The Documentary Podcast

Venezuela’s hospitals are dealing with a pandemic at a time when the country is already in an economic crisis. Many hospitals don’t have running water and there are shortages of oxygen and other medical supplies to treat Covid patients. Two doctors in the capital Caracas share their stories with host Nuala McGovern. In the United States, more than 500,000 lives have now been lost due to Covid-19. A reverend and deacon from a baptist church in New York, at one point the epicentre of the disease, reflect on how their community is coping almost a year after the pandemic was first declared.

All over the world, frontline health workers have paid the ultimate price during the coronavirus pandemic. But in Kenya the story of one young doctor’s heroism has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Twenty eight year-old Stephen Mogusu died from Covid 19 in December 2020, after working on an isolation ward and complaining that he lacked adequate protective clothing. Despite his vital service, he hadn’t been paid a salary for five months. Stephen’s tragedy also exposes a wider malaise in Kenya’s health provision: A corruption scandal involving overpriced masks, aprons and other protective clothing. Meanwhile, across the country, a series of on-off strikes have disrupted care, as doctors, nurses and clinicians have made sporadic protests against alleged mismanagement and a devolved power structure they say is dysfunctional. For Assignment, Lucy Ash finds out what’s ailing Kenya’s healthcare system.

Producer: Michael Gallagher

(Image: Healthcare workers light candles next to a photograph of Doctor Stephen Mogusu. Credit: Dennis Sigwe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Robert Chelsea suffered horrific burns after his stationary car was hit by a truck with a drunk driver at the wheel, in Los Angeles in 2013. He survived and went ahead with a series of demanding surgical operations at a Boston hospital in an attempt to restore his appearance. A shortage of black donors meant it was a long wait for his doctors to find even a partial match for his skin colour. The operation was a success. Although he still has difficulty speaking, he can now eat and drink without difficulty. In a moving narrative, Robert, his friends, family and doctors reflect on his remarkable journey.

With migration, integration and assimilation dominating much public debate, Fergal Keane explores the profound influence, over many centuries, of the Irish in Britain. Whether it is 19th Century theatre or verse, or today’s pop culture, Irish migrants and their descendants have deeply influenced and steered the UK’s literature and arts. Fergal Keane examines the impact of the longest and biggest immigrant story in the history of the United Kingdom.

With thousands of schools still closed around the world, there are increasingly urgent warnings about the impact this pandemic is having on millions of children. Ros Atkins looks at risks of reopening classrooms and the consequences of not doing so.

Tasneem recently graduated from university. Like everyone else, her future is on hold because of coronavirus. But for Tasneem it is a particularly uncertain time, as she has been living in Jordan at one of the world’s largest refugee camps, since leaving Syria with her family in 2013. Host Nuala McGovern has a conversation with her and her father about life in a refugee camp during the pandemic. We also hear why Tanzania is denying its people are dying from Covid-19; and how sniffer dogs in Finland can be trained to detect the virus among passengers arriving at Helsinki airport - with unprecedented success.

Can Norwegians with psychosis benefit from radical, drug-free treatment? In a challenge to the foundations of western psychiatry, a handful of Norway’s mental health facilities are offering medication-free treatment to people with serious psychiatric conditions. But five years after the scheme began it is still being questioned by the health establishment. For Assignment, Lucy Proctor hears the testimony of Norwegian psychiatric patients, and the doctors who have aligned themselves on either side of the debate. Why is this happening in Norway? And how much power should people with debilitating psychosis have over their own lives?

Presenter: Lucy Proctor

(Image: Artwork depicting a young woman, with her head in her hands. Credit: Malin Rossi)

David Baker reveals the thinking and the values that made Jeff Bezos the richest man on the planet, and Amazon the most wildly successful company, even in a year when the global economy faces catastrophe. Speaking to senior colleagues within his businesses, longstanding business partners and analysts, David Baker learns the secrets to Amazon's success. As the billionaire creates a huge philanthropic foundation, the programme examines the impact of Jeff Bezos' ideas on the fight against global climate change and the exploration of the solar system, as well as his impact on the media.

We may think we live in a digital age, but only half the world is currently online. Across the globe, small radio stations bind remote communities, play a dazzling array of music, educate, entertain and empower people to make change. Cameroon’s Radio Taboo, Radio Civic Sfantu Gheorghe in the Danube Delta, Tamil Nadu’s Kadal Osai (“the sound of the ocean”), Radio Pio Doce in Bolivia and KTNN, the Voice of the Navajo Nation continue to lift their listeners' spirits up.

As scientists from the World Health Organisation release the findings of their latest visit to Wuhan, Ros Atkins looks at the reasons why so much remains unknown about the start of the pandemic, and the central role China is playing in shaping the investigations.