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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

Heart and Soul: The race to break the glass

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/07

Amie Liebowitz interviews matchmaker and dating coach Aleeza Ben Shalom from the Netflix show Jewish Matchmaker. She then goes on her own quest to learn about the traditional and religious values of matchmaking. From a mass dating event to going through her own matchmaking experience, Amie asks herself the question: Is she being open enough to exploring new connections and can tradition save her love life in this modern world?

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26:29

Boxing Sisters: Yazidi women boxing back to health

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/06

In Northern Iraq, Yazidi women and girls who have been the victims of brutal sexual enslavement and lost swathes of their family and community to genocide at the hands of IS, are finding an unusual way to heal - boxing. Since 2014, when ISIS began targeting Yazidis because of their religious identity, those who survived the genocide have been confined to internally displaced persons camps in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Here conditions are difficult and the women and girls still struggle to process

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22:26

What in the World: How have older reality tv shows aged?

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/05

America’s Next Top Model, the reality competition series hosted by Tyra Banks, continues to face criticism years after it stopped airing. And it is not the only reality show that critics say has not aged well. From Cops to The Swan to Mr Beast’s new show Beast Games, reality TV routinely courts controversy.We all know reality shows like The Traitors, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Real Housewives and Love Island. But how did the genre become so popular in the first place? We hear from

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27:28

Assignment: Russia’s new war elite

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/04

Russians who sign up to fight in Ukraine earn big money in salaries and bonuses – and the Kremlin is even more generous to families of those killed in battle. Average compensation packages for a dead son or husband are worth about US$130,000. In less-wealthy Russian provinces, where most recruits are from, that’s enough to turn your life around. Reporter Arsenii Sokolov finds out how the relatives of the tens of thousands of men Russia has lost in the war are spending the money – and asks whether

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26:29

TikTok and the digital pimps: Eye Investigates

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/03

With its dancing challenges and comedy sketches, it’s no surprise why Tiktok is popular with young Kenyans. It’s also a way for them to make money through the app’s gifting service. But there’s a darker side, where young women – and girls as young as 15 – are selling sexual content on livestreams, with some being recruited and exploited by “digital pimps”. Africa Eye’s Debula Kemoli investigates who is profiting. A spokesperson for Tiktok said in a statement that they have zero tolerance for

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26:30

In the Studio: Marcin Dudek

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/02

Mark Burman follows artist Marcin Dudek as he works on his sound sculpture The Ground Harbours The Soul, which is made from the sounds of the crowd at Tottenham Hotspur stadium. Visitors get to experience all the highs and lows of fans watching a football game in real time.

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26:32

The Fifth Floor: Are Korean beauty products too light?

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/01

The Korean skincare industry is booming around the world, but some brands faced backlash because of the lack of products for people with darker skin tones. Korean journalist Soo Min Kim looked into how companies responded and spoke to the influencers driving this change. Plus, can radio help save a farmer's livelihood? Boyd Chibale from BBC Media Action in Zambia talks about the work they've done to help local communities cope with droughts and power cuts; and the art of balancing rocks, as filmed

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23:08

BBC OS Conversations: Polyamorous relationships

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/03/01

A video of American R&B singer Ne-Yo kissing three of his girlfriends backstage has had loads of attention and highlighted the practice of polyamory. This is when people have several partners at once and are completely open about it. To find out more, we bring together four polyamorous men and women in the US and the UK to tell us what their lives are like. Apart from the positives, we also hear about the stigma and the jealousy that can arise from having more than one partner.

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26:28

Heart and Soul: Becoming a Buddhist Bhikshuni in Bhutan

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/28

In 2022 the kingdom of Bhutan ordained 144 women in an unprecedented ceremony. Among them was Emma Slade, also known as Lopen Ani Pema Deki, from Kent in the UK. She was the only Western woman to take part. Emma’s faith has been a part of her life since she was held at gunpoint and robbed in Indonesia in 1997. She studied in Bhutan and set up a charity that supports children with special needs in the country. She talks to Julia Paul about life as a bhikshuni in the UK and Bhutan, her memories of

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26:30

Flight of the vulture

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/27

With their fearsome talons, acid poo and a penchant for rotting carcasses, the vulture has long been shouldered with associations of death, and dishonour. This taboo often puts them bottom of the list for conservation projects. Conservationist Sacha Dench visits three different vulture species, each with an extraordinary story of persecution and survival. In India, vulture populations collapsed by 99.9%, the sharpest decline of any animal ever recorded. Debbie Pain and Chris Bowden describe the

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19:24

BBC Trending: Can Community Notes clean up your feed?

