The Documentary Podcast

Vast areas of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul remain under water after the worst flooding in 80 years. Homes have been destroyed, thousands are without power or drinking water, and entire towns remain cut-off. The torrential rains began in Rio Grande do Sul at the end of April, saturating the ground and bursting the banks of the Taquari and Caí rivers. Those rivers flow into the...

When Father Père Basile was 12 years of age, he started thinking of a religious life. But it never crossed his mind that he would someday be living in a cloistered abbey in the south of France producing wine. This monastery has incredible history as it is the site of the oldest papal vineyard in the world, dating back to the 14th Century. When Pope Clement V moved the papal capital from Rome to Av...

A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. EncroChat: The crime family brought down by their violent messages. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcast...

A bonus episode from the Lives Less Ordinary podcast. Manni Coe’s brother Reuben has Down’s syndrome, and had become isolated and non-verbal in a UK care home during the Covid pandemic – so he decided to stage a lockdown rescue mission. For more extraordinary personal stories from around the world, go to bbcworldservice.com/liveslessordinary or search for Live Less Ordinary wherever you get your B...

In 1897 British colonial forces attacked and looted the ancient Kingdom of Benin in what is now southern Nigeria. Thousands of precious objects were taken, including stunning sculptures made of bronze, brass, ivory and terracotta. Some were decorative, some were sacred. Known collectively as the Benin Bronzes, they were famed for their craftsmanship and beauty. The majority ended up in museums aro...

Outside of a war zone, South Africa is one of the most dangerous places in the world. The country’s murder rate is now at a 20-year high. With trust in the police falling, communities say they have no option but to defend themselves. BBC Africa Eye’s Ayanda Charlie joins two volunteer units, a team of farmers near Pretoria, and a group in Diepsloot, a poor township near Johannesburg. We see the ri...

Enter the magical world of children’s writer Cressida Cowell. She created the hugely successful How to Train Your Dragon series, which continues to excite children across the globe and has been turned into Oscar nominated animated films. For her latest series, Cressida explores teenage magic and Iron Age warriors. As she works on the illustrations for the second book in this new trilogy, The Wizar...

The BBC's new Global China Unit tell Faranak Amidi about their investigation into Chinese mines overseas, and what it's like to work in them and live near them.

The pandemic stopped most of us travelling anywhere, but now the United Nations predicts that international tourism will soon return to pre-Covid levels. While that might be welcome if you’re making money from tourism, the number of visitors can also cause problems. Hosts James Reynolds and Lukwesa Burak discuss how you balance the tourist dollar. Residents of Venice, Bali and Spain’s Canary Islan...

In the heart of Colombia, very special Christmas celebrations take place not in December but in February. Its roots lie in the days of slavery when many Afro-Colombians were serving their masters' festivities during that time. In an act of cultural and racial resistance that has been preserved for nearly 200 years, Christmas celebrations in Quinamayo are held 40 days after the traditional birth da...

The small rural town of Igbo-Ora in south-western Nigeria proclaims itself to be the “twin capital of the world". It has an astonishingly high twin birth rate. Everyone here wants to have twins because in Yoruba culture they are believed to bring good fortune and are celebrated almost as deities. And yet, in another part of Nigeria, near the capital Abuja, a different community once viewed twins w...

A bonus episode from the World of Secrets podcast. Inside the World of Secrets investigation – the story of the journalism behind The Disciples. Hear from the journalists and the whistleblowers about the investigation into TB Joshua. A special episode with season 2 presenters Charlie Northcott and Yemisi Adegoke, producer Rob Byrne and whistleblowers Rae and Ajoke. Hosted by Hannah Ajala, presente...

Last year in Italy the biggest anti-mafia trial in 30 years reached a climax. On the stand were the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta: they are estimated to run 80 percent of Europe’s cocaine and to make more money in a year than McDonalds and Deutsche Bank put together. With access to mafioso-turned-collaborator Emanuele Mancuso, journalist Francisco Garcia looks at why Emanuele testified against his powerfu...

