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PODCAST

The Documentary Podcast

BBC World Service

Hear the voices at the heart of global stories. Where curious minds can uncover hidden truths and make sense of the world. The best of documentary storytelling from the BBC World Service. From China’s state-backed overseas spending, to on the road with Canada’s Sikh truckers, to the front line of the climate emergency, we go beyond the headlines. Each week we dive into the minds of the world’s most creative people, take personal journeys into spirituality and connect people from across the globe to

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

26:29

Steel from shipwrecks

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/07

In recent years component parts of historic shipwrecks have started to disappear, with reports of mysterious vessels and scavengers floating around. This phenomenon has been reported in Indonesia, Australia, and the Netherlands. One theory is that the target for plunderers is pre-atomic steel, i.e any steel produced before the nuclear testing era, and therefore free of radioactive particles. Its purer material composition makes it essential in the manufacturing of specialist scientific tools such as

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26:28

Reporting the Nigerian School Kidnappings

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/06

More than 300 children were kidnapped from a school in the Western Nigerian village of Papiri in November, but in the aftermath, accounts of the kidnappings were confused and misleading. BBC Africa's Madina Maishanu was part of a team of journalists who faced huge risk to visit the site of the kidnappings and hear the testimonies of parents. In October this year, a young Chechen woman living in Armenia, Aishat Baimuradova, was killed. She'd previously escaped a repressive life in Chechnya but is now

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23:59

Australia’s under-16 social media ban

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/06

From 10 December, Australian children under 16 will be banned from most social media platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. The ban is designed to protect teenagers from harmful content and other risks such as cyberbullying and grooming. Surveys suggest the legislation is popular with many parents, but it has been challenged by social media companies and some young campaigners have argued it disregards children’s rights. We bring together two families in New South Wales who are

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26:30

The mosque for Bangladesh’s transgender women

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/05

On the banks of the Brahmaputra River, a remote village in northern Bangladesh serves as a sanctuary for the hijra (transgender) community, a once-revered but now persecuted group. In March 2024, a mosque built by and for hijras offered a rare haven for worship without fear. After the August 2024 protests that toppled the secular government, a surge in religious extremism has fueled renewed violence against minorities, including the hijra community. Their mosque, once a beacon of hope and

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34:36

Made in Russia: The Kremlin’s economic rebrand

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/04

How Moscow is working around international sanctions: promoting self-sustainability, elevating Russian brands and deepening trade with friendly countries. After Western companies retreated as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started, Russian consumer habits and the economy began to shift. We explore how sanctions reshaped everyday life and ask the million-dollar question: can Russia sustain a forever war?

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26:31

From rocks to riches

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/03

Meteorites are pieces of space rocks, which having survived a fiery journey through the atmosphere, land on the earth’s surface. No-one knows the exact number which make it to the ground each year, but this extra-terrestrial material holds the secrets to the beginnings of our solar system. If you are lucky enough to come across one, you might disregard it as just a dusty old rock. But others know exactly what they are looking for and their worth. With rare specimens often out of the price range of

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26:28

Joana Vasconcelos: Mask of mirrors

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/12/01

The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is renowned for her large-scale sculptural pieces which have featured in galleries across the world. She has used materials such as fabric, plastic and even tampons to construct her works. In June 2018 her exhibition I’m Your Mirror opened at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. For this Joana made a series of new sculptures, including an enormous Venetian-style mask, made of overlapping mirrors. The construction of the huge mask was a process full of

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55:27

Young and stateless

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/30

What does it mean to belong nowhere? Across the world, millions of people are denied citizenship and live without a country to call their own. It is estimated half of these are children. The majority of people become stateless or are born stateless through no fault of their own, but the onus is often put on the individual to fight for access to basic human rights that citizens take for granted. With insight from long-time experts, we discover how borders, nationality laws, histories and gender

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27:07

Ireland's new alcohol warning

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/30

Ireland has become the first country in the world to introduce labels linking alcohol with cancer and liver disease. Some producers began re-labelling their products this year and they're already on sale in pubs and supermarkets across the country. The rest of the drinks industry was due to follow suit next year but the Irish government has decided to delay the compulsory introduction of these labels until 2028. They blame uncertainty with world trade, but critics believe it’s the result of lobbying

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26:28

What is the 'Shadow Fleet'?

