The Documentary Podcast

Panic in Bulgaria

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Schools in Roma districts of Bulgaria emptied in minutes in a mass panic recently. Parents dragged their children out of class, fearing that if they s...

Vanuatu’s stolen generation

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On the tiny island of Tanna in Vanuatu in the South Pacific the ocean is a huge part of everyday life. The Tannanese rely on the sea for their livelih...

Polygamous marriage in modern Malaysia

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Muslim Malaysians often have complex and tangled views about polygamy. Their feelings and beliefs are not always mirrored by their actions. What role ...

Colombia’s new cocaine war

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Colombia produced a record 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine last year - about 70% of the world’s supply. In the regions where coca is grown, gangs f...

Survival and revival in the Torres Strait

29 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change is lapping at the shores of Poruma, a tropical island in Australia’s Torres Strait. It is a dot in the Pacific Ocean, just two kilome...

South Korea’s hope in hell

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Academic expectations, job competition and financial pressures are forcing some young South Koreans to give up on relationships, marriage and kids. Th...

The remarkable resistance of Lilo

24 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the heart of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, members of the Resistance worked tirelessly and at great risk to themselves to help those whose lives were th...

Finland's race to go carbon neutral

23 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How do you achieve net-zero carbon emissions in just fifteen years? In Finland, a fisherman-turned-climate scientist believes he has part of the answe...

Disagreeing better

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we hold our opponents in contempt? Former British politician Douglas Alexander believes that disagreement is good - it is how the best argument...

My father the killer

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“Did you actually kill hundreds of people, Dad?” This is certainly not a question that many people feel the need to ask their parents. But for a g...

Greenland: Why music matters

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Molleson visits the world’s largest island to explore the role of traditional and new music for its communities today. Between the capital of N...

Ayahuasca: Fear and healing in the Amazon

16 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Psychedelic plants, the spiritual tourism backlash - and sexual abuse. Increasing numbers of tourists are travelling to the Peruvian Amazon to drink a...

The Coffin Club

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2010, Katie Williams – a former palliative care nurse – started the first Coffin Club in her garage. The idea was that elderly New Zealanders w...

Germany: Justice and memory

12 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This year, 2020, sees the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two. Its legacy remains. Nowhere more so than in Germany, where the rise of Nazism ...

Belarus: The wild world of Chernobyl

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ninety year old Galina is one of the last witnesses to the wild natural world that preceded the Chernobyl zone in southern Belarus. 'We lived with wol...

Trans in Japan

07 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Japan to change gender, people must be sterilised, have gender reassignment surgery, not have any children under the age of 20 and must be single. ...

The world turned upside down

03 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For more than a century, the world has revolved around fossil fuels. Wars have been fought over them. The nations that had oil and gas had power. They...

Disappeared in Thailand

02 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Polajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen was last seen on April 17, 2014. At the time the human rights activist was working with lawyers in Bangkok to stop...

Hey Sisters, Sew Sisters

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Space travel is not always high-tech. When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969, seamstresses made their spacesuits at a company famous fo...

Time has chosen us

29 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the Soviet war in Afghanistan told through its teenage soldiers and the music they created. The 10-year conflict from 1979 to 1989 was on...

Iceland: The great thaw

26 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Iceland's glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate, with scientists predicting that they could all be gone 200 years from now.How is this affecti...

Ii: The greenest town in Europe

24 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The town of Ii in northern Finland is a green trailblazer. It has managed to stop burning fossil fuels and will have reduced carbon emissions by 80% b...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

22 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the leading liberal Judge on the US Supreme Court. At 86 she has spent many decades fighting for women’...

Living with Star Wars

22 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is the true story of how Star Wars Episode IV-A New Hope got made. A film that, as plain old Star Wars, transformed cinema to become part of a po...

County lines: Girl drug runners in the UK

19 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

New figures released in the UK have revealed at least 4,000 young people are currently caught up in what are known as "county lines" – meeting order...

Romania’s revolution 30 years on

18 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thirty years after Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas day, Tessa Dunlop looks back at the violent birth of post-...

