The Documentary Podcast

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Carl Brandon Strehlke: My search for the 15th Century artist Beato Angelico Oct 20, 2025

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Art historian Carl Brandon Stehlke is a world expert on the great 15th Century Florentine painter Fra Angelico, and this is his dream project: a historic, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of the artist's work at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco in Florence. The show brings together more than 140 works from 70 different lenders and reunites the sections of Angelico's great altarpieces, scattered when Napoleon closed the city's churches and convents in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, now fully restored and seen together for the first time in 200 years. Carl takes Maria Margaronis through the process of mounting such a massive exhibition from conception to grand opening. In the restorers' studios she hears how new technologies are revealing the limpid colours of paintings once thought beyond repair. And in the stillness of the San Marco convent Carl explains how Angelico's intimate, deeply humane frescos guided the friars' meditation and spiritual life, and how he fell in love with the artist's work nearly 50 years ago.

A people’s history of Gaza Oct 19, 2025

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The back-story of Gaza, from the 1940s to the 2010s, told through the personal experiences of a wide variety of ordinary people - a teacher, a smuggler, a bird-watcher, musicians, doctors and others. Tim Whewell finds out how the tiny territory was created, how it first filled with refugees, how people lived, worked and died, how they survived invasions, wars and blockade, how hopes for peace rose and fell - under the rule of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas. How did refugees arrive in Gaza in 1948? Why is the Strip so important to Palestinian identity - and the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict? How did living conditions gradually improve? How did the 1967 Six Day War change people's lives? Why did the two intifadas of 1987 and 2000 break out? When were the best times for Gazans in recent history? What changed for them after Hamas took control in 2007? Tim asks these and many other questions in this journey through the recent history of a sliver of land that has often dominated world news.

Reporting the impact of the Gaza ceasefire Oct 18, 2025

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Following the ceasefire in Gaza, this week has seen the release of hostages and prisoners on both sides and the beginning of the return of the remains of some of the deceased. Over the past two years, The Fifth Floor has been speaking to language service colleagues reporting on the conflict. This week, we reconnect with them to find out how networks of citizens on both sides have informed and provided new perspectives on their reporting. Amira Dakroury checked in from the BBC's Cairo Bureau where she's part of the team producing Middle East Diaries, formerly Gaza Lifeline; and from Tel Aviv, BBC Arabic's Michael Shuval reflected on reporting the stories of hostage families.

Dr Tri Maharani's videos about how to treat snake bites are beginning to be well known in Indonesia. For fifteen years, she's worked to improve outcomes for snakebite victims in her country, where only one antivenom is currently available, but more than eighty species of poisonous snake are a threat. BBC Indonesian's Astudestra Ajengrastri spoke to her.

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

Families in Israel and Gaza share their stories Oct 18, 2025

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After two years and two days of war in Gaza, Israel and Hamas have agreed the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire. In our conversations, families in Israel and Gaza share their experiences of the conflict and their lives today. With the remaining 20 surviving Israeli hostages seized by Hamas fighters on 7 October 2023 now back with their families, we hear from husband and wife George and Yael. Their town was attacked by Hamas fighters two years ago, but Yael is hoping for a lasting peace. On the other side of the border, thousands of Gazans have been making the journey back to their homes but most already know that there will be little left. We connect Basil in Gaza with his daughter, Layan, who escaped to Egypt. She has not seen her father for more than two years but hopes to return. 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

Mamdani New York Oct 17, 2025

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Zohran Mamdani catapulted on to New York’s political scene this summer when he captured the Democratic nomination to run for Mayor this fall. A young politician, Mamdani campaigned on issues that mattered to New Yorkers including lowering the cost of living, but unlike other candidates, was not shy about making his Muslim faith a central talking point on the campaign trail. We explore how a single decision galvanized voters of different faiths across America’s biggest city, and delve into the social issues that divided those casting ballots – including the war in Gaza, Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and the divisiveness of the phrase, “globalise the intifada,” which Mamdani refused on multiple occasions to denounce. What was it about Mamdani that led Muslim voters to feel like they had a voice who will represent them as Mayor of New York City? Do Jewish voters feel let down? We sit down with voters of varying views to find out.

