The Documentary Podcast

Amid the anarchy of post-Revolution Libya, seven brothers from an obscure background gradually took over their home town near Tripoli. They're accused of murdering entire families to instill fear and to build power and wealth. They created their own militia which threw in its lot, at different times, with various forces in Libya's ongoing conflict. And they grew rich by levying taxes on the human...

Violent content online has rightly been condemned, yet while we criticise those facilitating the supply we rarely talk about the demand. Aleks Krotoski asks who views it and why.

What is Donald Trump’s political and policy legacy? Nada Tawfik explores how four years of the Trump presidency has challenged US policy conventions and re-written the narrative of American political discourse. The audio for this podcast was updated on 8 January 2021.

Donald Trump was the businessman and TV show host who became the 45th President of the United States, with huge power and resources at his fingertips. Rob Watson tells the life story of one of the most extraordinary people to occupy the Oval Office.

Host Nuala McGovern checks in with two so-called Covid-19 ''long-haulers'', who are still enduring symptoms several months after catching the disease. We also hear from residents living in some of the world’s poorest communities in Kenya, India and Brazil, and a parent living in Chile who is bringing up a child with autism. Three mothers from three different countries also speak to Nuala again. Th...

There were times in 2020 when the world felt like an out of control carousel and we could all have been forgiven for just wanting to get off and to wait for normality to return. But will 2021 be any less dramatic? Joe Biden will be inaugurated in January but will Donald Trump have left the White House by then? And vaccines are promised to help tackle the Covid19 pandemic but how successful will th...

Dr Kevin Fong talks to the people who have seemingly achieved the impossible and created a coronavirus vaccine in a matter of months. Speaking to the scientists who’ve spent the past 12 months with the eyes of the world on them, Kevin wants to know how they tackled the science and what are the biggest barriers they’ve faced. There have been tensions along the way between science and politics, scie...

A young woman is desperately searching for her brother in Lagos. On the night of 20th October, Nigerian soldiers opened fire at a peaceful demonstration camped at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos. The government say they fired into the air, but witnesses insist that unarmed protesters came under deliberate attack. Amnesty International says that 12 people died. The incident has traumatised a highly pop...

Aleks Krotoski finds out if how we treat our subservient robots impacts how we treat one another. As with any new invention, domestic robots illuminate issues within human society that we may not have noticed before. Are we projecting old social norms of hierarchy and gender onto this new technology?

In 1914 a 19-year-old Indian student caused a sensation when she was awarded the top prize - the bardic chair - at the 1914 University College of Wales Eisteddfod held in Aberystwyth. All the entries in the prestigious Welsh language and literature contest were submitted under pseudonyms. When the winner was awarded to "Shita", for an ode written in English, Dorothy Bonarjee revealed herself as th...

Four radio producers present intimate stories of people across Europe, revealing the effect of Covid 19 on their experience of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. In a year where movement was restricted, physical contact was prevented (or fraught with risk) and screens mediated our social interactions, our new conditions for living have created new relationships with our senses. From Italy, Spai...

After hearing so many incredibly moving stories since the pandemic was first declared, we’ve decided to return to some of those people to hear how their lives have changed - from two residents in Wuhan, China - to the English couple who had a lockdown wedding and decided to ‘elope’ to save guests from getting the virus. Two women in Canada and the United States share how they’ve been faring withou...

Why do so many of us treat Silicon Valley billionaires like our new messiahs? For some, people like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and engineer Elon Musk are the charismatic high priests for this new dark age. But how did we get to this point? And where will our adoration for technologies and those who create them lead us?

In a remote part of Northern Kenya, former Samburu warriors have become elephant keepers, rescuing and raising baby elephants in what’s thought to be Africa’s first community owned and run elephant sanctuary. At Reteti Elephant Sanctuary they rescue baby elephants that have been injured, orphaned or abandoned. They look after them, rehabilitate them and release them back to the wild. It is transfo...

We are in the biggest holiday season for large parts of the world but many countries are experiencing a rise in Covid cases. It’s worrying for those in South Korea's capital Seoul, where around half the country’s 52 million population live. So far there has not been a national lockdown, but this may be about to change as the authorities deal with a third spike in cases. Since around one in three S...

After 17 years of conflict costing 300,000 lives, a peace agreement offers new hope to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. It comes as UNAMID, the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force, prepares to finally pull out at the end of December. But with nearly two million displaced people still living in camps and some armed groups yet to sign the agreement, who will protect civilians if the p...

Alan hears stories from people who’ve transformed their lives and are helping others to do the same against the backdrop of the pandemic. He speaks to Alhaji in Sierra Leone who’s building a house for his parents from the money he’s earned working in the United States. He hears from Tiffany in India who helps visually impaired people become more independent, after her own challenging childhood. Al...

Two doctors in Nairobi tell host Nuala McGovern why conditions for health workers in Nairobi are leading to calls for a strike. They include rising death rates, unpaid salaries and lack of a comprehensive medical insurance. We’ll also hear from two members of US President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid task force about combatting vaccine hesitancy after the United States recorded the highest daily death...

The bitter war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasian region of Nagorno Karabakh may have come to an end, but the business of fighting may continue for at least some of its combatants. There’s growing evidence that hundreds of soldiers in this war were mercenaries recruited from mostly rebel-held regions in northern Syria - even though that's strongly denied by Azerbaijan. In this week’s...

Alan Dein searches for the nspiring and moving stories of how the pandemic has changed people's lives on every continent. Today, airline pilot Peter in Australia talks about deciding to become a bus driver after the pandemic forced him to stop flying. And wedding planner Vithika in India discusses the dramatic impact of the pandemic on her industry. Plus, Chun Wing, a ballet dancer at the Paris Op...

For 100 days and counting protesters are calling for an end to the 26-year long rule of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. Poet Valzhyna Mort records first-hand stories from her friends who are out protesting week after week; ordinary people making extraordinary choices. Obsessively, she reads the social media posts flooding her phone. In her hands, these tiny messages are poetry themselves, the ora...

Since November 2000, humans have been living in space on the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS is a remarkable engineering achievement, human space exploration has proven dangerous and costly. There is no air, gravity or food, and water has to be recycled from sweat, stale breath and urine. As we return to the Moon and aim for Mars, some argue that space colonisation is also immo...

Nuala McGovern talks to Kerry. She has muscular dystrophy and has been shielding, or isolating, at home in England since March. We also hear from Dr Joseph Varon, Chief of Critical Care at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas. He has been working without a break for 258 days. A photo of him cradling an elderly man on a Covid ward went viral this week. He explains the picture and sh...

Internet trolls are harassing and bullying people like never before. That’s according to research carried out in the UK which found abuse rising as the world spends more and more time online thanks to the Covid pandemic. But who are the people behind these often anonymous attacks? How do they get involved in persecuting people they don’t even know? And what can their victims do about it? British J...

Ahead of a crucial year in the battle to control climate change, presenter Lucy Hockings is joined by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He is warning that "our planet is broken". We'll hear a live discussion as he answers questions from activists around the world and talks solutions to the problems we face.