The Documentary Podcast

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Africa's first film city Aug 09, 2026

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In Lagos, a vast patch of scrubland is being imagined as the future home of Kebulania: an ambitious African film city on the edge of Nigeria’s biggest metropolis, and one of the centres of Nollywood, the country’s multi-billion dollar film industry. Nigerian journalist Samuel Okocha follows the project in its earliest, most uncertain days – when the vision is big, but the buildings are yet to rise. At the proposed site, he joins community members, contractors and staff from Del-York Creative Arts, a Nigerian conglomerate film and media training company, as traditional leaders offer prayers and blessings.

Rapping behind bars in Cameroon Aug 08, 2026

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New Bell Prison in Douala, Cameroon, operates a bit like a city within a city. The facility has its own "taxis" (inmates who hand deliver messages), its own law enforcement (prisoners who help police the facility) and a market. The jail is overcrowded and under-resourced, and the occupants of New Bell have sometimes adapted the jail's overstretched systems to work for them. An on-site music studio and label, Jail Time Records, has also sprung up and found an international audience. Wedaeli Chibelushi, journalist for BBC World Online, Africa, tells the stories of some of the inmates involved.

In Egypt, Christians are a substantial minority, making up 10 to 15% of the population, but they're not always represented fairly in employment and public life. This month, the case of 13-year-old Makary Younan, who despite his talent was initially passed over for selection by a major Egyptian football academy, has led to a public debate over anti-Christian discrimination. BBC Arabic's Ahmed Omar has the story.

Wang Jibing, a Chinese food delivery rider in his fifties, has found a huge online following with reflective poems capturing his daily life and routines. Now, he's won one of China's top literary prizes. After growing up poor and doing many different jobs, Wang became a food delivery rider 2019. He often scribbles poems on scraps of paper between deliveries, but the prize he's won is named after poet Lu Xun, seen by many as the father of Chinese literature. Koh Ewe from the BBC's Hong Kong Bureau explains why so many Chinese people have taken him to their hearts.

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.)

Ariana Grande and the public scrutiny of women Aug 08, 2026

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Ariana Grande says she will be taking ‘a step back’ from public life. The reason, it seems, is the constant public commentary she faces – particularly surrounding her appearance. We bring together fans of the multi-award-winning singer and Oscar nominated actor to discuss the scrutiny facing women in the public eye. We also hear from women who have received abuse after posting on social media, including Ella, a high jump athlete from Finland. “I never imagined when I started doing sports as a little girl there would be a moment when I would receive messages that I should kill myself because I didn’t perform well or that I am the greatest embarrassment Finland has ever had” she says.

A singer’s search for peace Aug 07, 2026

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In Lithuania, singer Rugilė Daujotaitė was becoming a familiar face on television. She was performing at major music events, competing for a place at Eurovision, and building a life that, from the outside, appeared successful. But privately, she says she was struggling. Raised in a family shaped by New Age spirituality and occult beliefs, Rugilė grew up searching for God through a mixture of traditions. As an adult, she moved to Amsterdam to study jazz, became involved in shamanic practices and Santo Daime ceremonies, and began taking ayahuasca - a powerful psychedelic brew used in some religious rituals. Colm Flynn travels to Vilnius to meet Rugilė in the home where she first encountered many of the ideas that shaped her early life. She reflects on leading retreats, introducing others to practices she has since rejected, and the moment she began reading the Bible and questioning the world she had embraced. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

The teenagers who wired Romania Aug 06, 2026

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In the late '90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania’s capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive improvised network that catches the attention of telecom giants. Told by those who built it, this is the extraordinary story of how a homemade system became the backbone of a city - a reflection of what the internet was meant to be and what it became.

The Engineers: Flying at the Edge Aug 05, 2026

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Aviation is being reimagined for a changing planet: Vertical take-off passenger cars for city centres. Hydrogen powered planes for zero carbon travel. Hyper-sonic flights to take the London to Sydney journey to under two hours.

