The Documentary Podcast

Lyse Doucet travels to Saudi Arabia to meet Madeha al-Ajroush, who battled for 30 years to get women the right to drive. It is a battle she has now won, as women in the kingdom will legally be allowed to drive later this year. As a Saudi woman, she says, "you’ll always be treated like a child and never like an adult. And that was a problem, and it continued till this day - but things are opening up now."

Goodpath was once an agricultural village but is now home to 61 massive factories and 40,000 migrant workers who came from rural China to better their lives. The migrants work very long hours in poor conditions and then spend the rest of their time in cramped rooms, often sharing living space and beds. However most have been able to buy smart phones from the local mobile phone shop and have set up social media accounts on platforms like QQ, the social media giant in China that provides instant messaging, online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, and group and voice chat software. It is in these online worlds that the rural migrants come close to the modern China they came for.

Chinese reporter Haining Liu travels to Beijing and finds out what it was like for people who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and how those who lived under strict communism relate to their children who have had much more material, individualistic lives. And she hears about new attitudes to work and education as more people choose to study and work and outside the state system.

In a small cold courtyard in Herat in Afghanistan, two former enemies sit chained together. One is a former warlord, the other a Taliban fighter. Both men are dangerous. Both men are suffering from severe psychiatric conditions. The courtyard is where all 300 inmates of Afghanistan’s only secure psychiatric spend their day; men and women who are too dangerous to be treated in a general hospital. Nearly four decades of war have left a terrible legacy of mental health problems in Afghanistan. In a country where mental illness is often viewed with suspicion and stigma, the challenges of dealing with it are immense. For Assignment, Sahar Zand, gains unprecedented access to the institution, the only one of its kind in the country, where she meets the medical staff trying to deal with Afghanistan’s mental health emergency and the patients, traumatised by decades of conflict.

Monica McWilliams was one of only two local women who were at the table during negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet visits Belfast to hear her story.

Donald Trump campaigned on numerous issues, but when it came time for action in the early days of his administration, healthcare reform was his top legislative priority. “Repealing and replacing” the Democrats’ Obamacare system has proven harder than it seems. Time and time again the Republican-controlled Congress was unable to pass sweeping changes. Anthony Zurcher, examines the challenges facing Donald Trump’s Administration, including efforts to replace Obamacare as well as his handling of the opioid addiction epidemic and efforts to reform the medical system for US veterans.

Unlike many other nations of Europe, thousands of people with mental illness still live in asylums in Croatia. But not in Osijek… In this small city in the far east, dozens of people have moved from mental institutions into regular apartments in the community. One of the asylums has closed completely. The other has become a centre for recovery and respite, with just a few elderly residents. This process is called ‘de-institutionalisation’: a recognition that people with mental health challenges have human rights too, and are not usually dangerous maniacs who need to be locked away. In Croatia, in spite of a government commitment to change the situation for the thousands still residing in institutions, only Osijek has made this radical move. So what’s life like now for those who have been, ‘liberated’? And does life outside an asylum suit everybody?

Photo: Branka Reljan and Drazenko Tevelli outside the abandoned institution of Cepin, where they lived for more than a decade.

Explore the dark, demonic landscape of a 17th Century Flemish masterpiece - The Temptation of Saint Anthony - by Joos van Craesbeeck (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe). A giant screaming head dominates the painting; from its mouth pour tiny devils and the forehead has been peeled back to reveal a miniature artist working inside the brain. Cathy FitzGerald takes a closer look at Craesbeeck’s strange critters in the context of the early modern fascination with curiosity cabinets, monsters – and the devil.

What is happening to American diplomacy? It is the job of the State Department to explain to the world what America stands for, and manage the nuts and bolts of its international relations. But President Trump is uninterested in the diplomatic arts; he has proposed drastic cuts to the department and tweets foreign policy pronouncements seemingly on a whim. What does this mean for the way US foreign policy is run, and for American influence in the world?

Concussion is taking much of the sheen off America’s behemoth national sport and leading to many parents forbidding their children from taking it up. Bill Littlefield asks whether this multi-billion dollar business can survive if so many players turn their backs on the sport. Where will the next generation of players needed come from?