The Documentary Podcast Folgen

Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has led his country’s efforts to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. At one level it turned into a very personal mission. At the beginning of April he was hospitalised having tested positive for the virus and spent three days in intensive care fighting for his life. Jonny Dymond asks how this happened and what it reveals about Mr Johnson’s style of leadership and politics. (Image: Boris Johnson as he gives a statement outside 10 Downing Street on 27 April 27 2020 on his return to work after being hospitalised with the Covid-19 virus. Credit: Pippa Fowles/10 Downing Street/AFP via Getty Images)

It is week one of the coronavirus. In this critical time, decisions were made that set the entire trajectory of the crisis. The program uses exclusive interviews with a cast of characters who were on the ground at the hospital in the very beginning. Their stories, combined with striking audio from the heat of the moment, brings listeners into the critical turning-points that defined the crisis to come. We meet Dr Li, the head of the ICU in Wuhan and one of the first doctors to intubate a patient with Covid-19. As his hospital became overrun with patients, he and his colleagues debated just how contagious the virus was, what should be told to the general populace, and the proper government response.

How ‘get Brexit done’ turned into ‘StayatHome’ through the experiences of four first time MPs. They represent constituencies across the North of England – places where voters had switched traditional allegiances in great numbers. Conservative MP Simon Fell, won in Barrow-in-Furness, Olivia Blake, the newly elected Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam, Charlotte Nichols who held on narrowly against the Brexit tide in Warrington North and Richard Holden who took the North West Durham seat from Labour.