waste – and how we can stop it
‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Pales…
10 years of the long read: Seven stowaways and a hijacked oil tanker: the …
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair
‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with …
10 years of the long read: The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s f…
The cement company that paid millions to Isis: was Lafarge complicit in cr…
Journalist or Russian spy? The strange case of Pablo González
10 years of the long read: The invisible city: how a homeless man built a …
Has poppymania gone too far?
Slash and burn: is private equity out of control?
10 years of the long read: Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly di…
Hidden traces of humanity: what AI images reveal about our world
The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US
10 years of the long read: Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping fo…
‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope
The trial of Björn Höcke, the ‘real boss’ of Germany’s far right
10 years of the long read: How the sandwich consumed Britain (2017)
‘For me, there was no other choice’: inside the global illegal organ trade
How oligarchs took on the UK fraud squad – and won
10 years of the long read: Man v rat: could the long war soon be over? (20…

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