The Rainbow Railroad

17 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jane and Patricia fled their home in the middle of the night. Days before they had narrowly escaped an arson attack. It’s illegal to be gay in Barba...

Judy Garland: The final rainbow

15 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Judy Garland's last concerts at London's the Talk of The Town in 1969 is the subject of a new feature film. Weaving together newly restored archive re...

A fight for light in Lebanon

12 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Life in Lebanon is a daily battle to beat the power cuts caused by the country's chronic electricity shortage. If you live in a block of flats, you ha...

From Bude to Berlin

11 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gordon Corera becomes the first journalist allowed to record inside GCHQ's listening station at Bude on Britain’s south-west coast. The station has ...

My Big Korean-Iranian Wedding

10 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hossein Sharif is an Iranian boy, about to marry Hee Sue, a South Korean girl. As the families begin to meet, Sharif discovers all the criss-crossing ...

The digital election: How social media is reshaping UK democracy

07 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the UK’s 2019 general election, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are playing a more prominent role than in an...

Sri Lanka: The new climate of fear

05 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There’s a new climate of fear in Sri Lanka. This time it’s the Muslim community who are fearful of the future. The Easter bomb attacks in Sri Lank...

How Scarborough saved the world

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The work of GCHQ started just after the end of World War One as telegraph became a vital means of military communications. We hear from people who wor...

Giving peace a chance

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-in for peace protest and the people who witnessed it

The man who laughed at al-Qaeda

28 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Raed Fares, founder of Syria's legendary Radio Fresh FM, was mowed down by unknown gunmen as he left his studios in rebel-held Idlib in November 2018....

Emperor complex

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the span of five years, Chairman Huang turned farmland in China’s Sichuan province into Seaside City. The ocean-themed town, which Huang says was...

The Malawi tapes

24 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A race is on to save thousands of tapes of traditional Malawian music in danger of disintegrating in the archives of state broadcaster, Malawi Broadca...

Russian women fight back

21 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Domestic abuse in Russia is endemic with thousands of women dying at the hands of their partners every year. Despite this a controversial law was pass...

Sierra Leone: The price of going home

14 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Fatmata, Jamilatu and Alimamy all see themselves as failures. They’re young Sierra Leoneans who risked everything for the sake of a better life in E...

Hong Kong: Love in a divided city

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Unprecedented mass protests have caused chaos in Hong Kong’s public sphere – but what has it meant for private life? How have they affected the in...

Comrade Africa

10 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How Communist East Germany tried to influence Africa via radio, during the Cold War. The West often saw the GDR as a grim and grey place, so it’s so...

Albania’s Iranian guests

07 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Who are Albania’s Iranian guests? In July, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani visited an Albanian village just outside Tirana. At a t...

Moondog: Sound of New York

06 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

New Yorker Huey Morgan examines the life, work and enduring appeal of the musician known as Moondog, who lived and worked on the city's streets in the...

Cameroon's MMA champion

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

By the age of 10 Francis Ngannou was working in a sand quarry, where he dreamed of becoming a world class boxer. As a young man he traversed the Sahar...

The Zogos of Liberia

31 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When Miatta was 14 years old, armed rebels stormed into her classroom and forcibly recruited her and her classmates. They were trained to use machine ...

Northern Ireland 1969: The violence spreads

30 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ruth Sanderson grew up in Northern Ireland yet never really understood how the Troubles started. In the second programme, looking back at Scarman test...

Uganda's war in the bush

27 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Kasujja tells the story of the guerilla war in Uganda which began nearly 40 years ago and led to the current President Yoweri Museveni taking pow...

Being black in Italy

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dickens Olewe meets Italy’s first and only black senator, Tony Iwobi, and hears how a new generation of black Italians are fighting to claim their p...

Northern Ireland 1969: Battle lines

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ruth Sanderson grew up in Northern Ireland, yet never really understood how the Troubles started. Although the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement effective...

Looking for love: The Zoroastrian way

22 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Zoroastrian community has given the world Freddie Mercury, produced some of India’s richest businessmen and practises one of the world’s oldes...