Indian artist Abhishek Singh’s comic books have sold more than half a million copies and been translated into Italian, Spanish, French and English. His interpretation of the Indian myth, Krishna: A Journey Within, was the first graphic novel by an Indian writer and artist to be published in American comic book history. Abhishek has long included environmental themes in his work, but after travelli...

Nataliya Zotova of BBC Russian tells us how Yulia Navalnaya has stepped in for her husband since his death and how there is somewhat of a precedent for this in Russia. Plus Ikechukwu Kalu explains how the BBC Igbo social media team use proverbs to connect with their audience. Produced by Caroline Ferguson and Alice Gioia (Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich)

The war in Gaza has triggered demonstrations at dozens of universities thousands of miles away in the United States. There have been hundreds of arrests as police have gone in to break them up and remove the protest camps that have been set up. Amid the heightened tensions, three Jewish students with different views towards Israel and its government, share their experience on campus and the impact...

Dating in the Jewish world can be a struggle - different denominations, beliefs, being Kosher or not Kosher, ideologies and geography makes navigating this world difficult to decode. Amie Liebowitz talks to matchmaker and dating coach Aleeza Ben Shalom from Netflix's Jewish Matchmaker and goes on her own quest to learn about the traditional and religious values of matchmaking.

South Africa is marking 30 years of democracy this year, reflecting on the remarkable transition from apartheid that captivated the world. While some South Africans are celebrating, others are questioning whether the promises of democracy have delivered. The BBC’s Nomsa Maseko embarks on a personal journey, starting from the polling station she accompanied her mother to in April 1994, to meet the...

A bonus episode from the Lives Less Ordinary podcast. Evy Mages grew up in and out of foster care in 1970s and 80s Austria. But even when she started a new life in the US, she was haunted by traumatic memories of a strange yellow house high up in the Alps, where she had been placed as an eight-year-old. It took an idle internet search in her 50s to reveal that this was actually an institution call...

It's a quarter of a century since Kosovo emerged from a brutal war, one which pitted local ethnic Albanians against Serbs. Twenty-five years on, the government in Pristina is pressing ahead with reforms that could reinforce its separation from Serbia. They include banning the use of Serb dinars and curbing the import of things like Serb medicines. Pristina says the moves are needed to curb illegal...

Wangari Mathenge used to be a high-flying corporate lawyer before turning to her first love of art. She likes to express herself through her colourful palette and figurative paintings, exploring her African culture, identity and past. More recently she has turned to immersive installation. For this In The Studio, arts journalist Anna Bailey follows Wangari as she creates her second immersive exper...

Over the past twenty years, paintings from a private collection of Russian and Ukrainian modern art have been sold to museums and private collectors around the world. Paintings were sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Zaks collection, as it’s known. It was said to include over 200 oil paintings of some of the most treasured Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde artists, including those b...

How is disinformation created and spread, and how is it impacting the way journalists work? We'll look at what's going on in Latin America, Russia and Nigeria with the help of three World Service journalists: Luis Fajardo is a senior editor with BBC Monitoring, covering South American media; Olga Robinson, also with Monitoring, is a disinformation analyst specialised in Russian affairs; and Olaron...

After months of delays, US politicians agreed a $61bn aid package of military assistance for Ukraine to support their fight with Russia. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said it could save thousands of lives in the war and President Joe Biden said it would make the world safer. In this edition, host Luke Jones hears from Americans who continuously raise support of their own for the Ukraine w...

On the southern shores of Vietnam, whales are revered as gods of the oceans. Eliza Lomas visits whale temples and a whale cemetery, hearing about the roots and rituals of the belief. We learn how worshippers’ lives are entwined with the sea, joining a festival where whales are honoured with a ceremonial journey. With lives at sea full of risk, we hear how these sacred creatures ensure fishermen a...