The Documentary Podcast

The Pakistani author, Awais Khan, is working on his latest thriller, His Sister’s Secret, a look into the dark side of dating and family life. But Awais is also struggling with a familiar challenge for many authors - writer’s block – which is stopping him finishing the book he hopes could win him a global publishing deal. Join fellow author Paul Waters as he watches Awais take a radical step to ta...

A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. Elon Musk says Chinese electric vehicles could destroy competition. 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...

The BBC revealed this week that more than half the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed since Israel launched its retaliation for the Hamas attacks in October. The war has left tens of thousands dead or injured…and an estimated 1.7 million people have been displaced. There are shortages of water, food, and medicines. This week, three US doctors who recently left Gaza share th...

What does it mean to be a young Hindu in 2024? The world's Hindu population is projected to rise by 34%, by 2050 to nearly 1.4 billion. So how does one of the world’s oldest religions fit with today's world more than 4,000 years after its inception? In the second of three discussion programmes looking at religion in the 21st century, Rajeev Gupta is joined by 36-year-old Indian-born banker Om Dhum...

When Spanish football boss Luis Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso after her team’s world cup victory last summer, it set a match to Spanish gender relations. On every chat show, on every campus, in every couple’s bedroom, arguments started - does a kiss count as sexual violence? What is consent? Has feminism gone too far? 53% of Spaniards think it has, and that it is discriminating against men. Now, R...

Crude fakes in Uganda A BBC investigation has uncovered a network of fake social media accounts seemingly working together to promote the Ugandan government and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Online, an information battle appears to be going on – one being waged by hundreds of social media accounts set on pushing narratives in line with those of the Ugandan government. As part of a coordinat...

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages, including children and babies, women, and elderly people. The exact numbers are still changing. Some of the hostages have been released under a deal brokered by Qatar, but many remain in captivity inside Gaza. Anna Foster talks to people who were there when the attacks happened at the kibbutzim...

The search is on to find new ways to document the lives of the homeless – nowhere is this more true than in America, with increasing numbers of people sleeping rough. Sue Mitchell talks to filmmaker, Leonard Manzella, who has risen to the challenge with his award-winning film, Shoeshine Caddie. The film follows a year in the life of 61-year-old African American, Adrian Spears. He certainly stands...

Caucuses, primaries and Super Tuesday. Justin Webb, former BBC US correspondent, unpicks some of the terminology associated with the US election.

With concerns around further instability in the Middle East – as well as international trade – Yemen is the focus for many around the world. The Red Sea runs along part of the country’s coastline, and it is in these waters where cargo ships have been attacked. The US and UK have responded with air strikes against the Houthis, the armed political and religious group, which is responsible for target...

What does it mean to be a young Muslim in the world today? In the first of three discussion programmes looking at religion in the 21st century, a panel of young Muslims look at Islam and discuss their hopes, feelings and grievances on how they see their religion shaping up in the modern era.

While recent attention has focused on the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, BBC correspondent Nawal Al-Maghafi investigates a different, hidden aspect of the country’s long civil war. The conflict in Yemen began in 2014. It has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In 2015, a coalition formed by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia...

Since the devastating 2011 tsunami, Japan has been piloting risk reduction solutions in areas prone to severe damage from earthquakes and tsunamis. Better communication is key to these efforts - 35% of people living in affected areas in 2011 apparently did not hear the radio announcements. Sendai City is working to solve the challenge of reliable communications by developing an emergency announcem...

What happens if you give a homeless person a house, with no strings attached? In 2007 Finland decided to switch to a radical new approach to homelessness called ‘housing first’, in which homeless people are simply offered their own apartment, with no expectations of them except paying the rent (usually covered by their benefits); alongside this they are given whatever support they need to remain h...

Another chance to hear from production designer Maria Djurkovic, as she takes us behind the scenes of Harry Styles' movie, My Policeman, which was made in the middle of the pandemic. Lockdown presents a number of challenges, expected ones like social distancing and sick crew members. And unexpected ones, like studios being too full and staff being in short supply because more movies were being mad...

In the France World Cup squad, 11 were from Paris and there were also players born in the city's suburbs representing Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Qatar, Cameroon, Ghana, Portugal and Germany. What is it about Paris's banlieues that helps create such amazing football talent? We go inside the clubs that created Kylian Mbappe, William Saliba and Moussa Diaby, and speak to the coaches who helped launch...

The inspiring story of nurse and mother Cindy Mullins from Kentucky in the United States has captured a lot of attention online and has raised awareness of a condition that affects millions of people around the world. Following an infection that led to sepsis, Cindy’s doctor told her she would need to have both of her arms and both legs amputated. Cindy and her husband, DJ, share their experiences...

When the Russian Orthodox Church set up its own outpost in Africa in late 2021, just months before the invasion of Ukraine, it was considered a blatant challenge to the historic authority of the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa. It sparked a major split in the global Orthodox community. Moscow’s move was in response to Alexandria’s support for the newly independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine...

Migration is high on the political agenda in countries across Europe, as the number of asylum seekers rises once more. As well as those who risk life and limb on flimsy boats in the Mediterranean, thousands more come via the Balkans, many of them through Turkey and across the border into Bulgaria. They don’t stay there long. Their preferred destinations are further west, Germany perhaps or Britain...

Jo Glanville meets Berliners who have researched the stories of the Jewish families who once lived in their homes. Marie, Hugh, Anke and Matthias all became fascinated by the history of the families who lived in their flats before them when the Nazis were in power and wanted to find out what happened to them. Their discoveries are an intimate portrait of how lives were turned upside down and offer...

Thelma Schoonmaker is arguably the world’s most famous film editor, winning three Oscars in her 40-year career. Ever since Raging Bull, she has worked on all of Martin Scorsese’s major feature films like Goodfellas, Gangs of New York and Killers of the Flower Moon. She tells Francine Stock some secrets of the cutting room and about the other director in her life, her late husband Michael Powell, h...

The pandemic, an economic downturn and the cost of living crisis have all taken their toll on the global job market. In China, millions of young people are struggling to find a job and in India 42% of graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed. Host James Reynolds hears from graduates from India, the United States, Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana who either can’t find work or have changed direct...

In Kenya, palliative care - which involves end of life care for terminally ill patients - is often treated with suspicion. There's a deep taboo around speaking about the death of a person before it happens, which is thought to be like welcoming it. Some feel that taking up end of life care indicates that you've lost faith in the power of a healing God to cure your illness. But serious and complex...

Campaigners on the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda are locked in a battle over its development by foreign investors who are building exclusive resorts for wealthy clients. The development of Barbuda into a high-end tourist destination is supported by the government of Antigua and Barbuda, who say it’s essential to create jobs and for the economic future of the island. But others argue that it wil...

Five years after reporting on one of Mozambique’s worst cyclones, the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko returns to the city of Beira to meet the people on the frontline of climate change. With scientists predicting that such storms will become more powerful and dangerous because of global warming, work is underway to build the resilience to withstand this extreme weather. From builders learning techniques to con...