The Documentary Podcast

Want to know who you really are? Take an at-home DNA test, just like over 26 million others have around the globe. But the question is: why? For many, it’s just a bit of fun; for others it might be for medical insight. But for everyone, it promises to tell you who you really are – and for many, those results might come as a surprise. For BBC reporter Sophia Smith Galer and her father, an innocent at-home kit led to a series of shocking discoveries about their family

We listen in to four black-owned radio stations in the United States to find out how they are covering the killing of George Floyd and the waves of protest since. From Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago, we hear discussions on preparing young people for encounters with police, on access to finance and housing and on black identity and activism. We also bring the hosts together, in conversation with Chloe Tilley, to find out what it means to be behind the mic on a black-owned station. How is it different to working elsewhere in the US media?

This series comes from the Bradford Royal Infirmary, in the North of England, with recordings made by Dr John Wright, who works there. He is an epidemiologist and as he helps the hospital prepare and cope with a huge influx of patients, he’s also searching for answers about Covid-19.

In March and April, Guayaquil in Ecuador was the epicentre of the Covid pandemic in Latin America. The city’s health services began to collapse fast – hospitals, cemeteries and morgues were overwhelmed. As the bodies of the dead were not collected, hundreds of desperate families kept the remains of their loved ones at home, or deposited them on the streets. Eventually they were picked up. But in the chaos, some corpses went missing.

For Assignment, Mike Lanchin teams up with Guayaquil journalist Blanca Moncada, to follow the story of one woman in her dramatic search for the body of her late husband.

(Image: Funeral workers with a coffin in the back of a pick-up truck outside Los Ceibos hospital in Guayaquil. Credit: Reuters/Santiago Arcos)

Maps are the scaffolding of the digital age. Without them, and their associated data, a technological revolution is impossible. Vast swathes of Africa are still not mapped to a true local scale. That means governments face huge problems when tackling rapid urbanisation on this fast changing continent – they simply don’t know where people are. It also means that when outbreaks of disease occur, mapping the spread of infections is all but impossible. Katie Prescott travels to Rwanda, to Kigali, which is rapidly changing its layout and erasing signs of the past, to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the maps just seem to stop, and to Tanzania’s commercial hub of Dar Es Salaam, to hear how community mapping projects run by students are helping to tackle flooding, and outbreaks of cholera.

As Americans call for change following the killing of George Floyd, three women share the history of slavery in their families and discuss its impact on society today. Sharon Leslie Morgan in Mississippi is the founder of Our Black Ancestry Foundation, which provides resources for African American genealogical research. She's also co-written a book on the subject called Gather at the Table. Bernice Alexander Bennett is a blogger and radio host in Silverspring, Maryland. Shonda Brooks is a therapist in New Jersey. They've been reflecting with Nuala McGovern on what they uncovered when they researched their own family trees.

The BBC’s China correspondent, John Sudworth, travels to Wuhan – the city on the banks of the Yangtze river where Covid-19 first emerged. As the city returns to life, he examines one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind: did the virus emerge naturally or could it have been leaked, as the US alleges, from a Wuhan lab, where work was being carried out to research bat viruses? As John and his team discover, asking questions and getting answers in Wuhan is no easy task.

Reporter: John Sudworth

Photo: Two motorcyclists in Wuhan, China - June 2020 Credit: Getty Images

Zimbabwe has over 14 million people but fewer than 20 psychiatrists. After years of economic turmoil, unemployment and HIV, mental health is a huge challenge and doctors estimate one in four Zimbabweans battles with depression or anxiety. Lucia is one of the 700 grandmothers in the country turning the nation around. She sits on a wooden bench using a gentle form of cognitive behavioural or talking therapy with her community. This is one of 250 Friendship Benches set up by Zimbabwean psychiatrist Dr Dixon Chibanda, who believed that after a few weeks of simple training, grandmothers could become lay health workers for their communities. Lucia has the time, wisdom and respect to help the people who come to her. She understands them and has direct experience of their problems. Presenter Kim Chakanetsa hears the grandmothers are having astounding results. They have helped over 50,000 people and are breaking down the stigma around mental health. Dixon Chibanda explains how he is facing up to the pandemic, moving his idea online and giving the world access to a virtual Friendship Bench.

In a few short months the coronavirus has turned the world upside down. Alongside the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of deaths, the world is now bracing itself for a brutal economic impact.

Health experts and listeners from Ghana, the US, Canada, China, Switzerland and Italy share their views of life in a post-pandemic world.