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BBC World Service

Hear the voices at the heart of global stories. Where curious minds can uncover hidden truths and make sense of the world. The best of documentary storytelling from the BBC World Service.
From China’s state-backed overseas spending, to on the road with Canada’s Sikh truckers, to the front line of the climate emergency, we go beyond the headlines.
Each week we dive into the minds of the world’s most creative people, take personal journeys into spirituality and connect people from across the globe to share how news stories are shaping their lives.

The Documentary Podcast

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft turns out to be flawed? The History Bureau revisits the defining stories of our times with the reporters who first covered them. What did they get right first time around? And, in the chaos and confusion of unfolding events, what did they miss?

Season 1: Putin and the Apartment Bombs. In September 1999, just weeks after a 46-year-old Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister, four bombs blew up four apartment buildings across Russia, killing hundreds of people while they slept. The attacks plunged the country into panic. Families fled their homes. Residents patrolled their blocks around the clock. An entire nation paralyzed by fear. But who did it? It's a mystery that has fuelled some chilling theories. The government blamed Chechen militants. Many reporters agreed. But then the whispers started. Was something even more sinister going on? 

If you're in the UK, listen first to The History Bureau on BBC Sounds - or elsewhere in the world, listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bonus: Introducing: The History Bureau

In a case with profound implications for European migration policy, two dozen former volunteer humanitarian workers have been on trial on the Greek island of Lesbos. Seven years ago, they were arrested after rescuing thousands of migrants from the sea. Now, following many delays, a court case involving charges of facilitating illegal entry of foreigners, membership of a criminal organisation and money laundering has finally gone ahead. Among the defendants facing a possible 20 years in jail have been the Syrian refugee and former competitive swimmer Sara Mardini - and Irish human rights activist and lawyer Sean Binder. They've denied the charges - and argued that the prosecution was an attempt by the Greek authorities to criminalise help to asylum seekers.

Tim Whewell reports on the trial and its outcome - and on the consequences for Lesbos. Back in 2015, when as many as 800,000 migrants arrived on the island after crossing the narrow strait from Turkey, local people were proud of their efforts to rescue and support refugees. But later, attitudes towards migrants changed. And NGOs stopped their rescue work - for fear more aid workers might be prosecuted. Now, far fewer migrants attempt the crossing to Greece. But those who do sometimes die in shipwrecks. And there are allegations, denied by Greece, that its police are illegally pushing asylum seekers back - putting them back on boats and abandoning them at sea.

What will the verdicts in this trial mean for Greece, for other European states that have been tightening their immigration policies - and for the defendants whose lives have been on hold for the last seven years?

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.

Greece: Rescuers on trial

Black girls performing in a parade on the streets of Chicago and playing in the surf at Martha's Vineyard offer a glimpse of what it is like, growing up in the United States today. Sisters Salamishah and Scheherazade Tillet are using photographs and words to capture the lives of girls from two very different communities.

Black girlhood in photos and writing

What does it take to make something which has never existed on Earth before? The search for element 120 on the periodic table has begun at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Cosmologist Andrew Pontzen, who is used to studying the processes of creation, visits the 88-inch Cyclotron facility at Berkeley, where the next new element may be created very soon. To uncover what motivates scientists to pursue something that is possibly only produced in the violent explosions of stars he speaks with the scientists trying it now, the scientists who last made an element at Berkeley 50 years ago, and a historian of the fraught history of element discovery. The answer is not as straight forward as he suspected.

New elements

Kenyan authorities recently reported that 200 of their citizens are fighting for Russia in the war in Ukraine. Many of them have reported that they travelled to Russia after replying to job adverts for roles as drivers, security guards and cooks. It was only on arrival that they were sent for military training, and then sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.BBC Africa's David Wafula has spoken to families trying to find sons and brothers, lost in Russia's war. 

In September 2025 a wave of anti-government protests swept through Indonesia. Bali, however, remained free from demonstrations. Academics and sociologists say this is due to a legacy of terror from the island's 1965 communist purge. This brutal period taught communities a chilling lesson: dissent leads to annihilation. As a result, many Balinese people have become conditioned to avoid confrontation and suppress negative opinions, especially concerning the tourism sector. Tri Wahyuni of BBC Indonesian has looked into Bali's relationship with tourism and its own history. 

In Panna, a diamond mining region in central India, two childhood friends recently made a discovery that they think could change their lives forever. They had rented a small patch of land in the hopes of finding diamonds, and after only 19 days of digging they found one worth an estimated $55,000. Vishnukant Tiwari reports for the BBC in central India and spoke to the brothers. 

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from The Fifth Floor, the show at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world. 

Presented by Faranak Amidi. 

