The Documentary Podcast: Archive 2014

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the Middle East has experienced a proliferation of new TV channels keen to spread religious and political messages to audiences. There are new media stars – TV evangelists and religious leaders. But some of what is broadcast has been described as openly sectarian, provocative and even blasphemous. We look at two countries where this kind of broadcasting proliferates – Iraq and Egypt - and try to uncover the reasons for it, and the possible consequences.

Hungarian conductor – Ivan Fischer – is holding up a mirror to Hungarian society and has written an opera to expose growing intolerance. Lucy Ash reports

With regulation of newspapers planned, Steve Hewlett and a panel of international editors ask: how free is the UK press?

Fashion magazines, consumerism, and the changing face of Chinese fashion. Jessie Levene speaks to editors, photographers, designers and cultural commentators to find out how Chinese women are creating a new Chinese female identity.

A decision by his father to send him to ballet school changed the direction of Carlos Acosta’s life. Thanks to Fidel Castro’s belief that art should be accessible to all Cubans he received free ballet tuition. It shaped his character, and secured his future. Now he wants to give something back to his country by saving an abandoned ballet school in Havana. Vittorio Garatti’s School of Ballet is an extraordinary labyrinth of corridors, graceful arches and majestic brick and terracotta domes, and has been described as one of the most remarkable buildings of the 20th Century. But the ballet star’s attempts to restore the building have stirred Latin passions and protest.

Rupa Jha meets fellow Indian women who choose to be, or are forced to be, single. She comes face-to-face with a story of coercion, prejudice and neglect that is both shocking and moving. It is also a story about the reactionary attitudes, narrow-mindedness and sometimes outright misogyny that obstruct such women's choices.

Thousands of Uruguayans are hooked on a highly addictive cocaine derivative – ‘pasta base’. Will the legalisation of marijuana impact this problematic drug abuse? Linda Pressly reports.

Ingrid Betancourt - who was held captive for six years - explores how people's minds can be free even while they are in captivity.

The number of families in India employing detectives to spy on future brides and grooms is on the rise. Many dozens of premarital investigations happen each week, it’s now reported. Ed Butler has been finding out why.

Ex-Guantanamo detainees talk about freedom and how detention in the military prison changed their lives and thinking.