The Documentary Podcast

There is a general fear that artificial intelligence could make huge swathes of workers redundant, but are those fears unjustified? Rob Young asks what history can tell us about big technological leaps and how they changed the world of work at the time. How much of the rate of change comes down to customer preference - would you rather deal with a bot or a person?

We visit two projects exploring practical responses to homelessness and housing insecurity. Presenter Myra Anubi travels to Edinburgh to see the work of Social Bite, a charity creating small communities of prefabricated homes on unused land, offering people a stable place to live and rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, in Nantes, western France, we meet the team behind Bureaux du Cœur, which partners with businesses to open up unused office space as safe overnight accommodation for people in need.

The rescuers who dodge drones and bombs to evacuate from frontline areas in Ukraine, known as the “kill zone”. More than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, thousands of civilians still live dangerously close to active combat zones. Getting them to safety requires powers of persuasion, knowledge of warfare, and nerves of steel. The Global Jigsaw explores how volunteer evacuation efforts of civilians in eastern Ukraine have evolved throughout the war, and how rescuers continue to adapt to an increasingly hostile and unpredictable battlefield.

Find out more about BBC Monitoring on our website: https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk<...

Survivors of the floods in Nepal share their experiences of escape from the torrent of water that swept through valleys in the Himalayas, killing at least 1.300 people. “For me that river valley was where I built my dreams,” Gaurav, who owned a café tells us. “Within a few minutes we lost everything, everything was swept away.” Gaurav is joined in conversation by his friend Sakil, who lost his family home in the floods. Extraordinary pictures of the first people to be rescued after nine days have been shared with the world. They were trapped in a hydro-electric power station tunnel wi...

Fred Hammond is one of the biggest names in Gospel music, with 15 Grammy awards, and a career that spans over 40 years, from playing bass in The Winans to more recently his Tiny Desk Concert. His songs are loved by Christians around the world, and gospel fan and radio presenter Swarzy Shire wants to learn more about the man behind the music and how his faith has kept inspiring that music. Fred has faced ups and downs publicly from his divorce and the impact that has had on his family, to his physical suffering with multiple knee operations and a...

Forty years ago, an iceberg broke away from the Antarctic ice shelf. But this was no ordinary iceberg. A colossal chunk of ice which covered an area twice the size of London, it was as deep as the Empire State building is high and it weighed a trillion tonnes. For nearly four decades A23a was the world’s largest iceberg. Glaciologist Dr. Catherine Walker tells the story of A23a from its origins, its ice being laid down deep in the Antarctic over millennia, through to its final chapter - shrinking, melting and feeding the ocean from which it...

Presenter Becky Green lost one of her twins to sepsis in 2018. It is a condition that, according to the World Health Organization, is implicated in one in five deaths worldwide - more than bowel, prostate and lung cancer combined. Sepsis can begin as a simple infection and escalate within hours, overwhelming the body and causing organ failure. It is a race against time that too often goes unrecognised until it is too late. But around the world, that is starting to change. Becky speaks to Dr Kissoon of the Global Sepsis Alliance about how our understanding of sepsis has...

AI cameras, drones, licence plate readers, sound detection, Flock - the United States is monitored through a growing, high-tech, and increasingly interconnected surveillance network. In some cities, like Houston, Texas, the true extent of this system is a secret. Law enforcement says this is all for public safety - to prevent crime and assist investigations. Critics think it is an invasion of privacy, open to misuse, and a sneaky tool aiding ICE in President Trump’s deportation drive. One company is bearing the brunt of the backlash: Flock Safety. Its network of AI-powered licence plate readers spans over 6000 communities, ge...

The Made in Turkey label found in so much of our clothing could disappear as the industry faces competition from countries like Egypt. Turkey is battling huge inflation and hundreds of clothing factories are going bankrupt leaving tens of thousands out of work. Emily Wither reports from Istanbul.

Colombia is reeling from the False Positive scandal. Incentivised by the government, soldiers abducted and killed over 7,000 innocent civilians, falsely presenting them as guerrilla fighters in an attempt to convince the nation they were winning a bloody civil conflict that had raged for over 50 years. We meet Blanca Monroy, the mother of a murdered young man, who battled the establishment to bring the scandal to national attention. We join forensic anthropologist, Cesar Medina as he hunts for the bodies of the missing. Jaime Trujillo is an ex-soldier, desperate to atone for his role in around 40 of the murders. Now...

