The Documentary Podcast

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised a more humane approach to migration on the US-Mexico border. But right now, more than 17,000 unaccompanied children are being held in migration facilities. Ros Atkins considers the challenge facing the Biden administration (Photo: Dareli Matamoros, a girl from Honduras, holds a sign asking President Biden to let her in during a migrant demonstration...

The coronavirus has changed almost everyone’s lives and for some losing their jobs has led to homelessness. Edward in the United States had to sleep in the New York subway and train stations before finding help from a mission, while Walter spent five months homeless in South Africa - even for a stint, on the famous Table Mountain. Host Nuala McGovern also hears how families in Rome are approaching...

The shipping industry is worth millions to the world economy and we depend on it for most of our goods. Assignment lifts the lid on the dangerous and polluting world of shipbreaking and investigates why ships once owned by UK companies end their lives on beaches in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (Image: Bangladeshi labourers and docked ships at a shipbreaking yard. Credit: Farjana Khan Godhuly/AF...

How do you solve a problem like America? A land where speech is free - but hate rules the airwaves. A land of opportunity - where 40 million people live in poverty. A land of democracy - where the majority of Americans are under-represented in national government. Award winning journalist Brian Palmer asks if the near sacred text is fit for modern governance. Does the electoral college deliver ade...

Eckhart Tolle, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Sister Dang Nghiem offer advice to members of the public from across the world as they respond to the challenge of the pandemic. In a series of intimate pone explore more life-lessons in this series of two programmes. In a series of intimate one to one conversations presented by the BBC’s Nuala McGovern, for the BBC World Service Festival they explore life-les...

Eckhart Tolle, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Sister Dang Nghiem offer advice to members of the public from across the world as they explore life-lessons in this series of two programmes. The last year has brought challenges like no other year, leading to dramatic personal changes all over the world. People struggle to endure the restrictions, or to cope with grief, or perhaps they wonder suddenly see the...

Some of the European Union's biggest nations have restarted their roll-out of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after the medicines regulator concluded it was safe and effective. Ros Atkins considers how a vaccine initially hailed as a "gamechanger", has ended up in the middle of a scientific and political storm.

During the last year hundreds of people across the globe have shared their experiences on the programme about living during a pandemic. This time, we view this challenging situation through a journalist’s lens. Reporters from India, Brazil, the United States, Italy, South Africa, Rwanda and New Zealand share, with host Nuala McGovern, what it’s like to work on possibly the most important story of...

For over three hundred years the union of England and Scotland has held firm through war and poverty but in recent years some people north of the border have asked for a divorce. Elections in May to Scotland’s devolved parliament could return a majority for the ruling Scottish National Party which is seeking a mandate for a second referendum on seceding from the UK. Only seven years ago those want...

From women in senior management positions, to women-owned start-ups, to low income families, Covid poses difficult questions about how to adapt to an uncertain future. Nada Tawfik explores some of the strategies being adopted by women in the US economy to adjust to a vastly changed economic landscape.

It has been a turbulent week for the British royal family following Harry and Meghan's explosive sit-down with Oprah Winfrey. On Thursday, Prince William said the British Royal family is not racist - in his first public response to allegations made in the US television interview, where the Duchess of Sussex claimed her husband had been asked how dark the skin of their first baby might be. Ros Atki...

One year ago, the World Health Organisation announced that Covid-19 was spreading across different countries at such an alarming rate that it needed to be classed as a pandemic. It has been a challenging year for everyone and host Nuala McGovern shares conversations with people who perhaps don’t always receive public recognition for their work or actions. This includes one of the researchers who h...

Prior to the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement and the Covid 19 pandemic, China’s presence on social media was largely to promote a positive image of its country – trying to ‘change the climate’ rather than seeking to sow confusion and division. But this is changing. In this investigation for Assignment Paul Kenyon and Krassimira Twigg examine China’s new strategy of aggressively pushing disinforma...

A year ago American women out-numbered men in the workforce for the first time. Now, after a year of Covid pandemic that process has gone into reverse with more women than men leaving the workforce. Nada Tawfik hears how women are experiencing disproportionate job losses due to Covid recession and hears how working from home has changed work for many women.

Joe Biden promised to be tough on Saudi Arabia. But this week, he stopped short of punishing the kingdom's crown prince despite US intelligence holding him responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Ros Atkins looks at the President's first foreign policy test, and the Washington-Riyadh alliance.

We hear from two US veterans who served during the war in Vietnam about the similarities between their experiences and the trauma experienced by many during the pandemic. Covid vaccines are bringing renewed hope across the world when it comes to Covid-19 but thousands of people are continuing to die from the disease on a daily basis. The emotional toll of losing loved ones is being felt by so many...

President Biden claims “America is back”. He plans to put diplomacy first and restore long-standing American alliances. His predecessor, President Trump, left behind a very different world from the one he greeted in 2016. Fresh crises confront the Biden Administration, including the Myanmar coup and political unrest in Russia. And climate change is now an urgent global problem. Secretary of State...

In March 2020 the UK was gearing up to face the Covid-19 pandemic. Cases were increasing rapidly and by the end of month the country was in full lockdown with medics facing their toughest ever test. A group of doctors and nurses in intensive care units recorded audio diaries for the BBC which illustrated the true scale of the professional and personal challenge they faced. The UK was to become one...

After a series of damaging scandals, many critics believe the social media giant has become too powerful and should be broken up. This week, Ros Atkins will consider Facebook's influence in Myanmar, its role in the storming of the Capitol building in Washington, and its decision to temporarily ban news in Australia.

Venezuela’s hospitals are dealing with a pandemic at a time when the country is already in an economic crisis. Many hospitals don’t have running water and there are shortages of oxygen and other medical supplies to treat Covid patients. Two doctors in the capital Caracas share their stories with host Nuala McGovern. In the United States, more than 500,000 lives have now been lost due to Covid-19....

All over the world, frontline health workers have paid the ultimate price during the coronavirus pandemic. But in Kenya the story of one young doctor’s heroism has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Twenty eight year-old Stephen Mogusu died from Covid 19 in December 2020, after working on an isolation ward and complaining that he lacked adequate protective clothing. Despite his vital servic...

Robert Chelsea suffered horrific burns after his stationary car was hit by a truck with a drunk driver at the wheel, in Los Angeles in 2013. He survived and went ahead with a series of demanding surgical operations at a Boston hospital in an attempt to restore his appearance. A shortage of black donors meant it was a long wait for his doctors to find even a partial match for his skin colour. The o...

With migration, integration and assimilation dominating much public debate, Fergal Keane explores the profound influence, over many centuries, of the Irish in Britain. Whether it is 19th Century theatre or verse, or today’s pop culture, Irish migrants and their descendants have deeply influenced and steered the UK’s literature and arts. Fergal Keane examines the impact of the longest and biggest i...

With thousands of schools still closed around the world, there are increasingly urgent warnings about the impact this pandemic is having on millions of children. Ros Atkins looks at risks of reopening classrooms and the consequences of not doing so.

Tasneem recently graduated from university. Like everyone else, her future is on hold because of coronavirus. But for Tasneem it is a particularly uncertain time, as she has been living in Jordan at one of the world’s largest refugee camps, since leaving Syria with her family in 2013. Host Nuala McGovern has a conversation with her and her father about life in a refugee camp during the pandemic. W...