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Episodes from The Documentary Podcast
Growing up black in a white family – the truth behind my birth
M People star Andrew Lovell’s home life hid a terrible – yet beautiful – secret. It would take him decades to find out the truth. At the height of his fame, drummer Andrew ‘Shovell’ Lovell had everything he’d dreamed of: sex, drugs and regular appearances at the top of the charts with the dance music band M People. But sell-out shows, first-class travel and five-star hotels couldn’t stop the questions gnawing away at him. As a mixed-race kid growing up in a white family in south London he wanted to know: who were his birth parents? Why had they given him
The woman fighting IS in Somalia
The global activities of the Islamic State group are now believed to be run from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in the north-east of Somalia, where IS fighters are entrenched in the caves and harsh mountainous terrain of the area. But many locals there do not support IS and are committed to fighting back against the group. For BBC News Somali, Sahnun Ahmed spent time embedded with the Puntland Defence Force, one of the groups resisting the militants, and witnessed the operations of their fighters, including one female fighter determined her children will not grow up in the shadow...
Surviving a shark attack
Shark attacks on humans are rare, but they are slowly on the rise in Australia where all our guests are from. In this episode, they share the terrifying moment when they realised they were under attack. For Brett Connellan in New South Wales, it was an encounter with a Great White. “Out of nowhere I get hit with this immense force from my right side and this force was so strong it threw me off my surf board,” he says. “I landed in the water and before I could even look around and figure out what had happened I look d...
God, grief and the chatbot
When Megan Garcia travelled to Rome, she carried with her a mother’s grief. At the Vatican she met the Pope and asked him to pray for her son Sewell, who died last year at the age of 14. In the months after his death, Megan discovered Sewell had been spending hours talking to an artificial-intelligence chatbot, which he believed was a real person for more than a year. He formed a deep emotional attachment to it, confiding in it about his life and feelings. Megan believes that relationship played a part in her son’s death. She is now purs...
The Saltmakers
In India's Gujarat state lies the Little Rann of Kutch, a sprawling salt marsh desert where temperatures soar to 50 degrees Celsius. This harsh landscape is home to the Agariyas, nomadic tribal families who have harvested salt here since the 16th Century. For eight months of every year, they migrate to this harsh environment, living in temporary shacks and pumping briny groundwater into vast pans where it evaporates into gleaming, sturdy crystals. This traditional practice, responsible for 75% of India's salt production, is now under a grave existential threat. Seasonal cycles, predictable for centuries, have become erratic. Unexpected rains and sudden...
Inheritance Samsung: 1. My kingdom for a horse
In 2017, the heir to South Korea’s biggest company is facing jail, leaving it with an uncertain future. After 80 years of business, how did Samsung get here? And how did a deal meant to secure family control of the company go so wrong? We take you behind closed doors inside the billion-dollar deals and the family power struggles that shape global empires. When your relatives are also your business partners, every decision is personal. In these dynasties, the boardroom is not just about profit - it is about survival. A new 10-part series from the BBC World Service.
India’s Shadow Children
Stephanie was brought up in France in a French family, but her birth parents are Indian – she’s an intercountry adoptee. In the 1980s and 1990s thousands of babies, like Stephanie, were adopted from India into white, western families. Now, inter-country adoption is more regulated, and there’s a recognition that this is a practice open to abuse – several countries have banned it altogether. In France, Stephanie grew up very happily with her adoptive mum and dad. But after they both died, she began to think more about her origins. And she experienced a desire to re-connect with her...
Kubra Khademi: Art of strength and survival
On a busy street in Kabul, a young artist steps into traffic wearing a steel sculpture she has shaped around her breasts and buttocks. She calls the piece Armour. Within minutes, a crowd gathers. Days later, death threats force her to flee the country. Today, Afghan artist Kubra Khademi lives in exile in France, creating bold multidisciplinary works that confront patriarchy while reclaiming the female body as a site of power, sexuality and resistance. Drawing on personal history and the cultures she grew up in across Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, her art blends performance, painting and symbolism to challenge...
Elana Meyers Taylor: A 20-year journey to gold
Elana Meyers Taylor became the oldest-ever winner of an individual Winter Olympic gold medal when she won the women’s monobob event in Milan-Cortina, aged 41. It was the American’s sixth Olympic medal, and first gold, having first won a bronze medal in 2010 at the Vancouver Games. She’s the most-decorated black athlete in Winter Olympic history, as well as the mother of two sons – both of whom are deaf. Her eldest son, Nico, also has Down syndrome.In an in-depth interview with More than the Score’s Lee James, Elana discusses her 20-year journey to Olympic gold, and...
80 years of the BBC Russian Service
The BBC's Russian service marks its eightieth anniversary this week. In eight decades, it has grown from a short wave radio service to a multimedia operation reaching upwards of 6 million people per week, despite ongoing blocking in Russia. As a 14-year-old boy Oleg Boldyrev discovered BBC Russian on shortwave radio whilst camping with his parents in the woods. He eventually ended up working for the service as a journalist both in London and Moscow. He talks to The Fifth Floor about some of the service's most memorable moments and how the current authorities continue to try to stop their ci...
Bombings in Lebanon
Lebanon’s citizens are again caught under fire. As many as a million people are displaced as they search for a place of safety and there are fears of a major humanitarian crisis. The attacks are being carried out by Israel, which says it is targeting Hezbollah – an Iranian-backed militia and political party. The fighting has resumed as part of the wider conflict across the Middle East. Israel says its aim is to stop Hezbollah attacking communities in northern Israel. In our conversations, families in Lebanon share their experiences, once again, of living under attack and being on the move...
Deaf Umrah
Islamic religious practice is deeply entwined with sound, from the call to prayer to memorising the Quran; learning to recite the holy text is very much an oral tradition relying on listening and repetition. All this poses a unique challenge for deaf Muslims. In November 2025, a group of pilgrims from the United Kingdom travelled to Mecca for Umrah, supported throughout in British Sign Language. Through reflections from presenter Zainam Bostan and pilgrims, the programme explores faith, belonging and accessibility, and asks what changes when religious teaching is explained visually, not only heard. The programme follows them from the first...