The Documentary Podcast

Darfur: A precarious peace

17 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

After 17 years of conflict costing 300,000 lives, a peace agreement offers new hope to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. It comes as UNAMID, the Unite...

Don't Log Off: Opportunity

16 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alan hears stories from people who’ve transformed their lives and are helping others to do the same against the backdrop of the pandemic. He speaks ...

Coronavirus: Vaccines, frustrations and hope

12 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Two doctors in Nairobi tell host Nuala McGovern why conditions for health workers in Nairobi are leading to calls for a strike. They include rising de...

Syria's soldiers of fortune

10 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The bitter war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasian region of Nagorno Karabakh may have come to an end, but the business of fighting may co...

Don't log off: Grounded

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Dein searches for the nspiring and moving stories of how the pandemic has changed people's lives on every continent. Today, airline pilot Peter i...

Belarus across the barricades - part two

08 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For 100 days and counting protesters are calling for an end to the 26-year long rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. Poet Valzhyna Mort records fi...

Back down to Earth

05 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Since November 2000, humans have been living in space on the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS is a remarkable engineering achieveme...

Coronavirus: Vaccine approved

05 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nuala McGovern talks to Kerry. She has muscular dystrophy and has been shielding, or isolating, at home in England since March. We also hear from Dr J...

Me and my trolls

03 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Internet trolls are harassing and bullying people like never before. That’s according to research carried out in the UK which found abuse rising as ...

The state of the planet

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ahead of a crucial year in the battle to control climate change, presenter Lucy Hockings is joined by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He is...

Don't Log Off: Searching for hope

02 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Dein searches for the stories that connect us in a changed world. Inspiring and moving stories of how the pandemic has changed people's lives on ...

Belarus across the barricades - part one

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lucy Ash explores the world of the security forces that keep Lukashenko in power, peeling back the ubiquitous balaclavas to find the men and women ben...

100 Women: Women in power

29 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Ann Sieghart asks what it takes to be a powerful woman and what holds so many back. Sexism, appearance and encouraging fathers are all up for dis...

Coronavirus: Festive celebrations

28 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The arrival of winter for many countries brings the threat of increased infections as people gather indoors to escape the cold. It’s also a time for...

The Mapuche – fighting for their right to heal

26 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group – a population of more than 2 million people. And, they are fighting for their right to heal. The...

Don't Log Off: Resilience

25 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout the pandemic Alan Dein has been hearing inspiring and moving accounts of how people’s lives have been transformed by the pandemic. Today,...

100 Women: The mushroom woman

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This is the story of Chido Govera aka The Mushroom Woman. It is a story about her home, Zimbabwe. And it is also a story about mushrooms. It never sho...

Coronavirus: Mental and physical toll

21 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Women in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil reveal the frightening effect of the pandemic and lockdowns on women in Latin America. Many are living with their ag...

Martinique: The poisoning of paradise

19 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“First we were enslaved. Then we were poisoned.” That’s how many on Martinique see the history of their French Caribbean island that, to tourist...

The five-day election

18 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Philippa Thomas hears from voters across the United States on the agony and ecstasy of waiting for results of the unusually protracted presidential el...

Obesity crisis In Thai temples

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Obesity is a growing problem in Thailand. As the country becomes more affluent, its citizens are working more and cooking less which means that they a...

Blood lands

15 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

At dusk on a warm evening in 2016, two men arrive, unexpectedly, at a remote South African farmhouse. The frenzy that follows will come to haunt a com...

US election: A test of democracy

14 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Joe Biden is the projected winner of the race to be the next president of the United States. Donald Trump, however, refuses to concede the election an...

The burning scar

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, a product found in everything from shampoo to soup; in the last two decades vast areas of for...

India's missing children

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes. BBC South Asia Correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan meets the family of one of those children and fol...

US election: Divided nation

07 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The US election has amplified political and racial divisions across the nation, so how do voters feel about the splits in their society?Host Nuala McG...

