The Documentary Podcast

Antonia Quirke goes behind the scenes of Bookish, the murder mystery series written by Matthew Sweet and Mark Gatiss, who plays an amateur detective and bookshop owner called Book. Antonia hears from Matthew as he works on the script, crafting a cliff-hanger and deciding just how many red herrings there should be in one episode. He reveals the secrets of his working relationship with Mark, and we...

In 2025, Voice of America was thrust into the spotlight when the bulk of its funding was taken away. But in an era shaped by the internet and social media revolutions and with the West's funding priorities changing, it was not the first international broadcaster to go quiet. The soft power war of the airwaves has now moved to a decisive phase. Josephine McDermott traces the start of international...

More than four years after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, the war continues to shape almost every aspect of life in both countries, including the challenge of finding enough people to serve on the front line. In Ukraine, videos showing violent confrontations between recruitment officers and members of the public have sparked angry debate about how the country...

It’s been several weeks since there has been any significant rainfall in many parts of the world. Across Europe, a prolonged heatwave and little rain have dried-up waterways, hit crop production and have contributed to the wildfires that continue to burn in many areas. In our conversations we hear from Germany and Hungary – areas where low water levels are impacting transport and tourism - and we...

Laurent de Cherisey was fresh out of business school and looking forward to earning a lot of money when his sister had a car accident that left her severely disabled. This led him to rethink everything. Including finding faith. He founded what has become a string of houses where accident victims and non-accident victims live side by side. They’re called the Simon of Cyrene houses, named after the...

How has botany been able to function as one of the longest-lasting soft powers between the two world powers - China and the US? Journalist and producer Finn Aberdein has been focused on China for over two decades. He hears from policy analysts, supply chain diplomats and leading Chinese and US botanists working tirelessly to keep their boots on the ground trips operating. From the secretive walled...

When it opens in December, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will be the largest in the world. Stretched over a 10-lane freeway, it is intended to help save California's mountain lion population, which has become fragmented by the highway. It could also serve as a model for other projects, as crossings of this kind have often been viewed as too large to be effective. But will the crossing wor...

The Victoria falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, is considered one of the natural wonders of the world. But as Isa Jacobson reports, there is concern that development around the waterfall could threaten the delicate ecosystem and exacerbate conflict between humans and wildlife.

South African police detective Frans Mathipa told his boss he feared that he would be killed by the country’s military. Two days later he was found shot dead in his car by the side of a motorway. At the time of his death, Mathipa had been investigating whether special forces soldiers were behind the disappearance of Abdella Abadigga, a suspected member of so-called Islamic State or ISIS, and his b...

In Lagos, a vast patch of scrubland is being imagined as the future home of Kebulania: an ambitious African film city on the edge of Nigeria’s biggest metropolis, and one of the centres of Nollywood, the country’s multi-billion dollar film industry. Nigerian journalist Samuel Okocha follows the project in its earliest, most uncertain days – when the vision is big, but the buildings are yet to rise...

New Bell Prison in Douala, Cameroon, operates a bit like a city within a city. The facility has its own "taxis" (inmates who hand deliver messages), its own law enforcement (prisoners who help police the facility) and a market. The jail is overcrowded and under-resourced, and the occupants of New Bell have sometimes adapted the jail's overstretched systems to work for them. An on-site music studio...

Ariana Grande says she will be taking ‘a step back’ from public life. The reason, it seems, is the constant public commentary she faces – particularly surrounding her appearance. We bring together fans of the multi-award-winning singer and Oscar nominated actor to discuss the scrutiny facing women in the public eye. We also hear from women who have received abuse after posting on social media, inc...

In Lithuania, singer Rugilė Daujotaitė was becoming a familiar face on television. She was performing at major music events, competing for a place at Eurovision, and building a life that, from the outside, appeared successful. But privately, she says she was struggling. Raised in a family shaped by New Age spirituality and occult beliefs, Rugilė grew up searching for God through a mixture of tradi...

In the late '90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania’s capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive improvised network that catches the attention of telecom giants. Told by those who built it, this is the extraordinary sto...

Aviation is being reimagined for a changing planet: Vertical take-off passenger cars for city centres. Hydrogen powered planes for zero carbon travel. Hyper-sonic flights to take the London to Sydney journey to under two hours. Kelly Latimer, US Aerospace engineer, flight test pilot, and former Flight Test Director of Virgin Galactic; Rob Miller, Net-zero aviation pioneer and Director of the Whitt...

Amid the tents and the rubble Gaza is developing once again as an unlikely tech hub. Even before the 7 October 2023 attack and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas, NGOs, with the backing of Google, had sought to develop tech start-ups in the Gaza strip. The digital economy was one of the few areas in which young Gazans in particular could seek to earn money for their families. During the t...

Nine Yards, the designers behind the Paris 2024 Olympic skatepark, get to work on their next big challenge: the rebuild of Olympiaplein, one of Amsterdam's oldest and most cherished skating spots. Sean Allsop joins designers Jesper Kuipers and Jeroen Van Eggermond in the Netherlands, as they work through sketches and plans before presenting their vision to local skaters for crucial feedback. Then...

The extremist content quietly spreading on TikTok and Instagram, targeting unsuspecting young people. Through what is disguised as innocuous lifestyle content, supporters of jihadist groups like IS and al-Qaeda reach audiences outside their echo chamber. This is a recruitment drive that signals a move from direct operational instructions to “do-it-yourself jihad", with the aim of potentially inspi...

When Chinese policeman Dong Guangping wrote an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, it kicked off a chain of events that led to him serving jail time and losing his job. But it also sparked the beginning of a deep desire to live more freely. So Dong began planning how he might escape China. Just a few weeks ago, back in l...

Wildfires continue to burn across the continent. Thousands of people have been evacuated on the Greek island of Crete, as well as in western France, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. A blaze in central Spain has burned almost 80,000 hectares over the last week and is now considered the largest recorded wildfire in Spanish history. With temperatures hitting more than 40 degrees Celsius in south-western F...

What does it mean to inherit a faith that served as a fortress for your father, but feels like a contradiction to you? Throughout his childhood in Oxford, Silas Gray was surrounded by the sights, sounds, and symbols of his father’s Rastafarian identity. He was even named after the Rastafarian spiritual figurehead, Emperor Haile Selassie I. But this legacy weighs heavily. It anchors him to a comple...

The 1st of July 1916 is still one of the deadliest days in the history of warfare. Nearly 20,000 men from the British Army and 6,000 German soldiers were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The World War One battle would last another four months and was one of the first examples of industrial warfare; three million men fought in it, over a-million soldiers were wounded, missing or...

Ed Butler investigates how one of Europe’s most wanted drug smugglers, Jos Leijdekkers, ended up in Sierra Leone while evading justice. He also explores reports linking Leijdekkers to the family of Sierra Leone’s president, including claims that he has married the president’s daughter. for more programmes like this search Business Daily wherever you get your BBC Podcasts Presenter/producer: Ed But...

In Kenya, a young lawyer is bringing a legal case against the Kenyan government, regulator, and several multinational agrochemical companies. He’s working alongside activists and health practitioners, and they claim that hazardous pesticides and herbicides, designed to make farming for efficient, are damaging the health of farmers in Kenya. They are demanding changes to regulation, as well as incr...

The American artist James Turrell is famous for his Skyspaces. A Skyspace is chamber with an opening to the sky. Turrell bathes the roof with light that subtly changes colour, which affects our perception of the colour of the sky itself. Julian May travels to ARoS, the Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark to meet James Turrell as he prepares his latest SkySpace, entitled As Seen Below – The Dome. It is a...