The spoken languages in Hong Kong and Taiwan differ, with Cantonese being spoken in Hong Kong and Mandarin preferred in Taiwan, but the two territories use traditional Chinese characters for reading and writing. This has created a strong bond between them in the field of book publishing, with many books which are published in Taiwan being sold in Hong Kong. This year, authorities in Hong Kong have cracked down on booksellers under national security laws. Hong Kong's government argues they are necessary steps to maintain stability in the territory, but critics say they're crushing dissent. Concern is now being...

Flags are at half-mast across the United States following the death of Dolly Parton at the age of 80. Born in poverty in a log cabin in rural Tennessee, she went on to sell more than 100 million records and became one of the most influential figures in country music. Dolly Parton was also a highly successful entrepreneur and philanthropist and gave away millions to fund child literacy, conservation and healthcare. In our conversations, we bring together female country musicians – including Rhonda Vincent and Rissi Palmer - to share their memories of Dolly Parton and discuss her achievements. We also bring to...

rk Franklin is one of the biggest names in Gospel music, with 20 Grammy awards, and a career that spans over 30 years. From classics like ‘Why we sing’ to the mainstream hit ‘Stomp’, so many of his songs are loved by Christians around the world. Gospel fan and radio presenter Swarzy Shire wants to learn more about the man behind the music and how his faith has kept inspiring that music. Despite many public ups and downs, Kirk reveals why his faith has been a constant source of support in his life. From being adopted as a young child to facing p...

Throughout August, the Lives Less Ordinary podcast is sharing extraordinary love stories from around the world. To listen to the season, search ‘Lives Less Ordinary’ wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In this episode: in the 1970s, Mark arrived in the UK from the Bahamas and fell in love with a woman called Penny. For Penny, it felt like the beginning of everything- until, without warning, Mark broke things off and disappeared from her life. Devastated and searching for answers, Penny spent decades believing she was to blame, carrying that loss into the rest of her life and never quit...

In the 30 years since its invention the ready-to-use therapeutic food Plumpy'nut has saved the lives of millions of children and protected countless others from the effects of malnutrition. Jewel Kiriungi explores its origins and ongoing legacy. The brainchild of two Frenchmen, Doctor Andre Briend and Michel Lescanne, a food processing engineer, they set out to put the power to feed children back into the hands of parents. With the help of organisations like Unicef they created a system of manufacture and distribution that would not only feed the hungry but benefit the economies of the countries where Plumpy'nut was...

The figures are startling - 2.1 million Brazilians have a clinical addiction to betting and 7.5 million are problem gamblers. Women now comprise 40% of all gamblers, having been 25% just a decade ago. Online sports and casino betting have exploded in Brazil to make it one of the largest gambling markets in the world. The self-help group Gamblers Anonymous says it is receiving thousands of calls each month and millions of Brazilians are estimated be suffering financial, emotional or relationship problems as a result of betting. Camilla Mota talks to football fans in Sao Paulo about why they are gambling on their...

Lucy Sparrow stitches life into everyday objects, creating vibrant felt worlds that look just like the real thing. Following the success of her hand-stitched felt fish and chip shop, she has recreated a Walmart convenience store from the 1980s, complete with TV dinners and a felt photo booth.

Roland Pease explores how decades of strategic investment and diligent educational reform have brought China to the brink of global scientific dominance. As the world’s other scientific superpowers seemingly retreat from their historical high ground, how has China achieved such remarkable progress, both in applied and fundamental sciences? And what might that mean for the rest of us?

Image: A humanoid robot competes in the 1500m final at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, China on 15 August 2025 (Credit: Tingshu Wan/Reuters)

In a sprawling prison in the Asir province of Southwestern Saudi Arabia, hundreds of young Ethiopian men are currently sitting on death row, not knowing when their name might be called and to be told that it's their turn. In the hope of getting their voices heard some of the prisoners managed to get hold of the phone number for the BBC's Tigrinya language service. One of the journalists working for the service is Aklilu Tsegay and he tells us what it was like to speak to those prisoners, sometimes multiple times a day, when reporting on the story.<...

Noisy and disruptive children can turn a normal flight into a living nightmare. Earlier this month, a flight in Canada was cancelled after a young child refused to wear a seatbelt. The incident has opened a debate about how airlines should deal with these situations and how parents should control their children. In our conversations we bring together three parents to share their experiences. We also bring together three flight attendants to share their experiences of dealing with disruptive passengers, while keeping everyone on board safe.

