The Documentary Podcast

From internal barriers to border fences, do walls built for political purposes create bigger problems than they solve? And what is it like to live next to them, asks Cathy Gormley-Heenan, of Ulster University. She meets residents and experts in Belfast, Israel-West Bank, and on the US-Mexican border, to find out why we are still building walls and what impact they have.

Lucy Ash meets the young Russians taking death-defying photos on top of skyscrapers to gain internet fame and explores why this is a particularly Russian phenomenon.

This is an affectionate portrait of Elizabeth Gathoni Koinange - a woman who lives a short drive outside Nairobi - and who celebrated her 117th birthday this year. Her story, and that of her family, is told by Elizabeth's own great granddaughter Priscilla Ng'ethe. The joy of family life is captured when many generations come together. But it is also a short mental journey to the past and more turbulent times, when the British were rounding up suspected Mau Mau independence rebels.

What accounts for Marine Le Pen's popularity? As a populist wave sweeps across the Western world, France is emerging as a key battleground and she is scoring record ratings for a leader of an 'outsider' party and looks set to get through to the second round of the presidential elections. How much is it to do with an increasingly familiar politics which blames global elites and immigrants for economic and social woes? And how much is it a distinctively French form, mixing policies of the left and the right in a brew which harks back to previous generations of Gallic leaders? What turns a party previously seen as fascist into one seriously vying for the highest office in the land? Anand Menon examines how Marine Le Pen has detoxified her father's party and asks what its success says about France's future as one of two anchoring states of the EU.

Nearly half of all peace agreements fail. What can be done to stop countries from sliding back into civil war? Sri Lanka and Uganda are two countries that have suffered long and brutal civil wars, but have managed, to keep the peace - at least so far. BBC foreign affairs correspondent, Mike Thomson, who has reported from many conflict zones around the world, investigates how well both countries have managed to heal the wounds of war and what their experiences can teach us about winning the peace.

Last summer the emergency services rescued two children from an out-of-control fire in an old industrial building in the commercial area of Hong Kong. The children were living with their mother inside a storage unit in the building. For Assignment, Charlotte McDonald explores the reasons which would drive a family in one of the wealthiest cities in the world to live illegally in a place not fit for human habitation. It's estimated that around 10,000 people live in industrial buildings - although the true number is not known due to the very fact it is not legal. Hong Kong consistently ranks as one of the most expensive places to rent or buy in the world. Already around 200,000 have been forced to rent in what are known as subdivided flats. But now attention has turned to those in even more dire conditions in industrial blocks. From poor government planning, the loss of industry to mainland China and exploitative landlords, we uncover why people are choosing to live in secrecy in neglected buildings.

Charlotte McDonald reporting

(Photo: Construction workers on site in front of a building, in Hong Kong)

When political activists like Daw Sander Min were imprisoned for their campaigns on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy they were locked up alongside sex workers like Thuzar Win, criminalised by Myanmar's harsh laws against prostitution. Now Sandar Min is an MP and Thuzar Win addresses parliament on behalf of the Sex Workers in Myanmar network. With Myanmar poised to become the new global centre of sex tourism, Sandar Min and Thuzar Win are adamant that the future of the thousands of young people forced into sex work every year, depends upon the decriminalisation of prostitution.

When Peter Taylor stepped nervously onto a plane in 1967, bound for the Middle East, he had no idea it was to be the start of a journalistic mission he would still be pursuing fifty years later. At the time “terrorism” was barely in our vocabulary. In the hundred or so documentaries he has made on the subject since then, Peter has tried to get behind the headlines to understand and explain a phenomenon which has grown to affect us all. Peter has reported the escalation of terrorism from the IRA and its Loyalist counterparts to Al Qaeda and the so called Islamic State. He has met the victims of terror, those involved in perpetrating terrorist acts and members of the intelligence services tasked with stopping them. Revisiting his own extraordinary archive has given Peter the chance to reflect on the evolution of terrorism and to recall some of his most memorable interviews. “There are moments when the interviews are chilling, moments when they're shocking and at other points they provoked a sharp intake of breath – surprising me by how prophetic they were.”

Captains of the Sands, a Brazilian novel about street children written 80 years ago, still resonates in the 21st century.

How much do mums know about the messages being preached to their children? BBC World Service journalist Shaimaa Khalil meets a group of Muslim mums in London to talk about the everyday fears of parents who worry that extreme interpretations of Islam, often via online preachers, may be infecting the minds of their sons and daughters.