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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

25:35

In the Studio: Madeleine Thien

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/28

In 2020, the Canadian writer Madeleine Thien was working on her next novel, the follow-up to her prize-winning 2016 book Do Not Say We Have Nothing. But it was difficult to find the internal peace and privacy to begin again, especially after being catapulted into the public eye by the previous novel’s success. Paul Kobrak followed her over several months as she created the first drafts of the new novel. It is a process which moves from Berlin to Brooklyn and finally to Portugal's capital city

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47:27

Bonus: Good Bad Billionaire: Minecraft’s maker

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/27

A bonus episode from Good Bad Billionaire - the award-winning podcast from the BBC World Service. You can find more episodes by searching for ‘Good Bad Billionaire’ wherever you get your BBC podcasts.Minecraft is the most successful computer game ever. It's sold 300 million copies, built an active community of fans and there's now even a Minecraft movie. So how did one man - Markus Persson - create it all by himself, before selling it for billions?BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing

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24:11

The Fifth Floor: Tackling Nigeria's skin bleaching...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/26

According to the World Health Organisation, 77% of Nigerian women have used skin-lightening creams. When BBC Hausa’s Madina Maishanu decided to look into this, she uncovered an even more worrying trend: mothers using potentially harmful products on their babies. Madina spoke to the campaigners trying to stop these practices. Plus, how human activities and climate change are threatening shea trees in Uganda with Njoroge Muigai from BBC Africa. Presented by Faranak AmidiProduced by Alice Gioia and

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24:53

BBC OS Conversations: Remembering the life of Pope...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/26

Mark Lowen in Rome brings people together to share their memories of the Pope, who died on Easter Monday. In our conversations, Mark hears from Catholics in Argentina, including one of Pope Francis’ friends who knew him when he was a priest in Buenos Aires. We also bring together three people from Northern Ireland who had a private audience with the Pope, and three women who describe how he changed their lives. Mark sits down with Iraqi-American Pilgrims in a café just outside the Vatican to chat

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26:43

Bonus: Bridgerton actor’s interview on Dear Daughter

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/25

A bonus episode from Dear Daughter - the award-winning podcast from the BBC World Service. You can find more episodes by searching for ‘Dear Daughter’ wherever you get your BBC podcasts.Bridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh joins Namulanta in the studio to share the letter she’s written to her three children. She tells them the importance of trusting their bodies and following their instincts - a life philosophy which has sometimes led her into some unexpected situations, especially while pregnant…Dear

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26:29

The call of Anastasia

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/24

Members of the new age Anastasia movement espouse strong family values, farm small plots of land and try to educate their own children outside the public school system. Originating in Russia, the quasi-religious group has now spread to Germany, where there are more than a dozen ‘Anastasia’ rural settlements. But are they more than just a harmless fringe group? Reporter Johannes Dell goes back to his native Germany to discover what the group stands for. He speaks to a former Anastasia member and to a

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52:14

Witness History: The Environment Movement

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/23

To mark Earth Day, we bring you remarkable stories of the history of the environmental movement, told by the people who were there. Selected from the BBC’s Witness History program, we hear about the major moments that changed our understanding of the planet we live on.

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49:22

Francis, the rebel Pope

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/22

Following the death of Pope Francis, Edward Stourton looks at the life and legacy of the spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics worldwide. He was elected at a time of crisis for his Church, but quickly transformed its reputation. He urged Christians to be less judgemental and more welcoming of gay and divorced people. And as the first Pope of Latin American identity and from the southern hemisphere, he put the poor at the heart of the Church’s mission, speaking up for migrants and

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33:10

Assignment: Dicing with democracy? Romania’s...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/22

A cancelled election, a cancelled candidate and a divided country – is Romania’s democracy under threat?Last December the country’s Constitutional Court cancelled the presidential election two days before the final vote, citing outside interference, with the nationalist pro-Putin candidate, Calin Georgescu, riding high in the polls. TikTok sensation and portraying himself as an outsider, Georgescu’s anti-EU and anti-NATO message resonated with an unhappy electorate. His sudden success was

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27:21

In the Studio: Amin Gulgee - Heavy metal

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/21

Amin Gulgee defies easy categorisation: he’s a metal sculptor, a curator, and one of Pakistan’s most innovative and cherished artists, the beating heart of his home city of Karachi’s creative scene. His metalwork is as dramatic and eccentric as Amin is. He’s in your face, uncompromising, a living and breathing performance piece.Amin also comes from a prestigious family: his father, Ismail Gulgee, was one of Pakistan’s most famous modernists, creating abstract paintings that have been exhibited

