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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 Sierra Leone's cocaine trail, to Israelis driving sick Palestinians to hospital, to child obesity in Italy...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

What does it mean to inherit a faith that served as a fortress for your father, but feels like a contradiction to you? Throughout his childhood in Oxford, Silas Gray was surrounded by the sights, sounds, and symbols of his father’s Rastafarian identity. He was even named after the Rastafarian spiritual figurehead, Emperor Haile Selassie I. 

But this legacy weighs heavily. It anchors him to a complex world leader he’s not sure he’s aligned with. And he feels like an imposter carrying a name associated with a faith he doesn’t practise. 

Desperate to find a version of this legacy he can comfortably own, Silas decides to do what his father spent forty years dreaming of but never actually did: he books a flight to Ethiopia and travels to the Rastafarian spiritual motherland of Shashamane, the land granted to the global black diaspora by the Emperor himself. 

Silas encounters a living, breathing community where three generations of Rastafarians exist under one roof. 

This is a deeply personal pilgrimage about a son trying to see what his father sees, heal a generational disconnect, and finally make peace with his name.

Rastafari and I

The 1st of July 1916 is still one of the deadliest days in the history of warfare. Nearly 20,000 men from the British Army and 6,000 German soldiers were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The World War One battle would last another four months and was one of the first examples of industrial warfare; three million men fought in it, over a-million soldiers were wounded, missing or killed. Jordan Dunbar investigates how, 110 years on, the battle still affects people and communities, and discovers new insights about its impact on his own family and on the history of Ireland.

A battle that changed Ireland

Ed Butler investigates how one of Europe’s most wanted drug smugglers, Jos Leijdekkers, ended up in Sierra Leone while evading justice.
He also explores reports linking Leijdekkers to the family of Sierra Leone’s president, including claims that he has married the president’s daughter.

for more programmes like this search Business Daily wherever you get your BBC Podcasts

Presenter/producer: Ed Butler

Sierra Leone: The cocaine trail

In Kenya, a young lawyer is bringing a legal case against the Kenyan government, regulator, and several multinational agrochemical companies.
 
He’s working alongside activists and health practitioners, and they claim that hazardous pesticides and herbicides, designed to make farming for efficient, are damaging the health of farmers in Kenya. 
 
They are demanding changes to regulation, as well as increased education and compensation for people who they claim, have had their health severely affected by high exposure to these products. 
 
For Assignment, Josephine Casserly travels to Kenya to follow lawyers, health practitioners and scientists as they face the challenges of gathering evidence to support their case.

The Kenyans taking on multinational chemical companies

The American artist James Turrell is famous for his Skyspaces. A Skyspace is chamber with an opening to the sky. Turrell bathes the roof with light that subtly changes colour, which affects our perception of the colour of the sky itself. Julian May travels to ARoS, the Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark to meet James Turrell as he prepares his latest SkySpace, entitled As Seen Below – The Dome. It is a monumental work, which from the ground outside looks like tumulus, an ancient a grass covered burial mound. To experience the work Julian goes through an underground tunnel that brings him into the huge domed space flooded with changing coloured light. Through the opening the sky appears at once immensely deep, yet close. 
James Turrell tells Julian that while most artists depict light, light is his material; his work is light itself. He speaks about how flying (he gained a pilot’s licence at the age of sixteen), the changing colours of the sky and the disorientating experience of speeding between clouds and fog inspires him. How, too, his upbringing and life as a Quaker has a profound influence.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.

James Turrell: Master Of Light

Cars driven by Israeli volunteers wait at check points to give lifts to sick Palestinians to their hospital appointments - what the volunteers call “one hour of peace”. Since Hamas’s attacks on 7 October, it has become an increasingly rare space for Israelis and Palestinians to speak and build trust and connection amid the trauma of war. Most Palestinians from the occupied West Bank are prevented from travelling to Israel, among them patients in desperate need of specialised medical treatment. Some days there are more than 80 car rides, volunteer drivers, waiting at the checkpoint, by the separation barrier that divides Israel and the West Bank. Meanwhile in Gaza, patients who used to receive medical care in Israel are among around 20,000 patients on a long list awaiting medical evacuation. Jerusalem reporter Naomi Scherbel-Ball hears how they have survived more than two years of a devastating war, displaced from their homes and reliant on a health system all but destroyed by war. She also meets the Israeli volunteers, who had friends and family killed on 7 October. Despite the war, some have stayed in touch with the patients they used to drive from Gaza.

