Episodes
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America's friends
The Documentary Podcast addFrom a US president who is turning the world upside down – with a relish for dismantling global agreements – the message is clear: it’s America first. But where does that leave old European allies? Few expect the transatlantic relationship to go back to where it was before Trump. Europe, says Angela Merkel, now has to shape its own destiny. James Naughtie explores the uncertain future for America's friends.
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South Africa's Born Frees at 25
The Documentary Podcast addThere's a generation in South Africa who are known as the Born Frees. They were born in 1994, the year of the elections in which black citizens were allowed to vote for the first time.
The Born Frees are 25 years old now – graduating from universities, getting established in their careers, or still living in enduring poverty, which has reduced since 1994 but is still profound. The government estimates that 13 million South Africans still live in what they call 'extreme poverty.' This is a major disappointment to many who queued for hours to vote in the 1994 election which brought Nelson Mandela to power. Despite spending twenty-seven years in an Apartheid gaol, Mandela was dedicated to creating a 'rainbow nation', with dignity and opportunity for everyone, regardless of race.
BBC correspondent Hugh Sykes has visited South Africa regularly since 1994, and in this programme he tells us about the politics of the country, education, corruption and poverty. -
Episodes manquant?
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10, 9, 8, 7
The Documentary Podcast addTaking place over just eight months, four perilous and eventful space missions laid the foundations for a successful Moon landing. Each pushed the boundaries of technology and revealed new insights into our own planet. As we count down to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, astronaut Nicole Stott tells the story of the build-up to mankind’s giant leap.
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Restoring Brazil's National Treasure
The Documentary Podcast addBrazilians wept when their 200-year-old National Museum went up in flames last September. Twenty million items, many of them irreplaceable, were thought to have been reduced to ash when it was gutted by a massive fire. Staff said the loss to science and history was incalculable - and the tragedy, possibly caused by faulty wiring in the long-underfunded institution, led to much national heart-searching about the country's commitment to its heritage. The museum, housed in Brazil's former Imperial Palace in Rio de Janeiro, held unique collections of fossils, animal specimens, indigenous artefacts, as well as Egyptian and Greek treasures - and the oldest human skull found in the Americas. Some scientists, who saw their entire life's work go up in flames, were in despair - but others vowed to work to rebuild and restock the museum. Now, months on, painstaking archaeological work in the debris has uncovered items that can be restored, while other specialists are setting out on expeditions to acquire new specimens. Tim Whewell reports from Rio on the agonies - and occasional small triumphs - of the slow, exhausting effort to bring a great national institution back to life.
(Image: A Brazilian firefighter attempts to extinguish flames during a fire at the National Museum of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Sept 2018. Credit: Getty Images) -
Snooker: Young, cool and Chinese
The Documentary Podcast addOnce a game associated with the backrooms of British pubs, snooker is now a global sport, with most of its growth coming from China. Seven-time world snooker champion Stephen Hendry presents this exploration into how snooker became so popular in China, and why its future is looking young, cool and Chinese.
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Mumbai Mirror
The Documentary Podcast addAs the 2019 Indian election campaign kicks off, BBC World Service follows journalists from the daily Mumbai Mirror newspaper to get under the skin of the stories that matter to Mumbaikers. From daily editorial meetings to exclusive investigations, this ‘fly-on-the-wall’ radio documentary offers insight into how a newspaper covers the life and news of India’s largest city.
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New York City’s pirates of the air
The Documentary Podcast addAs the workday winds down across New York, you can tune in to a clandestine world of unlicensed radio stations; a cacophonous sonic wonder of the city. As listeners begin to arrive home, dozens of secret transmitters switch on from rooftops in immigrant enclaves. These stations are often called ‘pirates’ for their practice of commandeering an already licensed frequency.
These rogue stations evade detection and take to the air, blanketing their neighbourhoods with the sounds of ancestral lands blending into a new home. They broadcast music and messages to diverse communities – whether from Latin America or the Caribbean, to born-again Christians and Orthodox Jews.