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26:21

Make me perfect: Manufacturing beauty in China

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/20

In China today, looking good is seen as key to career success. With beauty videos promoting extreme weight-loss flooding social media, beauty apps making booking surgery click of a button away, China’s cosmetic surgery industry is booming. But the surge in demand has led to a shortage of qualified practitioners and licensed clinics. Hundreds of accidents are happening inside Chinese clinics every day. We talk to young women pressured into cosmetic procedures and expose the surgeon behind one of

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26:36

The Fifth Floor: Inside the Taliban's surveillance...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/19

There are over 90,000 hi-definition CCTV cameras in Kabul, watching everyone’s movements. What are the Taliban using this footage for? BBC Afghan Services' journalist Mahjooba Nowrouzi was granted exclusive access into the country’s top security control room. Plus, BBC Mundo's William Márquez on the history of Charles Darwin's house, and Mayuresh Gopal reports for BBC Marathi on the geological and historical relevance of India's Lonar Crater Lake.Presented by Faranak AmidiProduced by Alice Gioia,

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23:48

BBC OS Conversations: Colourism

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/19

The issue of colourism was highlighted in a recent BBC news report about a Nigerian woman who bleached the skin of her six young children leaving them with discoloured skin, burns and scars. It is a form of racism where light skin is more highly valued than dark skin amongst people of the same ethnic group.In our conversations, we hear from women who share experiences of colourism in India including Chandana who has faced colourism from an early age: “I was six or seven years old when I would first

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26:29

Heart and Soul: Our Sacred Harp

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/18

Sacred Harp pioneer and former punk frontman, Tim Eriksen, takes us into the hair-raising sound of shape note singing – an American choral tradition experiencing a resurgence across the US and in Europe. All people and all faiths are welcome. As a new edition of the songbook approaches publication, Tim explores why this music is drawing more singers and how it’s managing to remain inclusive despite increasing political polarisation in the wider culture.Sacred Harp is sung a-cappella in four-part

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26:34

Braille and me

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/17

Built around a game of braille Scrabble, Emma Tracey presents a celebration of braille, 200 years after it was invented. Emma, who’s been blind since birth, talks to others who love the six tiny dots: Geerat Vermeij, one of the world’s leading experts in molluscs; Yetnebersh Nigussie, an Ethiopian lawyer, who describes her blindness as "a lottery I won at the age of five"; Sheri Wells-Jensen, a linguistics professor who’s been a linguistic consultant on Star Trek and is on the US advisory board for

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49:20

Olympique Lyonnais: The Champions League trailblazers

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/16

Olympique Lyonnais is the most successful club in women’s football, dominating Europe over the last 15 years winning eight Champions League titles. Only Barcelona have recently been able to compete. Lyon's success is the vision of club president Jean-Michel Aulas who wanted to create an iconic team, with the best players, but in the case of Aulas he also promised to ensure both male and female players were treated equally. This included the first mixed football training academy. In Olympique

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27:22

Assignment: New Zealand - what counts as Māori equality

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/15

Māori in New Zealand have been resisting moves by the current right-of-centre government to abolish certain indigenous-specific rights aimed at combatting disadvantage.In a 9-day hikoi or march of defiance they walked from the top of New Zealand down to the capital Wellington, joined by non-Māori supporters - all opposed to the changes. A separate Māori Health Authority has been dismantled, for example. It was set up by the previous centre-left government to tackle health inequalities that mean

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26:29

In the Studio: Steve Reich

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/14

For 60 years, New York composer Steve Reich has been one of classical music’s most celebrated revolutionaries. Pioneering minimalism in the 1960s, a musical style based on repetition and shifting rhythms, his strange experiments with cassette tape led to orchestral masterpieces – now performed around the world. His career has not only helped define the latest era of classical music, but had an enormous influence on pop, rock and electronica. He has helped shape 20th Century music in a way few can

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49:27

Defeated: How ordinary Germans experienced the end of...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/13

On 8 May 1945 Britain, the US and many other countries were rejoicing. Germany had surrendered, and World War Two was over, at least in Europe. Yet it was not a day of celebration for everyone - for the vanquished Germans, it marked the end of bombings and of Nazi rule. But it was also a time of deprivation and chaos, fear and soul-searching. Millions of ethnic Germans had fled their homes to escape the approaching Red Army. Lore Wolfson Windemuth, whose own father grew up under Nazi rule, unearths

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20:08

The Fifth Floor: Stranded in Panama

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/04/12

On his first day as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order shutting down the asylum system at the US-Mexico border. He also promised huge changes to the US immigration system, including arrests and mass deportations of undocumented migrants. Santiago Vanegas from BBC Mundo has been following a group of Venezuelans who are trying to go back to their home country, undertaking a dangerous journey through Central America. Plus, Gopal Kateshiya visits some Kutchi bhungas, traditional mud

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2,353 results

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