Driving across the divide

When it comes to conservation, adorable and majestic animals often attract the most concern for their plight. It's not so easy to get the public's attention when it comes to animals that are perceived as weird or creepy or downright unpleasant. The vulture, traditionally associated with death and carrion, falls into this unlucky group. Globally, around 70% of vultures are now under threat of extinction and Nigeria's vultures are no exception. BBC West Africa journalist Makuochi Okafor has been investigating this story. 

 In Vietnam, The Last Empress, a new film inspired by the life of the final empress of the Nguyen Dynasty, appears to be provoking a strong reaction. Nam Phuong is a well-known historical figure in Vietnam, who along with her husband, Bao Dai, she was also seen as a puppet of the French colonial regime. Since the release of the trailer for The Last Empress, this long debate in Vietnam has bubbled back to life. Duc Ha from the BBC's Bangkok bureau has been exploring the human story behind all the politics and controversy. 

In a private party in a Russian town, Katya was about to blow out the candles on her 30th birthday cake when masked men burst into the nightclub that she had hired and began physically and verbally attacking her friends. The swoop was instigated by a vigilante group who want to accelerate President Vladimir Putin's promotion of what he sees as traditional Russian family values. As is sometimes the case in these raids, members of the town's police also joined them, shutting down the party and interrogating the guests. Amalia Zatari of BBC Russian has been looking into this vigilante group. 

The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts.
 
Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India.
 
If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.

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, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean. 
 

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

Saving Nigeria's vultures

It has been a month since the twin earthquakes in Venezuela, estimated to have killed more than five thousand people. But there have also been some remarkable stories of rescue with people being pulled alive from the rubble many days after the disaster.

In our conversations, we bring together people who survived disasters to discuss the long-term impact the events have had on their lives.

Marinel lived through Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and was one of the strongest typhoons in recorded history.

Jeff was a pupil at the junior school in Aberfan in South Wales. In 1966, 116 children were killed when waste from coal mines crashed down the mountainside engulfing his school.

“I did go to one counsellor and that counsellor said to me, when you review what you’ve been through, think of happy things like birthday parties,” Jeff tells us. “Well, the majority of people that would have come to my birthday party were now gone.”

We also bring together rescue workers to hear what motivates them and how they cope with confronting death and destruction.

This edition of The Documentary is from BBC Conversations where we bring people together to share their personal experiences of world events.

Presenter: James Reynolds
BBC producers: Ryan Keane, Lindsay Brown and Isabella Bull
Boffin Media producer: Richard Hollingham
Editors: Arja Haikonen and Harriet Oliver

A Boffin Media production in partnership with the BBC World Service Outside Source team.

The lifelong toll of surviving disaster

When her mother dies, Rimi Tanaka regrets that she never truly got to know her. And so when her mother’s literary agent calls Rimi out of the blue, and asks her if she wants to write the book Akemi was writing when she died, Rimi seizes the opportunity. Akemi was researching her samurai ancestry, learning more about their philosophical code, and how it can teach us to live a fuller life today. Can completing her mother’s spiritual quest help Rimi finally come closer to someone she felt she never fully knew?

Searching for my samurai mother

In 2014, Tonga had no national netball team, coach, squad, or training facilities. Determined to change that, former television news anchor Salote Sisifa became CEO of Tonga Netball and promised the board that within five years she would build a team capable of competing internationally and reaching the world’s top 10 by 2025. If she failed, she would resign. Alongside, Head Coach Jaqua Pori-Makea-Simpson, Salote propelled Tonga from 42nd to seveth in the world rankings navigating national disaster, the Covid-19 pandemic, and restricted resources along the way. This episode of The Documentary Podcast examines Tonga’s extraordinary journey and how they have become a formidable force on the international stage. Their next milestone is their Commonwealth Games debut in 2026.

The spirit of Tala: The rapid rise of Tonga's netball team

“Perfidious Albion” - how Britain replaced the US as Russia’s top nemesis and the villain at the heart of its war narrative. Since the re-election of Donald Trump, Russian propagandists have softened their tone on the US, while intensifying their rhetoric against the UK. They have unleashed a wave of elaborate insults, accusations and threats against Britain, amounting at times to a full-blown character assassination. The insults may sound theatrical, and London denies the accusations, but beneath them lies a more troubling signal - one UK military chiefs take seriously. We ask, what does this shift reveal about Russia’s strategic intentions in a time of conflict.

Moscow’s enemy number one

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