Sicily’s prisoner fishermen

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eighteen fishermen from Sicily are in jail in Benghazi, accused of fishing in Libya’s waters. And in this part of the Mediterranean, rich in the hig...

Missing and murdered: America’s forgotten native girls

03 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Native American women are trafficked, murdered and raped at five to ten times the national rate of other American women. The figures are gruelling. Ea...

US election: Race and policing

31 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the presidential election campaign nears its conclusion, another American city witnesses protests for racial justice after police officers shoot de...

US election: Socially distant

29 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ahead of the US presidential election on 3 November, two socially distanced views of the pre-election political landscape of America, explore differen...

China's rocket man

27 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Qian Xuesen is widely celebrated in China as the father of the country’s rocket programme, and the man who kick-started its exploration of space. Ch...

Fighting together in Korea

25 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Seventy years ago tens of thousands of North Korean troops invaded South Korea. Over the next three years one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th C...

US election: Trucking and farming

24 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nuala McGovern speaks with truck drivers and farmers in the United States as they share their thoughts on how their lives and livelihoods have been un...

The British and their fish

22 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

By the middle of the 20th century, the English town of Grimsby was the biggest fishing port in the world. When the catch was good “fishermen could l...

A perfect match

20 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Thirteen years ago, journalist Ibby Caputo underwent a bone marrow transplant in the US to treat an aggressive form of leukaemia. Because she is of No...

The TikTok election

18 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

TikTok has become one of the political stories in the run up to the US elections, exposing America's distrust of China. But its users and influencers ...

The Response USA: The return

17 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As an election approaches in America, we return to a unique experiment which took the temperature of the USA after the surprise election of Donald Tru...

US election: Losing your job

17 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Our conversations reflect the impact Covid-19 has had on the US economy and on people’s jobs and wellbeing. We hear from a cook in northern Californ...

Reza's story

15 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A death-defying migrant's story... Said Reza Adib was a TV journalist in Afghanistan. In 2016, about to break a story about the sexual abuse of childr...

Dyslexia: Into adulthood

13 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stella Sabin, who has dyslexia herself, looks at the impact of the condition in adult life, and asks what difference does it make to know the name of ...

Spitfire stories

11 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1940, in two factories in Southampton, one of the most iconic planes of World War Two was being painstakingly assembled, piece by piece. ...

US election: Testing positive for Covid-19

10 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The President of the United States is recovering from Covid-19, after a week when the world watched him leaving hospital briefly in a motorcade to wav...

Portland, prisons and white supremacy - part two

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The second part of this two-part documentary continues the story of Portland, Oregon and its struggle with white supremacists.Portland has a reputatio...

Dyslexia: Language and childhood

06 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Toby Withers who is dyslexic himself, reveals the challenges of learning English, with all its inconsistent rules and odd spellings. He talks to the s...

US Election 2020: Trump and coronavirus

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed more than 200,000 lives in the US and there are more than 7 million confirmed cases. President Trump, whose appro...

Portland, prisons and white supremacy - part one

01 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Portland, Oregon, has a reputation as one of the United States’ most liberal and tolerant cities. Since the death of George Floyd, it has been at th...

Songs of the Humpback Whale

29 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Songs of the Humpback Whale was released in 1970 and went multi-platinum, becoming the best selling environmental album of all time. But it also becam...

What has Nobel done for the World?

27 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Brilliance is a must to win a Nobel Prize, but is that the only requirement? What else does it take to become a laureate? Ruth Alexander tells the sto...

Coronavirus: Back to normal in Wuhan?

26 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What is life like now in the Chinese city where Covid-19 was first detected? Officials have declared Wuhan virus-free. Lots of people have been sharin...

Poland's gay pride and prejudice

24 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A number of small towns in Poland have been campaigning against what they call 'homosexual ideology'. Local authorities in the provinces have passed r...

Coronavirus: Friendships during lockdown

19 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Covid-19 is affecting our relationships - some are better, others are more challenging. A jewellery designer in India and a lawyer in the United State...