Super Sisters

20 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1979 a young girl named Melissa Rich asked her mother Lois why there were no women trading cards. So Lois decided to produce her own set called “...

Argentina’s ‘white gold’ rush

17 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Are lithium-powered electric vehicles as ‘green’ as we think they are? With the advent of electric cars, manufacturers tell us we’re racing towa...

The Gospel of Wealth

16 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What should billionaires do with their money? The world’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie said they should give it all away. Andrew Carnegi...

My personal history of sormeh

15 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The eyes have always been a focal point of Persian beauty for men and women and they have always been embellished with sormeh, or thick black eyeliner...

Cuba's digital revolution

13 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A revolution is underway in Cuba. The country’s communist leaders, who normally retain tight control of the media, have encouraged Cubans to become ...

Nigeria: sex for grades

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

University lecturers sexually harassing and blackmailing their students. It's a problem which plagues West Africa but it's almost never proven. Until ...

Translating for mum and dad

09 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Across the UK, in supermarkets, hospitals, council houses and solicitors’ offices, children and young people are doing vital unpaid work: interpreti...

Passport to paradise

08 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Citizenship is changing; and half the world’s governments are making money through citizenship schemes. In Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific Island Nation, a ...

Undercover with the clerics: Iraq’s secret sex trade

03 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Muslim men and women are forbidden to sleep together outside marriage, but in Iraq, it’s possible for men to find a way round this obstacle to sexua...

How to buy your own country

01 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Citizenship is changing; and half the world’s governments are making money through citizenship schemes. We investigate the booming trade in passport...

America's child brides

29 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A tense debate is taking place in states across America. At what age should someone be allowed to marry? Currently in 48 out of 50 states a child can ...

Chile’s Stolen Babies

26 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A Chilean man - adopted at birth and sent overseas - searches for the mother forced to give him up. He is among thousands now finding out the truth ab...

The imam and the artist

24 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On 27 September 1969, Imam Abdullah Haron – an outspoken Muslim cleric in South Africa – died in police detention. Abdullah Haron was the only Mus...

World War Two: The economic battle

22 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The story of World War Two is usually told in terms of heroism on the battlefield, but perhaps the most important struggle was the economic battle. Ac...

The bitter song of the hazelnut

19 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Every August tens of thousands of Kurdish migrant workers, including children, toil long hours for a pittance in the mountains of northern Turkey pick...

Living with leprosy

17 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When Aleks Krotoski was six years old she lived in a world surrounded by people with leprosy, or Hansen's Disease as it's officially known. Both her d...

Colombia’s kamikaze cyclists

12 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Precipitous mountain roads, specially-modified bikes, and deadly consequences. Simon Maybin spends time with the young men who race down the steep roa...

Hearing me

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

(This programme contains audio effects that may cause discomfort to people living with hearing conditions. There is a modified version of this program...

Robert Mugabe: A life

06 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Audrey Brown looks back at the life of the former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who has died in Singapore aged 95.

Marawi: The story of the Philippines’ Lost City

05 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Marawi in the southern Philippines is a ghost town. In 2017, it was taken under siege for five months by supporters of Islamic State who wanted to est...

Detours 5: The last cola in the desert

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A small Costa Rican surfing city is the unexpected final home for people leaving Asia and Africa in search of a better life in the US. Hosted by Acade...

Detours 4: Imran is stateless

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Imran fled violence in Myanmar – now he is in detention on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, with no papers and no idea what will happen to him. Hos...

Detours 3: Eighteen Greeks a week

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Follow the dead bodies – 18 each week – that travel along the mountain passes in northern Greece for cremation in another country. Hosted by Acade...

Detours 2: Where the homeless elephants go

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Wild elephants surround a village in Assam, India. And they’re hungry. Spend time with the night watch, trying to keep people safe. Hosted by Academ...

Detours 1: Doctor Fake News

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Fake news pays. Medical student Elena ran out of money, so she joined her friends in Veles, North Macedonia, writing fake stories for cash. Hosted by ...

Michelle Bachelet: Chile's first female president

03 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Michelle Bachelet's father died after being detained and tortured during the first year of General Pinochet's dictatorial rule in Chile. More than 40 ...

