The Documentary Podcast BBC World Service

Myanmar is in the grip of a country-wide insurgency as armed resistance groups, including many young people from the cities, attempt to overthrow a military regime which seized power in a coup three years ago. As much as two thirds of Myanmar, mostly the countryside, may now be under the control of the resistance. Access is extremely difficult, hundreds of journalists have been jailed, but our correspondent Quentin Sommerville has managed to travel to Karenni and Shan states – in the east of the Myanmar - with young revolutionaries. Some have taken up arms, but others - doctors and teachers - are supporting the insurgency with skills of their own.
Presenter: Quentin Sommerville
Producer: Lindle Markwell
Editor: Penny Murphy
Sound Engineer: Andy Fell
Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman
image: KNDF graduates in Myanmar. Credit: BBC

The global perfume industry is worth billions. Some luxury brands sell for hundreds of dollars a bottle. But BBC Eye Investigations has discovered that, when the sun goes down in Egypt, there is a hidden human cost to this industry. In the summer of 2023, the BBC visited four different locations in Egypt’s main jasmine-growing area, Al Gharbia, and found children - some as young as five - working at night to pick the jasmine that was supplied to some of the world’s leading perfume brands through factories in Egypt. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery tells the BBC what it’s uncovered ‘may constitute the worst form of child labour’. We hear the story of one family who say they have no choice but to take their children into the jasmine fields to work, in order to earn enough money to live.
Reporter: Natasha Cox
Producers: Ahmed El Shamy and Louise Hidalgo
Editors: Rebecca Henschke and Rosie Garthwaite
Sound engineer: Neil Churchill + James Beard

As a unique creative experiment, Chilean director and playwright Constanza Hola Chamy is directing in parallel both a professional cast and a community cast of her new play Mad Women. Highlighting bipolar disorder, it’s inspired by the lives and deaths of three outstanding Latin American artists: the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Chilean singer-songwriter and visual artist Violeta Parra and Columbian painter Judith Marquez, and their struggles with mental health.
The professional actors are from the same country as their characters, while the community cast have volunteered to participate in the project, having experienced mental health challenges themselves. They’re women from underrepresented sections of the community in the East End of London, which is where some of the performances will take place.
‘Mad Women’ is fighting the stereotypes and stigma of what it has historically meant to be a woman with mental health conditions, in different countries, through sometimes brutal conversations about sexuality, motherhood, gender oppression and the role of women in the arts, as artists and muses.
Felicity Finch follows Constanza as she and her international creative team collaborate and face the challenges of working with the two casts: juggling rehearsals, coping with a very tight deadline, while making sure they are sensitive to the needs of the four women in the understandably vulnerable community cast.
Constanza is also making plans to take her play and this unique way of working to different communities of women internationally, including her native Chile.
If you need support following anything you’ve heard in this episode, there’s information at bbc.com/actionline
Presenter and Producer: Felicity Finch
Exec producer: Andrea Kidd
(Photo: Professional Cast of Mad Women. Credit: Héctor Manchego)

The rise of China is a defining challenge for the West. How far should it co-operate, compete or confront Beijing? And were Western countries slow to respond to China’s growing assertiveness?
The BBC’s Security Correspondent, Gordon Corera, delves into the worlds of espionage, surveillance, technology, the theft of commercial secrets, free speech at universities and political interference to explore the points of friction. In this documentary, he speaks to spy chiefs, former prime ministers and dissidents as well as those on the frontline of this Shadow War.

What's the price journalists pay for telling the truth? For many it's exile. We'll hear from two colleagues, TV presenter Shazia Haya from BBC Pashto and Nina Nazarova from BBC Russian, both living and working in exile.
Produced by Alice Gioia and Caroline Ferguson.
(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich)
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In the United States, questions are being asked after two beauty queens, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, stepped down in as many weeks. The sudden and controversial resignations have put the spotlight on a global, multi-million dollar business. We get a broader overview of what it is like to take part with former winners from Germany, Finland and Nigeria. Presenter James Reynolds also hears from two pageant judges and an organiser on how protections are put in place for those taking part.