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/29

Around one fifth of the world's oil tankers now belong to the 'shadow fleet', more than a thousand ships which Russia uses to skirt sanctions and - increasingly - conduct acts of sabotage and hybrid warfare. BBC Russian's economics reporter Alexey Kalmykov explains how, with its opaque ownership structures and uninsured, poorly maintained ships, the shadow fleet presents an ecological, economic and strategic threat. On the night of 13th November 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupted,

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23:10

Brain fog and perimenopause

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/29

BBC Tech Editor Zoe Kleinman was about to go live on TV to explain a global outage affecting dozens of websites and apps. Millions would be watching, but she kept forgetting a key technical phrase and had to resort to reading from notes. The ‘brain fog’ Zoe experienced coincided with perimenopause – the start of the menopause and time in life for women where hormone levels are changing. She wrote about the experience on social media, attracting thousands of views and hundreds of supportive comments

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26:30

Twin spirits: A lost bond that lives in dreams

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/28

Claire grew up in a multi-faith household that often looked beyond traditional beliefs for solutions. At 17, everything changed when her mother discovered that Claire was speaking to “dead people.” Convinced it was ungodly, her mother turned to both a medium and her charismatic Christian sect for guidance, asking priests to intervene so that Waswa, Claire’s twin brother who had died at birth, would no longer appear. Soon after, the dreams that had been Claire’s source of comfort vanished, leaving

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32:07

What is the 'Russian cultural code'?

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/27

Why the traditional kokoshnik headdress is en vogue in Russia, and how it has become a poster image for the Kremlin’s vision of national identity. When President Putin talks not of tanks but of tiaras, it’s a signal that symbolism matters. We unpick the dress code of the Russian “patriot” to explore a deeper idea at the heart of everything from fashion and music to entertainment and literature. We go on a mission to decode the “cultural code” that, in the eyes of Russia’s leaders, makes the nation

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26:40

Stemming the tide in Normandy

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/25

Coastal erosion has become a serious problem for many seaside communities, no more so than in Normandy, in north-west France, where rising sea levels, strong tides and stronger storms have swept away homes, sand dunes and beaches. Every year the sea here is reclaiming several metres of coastline. But there are arguments over what to do about it. In the area around Coutainville beachfront homeowners, oyster producers and campsites are confronting local and national authority plans for some of them to

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24:34

The Shiralee: D'Arcy Niland's 1955 Australian western

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/24

The Shiralee is a 1955 novel by D'Arcy Niland, telling the story of a wandering swagman on a journey through the Australian outback, accompanied by his 10-year-old daughter. It was made into a 1957 film by Ealing Studios, starring Peter Finch, and now it is being brought to the stage of the Sydney Opera House by the Sydney Theatre Company. Mark Burman talks to the show's cast and crew, including playwright Kate Mulvany, about this Australian classic's journey to the stage. This episode contains a

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26:29

Inside India's war on Maoists

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/22

For nearly 60 years, the Indian government has been fighting a violent group of Maoists in the country. They are followers of the late Chinese leader, Mao Zedong and have carried out bombings and killings in different parts of India. Now, the Indian authorities claim to be on the brink of defeating these insurgents and has said that they will be fully removed by March 2026. There is one group that has been attributed with the recent success against the Maoists, known as the DRG or District Reserve

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23:35

Raising children on a warming planet

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/22

Another round of global climate talks is taking place at the COP30 summit, but some are questioning whether there is much point to these gatherings. We bring people together who have decided to take their own action. One guest, Gwynn, suggests the best way to save the planet is to not have children. She has even had surgery so she cannot get pregnant. “Forests and oceans and prairies are being destroyed so I can exist, so I can have my life,” Gwynn tells us. “I decided that I didn’t want to do that,

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26:30

Navigating faith on the road

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/21

Canada is home to thousands of Sikh truck drivers, crossing North America in cabs that double as kitchens, bedrooms and places to pray. In a single week, some will see more of the continent than most people will in a lifetime, from major cities to mountain ranges and endless miles of road. But the road can be a hard place to practise faith built on family, community, and a vegetarian diet. Journeys can be long, food options limited, and drivers say discrimination is rising. Yet many choose to

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26:39

China’s global spending spree

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/18

China has been on a giant global shopping spree. Since 2000, Chinese state banks have fuelled investments and acquisitions at a surprisingly rate - some four times what was previously thought. Brand new data, shared exclusively with the BBC, reveals that many of Beijing’s state-backed spending has targeted rich countries. Such deals are strictly legal, though not always easy to trace. Observers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are alarmed at the potential for Beijing to dominate key

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26:38

Fifty years since Franco: Spain, the valley and a...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/11/18

Fifty years after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, Spain continues to feel its way towards an accommodation between its once-warring factions. And nowhere in Spain is more emblematic of the lasting divisions provoked by the Spanish civil war than the place known for decades as El Valle de los Caidos – the Valley of the Fallen. Built partly with the forced labour of political prisoners, this is a monument that symbolised Franco’s Nationalist victory over Republican Spain. The Valley

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2,337 results

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