AI isn’t just occasionally going rogue…(Open AI and Meta we’re looking at you) it’s also changing the world of work. Nearly 70% of college students in the US said they thought AI would make it harder to find a job in a recent survey - and 22% said that they’ve changed what they’re deciding to study at university because of this. They’re not the only ones… students all over the world are thinking about how to AI-proof their future careers.

In this episode, we go to the University College London campus to speak to three s...

As Silicon Valley races to build machines that can think, create and perhaps surpass human intelligence, the Vatican has emerged as one of the most prominent global voices questioning the path the tech billionaires are setting for us. Pope Leo XIV, in his recent document on AI, warned of “the risk of dehumanisation.” Behind that warning lies a question that has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries: what does it mean to be human?

In Rome, Isobel Cockerell explores whether the answer to that age-old question survives contact with the era of artificial intelligence. She turns to Fath...

On 7th January 2025, the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighbourhoods of Los Angeles suffered two of the most destructive fires in the city’s history. Twenty-one people died and 15,000 buildings were destroyed over a combined area the size of Paris.

The city is still reeling from the scale and intensity of the fires, and the challenge of rebuilding areas in which almost nothing remains standing. As the first tentative shoots of recovery begin to appear, Jonathan Glancey meets locals, including architects Scott Uriu and Michael Kovac. Like Dustin Bramell, co-founder of the Case Study: Adapt programme, they lost th...

When the BBC’s Richard Hollingham and his producer, Will Grant, arrived with their bikes in Kansas City, Missouri in 2008, it had just been named as the worst city for cyclists in the country. The resulting radio show became a “wake-up call” that has since inspired new cycling groups and millions of dollars of investment in cycling and walking initiatives. Now the BBC team is back to see what’s improved and what other communities around the world can learn from the city’s experiences. In their travels, Richard and Will join a group cycle, meet volunteers fixing bikes and find o...

What do the stolen love letters of John Keats have to do with homicide on the streets of New York? Prosecuting both crimes falls under the remit of assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdanos. A retired Marine colonel with both law and classics degrees, he has been the head of the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit since its creation in 2017. In his time on the job, the office has has seized more than six thousand pieces of stolen art and antiquities from various museums, art galleries and private homes in order to return them to their countries of origin...

Antonia Quirke goes behind the scenes of Bookish, the murder mystery series written by Matthew Sweet and Mark Gatiss, who plays an amateur detective and bookshop owner called Book. Antonia hears from Matthew as he works on the script, crafting a cliff-hanger and deciding just how many red herrings there should be in one episode. He reveals the secrets of his working relationship with Mark, and we join them as they travel to their place of work, a film studio in Belgium, where they discuss which character they are going to murder that day - and how the crime...

In 2025, Voice of America was thrust into the spotlight when the bulk of its funding was taken away. But in an era shaped by the internet and social media revolutions and with the West's funding priorities changing, it was not the first international broadcaster to go quiet. The soft power war of the airwaves has now moved to a decisive phase.

Josephine McDermott traces the start of international radio and its heyday through World War Two and the Cold War as a tool of soft power. Hear the hosts of shortwave radio, from the Nazi propagandists Lord...

More than four years after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, the war continues to shape almost every aspect of life in both countries, including the challenge of finding enough people to serve on the front line. In Ukraine, videos showing violent confrontations between recruitment officers and members of the public have sparked angry debate about how the country's draught system is working. In Russia meanwhile, the authorities have tightened conscription rules and introduced new digital tools aimed at successfully recruiting more young Russians. With BBC Monitoring's Vitaly Shevchenko and BBC Russian's Yaroslava Kiryukhina.

It’s been several weeks since there has been any significant rainfall in many parts of the world. Across Europe, a prolonged heatwave and little rain have dried-up waterways, hit crop production and have contributed to the wildfires that continue to burn in many areas. In our conversations we hear from Germany and Hungary – areas where low water levels are impacting transport and tourism - and we speak to Austin from Florida who used to run fishing tours. We are also joined by farmers in India, France and the UK, where the lack of rain has hit crop production, whic...

Laurent de Cherisey was fresh out of business school and looking forward to earning a lot of money when his sister had a car accident that left her severely disabled. This led him to rethink everything. Including finding faith. He founded what has become a string of houses where accident victims and non-accident victims live side by side. They’re called the Simon of Cyrene houses, named after the man Jesus chose to help him carry his cross.

