The Documentary Podcast: Archive 2008

This special documentary exploring life in Chicago's inner city is based on Ghetto Life 101, an acclaimed 1993 documentary featuring LeAlan Jones and LLoyd Newman, two teenagers who brought US radio listeners face to face with life in of one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Jones has revisited the area to see how it has changed.

A series of protests against Indian rule in Kashmir has left more than 30 people dead since August. Thousands of people have died in the violence there since 1989. For Assignment George Arney travels to Kashmir to speak to young people caught up in the protests and discovers that for the first time the Muslim separatist struggle is embracing non-violence.

Owen Bennett-Jones tests the big promises governments have made about the financial war on terror.

In Mexico, the government has deployed thousands of troops in an attempt to break up the powerful drug cartels operating in the country. Emilio San Pedro travels to the border city of Tijuana and profiles a community under pressure from one of Mexico's most violent gangs.

In Iran, the constant drugs crisis and loss of skilled workers contrast with a lively internet scene which harbours poets, political dissidents and religious leaders.

Owen Bennett-Jones looks at al Qaeda's hard power and military capabilities in its chosen key battlegrounds: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

In Assignment, Robert Walker travels to East Africa to investigate a secret detention programme - involving the transfer of suspected terrorists across three countries: Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

This series explores what life offers to Iran's burgeoning young population who are trapped by conservatism and an ailing economy. In the first programme, we hear how the war with Iraq acted as a continuation of the Revolution.

Seven years into the global war on terror, is al-Qaeda winning? It's a deceptively simple question, one Owen Bennett-Jones asked in Riyadh, Peshawar and Baghdad, as well as London, Brussels and Washington for this series in four parts.

Pakistan's government is locked in an intense battle with Islamist militants for control of areas on its northern border with Afghanistan. For Assignment Owen Bennett-Jones visits the Khyber pass - the main supply route for the American and other western forces based in Afghanistan - and discovers that the insurgency has made it vulnerable.