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/26

Meta has decided to abandon the use of independent fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram in the United States, citing concerns that fact-checkers have become too politically biased. Instead, the company seems to be following X’s lead by shifting to a Community Notes-style system, where users rather than professional fact-checkers and experts correct inaccurate information. But will it lead to more free speech and fewer errors? Or does it open the door for misinformation to spread more easily? How

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28:15

Assignment: Road wars - cycling in Paris

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/25

On 15 Oct 2024, a 27-year-old cyclist was killed in a bike lane in Paris. His name was Paul Varry. He was run over by a car after an argument with a driver. What happened to Paul was extreme, but it resonated with many Parisians. For Paris is undergoing a cycling revolution. The city has created a vast network of bike lanes, introduced new restrictions for cars. The number of cyclists has soared. But there have also been conflicts, as cars, bikes and pedestrians try to navigate the new balance of

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26:29

In the Studio: Mohammad Barrangi

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/24

Iranian-born artist and former Paralympian, Mohammad Barrangi, creates intricate, dreamlike worlds where myth and reality collide. His bold, layered works, murals, prints, and 3D sculptures, fuse Persian aesthetics, ancient symbols, and surreal hybrid creatures, often blending women and animals into fantastical forms. Born without the use of his left arm, Barrangi has developed a distinctive printmaking technique, working on the floor and stabilizing his materials with his feet. For his latest

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59:35

Life in occupied Ukraine

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/23

Russia’s land grab playbook aimed at erasing local identity and russifying “liberated” territories. Three years into the full scale invasion of Ukraine, we ask what life is like in areas under Russian control. We look at “ripe for russification” Crimea, which was annexed 11 years ago, Moscow’s subsequent efforts to assert itself in the separatist East, and the Kremlin’s challenges in subjugating parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. As time passes, the uncertainty over the future of what

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11:57

The Fifth Floor: Syria after Assad

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/22

In December 2024, rebel forces took control in Syria, and former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. What's happened since? Salma Khattab from BBC Arabic has just come back from Syria and she'll share what she's seen on the ground.Presented by Faranak Amidi. Produced by Alice Gioia, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean.(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

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24:08

BBC OS Conversations: Ukraine and three years of war

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/22

The past week has seen talks between the United States and Russia – without Ukraine. This was followed by what seems to be a deepening rift between US President Trump and Ukrainian leader President Zelensky. Meanwhile, the war on the ground grinds on and Russia continues to bombard Ukraine with drones and missiles. We bring together three people who we first met on the programme shortly after the full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. We also hear from two women involved in a project to rebuild

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26:28

Heart and Soul: The only thing certain in life

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/21

In 2019, performer and writer Rochi Rampal found herself attending 10 funerals in one year. To contend with this, she embarked on her own “crash course” to better deal with death, and felt she had found a new attitude to both grief and dying. But Rochi was then given a new diagnosis that forced her to face the threat to her life that she thought she was ready for and the composure she thought she had was shaken. So Rochi wants to begin again and turns to faith and spirituality for answers.

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52:21

Witness History: US Black History Month special

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/20

Extraordinary stories from African-American history, told by the people who were there. We hear tales of bravery and survival against all odds, from the first African-American woman to lead a World War Two battalion, to a Black Panther Party leader in exile, to one man’s incredible escape from the Tulsa Race Massacre. This is a special collection of stories from Witness History, from the BBC World Service, to mark Black History Month in the United States.

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19:30

BBC Trending: Quadrobic panic in Russia over craze to...

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/19

There’s a moral panic in Russia and several former Soviet states about a craze in which teenagers and children dress up as animals and walk on all fours like their favourite animals. In one TikTok video, a group of youngsters are seen scampering across Moscow’s Red Square wearing fox masks and tails. Politicians and religious leaders have warned the trend is a threat to civilised values and a cover for LGBT and western ideology. Legislation is now being considered to ban quadrobics and fine or

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26:36

Assignment: The village that came back from the dead

The Documentary Podcast ·

2025/02/18

In Germany some 300 villages have been destroyed since the Second World War because of the coal that lay beneath them. Villagers have grown up in the knowledge that one day their house will be torn down and generally they’ve accepted the deal on offer: the mine buys their house and they build a new one in a brand-new village. But the demands of climate change and the need to curb CO2 emissions has changed attitudes to fossil fuels. In one region west of Cologne all mining activity will cease by

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2,353 results

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