Museum of Lost Objects: The fire that scorched Brazil’s history

01 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been a year since Brazil’s National Museum burned down in a fire. Not only was its collection one of the most extraordinary in the world, but...

Lethal Force in Rio’s Favelas

29 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Brazil’s party capital, Rio de Janeiro, is witnessing a killing spree. Nothing new there, you might think – it’s long suffered from violent crim...

Why Woodstock still matters

29 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Woodstock myth is a potent and evocative symbol of the '60s utopian hippie dream – the ultimate example of the unifying power of music, peace an...

Afghan Star 2: Music, tradition and the Taliban

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The TV talent show Afghan Star has been running for 14 years, and has never been won by a woman singer. This year one of the two finalists is an 18-ye...

Maria Ressa: The Filipino-American journalist combating fake news

27 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Maria Ressa, the Filipino-American journalist and author was included in Time's Person of the Year 2018 as one of a collection of journalists from aro...

My very extended family

24 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Two years ago Julia, a high school student from Ohio, received an email from a woman in New York she had never met, claiming that her daughter and Jul...

Romania's killer roads

22 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Everybody in Romania knows someone who has died in a road accident. The country has the highest road death rate in the European Union – twice the EU...

Afghan Star 1: A TV talent show

21 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sahar Zand is in Kabul for the finals of Afghan Star, a TV talent show that is on the front line of the fight to keep music alive in Afghanistan, foll...

Her Story 2: Betty Bigombe, Ugandan peace negotiator

20 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Betty Bigombe spent much of her career trying to negotiate peace with the notorious warlord Joseph Kony. She was born in northern Uganda as one of 11 ...

Barbuda: Storms, recovery and ‘land grabs’

15 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Who will shape the future of the hurricane-hit, tropical isle of Barbuda? In 2017, category-5 hurricane Irma devastated much of Barbuda’s ‘paradi...

Peterloo: The massacre that changed Britain

14 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On 16 August 1819, troops charged the crowds in St Peter's Field - 18 people lost their lives and around 700 were injured. Within days, the press were...

Her Story 1: Vaira Viķe-Freiberga, the first female president of Latvia

13 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Vaira Viķe-Freiberga became the first female president of Latvia in 1999, just eight months after returning to the country she left 54 years earlier....

Genoa's Broken Bridge

08 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

An icon of Italian design; a centrepiece of a community; a tragedy waiting to happen? When the Morandi bridge opened in 1967, it was one of the longes...

Black girls don't swim

06 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Seren Jones swam competitively for 13 years in the UK and in the US collegiate system. But in that time she only ever saw six other black girls in the...

America's Hospital Emergency

01 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A small town goes on life-support after its lone hospital closes. The story of Jamestown, Tennessee, recorded in the emotional hours and days after it...

The spy of Raspberry Falls

30 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Mallory lived a double life - he helped people on his street with yard work, went to church and showed off his dogs. Yet at home he communicated...

When Africa meets China

28 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows how China is changing Africa but what is less well known is how Africa is changing China. Linda Yueh uncovers the growing number of Afr...

The Spy in Your Pocket

25 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Anti-obesity campaigners in Mexico, human rights advocates in London, and friends of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi all claim they’ve been ...

The Superlinguists: Monolingual societies

23 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Simon Calder meets speakers of indigenous languages (like Welsh in Britain), of dialects (like Moselfrankish in Germany) and vernaculars (like African...

Music to land on the Moon by

21 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, Beatriz De La Pava researches how real life events are reflected in the lyrics of popular songs, a...

Tuku Music

20 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Oliver Mtukudzi was loved by people all over the world for his unique melodies – and by Zimbabweans for the messages of hope contained in his lyrics...

Bitter brew

18 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With the rise in ethical consumerism, Assignment explores the hidden suffering of tea workers in Africa. Attacked because of their tribal identity, re...

The Superlinguists: Multilingual societies

16 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

What is it like to live in a place where you have to speak several languages to get by? Simon Calder travels to India, where a top university only tea...