Reporter David Goren has long followed these stations from his Brooklyn home. He paints an audio portrait of their world, drawn from the culture of the street. Vivid soundscapes emerge from tangled clouds of invisible signals, nurturing immigrant communities struggling for a foothold in the big city.
With thanks to KCRW and the Lost Notes Podcast episode Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD.
Producer/Presenter: David Goren -
Order! Order!
The Documentary Podcast addThe BBC’s parliamentary correspondent Mark D’Arcy reviews the bizarre twists and turns of the extraordinary and chaotic past few weeks of debates and voting on Brexit in the British Parliament, from the record-breaking defeat for the government to the crucial vote prevented by procedural rules dating from 1604. And he examines the role played by the personalities of the controversial characters in this drama, including prime minister Theresa May and the House of Commons speaker John Bercow.
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Poland's partisan ghosts
The Documentary Podcast addFor some in Poland the Cursed Soldiers are national heroes; for others they are murderers. A march in celebration of a group of Polish partisans fighting the Soviets has become the focus of tension in a small community in one of Europe’s oldest forests. Those taking part believe the partisans – known as the Cursed Soldiers – were national heroes, but others remember atrocities committed by them 70 years ago. Some partisans were responsible for the burning of villages and the murder of men, women and children in and around Poland’s Bialowieza forest. The people living the forest are Orthodox and Catholic, Belorussian and Polish; this march threatens to revive past divisions between them. Many believe that far-right groups have hijacked this piece of history to further their nationalist agenda. For Assignment, Maria Margaronis visits the forest to find out why this is causing tensions now; why the locals feel the march is making them feel threatened; and how this reflects wider political rifts in Poland today.
Produced by Charlotte McDonald.
(Image: March through the town of Hajnowka to celebrate the Polish partisans known as the Cursed Soldiers. Copyright: BBC) -
India's forbidden love
The Documentary Podcast addAt a time when religious extremism and honour killings have been dominating the political and social discourse, we take a look at the issues surrounding marriages between inter-faith and inter-caste couples ahead of India’s parliamentary elections. Divya Arya, the BBC’s Women’s Affairs journalist in India tells the story of couples who have fled their homes and communities in fear of their lives in the name of love.
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Will AI kill development?
The Documentary Podcast addIan Goldin asks if robotisation will prevent poorer countries taking the traditional route to prosperity. Since World War Two, nation after nation has more or less followed the same growth path. As the workforce has moved away from farming, they have created low-skilled industrial jobs, utilising their advantage of cheap labour. Gradually they have moved up the value chain, producing more and more sophisticated goods, before moving towards a service economy. But robots can now can replace even a low-paid factory workforce. So what does that mean for countries still struggling near the bottom of the development ladder?
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Nepal Fights Foreign Paedophiles
The Documentary Podcast addHunting western paedophiles is a priority for a new police unit tasked with safeguarding children in Nepal.
Mired in poverty and still recovering from a devastating earthquake in 2015, Nepal is increasingly being targeted by foreign paedophiles who recommend it as a destination when they share child abuse tips on the dark web.
In recent years a series of western men have been charged with raping or sexually assaulting Nepali boys.
Jill McGivering follows the under-resourced police unit, hears the stories of victims and perpetrators and examines what makes Nepal so vulnerable to abuse by western men.
This programme contains descriptions of child sexual abuse which some listeners may find distressing.
Producer: Caroline Finnigan
(Photo: Nepalese children play in Kathmandu. Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images) -
Will China and America go to war?
The Documentary Podcast addWill the growing competition between China and the United States inevitably lead to military conflict?
One leading American academic created huge attention when in 2017 when he posed the idea of what he called a "Thucydides Trap". Drawing on the work of the ancient Greek historian, he warned that when a rising power (Sparta) threatens an existing power (Athens) they are destined to clash, unless both countries change their policies. He warned that the same pattern could play out with the US and China.