Kelly Latimer, US Aerospace engineer, flight test pilot, and former Flight Test Director of Virgin Galactic; Rob Miller, Net-zero aviation pioneer and Director of the Whittle Lab at Cambridge University, UK and Daniel Moczydlower, president of the Brazilian future aircraft innovators, Embraer-X, join BBC presenter Caroline Steel on stage in London, to discuss their trailblazing work and answer questions from a live audience at the Royal Geographical Society, London.

Photo: An A/A-18 E/F model jet tested in a wind tunnel. Photo credit: Getty)

Getting Gaza back online Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Amid the tents and the rubble Gaza is developing once again as an unlikely tech hub. Even before the 7 October 2023 attack and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas, NGOs, with the backing of Google, had sought to develop tech start-ups in the Gaza strip. The digital economy was one of the few areas in which young Gazans in particular could seek to earn money for their families. During the two years of war they struggled for food and water. Forced to move from place to place, most of them lost their homes, their work, sometimes their laptops and plenty lost family members. Now 80% of Gazans are unemployed and have no income. Many of them live amid the rubble in tents. Stable electricity and internet are difficult to come by. And yet co-working hubs have begun to pop up, giving well educated graduates a chance to work remotely for foreign companies as coders, software engineers and app developers.. Yolande Knell reports on how its tech workers give a glimpse of a brighter, possible future, open to the world beyond Gaza’s borders. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Assignment.

Skatepark designers Nine Yards Aug 03, 2026

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Nine Yards, the designers behind the Paris 2024 Olympic skatepark, get to work on their next big challenge: the rebuild of Olympiaplein, one of Amsterdam's oldest and most cherished skating spots. Sean Allsop joins designers Jesper Kuipers and Jeroen Van Eggermond in the Netherlands, as they work through sketches and plans before presenting their vision to local skaters for crucial feedback. Then the team head out onto the building site, with concrete trucks, tight deadlines, and one shot to get the surface smooth for skaters of all levels, before the gates open and a community gets to skate again. We explore how skating has evolved from an underground sport into an established movement, the community within skateparks, and the intricate detail that goes into every park.

What is so-called 'Jihadi cool'? Aug 02, 2026

Show notes

The extremist content quietly spreading on TikTok and Instagram, targeting unsuspecting young people. Through what is disguised as innocuous lifestyle content, supporters of jihadist groups like IS and al-Qaeda reach audiences outside their echo chamber. This is a recruitment drive that signals a move from direct operational instructions to “do-it-yourself jihad", with the aim of potentially inspiring lone wolf attacks. The Global Jigsaw explores the tactics used to obscure and evade detection, the challenges this poses for platforms, and how it has become a relentless game of whack-a-mole.

Find out more about BBC Monitoring on our website: monitoring.bbc.co.uk

Contributors: Mariam Soussi, Mina al-Lami Producer: Kriszta Satori, Elchin Suleymanov Presenter: Krassi Ivanova Twigg Music: Pete Cunningham

A Chinese dissident's journey Aug 01, 2026

Show notes

When Chinese policeman Dong Guangping wrote an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, it kicked off a chain of events that led to him serving jail time and losing his job. But it also sparked the beginning of a deep desire to live more freely. So Dong began planning how he might escape China. Just a few weeks ago, back in late May, he finally achieved his dream, having taken the huge risk of crossing China's Yellow Sea in a dinghy to reach South Korean waters. Phoebe Kong, based in the BBC's Hong Kong bureau, explained how rare Dong's achievement really is.

Yemen has faced decades of economic hardship and war, but the khat industry is thriving. Khat is a plant, and when chewed it acts as a stimulant. It is estimated to consume one-third of Yemen's groundwater and occupy much of the country's agricultural land. Dalia Haidar of BBC Arabic has been looking into Yemen's relationship to khat and the problem it can cause.

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 and Caroline Ferguson

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

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