The trouble with Dutch cows

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Netherlands - small and overcrowded - is facing fundamental questions about how to use its land, following a historic court judgment forcing the s...

The shepherd and the settler

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Muhammad is a Bedouin shepherd in a remote corner of the West Bank called Rashash. His family has been herding sheep and goats in Rashash for 30 years...

Remembering those lost to Covid-19

11 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It is six months since the outbreak of a new coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Very few lives around the world have not been affected by Cov...

South Africa moonshine

10 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pineapple beer is the universal homebrew in South Africa and pineapple prices trebled when the government imposed a ban on the sale of alcohol and tob...

Accused of hacking the Pentagon

09 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Seven years ago in a sleepy English village a doorbell rang. In that moment, Lauri Love’s life changed completely. Lauri was arrested at the door. H...

Why India is mad for motorbikes

08 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What is behind the deep-seated and increasing passion for motorcycling in India?The hosts of the podcast Biker Radio Rodcast, explore what drives the ...

BBC OS Conversations: Covid-free nations

07 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Vanuatu, Micronesia and the Solomon Islands are among a handful of nations that have no registered coronavirus cases. Yet, despite this enviable statu...

Naziha Syed Ali: Pakistan’s fearless female reporter

03 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Naziha Syed Ali has made a career out of investigating sometimes scandalous abuses of power in her native Pakistan. Publishing in the count...

Rulebreakers: A beautiful prison

02 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Greenland has been detangling its colonised relationship with Denmark since World War Two. Along the way, each state service and law needs to be rewri...

The Soviet Feminist Army

01 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Soviet women spreading ideas on women’s equality in Afghanistan They were highly trained, focused on their mission and dedicated to their goal o...

Coronavirus: Children with special needs

30 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Children around the world are starting to return to school after months of absence because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nuala McGovern talks to Unathi...

August in Minsk

29 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

August in Minsk tells the story of the popular uprising in Belarus this August; a fast-changing revolt against the Soviet-style regime of Alexander Lu...

Hugh Sykes: Reporting from the frontlines

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hugh Sykes has reported for the BBC since the 1970s and has travelled far and wide to witness some of the most significant events of our age. Here, in...

Rulebreakers: Veteran on the tracks

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There is a secret map passed down from hobo to hobo. You can’t buy it in stores or download it online but if you’re lucky enough to get a copy you...

Red State refugees

25 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

President Trump has dramatically reduced the numbers of refugees arriving in the United States, vowing to protect native-born Americans’ interests. ...

BBC OS Conversations: Covid-19 'long-haulers'

23 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of people across the globe are experiencing a worrying cycle of Covid-19 symptoms months after recovering from the disease. Four of the so-c...

Barbara Demick: True stories from North Korea

20 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

North Korea and Tibet are two of the most tightly-controlled societies on earth, and as a consequence their peoples are often misunderstood by the wor...

Rulebreakers: How I disappear

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Japan, if you want to disappear from your life, you can just pick up the phone and a ‘night moving company’ will turn you into one of the count...

Vaccines, money and politics

18 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sandra Kanthal looks at what strategies are being put in place to transport a vaccine to countries around the world, who will be the first in those co...

BBC OS Conversations: Addiction during a pandemic

16 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nuala McGovern considers alcohol and drug addiction relapse during the pandemic. We hear from two men, in Kenya and the United States, about how they ...

Stitching souls

16 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The women of Gee’s Bend have held on to their creative traditions, passed down from mother to daughter: spine-tingling gospel singing, and a unique ...

Milton Nkosi: The apartheid child who changed Africa’s story

13 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As a child of Soweto, apartheid South Africa’s most notorious black township, Milton Nkosi could easily have become an embittered adult; in June 197...

Fighting talk: How language can make us better

12 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When we talk about cancer it’s often hard to find the right words. As we search for the perfect thing to say, we find ourselves reaching for familia...

Vaccines, money and politics

11 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly every person on the planet is vulnerable to the new coronavirus, SarsCoV2. That’s why there are more than 100 projects around the world racin...