The project was financed in part by the box office receipts for the hit comedy 'Untouchable' at the request of...

How has botany been able to function as one of the longest-lasting soft powers between the two world powers - China and the US? Journalist and producer Finn Aberdein has been focused on China for over two decades. He hears from policy analysts, supply chain diplomats and leading Chinese and US botanists working tirelessly to keep their boots on the ground trips operating. From the secretive walled-gardens of China’s communist elite, to the gingko picnic spaces of Bostonian college lawns, and ancient forest canopies of the Sichuan basin, a portrait emerges - one of a borderless community of pl...

When it opens in December, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will be the largest in the world. Stretched over a 10-lane freeway, it is meant to save the California Mountain Lion population, which has become fragmented by the highway. It could also serve as a model for other projects, as crossings of this kind have often been viewed as too large to be effective. So, will the crossing work? We examine the construction and the existing scientific data to find out.

The Victoria falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, is considered one of the natural wonders of the world. But as Isa Jacobson reports, there is concern that development around the waterfall could threaten the delicate ecosystem and exacerbate conflict between humans and wildlife.

South African police detective Frans Mathipa told his boss he feared that he would be killed by the country’s military. Two days later he was found shot dead in his car by the side of a motorway.

At the time of his death, Mathipa had been investigating whether special forces soldiers were behind the disappearance of Abdella Abadigga, a suspected member of so-called Islamic State or ISIS, and his bodyguard. So was Mathipa killed, as his colleagues believe, because of fears about what his investigation threatened to reveal?

Dino Mahtani and Yeshiel Panchia investigate an...

In Lagos, a vast patch of scrubland is being imagined as the future home of Kebulania: an ambitious African film city on the edge of Nigeria’s biggest metropolis, and one of the centres of Nollywood, the country’s multi-billion dollar film industry. Nigerian journalist Samuel Okocha follows the project in its earliest, most uncertain days – when the vision is big, but the buildings are yet to rise. At the proposed site, he joins community members, contractors and staff from Del-York Creative Arts, a Nigerian conglomerate film and media training company, as traditional leaders offer prayers and blessings.

New Bell Prison in Douala, Cameroon, operates a bit like a city within a city. The facility has its own "taxis" (inmates who hand deliver messages), its own law enforcement (prisoners who help police the facility) and a market. The jail is overcrowded and under-resourced, and the occupants of New Bell have sometimes adapted the jail's overstretched systems to work for them. An on-site music studio and label, Jail Time Records, has also sprung up and found an international audience. Wedaeli Chibelushi, journalist for BBC World Online, Africa, tells the stories of some of the inmates involved.

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Ariana Grande says she will be taking ‘a step back’ from public life. The reason, it seems, is the constant public commentary she faces – particularly surrounding her appearance. We bring together fans of the multi-award-winning singer and Oscar nominated actor to discuss the scrutiny facing women in the public eye. We also hear from women who have received abuse after posting on social media, including Ella, a high jump athlete from Finland. “I never imagined when I started doing sports as a little girl there would be a moment when I would receive messages that I should kill myself because...

In Lithuania, singer Rūgilė Daujotaitė was becoming a familiar face on television. She was performing at major music events, competing for a place at Eurovision, and building a life that, from the outside, appeared successful. But privately, she says she was struggling. Raised in a family shaped by New Age spirituality and occult beliefs, Rūgilė grew up searching for God through a mixture of traditions. As an adult, she moved to Amsterdam to study jazz, became involved in shamanic practices and Santo Daime ceremonies, and began taking ayahuasca - a powerful psychedelic brew used in some religious ritua...

In the late '90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania’s capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive improvised network that catches the attention of telecom giants. Told by those who built it, this is the extraordinary story of how a homemade system became the backbone of a city - a reflection of what the internet was meant to be and what it became.

Aviation is being reimagined for a changing planet: Vertical take-off passenger cars for city centres. Hydrogen powered planes for zero carbon travel. Hyper-sonic flights to take the London to Sydney journey to under two hours.

Kelly Latimer, US Aerospace engineer, flight test pilot, and former Flight Test Director of Virgin Galactic; Rob Miller, Net-zero aviation pioneer and Director of the Whittle Lab at Cambridge University, UK and Daniel Moczydlower, president of the Brazilian future aircraft innovators, Embraer-X, join BBC presenter Caroline Steel on stage in London, to discuss their trailblazing work and answer questions from a live...