The Documentary Podcast

The last US soldier has left Afghanistan, leaving the Taliban in control of the vast majority of the country. Working women have been told to stay at home for now, for their own safety. Host Nuala McGovern hears from two sisters, who say they feel trapped in their family home in Afghanistan, unable to set foot outside and terrified of the Taliban. She meets Afghan women, who are volunteering at a...

The fire that destroyed the sprawling Moria asylum seekers’ camp on the Greek island of Lesvos last September made headlines around the world. For the asylum seekers who lost their makeshift home and most of their possessions, it was a devastating setback. For Greece, still hosting thousands of migrants Europe won’t take in, the fire intensified a determination to move them on elsewhere. What’s ha...

The cheating is now out in the open and the players - including genuinely-disabled captain Ray - have to hand back their gold medals. But how and when did the cheating start? An ex-coach of the team, who was in charge until just two years before the scandal, says he began to suspect something was wrong way before Sydney 2000. Plus Dan tries to find an answer to one of the biggest questions of all...

What can we learn about a culture from what they search online? From xenophobia in Nigeria, shut-in teenagers in Japan, India’s biometric identity card, and the creation of viral TikTok slang, we look at the search trends that have come to define us. Ben Arogundade investigates what the most popular searches reveal about our approach to death, dating, and digital identity. Tech journalist Nilesh C...

Keeping some peace of mind when the world around you is in turmoil is a great challenge. Mohammed finds it hard to maintain concentration, he sleeps 12 hours a night but awakes exhausted. He lives in Afghanistan, which is in a state of conflict, and spends a lot of time on social media. Sister Dang Nghiem offers advice on how to make your mind a beautiful refuge from the chaos and insecurity in th...

Despite terror warnings, Afghans continued to gather at Kabul’s airport, desperate to get onto a plane. What was feared, and what is sadly familiar in Afghanistan, happened - bomb blasts brought further devastation. Around 100,000 people have been flown out of the country though since the Taliban takeover. We hear stories from two women who have been at the airport and managed to get a flight. Als...

How Catalonia’s housing crisis spawns opportunities for organised crime… Spain has a history of squatting. After the property crash of 2008 many families were forced to occupy homes that did not belong to them because they could not pay their mortgages. Now a darker side to ‘okupacion’ has emerged. Organised crime has seen an opportunity. Some flats in Barcelona have become ‘narcopisos’ - properti...

"We are our history," said James Baldwin. But how history is remembered depends on what materials survive, and who deems those materials worthy of preserving. Maya Millett - a writer, editor and founder of Race Women, an archive project dedicated to honouring early Black American feminists - speaks to the archivists who are working to ensure the voices and stories of African-Americans are not forg...

A basketball journalist in Spain recognises three of the players in the gold-medal-winning intellectual disability basketball team - and they are not disabled. He has even played on the same team as one of them. But when he publishes his story in a national basketball magazine, the team’s organisers show certificates supposedly proving the players’ disability status. The denials continue until ano...

Twenty years ago, the brash Texan energy company Enron collapsed after its massive fraud was finally exposed. Investors and pension funds worldwide lost billions of dollars. The case was meant to signal a sea-change in the way businesses were policed. How difficult would it be to weave a similar web of financial deceit today? Lesley Curwen travels to the dark side of business to find out whether i...

Akinkunmi has lost both his mother and his sister. Dr Shefali Tsabary helps him come to terms with bereavement, and discusses the idea of 'acceptance' and how we can learn from brutal realities. In a series of intimate one to one conversations presented by the BBC’s Sana Safi ,three spiritual advisers – Sister Dang Nghiem, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Eckhart Tolle offer guidance to members of the publi...

As the Taliban takes control of Afghanistan, thousands are attempting to leave the country, fearful for their safety. During the 20-year conflict, some Afghans worked as translators, interpreters and support staff with international armies and foreign organisations. Taliban officials have been keen to allay widespread safety fears but reports suggest the militant group are intensifying their hunt...