BBC OS Conversations: After the Beirut explosion

09 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Beirut has been left destroyed by this week’s massive explosion: more than a hundred are dead; thousands injured and hundreds of thousands have been...

Worlds Apart

09 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The pandemic has accelerated de-globalisation. Governments worry now about the length and strength of medical supply chains and cross-border trade and...

Soft Jihad Assignment

07 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States a small but increasingly vocal group of people believe that members of the country's Muslim community are working from within to ...

Algeria's plague revisited

06 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A mysterious illness appears out of nowhere. The number of cases rises exponentially, as the authorities attempt to downplay the severity of the disea...

Karachi's ambulance drivers

04 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Karachi, with a population of around 20 million people, ambulance drivers are on the front lines of this megacity’s shifting conflicts. Samira Sh...

BBC OS Conversations: Spain's tourism industry

01 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During a period of huge uncertainty, Spain's tourism industry suffers a setback while musicians in South Africa, Denmark and the United States share c...

Venezuela's 'Bay of Piglets'

30 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A failed coup in Venezuela - a story of hubris, incompetence, and treachery… At the beginning of May, the government of Nicolas Maduro announced the...

Ingenious: The milkshake and the cyclops gene

29 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Milkshake Gene - (LCTL) - More than 90% of people in some parts of the world are unable to properly digest milk, cheese and other dairy products. ...

Karachi's ambulance drivers

28 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Karachi, with a population of around 20 million people, ambulance drivers are on the front lines of this megacity’s shifting conflicts. Samira Sh...

Death of Elijah McClain

26 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man, was killed after an encounter with police in Colorado last year. He had been put in a chokehold and injected ...

The most important, least important thing

26 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why is watching sport so important to us as a species? And what happens when that experience is taken away from us? Award-winning sports journalist an...

The many colours of Raqqa

23 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The untold story of Abood Hamam, perhaps the only photojournalist to have worked under every major force in Syria's war - and lived to tell the tale. ...

Ingenious: The ginger gene and breast cancer gene

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A particular version of the ginger gene MC1R underpins the fiery hair and freckled complexion of redheads, famed and feared in many cultures. But it i...

The confined: A story of hidden children

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1942 in Nazi occupied France Jews were hunted and those helping them could be sent to concentration camps. Despite the dangers a Catholic nun took ...

South Africa’s alcohol ban

19 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For the second time during its Covid-19 outbreak, South Africa has decided to ban sales of alcohol. How does that have an impact on the workload of do...

Embankment baby

19 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tony May was only weeks old when he was abandoned as a baby on the Victoria Embankment in London in 1942. There was no clue to who he was or why he wa...

Coronavirus and Africa

18 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The terrible choice between hunger and infection, police imposing lockdowns with brutality and the unexpected positives to come out of the pandemic in...

What the sediment revealed in Lebanon

16 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of a mysterious delivery of defective, sediment-heavy fuel intended to generate electricity in Lebanon has sparked a huge scandal in the...

DNA and me

14 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Want to know who you really are? Take an at-home DNA test, just like over 26 million others have around the globe. But the question is: why? For many,...

Black America speaks

12 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We listen in to four black-owned radio stations in the United States to find out how they are covering the killing of George Floyd and the waves of pr...

The Coronavirus Frontline special

12 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This series comes from the Bradford Royal Infirmary, in the North of England, with recordings made by Dr John Wright, who works there. He is an epidem...

The missing bodies of Guayaquil

09 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In March and April, Guayaquil in Ecuador was the epicentre of the Covid pandemic in Latin America. The city’s health services began to collapse fast...

Unmapped world

07 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Maps are the scaffolding of the digital age. Without them, and their associated data, a technological revolution is impossible. Vast swathes of Africa...

Race in America: My enslaved ancestors

04 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As Americans call for change following the killing of George Floyd, three women share the history of slavery in their families and discuss its impact ...

Wuhan: City of silence

02 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The BBC’s China correspondent, John Sudworth, travels to Wuhan – the city on the banks of the Yangtze river where Covid-19 first emerged. As the c...