The Documentary Podcast

BBC World Service

A window into our world, through in-depth storytelling from the BBC. Investigating, reporting and uncovering true stories from everywhere. Award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and global issues. From Syria after Assad to rebuilding Ukraine, to how AI changed our lives, The Documentary investigates major global stories.We delve into social media, take you into the minds of the world’s most creative people and explore personal approaches to spirituality. Every week, we also bring together people from around the globe to discuss how news stories are affecting their lives. A new episode most days, all year round. From our BBC World Service teams at: Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio, OS Conversations, The Fifth Floor and Trending.

  • 47 minutes 27 seconds
    Bonus: Good Bad Billionaire: Minecraft’s maker

    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 Tsjeng find out how a high school dropout, obsessed with Lego and gaming, became a computer game hero. The Swedish programmer, known by the nickname Notch, built a virtual 3D world where, with the help of a pickaxe, players could harness their creativity to build almost anything, one block at a time. Persson founded the video game development company Mojang Studios, before selling it to Microsoft, but then came a spectacular downfall.

    Good Bad Billionaire is the podcast exploring the lives of the super-rich and famous, tracking their wealth, philanthropy, business ethics and success. There are leaders who made their money in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street and in high street fashion. From iconic celebrities and CEOs to titans of technology, the podcast unravels tales of fortune, power, economics, ambition and moral responsibility, before inviting you to make up your own mind: are they good, bad or just another billionaire?

    27 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 24 minutes 11 seconds
    The Fifth Floor: Tackling Nigeria's skin bleaching problem

    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 Amidi Produced by Alice Gioia and Hannah Dean

    (Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

    26 April 2025, 12:30 pm
  • 24 minutes 53 seconds
    BBC OS Conversations: Remembering the life of Pope Francis

    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 about what the Pope meant to them.

    26 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 26 minutes 43 seconds
    Bonus: Bridgerton actor’s interview on Dear Daughter

    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 Daughter is a podcast all about love, life, family, and raising children. It is the brainchild of Namulanta Kombo, a mother on a quest to create a ‘handbook to life’ for her daughter, through the advice of parents from all over the world.

    Each episode, a guest reads a letter they’ve written to their children (or their future children, or the children they never had) with the advice, life lessons, and personal stories they’d like to pass on.

    Expect extraordinary true stories, inspirational advice for parents, and moving accounts of families, relationships and raising daughters.

    25 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 26 minutes 29 seconds
    The call of Anastasia

    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 German journalist who spent two years tracking the group. A government intelligence officer tells him why three German states have designated the group as extremist.

    24 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 52 minutes 14 seconds
    Witness History: The Environment Movement

    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.

    23 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 49 minutes 22 seconds
    Francis, the rebel Pope

    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 refugees and those worst hit by the impact of climate change. Edward Stourton speaks to people inside and outside the Catholic Church, including those who worked closely with him.

    22 April 2025, 9:00 am
  • 33 minutes 10 seconds
    Assignment: Dicing with democracy? Romania’s cancelled election

    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 unprecedented, as was the cancelation of a European democratic election.

    The political establishment claim that cyberwarfare and Russian interference gave them no choice. Georgescu has now been eliminated from May’s Presidential re-run.

    Historian Tessa Dunlop asks how this happened, why it matters and what next for this strategically important country on the eastern edge of the EU and NATO?

    22 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 27 minutes 21 seconds
    In the Studio: Amin Gulgee - Heavy metal

    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 across the globe, and even sketching heads of state like Reagan and Gaddafi. In 2007, Ismail and Amin’s mother Zaro were tragically murdered by their driver. It was Amin who found their bodies, in their house which adjoins his own studio and gallery. Much of Amin’s work since has been an attempt to come to terms and heal from this most tragic of events.

    Presenter Harry Stott meets Amin on location in his Karachi studio-cum-gallery-cum-home, as he prepares to open a new museum of his father’s work – the ‘most momentous’ thing he has ever attempted. We listen in as Amin shows us the calligraphy adorned doors which he has created for the museum’s entrance. We go inside his studio to hear about his creative process more widely. And we hear Amin come to terms with the tragedy of his parents’ death and the solace that he finds in his workshop.

    Amidst the tumult of this momentous museum opening in the already tumultuous city of Karachi, this episode of In the Studio attempts to understand how Amin’s two year process of creation, curation and healing will change his creative process for the years to come.

    Presenter & Producer: Harry Stott Co-producer & Fixer: Adam Fahy-Majeed Exec Producer: Sandra Ferrari Sound Design & Engineering: Alan Leer, Lizzy Andrews

    A Message Heard Production

    Image: Amin Gulgee (Credit: Humayun Memon)

    21 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 26 minutes 21 seconds
    Make me perfect: Manufacturing beauty in China

    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 China’s most notorious botched surgeries.

    Presenter: Natalia Zuo Produce: Ly Truong Editors: Rebecca Henschke and Monica Garnsey Mixed by Gareth Jones

    This episode includes a clip from The Most Beautiful You in the World (世界上最动听的你), aired on WeTV.

    20 April 2025, 12:30 am
  • 26 minutes 36 seconds
    The Fifth Floor: Inside the Taliban's surveillance network

    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 Konnur Gopal reports for BBC Marathi on the geological and historical relevance of India's Lonar Crater Lake.

    Presented by Faranak Amidi Produced by Alice Gioia, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean

    (Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

    19 April 2025, 12:30 pm
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