The Documentary Podcast

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...

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first recorded enslaved Africans in Virginia, America, in 2019 Ghana launched the ‘Year of Return’, an initiative to encourage the African diaspora to invest, settle and visit. After a positive response a 10-year follow-up initiative called ‘Beyond the Return’ was launched in 2020 to further promote investment, migration and tourism. As a...

The poet, novelist and playwright Fred D’Aguiar was born in Britain, grew up in Guyana and now lives in Los Angeles. There he came across the story which became his most recent collection of poems, For the Unnamed. It was originally entitled For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico’s Sarco and Sepulveda’s Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852. That tells us wha...

It is four years since we reported the first cases of an outbreak of a mysterious viral pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in China. Within months, what become known as Covid-19, had spread around the world affecting most people in some way. The disease led to the creation of this programme. Since March 2020 – shortly after the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic – we began our first convers...

In 2016, the Philippines’ newly elected president, Rodrigo Duterte declared there was one, common enemy: the drugs trade. What followed was a bloodbath. Addicts, alleged traffickers, and many who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were gunned down in the streets by the security services. The government put the number of people killed in the ‘war on drugs’ at 6,252, a figure that...

The octopus is prized as the most intelligent of all marine species – immortalised in stories, poems and songs worldwide. In Madagascar it is also a vital source of income. Hazel Healy takes a journey into a pioneering Madagascan closure system which is enabling one particular species of octopus to flourish and protecting incomes for the most vulnerable. She learns how the system was first develop...

Adriana Brownlee is a mountaineering pioneer. The British woman became the youngest female to summit K2 - the second-highest mountain on Earth - in 2022. But mountains are changing and becoming more unpredictable because of climate change. High mountain areas are warming faster than the rest of the planet, meaning glaciers are shrinking and permafrost holding mountain faces together are disappeari...

Internationally renowned Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan is midway through an ambitious public installation that will be shown in the Valley of Arts, in the desert of north-west Saudi Arabia. She has just returned from collecting stories and drawings from the inhabitants of AlUla, and is starting to transform them into her own artwork. Titled Oasis of Stories, the project pays tribute to the local pe...

A special programme remembering past HARDtalk guests who died in 2023. All of them left an indelible mark on public life and all, in their different ways, relished the opportunity we gave them to discuss their decision-making and motivation. (Photo: Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary committee during confirmation hearings as she seeks to become the first woman to take a se...

We have spent the last year here on BBC OS Conversations covering some of the World’s major news stories. As the year draws to a close, however, we thought it would be interesting to hear from three people who have been doing something completely different in 2023 for their perspective on the world. 53-year-old professional explorer from Australia, Geoff Wilson, joined us from Canada. He has just...

Some people said it was created by Peruvian scientists, that it gorged on the blood of farm animals, that it was a monster. Many myths have grown up in Bolivia around the Paiche, one of the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish which is native to Amazonian rivers of Brazil and Peru and can grow up to four metres long. But after young fish were accidentally released from a Peruvian fish farm, the...

Stephen Sackur looks back at some of HARDtalk’s most impactful and thought-provoking interviews of 2023.

Photographer Andrea Hernández has been travelling around her native Venezuela documenting people and nature for her ongoing project called Mango Season. Mango season in Venezuela is a time of abundance, when mango fruit is plentiful on the trees. During this time of economic crisis and food scarcity in the country, many people can now be seen roaming the streets looking for these fruits to feed th...

Mani Djazmi presents a special programme as Crystal Palace defender Joel Ward and the former Portsmouth player Linvoy Primus discuss their Christian faith. We also hear from former USA international Jaelene Daniels, whose religious beliefs led her to turn down the chance to continue playing for her country.

There’s no doubt this has been Taylor Swift’s year. Just 34 years old, the American singer songwriter has been in the music industry for more than half her life. She’s a multi-award winning performer whose diehard fans have helped her break all sorts of records. Time Magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year is also the most streamed female artist on Spotify and Apple and this week she achieved a record...

Many mythological creatures and traditions we know, love, and more importantly fear, owe their origins to Celtic folklore. Borrowed to create epic franchises such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the countless adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Walt Disney’s Peter Pan, this programme casts new light on the subject. Seanchaí (shan-a-key) were/are traditional Irish storytel...

Rebuilding Ukraine after the destruction inflicted by Russia will be a gigantic task. Foreign donors have pledged billions of dollars. But they want reassurances that the money will be properly spent, in a country which still has high levels of corruption. For Assignment Tim Whewell visits Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, site of some of the worst Russian atrocities, to see the beginning of reconstru...

In a remote corner of Northern Kenya, former Samburu warriors continue to rescue orphaned and abandoned baby elephants, even as drought has put on hold plans to release them back into the wild. Traditionally Samburu warriors are not only charged with protecting their community, but with caring for their livestock. Now they have turned their attention to raising elephants. At Reteti Elephant Sanctu...

Ivo van Hove is the most sought-after theatre director in the world. We join him in Paris, London and Amsterdam, where he works on productions that are often maximal - big musicals, operas and dramas such as The Damned - but where he also loves to stage minimal intimate dramas, such as The Glass Menagerie or A Little Life. How does van Hove work? Why are actors of the calibre of James Norton and I...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knows that if he has any hope of victory in the war in his country he needs his international friends to keep backing him. Although the size of that task was pretty clear this week, in both the United States and Europe, when he returned largely empty handed - for now, at least. Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, says he remains up for the fi...

What does it mean to be a gay Christian in a country where many Church leaders say your sexuality is wicked and even demonic? In 2013, a group of LGBT Christians in Kenya started meeting for Sunday worship, to practice their faith free from homophobia. The community grew and became Kenya’s first openly queer-affirming Church - a sanctuary for diverse believers who feel excluded from mainstream rel...

As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers defend their country against Russia, many patriotic civilians are engaged in a struggle that's less risky, but that they believe is also vital. They’re battling for a fairer, less corrupt Ukraine, worthy of its heroes. For Assignment, Tim Whewell follows one tireless citizens’ group in the city of Dnipro as they continue, even in wartime, to hold loca...