300 episodes

Original BBC documentary storytelling, bringing award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and “unputdownable” audio.
New episodes every week from The Documentary, Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio and OS Conversations.

The Documentary Podcast BBC World Service

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

Original BBC documentary storytelling, bringing award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and “unputdownable” audio.
New episodes every week from The Documentary, Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio and OS Conversations.

    Assignment: Choking in Chiang Mai

    Assignment: Choking in Chiang Mai

    For a period earlier this month, the historic city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand had the worst air of any city in the world.
    The city gained the same unwanted accolade last year. The practice of agricultural burning in the hills around Chiang Mai renders the air so toxic from February to April that it becomes unsafe to breathe. Respiratory problems and allergies caused by PM2.5, a type of pollution, led to more than 12,000 people being admitted to hospital in 2023.
    The bad air affects everyone, including the young and physically fit. In December 2023, Krittai Tanasombatkul, a 29-year-old doctor and basketball fanatic, succumbed to lung cancer. Like 40% of people with the disease in the city, he was not a smoker.

    • 27 min
    Rwanda 30 years on

    Rwanda 30 years on

    Victoria Uwonkunda makes an emotional journey back to Rwanda, where she grew up. It is the first time she has visited since the age of 12, when she fled the 1994 genocide with her family. Victoria retraces her journey to safety out of the capital Kigali, to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way she speaks to survivors of the violence – both victims and perpetrators - to find out how the country is healing, through reconciliation and forgiveness. Victoria meets Evariste and Narcisse, who work together on a reconciliation project called Cows for Peace. Evariste killed Narcisse’s mother during the 1994 genocide. And she meets Claudette, who suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of a man, Jean Claude, sitting next to her as she tells her story.

    • 50 min
    Bonus: The Black 14

    Bonus: The Black 14

    A bonus episode from the Amazing Sport Stories podcast - The Black 14. Sport, racism and protests are about to change the lives of “the Black 14” American footballers. It’s 1969 in the United States. They’ve arrived on scholarships at the University of Wyoming to play for its Cowboys American football team. It was a predominantly white college. The team is treated like a second religion. Then, the players make a decision to take a stand against racism in a game against another university.
    This is episode one of a four-part season from the Amazing Sport Stories podcast.
    Content warning: This episode contains lived experiences which involve the use of strong racist language

    • 33 min
    In the Studio: Helmut Deutsch and Michael Volle - Staging Winterreise

    In the Studio: Helmut Deutsch and Michael Volle - Staging Winterreise

    Michael Volle is a baritone singer who has made his name with magisterial operatic performances, particularly Wagner. Helmut Deutsch has been playing the piano alongside the great and the good of the classical world for five decades, including the soprano Ileana Cotrubas and the tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Performing the 24-song cycle that Franz Schubert wrote at the end of his short life, Die Winterreise, or the Winter’s Journey, is considered the pinnacle of the recital repertoire, even for such accomplished musicians. The trust between singer and pianist must be absolute, because the two performers are, in Volle’s words, “naked and pure on stage”. Deutsch and Volle have a 20-year friendship and working partnership to build on, a musical connection that brings them together to perform this “summit” of singing over and over again. Yet their next performance will be something out of the ordinary. They are undertaking a staged performance at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in Barcelona. The musicians will be joined by actresses on the stage, photographs accompanying the music, and newly developed poems interspersed between songs. How will the staging affect the relationship between singer and pianist, and how will it impact the music? Writer and journalist Lluís Amiguet joins rehearsals in Barcelona to find out. Image: Helmut Deutsch (Credit: Kartal Karagedik) and Michael Volle (Credit: David Ruano)

    • 27 min
    Bonus: The Global Story

    Bonus: The Global Story

    A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. Rare access inside Sudan's forgotten war. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

    • 28 min
    The Cultural Frontline: Bjarke Ingels

    The Cultural Frontline: Bjarke Ingels

    Bjarke Ingels is the Danish architect who is responsible for creating the flood defence project for Manhattan. In 2012 Hurricane Sandy saw flood water rise up to 2.4 metres. Lives were lost, the city’s transportation system was brought to a stand-still and the New York Stock exchange was closed for two days. As a child, Bjarke wanted to draw comic books and walk on roofs and the buildings that he’s designed include a power station with a ski slope. How can he build his sense of fun and creativity into vital protection against climate change?
    Razia Iqbal meets Bjarke for The Cultural Frontline on the BBC World Service.

    • 27 min

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5
1.5K Ratings

1.5K Ratings

😉💙🙃 ,

12 November 2022 Qatar

How do expats feel about the classes and their rights? Qatar is highly supported by the expat’s that keep the country running, and allow these women their positions in society. These women are living a fairytale. The toll must eventually be payed for this extortion of others, nothing is free…

avm1406 ,

3 million

Kavita Puri’s new show on the bengal famine is outstanding….binge worthy and deeply moving. The music is beautiful yet evocative of this terrible tragedy deliberately and callously created by the colonial British chiefly Churchill.

blindGuyJoe ,

2/11/2024

Can you believe, a blind guy like me, yet I could see, the art by the sea.

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