James Shield

The decision facing Zelensky Podcast Episode · The Global Story · 24/11/2025 · 26m

Our episode on the decision facing Zelensky – with director of 20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Four programmes I edited for the BBC World Service this week

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

Senior Journalist, Long Form Audio Senior Journalist, Long Form Audio

Jobs like this don’t come up very often. The BBC is hiring a senior producer to work on the legendary Profile – in my opinion one of the best programmes on Radio 4 – and AntiSocial. Deadline 17th November: careers.bbc.co.uk/job/Senior-J...

A House of Dynamite is a brilliant, terrifying film about making an impossible decision with scant information

A few months ago my colleagues did something similar from a UK perspective

The key difference was that we knew who was attacking us... But our options were limited

The British Podcast Awards featured a strange “glitch” that everyone found amusing; but has interesting implications. Most of the winners were upstairs in the cheap balcony seats, meaning there was a few minutes’ delay on almost EVERY award as the winners went down the back stairs to the stage. >>

BBC launches new daily international podcast The Global Story BBC News has released the first episode of The Global Story, a new daily international news podcast exploring the relationship between the United States and the wider world.

BBC News has released the first episode of The Global Story, a new daily international news podcast exploring the relationship between the United States and the wider world.
podcastingtoday.co.uk/bbc-launches...

Jayne Morgan‘s review of The Wargame:

“In a podcast landscape that is currently dominated by the ‘two people in a room’ format, it strikes a blow for the idea that complex, original audio production is still very much worthwhile”

us8.campaign-archive.com?u=74b693fa81...

The Wargame podcast: Fictional British government faces a terrifying choice in final episode Under yet another attack from Russia, a fictional British government of former ministers and military chiefs face a terrifying choice in the final episode of The Wargame.

The Wargame podcast: Fictional British government faces a terrifying choice in final episode

The finale of The Wargame is out tomorrow (or possibly tonight if you refresh your feed). It took a small army to pull it off. What a talented team.
podfollow.com/thewargame

The Wargame review — a terrifying look at what a Russian attack would be like As Tortoise and Sky News show in their five-star new podcast, if Nato didn’t help in the event of a strike on the UK, our options would be alarmingly slim

Five stars for The Wargame in The Times

“Frightening and brilliant”

www.thetimes.com/article/5b1c...

Inside the Wargame | The Observer Independent journalism | News, culture & style | Investigations, analysis, features, ideas, recipes, newsletters & podcasts that make sense of the world

The Observer is hosting a spoilertastic event about The Wargame in its newsroom next month:
observer.co.uk/our-events/i...

Episodes 3 & 4 of 'The Wargame' scheduled for release tonight.

Meanwhile, Russian state media coverage highlights that "they also have a person playing the president of Russia. This one. With a beard."

As a general rule I think adding music to a project as early as possible makes your edit better, because you can fit the speech around the music and vice versa, rather than waiting until the very end of the edit to add music into a finished edit. The ducking tool helps with that.

Audio of the draft script was temped by an AI narrator, which meant we could record the script just the once, after we'd refined it; 'ducking' meant Descript would automate music levels around speech, giving us a rough automix; and the basic EQ/compressor made it an easier listen.

3) I've used these for years, but I think they're still underused: the audio effects panel (ducking, high-pass, compressor, limiter) and AI voices. Used together, they meant we could send rough edits for feedback which sounded much closer to the finished product.

2) The 'remove retakes' feature. The series running time is 272 mins and we have a lot of script, recorded over about 7 hours in the studio in total, so 'remove retakes' + 'shorten silences' really helped speed up script editing.

Having video which was vision mixed live, and then working on a single video and audio edit up to the last stage of the process, hopefully saved time. It's the first time I've worked like this but it was pretty straightforward.

… this meant that once our edit was done, it could be exported from Descript both to a Premiere timeline (for Sky colleagues to produce the video promos) and to Reaper, where I could swap the video for the original isolated audio stems before sending it to the sound designers.

For the audio nerds, here are two new techniques (and one old one) I used to edit The Wargame in Descript:

1) All of the scenes in the Cobra room are edited from video files, which were vision mixed live on the day of the wargame by a Sky News OB team and Spiritland.

That new The Wargame podcast is utterly brilliant. Not had a god tier podcast for ages. This is definitely that.

YouTube video by Sky News The Wargame podcast: What if Russia attacked the UK?

The Wargame from Sky News and Tortoise is out today. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we made it happen.

youtu.be/K6o8_onQrFQ?...

Watch out for this tomorrow.

Had a nice chat with Dom Joly on Times Radio about The Wargame, which is out on Tuesday.

I’ll be on Times Radio with Deborah Haynes from Sky News from 2.45ish to talk about our new series, The Wargame.

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK Former senior politicians, including Sir Ben Wallace, Jack Straw and Amber Rudd, play a fictional British government pitched against an imagined Kremlin.

This sounds great.

Former senior politicians, including Sir Ben Wallace, Jack Straw and Amber Rudd, play a fictional British government pitched against an imagined Kremlin.

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK
news.sky.com/story/the-wa...

Sky News and Tortoise launch simulated Russian attack podcast Sky News and Tortoise Media are launching a new original podcast series, The Wargame, which simulates a fictional Russian attack on the UK.

Sky News and Tortoise Media are launching a new original podcast series, The Wargame, which simulates a fictional Russian attack on the UK. #skynews #tortoise
podcastingtoday.co.uk/sky-news-and...

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK Former senior politicians, including Sir Ben Wallace, Jack Straw and Amber Rudd, play a fictional British government pitched against an imagined Kremlin.

Date for your diary: on 10 June you will want to listen to this, especially if you are in the UK. @deborahaynes.bsky.social brought together a home team of former ministers, generals and top civil servants to game out defence against Russia. The results are interesting.

news.sky.com/story/the-wa...

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK A top team of former government ministers and military and security chiefs have taken part in a wargame that simulates a Russian attack on the UK for a new podcast series announced on Wednesday by Sky News and Tortoise Media.

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK

The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK Former senior politicians, including Sir Ben Wallace, Jack Straw and Amber Rudd, play a fictional British government pitched against an imagined Kremlin.

From 10 June: Our new podcast series about a wargame that simulates a Russian attack on the UK.

Former ministers and military chiefs play the UK government, pitched against an imagined Kremlin.

news.sky.com/story/the-wa...

I ran some very speedy audio field recording training this week for a TV journalist. Literally 2-3 minutes – it’s all the time we had. What else would be on your list?