The Documentary Podcast

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition where a person’s breathing stops and starts repeatedly while they sleep, possibly over 30 times an hour, leaving them exhausted on waking. It affects millions around the world and can lead to serious health problems if left untreated. Patients are often given a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) breathing device to keep air flowing into their lungs through the night. But the mask that covers the face can look and feel a bit strange. And there is stigma too because although anyone can be affected by sleep apnoea, this is not the public perception. Enter, the ‘CPAP Baddies’, an informal online community who are on a social media mission to fight misconceptions around the condition and re-brand life with a CPAP machine.

Rosemary Nyirumbe became a nun when she was just in her mid-teens – and she felt her true vocation lay in rehabilitating children who had been through some of the worst trauma imaginable. So that’s what she did. In this episode Mike Wooldridge hears Sr Rosemary’s astonishing story.

The feared rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, started to terrorise the north of Uganda in the 1980s. Many children, girls as well as boys, were abducted and forced to become child soldiers. In many cases, the LRA forced them to commit atrocities, leaving them deeply traumatised. Many of the girls also bore the children of rebel leaders.

As they started to return home, these children were often rejected by their families and communities, says Sr Rosemary. So she set about giving them a future and a hope: through enabling them to acquire skills like sewing, and by helping them see that God had not rejected them for the atrocities they had been forced to commit.

More than once, Sr Rosemary put herself in enormous danger in order to fulfil her mission. But, she says, she also learnt that small acts of kindness can touch the hearts of even battle-hardened rebels.

Gautam Adani’s businesses span almost every part of life in India. From energy to food, ports to mining, and drinks to weapons, the Adani group has widespread influence over millions of people day to day. From his early career as a diamond trader, Gautam built a reputation as always looking for the next opportunity. But as well as a huge pyramid of business interests, he also has cultural and political power, leading to a close relationship with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Simon and Zing chart Adani’s journey from 1960s Gujarat to opening his first port in the middle of nowhere, to owning 10 private jets as one of the richest billionaires on the planet.

A new farming method is having a dramatic effect on maize crops in Malawi, and assistance is coming from a solar-powered tractor. In the last of her visits to Malawi, Myra goes to a village where they are using a new method called Deep Bed Farming. It has more than doubled the yield of some of the farmers and improved their standards of living. The method involves digging deep into the hard earth. This can be tough work but a new solar-powered tractor designed in the UK called Aftrak is helping the farmers. Malawi has been hit hard by the changing climate and often struggles to feed its population. So making it more food secure could improve the lives of millions.

When Linda Pressly met them in 2024 in the Netherlands, Els and Jan had fewer than three days left on Earth. Els was living with dementia. Jan was in continual physical pain. A married couple, they chose to die together by lethal injection in a hospice. Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands. But duo-euthanasia – dying together – is still rare. In The Documentary, Els and Jan discuss the reasons why they will end their lives. And then, two years later, Linda returns to the Netherlands to talk their son. Bas talks candidly about the experience of his parents choosing death, not life.

This episode contains discussion around euthanasia.

China's booming export figures, driven in part by demand for AI-related products, suggest a high-tech economy that's thriving. Yet many consumers at home continue to face economic pressures. Ed Butler asks whether there's a link between weakness at home and strength abroad, and what China's export surge could mean for other countries and trading partners.

On location in Dortmund, in Germany's Ruhr region, historian and author Katja Hoyer reports on the dramatic transformation that has taken place in the city in the last 20 years. Once known for its heavy industry, especially steel production, Dortmund realised the future lay elsewhere. The city would instead become a centre for hi tech industries, for start-ups, for logistics and it would attract talent to make that happen. Investing in two world class technical universities was a huge help together with the efforts of local government to support new businesses with access to workspace and useful contacts. The city cleaned up its act with new parks and lakes and a river free of pollution. The cultural centre Dortmunder U, the famous football club Borussia Dortmund plus a concert hall helped to turn the city into an attractive place to live. Yet in neighbouring Essen, people have been left behind in this transformation. What can Dortmund and its neighbouring cities teach the world about the process of deindustrialisation ?

A major new international study predicts that the number of people diagnosed with dementia will more than double by 2050. Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who led the study, predict that new cases worldwide will rise from some 11 million each year to around 25 million. That increase will not only have an impact on the families affected but also on health and care services. We bring together people with dementia to share their experiences. “If I say I have Alzheimer’s, it’s like the end of the world but it’s not the end of the world,” Helen tells us. We also hear from carers, including Amanda who looks after her 91-year-old mother in Ghana. They discuss the stigma around dementia and the pressure it can put on families.

As a young missionary priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli left his native Argentina to work in the Middle East. He went out of a passion for bringing Christ to the people wherever he was called. He became Gaza’s only Catholic parish priest at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City. Life in the territory was never easy, but it became extraordinarily challenging after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 when around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israel's Foreign Ministry. The Gaza Hamas-run Health Ministry has put the number killed since the start of the war at around 74,000 including more than 20,000 children. Mike Wooldridge finds out what motivated Fr Romanelli to return to his flock and stay with them through the dangers and hardships of the devastating war that followed the Hamas attack. On the day of the assault, he was in Bethlehem in the West Bank – and it took him nearly seven months to obtain permission from the Israeli authorities to go back to Gaza.

Navanetham 'Navi' Pillay has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026. The 85-year-old South African jurist and former UN Human Rights chief initially thought the news was a joke. Born in Durban, South Africa, to a Tamil family, her grandparents had come to South Africa as indentured labourers to work in the sugarcane fields. Born under apartheid rule neither of her parents were educated and her mother fought for her daughters to attend school where Navi's teachers saw her potential. The community then raised money enabling her to attend university. In 1967 she was the first woman to establish a law practice in Natal Province defending apartheid activists and political prisoners. She made international news in 1973 when she secured greater legal rights for the prisoners on Robben island including future president, Nelson Mandela. Once president, Mandela appointed Pillay the first non-white woman judge in the South African High Court. Soon after she was made a judge on the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She became UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and then in 2021 she chaired a UN Commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Israel has said awarding Pillay the Nobel Prize legitimised "anti-Israel hatred" and and both the US and Israel have since issued sanctions on the International Criminal Court. Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said she had been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.