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BBC World Service

A window into our world, through in-depth storytelling from the BBC. Investigating, reporting and uncovering true stories from everywhere. Award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and global issues. 

From Trump’s new world order, to protests in Turkey, to the headphone revolution, The Documentary investigates major global stories.

We delve into social media, take you into the minds of the world’s most creative people and explore personal approaches to spirituality. Every week, we also bring together people from around the globe to discuss how news stories are affecting their lives. 

A new episode most days, all year round. From our BBC World Service teams at: Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio, OS Conversations, The Fifth Floor and Trending.

The Documentary Podcast

Freddie once signed to a major record label. He appeared in high-production music videos and looked set for fame. But the pressure and pace of that life left him feeling hollow. In one of the world’s busiest cities, he now follows a very different path - one built on silence, discipline, and spiritual growth.
Freddie reflects on his decision to leave the music industry behind and embrace Buddhism. He now works as a nail technician and shares how his beliefs shape his daily life. Alongside him is Carl, his partner, who offers moving insights into how their shared values deepen their relationship. We step into Freddie and Carl’s world, where Buddhist practice offers an anchor amid chaos. Their story explores what it means to redefine success, maintain spiritual discipline in a hyperactive city, and find peace through faith. 
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Freddie’s second verse

Engineering has moved inside the body to innovate like never before. In neuro-science, brain implants can provide ‘psychic’ communication for people with locked-in syndrome. In medication a new technology aims to deliver chemo therapy and other drugs directly to the parts that need them by bubbles in the blood stream. And ingestible electronics are being made to fight disease by sending antibody-directing messages straight from the gut to the brain. The BBC and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 have come together to stage a special event. Presenter Caroline Steel is joined by Tom Oxley, professorial fellow at Melbourne Medical School; Eleanor Stride, OBE, professor of Biomaterials at the University of Oxford; Khalil Ramadi, director of the Ramadi Lab for Advanced Neuro-engineering and Translational Medicine in Abu Dhabi; Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, New York University.

The Engineers: Exploring the human

New Zealand citizens, particularly young professionals and graduates, are leaving the country in record numbers. Most are heading across the Tasman Sea – known colloquially as "the ditch" - to Australia, lured by better job opportunities and higher wages. However, immigration is also at an all-time high, with migrant arrivals from India the largest group, followed by the Philippines and China. Ruth Evans reports on what lies behind this Kiwi 'brain drain', and asks what the rapidly changing demographics mean for the country's future.

New Zealand: Heading across the ditch

A pioneering summer camp for Ukrainian children with missing parents.

According to the Ukrainian government more than 70 thousand people are missing in the war, leaving families, including thousands of children, anxious for news of their loved ones and unable to move on.

Psychologists say these children are some of the most traumatised they have worked with.

Now for the first time a leading Ukrainian children’s charity is putting on a special summer camp for some of these children, offering them therapy, fun activities and a safe place.

For Assignment, Will Vernon is given exclusive access to this project, where psychologists are developing a new framework to treat these deeply traumatised children.

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

Waiting for my Dad - Ukraine's children of the missing

Luke Jerram creates spectacular art installations all over the world. He reached millions of people with his work Play Me, I’m Yours, inviting anyone to make music on the 2,000 pianos he had placed on the streets of more than 70 cities. He has also created large sculptures of the moon, the planet Mars and the sun, which were suspended in spaces like cathedrals so that visitors could admire the celestial bodies up close. Julian May follows the creation of the Jerram's latest work, made for Bradford, this year’s UK City of Culture. A Good Yarn plays on the double meaning of the word “yarn” – both a length of thread and a story. It looks like a giant multi-coloured ball of wool, three metres high, which will be rolled through the city’s streets. Luke Jerram collaborates with Bradford residents to create a kilometre-long rope, made from woollen fabric donated by the public or from second-hand shops. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.

Luke Jerram: A good yarn

Puerto Casado is a remote village in Paraguay, in South America. It’s not dissimilar to many other rural towns in the area: red-brick houses, small grocery stores and unpaved roads. But what makes Puerto Casado an exception is that it’s at the centre of a land dispute between the Paraguayan state, local residents and the Unification Church, a controversial religious group from South Korea. Ronald Avila-Claudio from BBC Mundo has recently been there. Plus, what the re-opening of the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea means to people living there, with Girmay Gebru from BBC News Africa; and a diver swimming with a great white shark and other viral stories, with BBC Indonesian's Famega Syavira Putri.

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. This is an EcoAudio certified production.

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

Why a South Korean church bought a village in Paraguay

Israel faces growing international isolation over the shocking images of starvation in Gaza. Although Israel says there are no restrictions on aid deliveries – which it co-ordinates – or any starvation, charities warn the aid being allowed in is only a fraction of what is needed. The BBC is banned by Israel from reporting in Gaza but, in our conversations, doctors and journalists in the territory tell us how shortages of food, water and medical supplies are affecting them and their families. “We are not the same, this is not our shape, this is not our appearance,” Ghada, a journalist working in Gaza City tell us. We also hear from a medical student who shares her experiences of a typical day in Gaza and her hopes for the future. 
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.

Hunger in Gaza

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany was the only camp liberated by the British Forces in April, 1945. Prior to that, over 50,000 people were murdered there. After liberation, the British Forces, alongside the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) set up another camp about 2km away, the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons (DP) Camp, the largest DP camp in Europe, where over 2,000 babies were born. Known as ‘Bergen-Belsen Babies’, Susan Schwartz and Karen Lasky were two of the many born there and still hold the label ‘stateless’ after their families were eventually accepted and immigrated to Canada. On the 80th anniversary of the liberation, survivors and Bergen-Belsen Babies gather for the week, trying to fill in the gaps of what happened to their families and reflect on their childhoods. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Bergen-Belsen: Among graves, we were born

Could AI cure cancer using nature's DNA? A London tech firm, Basecamp Research, harvests genetic information from organisms and microbes around the world. Its genome database - the world's biggest - will help supercomputers to create new products, from detergents to medicines. It's a bewildering new frontier, and it comes with big questions: who should own this valuable information? Who should benefit? And what could it unleash?

Controlling nature's data

The JNIM branch of al-Qaeda is one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups. It has firmly planted its flag in the Sahel. Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as a key battlefront for jihadists: around 50 percent of deaths from terrorism in 2024 were registered in the Sahel region alone, according to the Global Terrorism Index. JNIM is an eclectic yet united coalition, rooted in the tribal desert regions of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. We look into its leaders, its narrative, and its modus operandi, and analyse the complexity of a region beleaguered by military coups, ethnic violence, and climate change.

Contributors: Barry Marston, Jacob Boswall
Producer: Kriszta Satori, Elchin Suleymanov
Presenter: Krassi Ivanova Twigg

The JNIM branch of al-Qaeda

In February 2017, President Trump made a speech to his supporters. He moved on to the topic of immigration and Sweden. "You look at what's happening last night in Sweden," he told the crowd at a rally in Florida. "They took in large numbers; they're having problems like they never thought possible". This confused the Swedes because they had not noticed anything happening that Friday night in their country. But since then there has been a spate of violent crime in Sweden. Ruth Alexander investigates.

What Happened Last Night in Sweden?

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