The Documentary Podcast

After a year of lockdowns and Covid restrictions, Manuela Saragosa and Devina Gupta take a global look at jobs, pay and financial wellbeing. They look at the support packages from governments around the world and revisit some of those who spoke to the programme a year ago. How have they fared in the past 12 months?

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised a more humane approach to migration on the US-Mexico border. But right now, more than 17,000 unaccompanied children are being held in migration facilities. Ros Atkins considers the challenge facing the Biden administration (Photo: Dareli Matamoros, a girl from Honduras, holds a sign asking President Biden to let her in during a migrant demonstration demanding clearer United States migration policies.

The coronavirus has changed almost everyone’s lives and for some losing their jobs has led to homelessness. Edward in the United States had to sleep in the New York subway and train stations before finding help from a mission, while Walter spent five months homeless in South Africa - even for a stint, on the famous Table Mountain. Host Nuala McGovern also hears how families in Rome are approaching the renewed restrictions. Nuala also considers the future workplace and how the pandemic has been good for robots.

The shipping industry is worth millions to the world economy and we depend on it for most of our goods. Assignment lifts the lid on the dangerous and polluting world of shipbreaking and investigates why ships once owned by UK companies end their lives on beaches in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

(Image: Bangladeshi labourers and docked ships at a shipbreaking yard. Credit: Farjana Khan Godhuly/AFP via Getty Images)

How do you solve a problem like America? A land where speech is free - but hate rules the airwaves. A land of opportunity - where 40 million people live in poverty. A land of democracy - where the majority of Americans are under-represented in national government. Award winning journalist Brian Palmer asks if the near sacred text is fit for modern governance. Does the electoral college deliver adequate representation for everybody? Is the Constitution key to solving America’s ills?

Eckhart Tolle, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Sister Dang Nghiem offer advice to members of the public from across the world as they respond to the challenge of the pandemic. In a series of intimate pone explore more life-lessons in this series of two programmes. In a series of intimate one to one conversations presented by the BBC’s Nuala McGovern, for the BBC World Service Festival they explore life-lesson on recovering from trauma, coping with kids in lockdown, personal growth after bereavement and learning to love yourself.

Eckhart Tolle, Dr Shefali Tsabary and Sister Dang Nghiem offer advice to members of the public from across the world as they explore life-lessons in this series of two programmes. The last year has brought challenges like no other year, leading to dramatic personal changes all over the world. People struggle to endure the restrictions, or to cope with grief, or perhaps they wonder suddenly see their life in a new way.

Some of the European Union's biggest nations have restarted their roll-out of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after the medicines regulator concluded it was safe and effective. Ros Atkins considers how a vaccine initially hailed as a "gamechanger", has ended up in the middle of a scientific and political storm.

During the last year hundreds of people across the globe have shared their experiences on the programme about living during a pandemic. This time, we view this challenging situation through a journalist’s lens. Reporters from India, Brazil, the United States, Italy, South Africa, Rwanda and New Zealand share, with host Nuala McGovern, what it’s like to work on possibly the most important story of their careers. They reveal the difficulties of obtaining accurate information, the influence of governments, and how they now deal with misinformation.

For over three hundred years the union of England and Scotland has held firm through war and poverty but in recent years some people north of the border have asked for a divorce. Elections in May to Scotland’s devolved parliament could return a majority for the ruling Scottish National Party which is seeking a mandate for a second referendum on seceding from the UK. Only seven years ago those wanting independence failed to win a poll on the issue but since then Brexit and the handling of the Covid pandemic have radicalised some voters, especially the young. For Assignment, Lucy Ash visits several communities in Scotland to hear their new arguments for and against the union, and to learn about the differing interpretations of Scottish history, identity and political culture that underpin them. From the east coast city of Dundee which voted so decisively for independence in the last referendum that it was dubbed the “Yes City” she travels to Stirling, the so-called Gateway to the Highlands. Finally, she flies to the isles of Orkney, which have vowed to become independent themselves if the rest of the country does secede from the UK – a sign that the centrifugal forces at work all over Europe could well apply to Scotland itself.

Producer: Mike Gallagher

(Demonstrator, with a Saltire bodysuit and flag, at a Pro-Scottish Independence rally in Glasgow, 05 February 2021. The Scottish National Party has adopted the Saltire as its symbol but Unionists say they have just as much ownership of the country’s blue and white flag, also known as the St Andrew’s Cross. Credit: Reuters)