Fighting on two fronts Oct 16, 2025

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More than a third of Ukraine’s scientific institutions have been damaged or destroyed by Russian bombing. Many scientists have either fled the country or are internally displaced, and that Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences is trying to operate on half its pre-war budget. The funding may be reduced but the science still matters, even in wartime. Perhaps especially in wartime. It is something the country can be proud of. Climate change has no borders and Ukraine is making a key contribution to our understanding of the global warming crisis. We hear from the scientists of Ukraine’s National Antarctic Scientific Centre, torn between the frontlines of a prolonged national conflict whilst simultaneously attempting to arm the world with the latest research on a warming climate from the white wilderness of Antarctica.

Sabotage by smartphone Oct 15, 2025

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Ukrainian teenagers are being recruited online to carry out sabotage against their own country in return for cryptocurrency, and for some the consequences are deadly. Ukraine accuses Russia of using Telegram to offer minors large sums of money to plant bombs or stage arson attacks. There have even been allegations that some recruits have been blown up while transporting explosive devices. This episode features a rare interview with a Ukrainian teenager who is currently awaiting trial after authorities claim they caught him planting a bomb in a vehicle used by the conscription service. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from BBC Trending in-depth reporting on the world of social media.

Drugs, Overdose, Hope - North Carolina and Nevada Oct 14, 2025

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Drug overdose has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Fentanyl – a synthetic opioid mass produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border – drove the increasing number of fatalities ever higher. But there’s a good news story that hasn’t been widely reported… Drug-related deaths fell year on year from 2023 to 2024 by around 25%. In some states, the decline was even more dramatic - North Carolina was one of them. In a two-part series for Assignment, Linda Pressly first visits the state capital of Raleigh to report on some of the reasons why fewer people are dying from illicit narcotics.

But drug-related fatalities haven't fallen everywhere in the US. In Nevada, those mortality statistics have continued to tick up. In the second in this Assignment series, Linda travels to Las Vegas and Reno to find out why this desert state is bucking the trend.

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

(Image: Kayla, a former fentanyl user and now a client of a LEAD programme (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) in North Carolina that diverts substance abusers away from crime. Credit: Tim Mansel/BBC)

Alexey Seliverstov: Bionic birdsong Oct 13, 2025

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How fixed is the borderline between human music and the sounds of nature? That is a question that guides the work of Los Angeles-based composer Alexey Seliverstov. In this programme, Regan Morris follows Alexey’s creative process from recording the dawn chorus in the Santa Monica mountains, through the ingenious transformations of the field recordings to the finished multi-channel and multi-sensory installation for the Shelemay Sound Lab at Harvard University. There is more to Alexey’s music than first meets the ear: some of the ‘birds’ are actually the sounds of his own and his brother’s voices recorded when they were children and altered beyond recognition by Alexey’s sophisticated processing. Adding ear-prints of empty spaces to the sounds of chirping synthesisers, similar to the effect of repeated exposures on an old-fashioned camera film, draw us further into Alexey’s imaginary landscapes. Are these soundscapes artificial or still mostly natural? How does mixing the sounds of nature and sounds that we associate with humans, such as pianos, alter our idea of what music can be?

Brazil's Miracle: an Indigenous disaster Oct 12, 2025

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During the Brazilian military dictatorship, the Krenak indigenous people were banned from speaking their language, imprisoned in reformatories and forcibly displaced from their land. In 2024, the State asked them for forgiveness. Can it be granted?

Journalist Pūlama Kaufman travels to the remote city of Resplendor in the south-east of Brazil to meet up with Brazilian environmental journalist, Cristina Serra. Together, they are welcomed into the Krenak Indigenous territory where they speak with Krenak elders, philosophers and community leaders.

The Documentary uncovers the many layers to what Brazilian Civil Prosecutor Edmundo Dias calls an intentional, “genocide” of the Krenak, lead by Brazilian federal agencies. For decades, very little was known about what the Krenak suffered during the dictatorship, but now they are speaking out. And in 2024, the Amnesty Commission made its first ever apology to an Indigenous group when the president of the Commission got down on her knees in front of the Krenak.

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