Since then, President Trump has engaged in combative rhetoric over trade, while China has fast been modernising and upgrading its military.
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus considers whether Washington and Beijing can escape the trap, or whether the growing economic, strategic and technological rivalry between the two nations will inevitably end in conflict.
(Photo: US and Chinese freight containers crash into each other. Credit: Getty Images) -
Not #MeToo, I'm French
The Documentary Podcast addIn 2016 when #MeToo spread around the world, thousands of women followed in France using the hashtag #balancetonporc (expose your pig). Some criticised the aggressive wording of the hashtag itself, others didn’t agree with the call to name perpetrators. Why was #MeToo so controversial in France? Was it lost in translation?
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Unrest in Ukraine’s Little Hungary
The Documentary Podcast addEastern Ukraine has been under assault from Russian backed rebel forces for the past five years, but few have heard of a smaller conflict, which could be brewing in the west of the country, between Ukraine and Hungary. Some have accused the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of trying to create a breakaway state in impoverished Transcarpathia, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Ukraine and Hungary both expelled diplomats from each other’s nations, following a row over passports and a Hungarian cultural centre has been repeatedly firebombed. Lucy Ash meets people in the Ukrainian border town of Berehove and investigates whether deepening tensions could destabilise the region and further dash Ukraine’s hopes of being a unified country inside NATO and the EU.
Producer: Josephine Casserly
(Image: Pupil at a Hungarian-language secondary school in Berehove in Western Ukraine walks down a corridor bearing a portrait of Lajos Kossuth, the 19th Century political reformer after whom the school is named. Credit: Balint Bardi) -
The Romanian Wave
The Documentary Podcast addRomanians are the second largest foreign nationality in the UK. Why did they come and will they stay? One politician famously once said he "would not like to live next door to Romanians." But now they work in the health service, they teach in British universities, pick fruit on farms and wash cars. Yet sensational headlines have described them as "criminal gangs" and "begging Roma." Tessa Dunlop, a Romania-phile historian, uncovers a misunderstood, multi-layered immigrant community and asks why so many now call Britain home.
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Where are you going? - London
The Documentary Podcast addCatherine Carr talks to people on the move in London. From the American who left her young children on the other side of the Atlantic, and the Russian buying Soviet propaganda posters at a tube station, to a ‘born and bred’ Londoner who protests that “we all voted out, we should be out”. With the original date for Brexit just days away, we find out what is really on people’s minds.
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RoboLife
The Documentary Podcast addMariko Oi has young children starting school in Singapore, where robots are increasingly being used in education, and ageing parents back in her home country Japan, where they are now assisting in elderly care. She has some understandable concerns about the future, and is setting off to find out just what these machines are being used for, why we need them, and what they’re really capable of.
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The crypto factor: the winners and losers in virtual investment
The Documentary Podcast addYou can't take money with you when you die.... or can you? In this episode of Assignment the stranger than fiction story that's the latest cryptocurrency scandal to leave tens of thousands of people out of pocket. The news about QuadrigaCX broke almost to the day that crypto-currencies celebrated a decade in existence. On this anniversary, we investigate the current state of the market and uncover how these sometimes tragic events have unfolded both here in the UK and across the world. With the UK government and other countries now considering attempting to regulate the market, we ask if these scandals could have been prevented and could now be avoided in the future.
Reporter: Paul Connolly
Producer: Kate West
Editor: Gail Champion
(Image: A broken Bitcoin. Credit: Reuters) -
India and how it sees Britain
The Documentary Podcast addNeil MacGregor visits different countries to talk to leading political, business and cultural figures to find out how they, as individuals and as members of their broader communities, see Britain. In India, Neil meets Gaj Singh, the former Maharaja of Jodhpur; Ram Narasimhan, proprietor of The Hindu Newspaper; professor Kavita Singh of Jawaharlal Nehru University; former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar; and the president of the Confederation of Indian Industry, Shobana Kamineni.
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