The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann - Robbyn Swan & Anthony Summers - #060

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Howdy, friends. I'm coming to you all the way from Boston as my trip across America continues, and so do the podcasts. And this week, it is something very special indeed. Robbyn Swan and Anthony Summers are investigative authors and two of the world's foremost authorities on the Madeleine McCann case. You may recognize them from the Netflix series, which has recently reignited public interest in what was already the world's most famous missing child case. And given that it feels like everybody has an opinion on what happened to little Madeline, I thought it might be a good idea to get some experts in who can actually take us through the real evidence. So today, we will be walked through the most important elements of the case. We will be told exactly what the states of the investigation is now. And Robbyn and Anthony will tell us their opinion on what really happened to Madeleine McCann. Now, if you have a friend who has a strongly held theory of their own, I urge you to share this podcast with them to hopefully help to illuminate exactly what is going on with this case. I do think that the common understanding and the common interpretation of exactly what went on appears to be so far from the truth based on what we hear today that it really is quite important for this message to get out. As always, I would really appreciate the shares, and if you have any questions or comments or feedback, at ChrisWillX on all social media, or the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel is waiting for you as well. Further to that, if you want to find out more, you can head to the show notes below and grab Looking for Madeleine, Robbyn and Anthony's book, which has just been updated for 2019 with new evidence and new information. That will be in the show notes below. But for now, please welcome Anthony and Robbyn.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined by Robbyn Swan and Anthony Summers. You may recognize them from the most recent Netflix series on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Guys, welcome to the show.

**Robbyn Swan** (2:19)
Thank you very much.

**Chris Williamson** (2:21)
So you are investigative journalists, but you're also married, and you've been working together for about 30 years. Is that right?

**Anthony Summers** (2:31)
That's, I think, what my wife would say.

**Robbyn Swan** (2:36)
One of us works, right?

**Anthony Summers** (2:39)
I've never really been fond of that description, investigative journalist. When asked what I am, I suppose I would say, and I was to nail it down, am I a bank manager or an engine driver or an investigative journalist, I would go for the third. But I always think that it's a misnomer in the sense that everyone in this business, in the journalist business should, in theory, try to dig beyond the grass that you can see and find out what's underneath. I totally get that. That is what we do, and that's what we've done in our career together.

**Chris Williamson** (3:19)
Yes. So having a look at your back catalogue of books, 9-11, Pearl Harbor, Richard Nixon and Madeleine McCann, there's some high pressure topics in there. Do you ever find the difficulty and the emotion and the pressure of writing with quite inflammatory topics ever? Do the lines get crossed with the relationship at all? Does that ever come in or are you able to mediate those pretty effectively?

**Anthony Summers** (3:49)
As a thoroughly cowed husband and co-author, I will leave Robbyn to answer that.

**Robbyn Swan** (3:58)
On a serious note, always the one to interject, it's a serious note here, frankly, we're incredibly lucky to be able to do the kind of work we do. What a privilege to be able to explore some of the most important cultural and historical moments of the last century and try to bring your own little bit of extra information into that to try to write that story well. Sure, there's pressure and we don't always agree, but I think the reason we have found that we're able to work together well is that sometimes we have slightly different strengths, but we're both incredibly relentless when it comes to the digging.
If one isn't pushing, the other one is. And I think so, so we have a real simpatico in that way. But also, I think each of us respects the other's, the other's talent, you know. Tony has an extraordinary ability to make the complex simple, you know, to drive what we call a coach and horses through a naughty problem and make it possible for readers to understand something in a really, you know, basic but interesting way. And I think, you know, I'm pretty good at, you know, getting the big picture of things and, you know, delivering, you know, to the project all the nuts and bolts so that we can do that, so that we can have that material to base the story on.