What would it be like if everyone believed you were dead? Lal Bihari knows exactly what that feels like. When he was 22 years old the Indian farmer was told by his local government office that he was dead and no protestations that he was standing before them would persuade the bureaucrats otherwise – after all, his death certificate was there as proof. Whether the victim of a scam or a clerical er...

Ex-Paralympic swimmer Dan Pepper investigates the cheats who won gold and left a devastating legacy for learning disability sport. Ray Torres used to get beaten up every day at school. He stood out because he had a learning disability. But when his dad gave him a basketball, he found an escape and a kind of friend that didn’t hit him or call him names. He took the ball everywhere - even using it a...

This audio was updated on 16th August. The Taliban is advancing towards Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as foreign forces prepare to fully withdraw from the country. Thousands of people are being displaced and many more are fearful about what lies ahead. Reporting the news in the country can result in death threats and loss of life, and host Nuala McGovern hears from Afghan journalists who are deter...

Life presents many personal challenges. Three spiritual advisors – Sister Dang Nghiem, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Eckhart Tolle offer guidance to members of the public from across the world on coping with anxiety, the pressures of parenting and how to learn life-lessons from the pandemic.

Israel’s Arab population is in the grip of a violent and deadly crime wave. Since the start of the year, scores of Arab citizens have lost their lives and increasingly, even women and children are victims of drive-by killings, point-blank shootings and escalating gang warfare. Arabs account for only around one in five of all Israelis, yet they are now the majority of the country’s murder victims....

When photographer Haruka Sakaguchi set out to Hiroshima to document atomic bomb survivors' stories, she discovered they were far more difficult to find than she expected. Stigmatisation and survivor’s guilt discourage many from disclosing their past, and with dwindling survivors left to tell their story, memories of the atomic bomb are fading. But a new generation has developed an unusual method o...

In the future, 10 years from now, will our fingers still reach for a laughing face with crying eyes? Will Unicode and its strict approval process for new emoji be relevant at all? Possibly not. We travel to Zimbabwe to hear how some designers are bypassing Silicon Valley by building their own emoji and sticker sets that reflect life in Africa. And we end the series in Shanghai, where we hear how i...

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were always going to be different. They took place a year later than planned and were the first to be held during a pandemic, with fans banned. So as the Games come to an end, host James Reynolds hears the experiences of three gold medallists: Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus; triathlete Flora Duffy, who won Bermuda’s first ever gold medal; and Qatari high jumper Mutaz Ess...

This is the curious story of how a child refugee ended up in Malta accused of the most serious crime - of being a terrorist. Lamin was 13 when he ran away from his home in Guinea in search of a better life. He had never even heard of Malta. But after attempting the perilous sea crossing to Europe, he and two other teenagers were accused of hijacking the ship, the El Hiblu, that rescued them and br...

Africa is a continent of 1.3 billion people, but makes less than 1% of the lifesaving vaccines it needs. The continent’s 54 nations are almost entirely dependent on agencies like Unicef and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for these essential pharmaceuticals. But the pandemic of 2020 has been a harsh lesson in the dangers of relying on other countries and agencies for support. Numerous vaccine clinical...

Our journey into the emoji universe takes some surprising directions. We reveal some of the human stories behind those tiny pictures on our screens. From the early days of reggae in Kingston, Jamaica to San Francisco’s Chinatown, we meet some of the people responsible for the emojis we have today.

Over a year after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the headlines in China, Liyang Liu explores the hidden impacts on people in her home city Beijing. Life has in some ways got back to normal in China’s capital, especially compared to many other global cities, but Liyang discovers things have changed in more subtle ways beyond the masks in this mega city of over 20 million people. We hear from business ow...

In recent weeks the world has seen floods in Europe and China and devastating wildfires in Canada, the United States and Siberia. It’s difficult to link single events to global warming but climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events. Host Nuala McGovern hears from those affected by flooding in Germany and Belgium as well as people in the city of Zhengzhou, in Hen...