Produced by Laura Thomas and Caroline Ferguson

Kenyans lured to Russia's frontline

In the past few days there have been a number of deaths on ski slopes in the Alps and, in recent months, hikers in Greece, climbers in Italy’s Dolomite mountains, and guides in the Himalayas have all lost their lives.The peak season for these huge and potentially lethal mass movements of snow is now underway in the northern hemisphere. To understand the dangers, and what it’s like to experience an avalanche, we hear from three survivors. For mountaineer Cory Richards in South Africa, the impact of an avalanche while climbing the world's 13th tallest mountain in Pakistan left him and his two climbing partners thinking they were all about to die.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from BBC OS Conversations, bringing together people from around the world to discuss how major news stories are affecting their lives.

Surviving an avalanche

*** This programme contains graphic descriptions of body mutilation ***
In the Nepalese Himalaya, one of the world’s rarest and most spiritually profound funeral rites is still practised: the Sky Burial. In some circumstances when a person dies, their body is offered to wild vultures. According to local Bon and Tibetan Buddhist customs, this burial is reserved only for those whose karma is deemed pure and whose astrological signs align with sacred guidance. The ritual represents the highest form of cremation, allowing the soul to ascend freely to the heavens. But the arrival of infrastructure projects and modern roads into these remote valleys have also created challenges for monastics and Sky Burial practitioners too. We follow Tashi Bista as he meets the guardians of this ceremony and comes eye to eye with human mortality.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Eternal horizons

In 1867, the US government bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars. At the time, critics questioned the value of purchasing such an inhospitable and remote territory. Yet today, due to its abundance of natural resources, America’s largest state has proved to be a significant investment. BBC foreign correspondent Anna Holligan travels to Alaska to report on the increasing China-Russia-US tension in the region. Supported by Russia, through fishing, shipping and military exercises, China has a growing presence in the Bering Sea, which separates mainland Russia from the US by 55 miles at its narrowest point. As Anna visits the largest Coast Guard base in the world on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, she asks why is China seeking to expand their influence in one of the most dangerous and volatile seas in the world?

Stories from the New Silk Road: The Bering Sea

*** This programme contains very strong language ***
Over the past year, BBC Eye has followed the journeys of young men from Syria, Egypt, and Yemen who travelled to Russia in search of work, only to end up on the frontlines in Ukraine. Why are these men risking their lives in a war that is not theirs?
 
Many, including students, say they were tricked into fighting for the Russian army by a recruiter.
 
BBC Eye investigates their stories, meeting a family grieving the loss of their son and a young Yemeni man now trapped in a prisoner-of-war camp.

Watch the film Into the Void Putin's Foreign Fighters on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y7ruSvJfn_g

Putin's foreign fighters

'Start by lighting a candle every morning.’ In other words, pray. That’s the advice on one social media platform to those looking for a rented property in the Netherlands. The pressure on housing is immense: an estimated shortage of 400,000 homes. It was the number one issue in the recent Dutch general election, with the winning D66 party promising to build '10 new cities'.
 
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Squatting was made a criminal offence over a decade ago, but with an estimated 90,000 homes standing empty, the squatters – krakers – are back. And there are thousands of people breaking the law by living year-round in holiday or recreation parks deep in the Netherlands’ countryside.
 
The authorities are trying to change the dynamics. The city of Amsterdam is cracking down on second homes and owners who leave a property vacant. And last year, in an effort to cool an overheated market and limit the exploitation of tenants, the national government strengthened rent controls. But this has only encouraged landlords to throw in the towel and put their properties up for sale. 
 
There’s also a question mark over plans to build thousands of homes - and new cities - because of an obstacle few seem to have foreseen... Electricity. The Netherlands has enough power, but it doesn’t have the infrastructure to transport it to proposed new developments. 
 
Of course, the Dutch are known for innovation – especially in their management of water. Could floating apartment blocks be one of the answers? 
 
For Assignment, Linda Pressly meets both those at the sharp end of the Dutch housing crisis, and those working to mitigate its fallout.

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.

The Netherlands: 10 new cities?

There’s no doubt this has been Taylor Swift’s year. Just 34 years old, the American singer songwriter has been in the music industry for more than half her life. She’s a multi-award winning performer whose diehard fans have helped her break all sorts of records. 

Time Magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year is also the most streamed female artist on Spotify and Apple and this week she achieved a record 90 weeks at number 1 on the US Billboard Artist 100 chart.

Swift’s Eras tour, which began in March this year and concludes at the end of 2024, has become the first to gross over $1 billion. Wherever Swift’s concerts land, they bring a big boost in the local economy.

Host James Reynolds hears about Swift’s appeal from those with a professional and personal interest in the singer-songwriter. They include the first full-time Taylor Swift reporter and also the professor who is about to start teaching a ‘Taylor Swift and her World’ course to students at Harvard University. 

We also meet fans - or Swifties - from across four continents about why her songs are so special.

“I was in the southern most part of Africa,” says Agape, who is from Cape Town and currently studying in the UK. “But I felt, even in her song lyrics, like she was writing for me or about me.”
 
A Boffin Media production in partnership with the BBC OS team.

BBC OS Conversations: The Taylor Swift phenomenon

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