The Documentary Podcast: Archive 2014

Forty years on from President Nixon’s resignation we hear from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story. Did their reporting make Americans more mistrustful of government and ready to believe the worst of their leaders?

In Colombia’s Marxist guerrilla war, thousands of rebel fighters have been female. When they got pregnant, they were forced to have abortions or give their babies up. Now, many of these rebel mothers have demobilised and are desperate to find their children.

Tim Whewell meets the dynamic young women in Turkish Kurdistan who are defining the future of their society.

Theatre director Mehmet Ergen guides us through the politically charged arts scene of his native homeland Turkey, as he negotiates national and cultural borders to stage work that is as unpretentious as it is provocative.

‘I’ll marry your sister if you marry mine. And if you divorce my sister, I’ll divorce yours.’ That is Yemen’s ‘Shegar’, or swap marriage, an agreement between two men to marry each other’s sisters, thereby removing the need for expensive dowry payments. But the agreement also entails that if one marriage fails, the other couple must separate as well - even if they are happy.

***WARNING: This programme includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence*** 'A humanitarian crisis', that's how the medical charity Medicins Sans Frontiers describes the levels of violence against women they are dealing with in Papua New Guinea - levels they usually only witness in war-zones. Russian photojournalist Vlad Sokhin reports on the untold stories of women subjected to the most extreme violence perpetrated anywhere on earth, including the brutal torture of women accused of witchcraft.

Six talented young writers under 35 explore a great grandparent or grandparent's involvement in World War One. This centenary offers a chance to reflect on the gulf that separates young people from the war. Each writer attempts to bridge the gap, to question what the values and sacrifices of the war mean today.

What do you do when a twisting funnel drops from the sky with tearing winds of up to 500 km an hour? Neal Razzell goes out and about with the storm chasers in Oklahoma City, USA.

As Nato troops withdraw from Afghanistan, British and Afghan women share their stories of being widowed by the same war. Zarghuna Kargar hears how the lives of four women changed the moment they received the news of their husbands' sudden deaths, how they have coped in the aftermath and what they feel about war today.

Following recent botched executions in several states, Rajini Vaidyanathan asks whether the future of the death penalty in the US is itself now in question. Is it possible that the United States could give up on the death penalty?