The Documentary Podcast

Valeria Perasso and Alejandro Millán travel to Colombia and witness the search for victims who vanished over the last decade in the country's 50-year-long armed conflict, and hear the voices of families looking for missing young students in Mexico - all with the help of the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, or EAAF as they are best known.

Kabul-based Tolo TV has made a name for itself reporting independent news and putting on hugely popular entertainment shows. But in the last few months the network has itself become the news story. After no fewer than four extremist threats, a Taliban suicide bombing in January this year killed seven staff and injured nearly twenty more. So what is life like for those who remain? Yalda Hakim tells the story of Tolo’s precarious operation – condemned as lewd and immoral by religious extremists, and described as a legitimate military target.

In helping Afghans to challenge those in power, promoting women to top appointments, and even broadcasting popular western style entertainment shows, Tolo is helping to change Afghan society. It belongs to a growing media that are giving voice to the voiceless. But in the face of such ruthless enemies, staff are leaving for their own safety and even senior management admit that the channel might one day be forced to close.

Owen Bennett Jones tells the story of India’s Deobandi school of Islam, which has inspired both a peaceful global missionary movement and the Taliban.

The Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology and their quest for clues from victims' bones, that tell the stories of Latin America's "disappeared". Valeria Perasso and Alejandro Millán discover how the team was born. They visit their lab and and speak to the sons, daughters, mothers and brothers who have received the remains of their long-sought “disappeared” from the forensics’s hands. What do these bones mean to them?

Twenty years ago the FBI ended their longest-running domestic terrorism investigation with the arrest of the Unabomber, a notorious serial killer obsessed with technology. Between 1978 - 1995, Theodore Kaczynski lived in a remote cabin in rural Montana, from where he planned the downfall of industrial society. A brilliant academic, Kaczynski was motivated by a desire to punish anyone connected with technology.

South Africa’s President Zuma is in deep trouble.

Like day labourers, working construction, the mariachis of Boyle Heights, East LA, hang around on Mariachi Plaza to pick up work. You’ll see them most days in their dark suits, embroidered jackets, silver buttons running up the sides of their pants. Writer, Evangeline Ordaz a night out in the Latino suburbs with the mariachis of Boyle Heights, East LA.

Journalist and BBC presenter Akwasi Sarpong heads to Ghana to hear the stories of rural women at the bottom of the pyramid of a multi-million dollar confectionery, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics industry relying on shea butter from Africa.

Twenty-five years ago, thousands of Iraqi Kurds lost their lives as they fled the forces of Saddam Hussein into the Zagros and Taurus mountains of northern Iraq, towards Iran and Turkey. Massively outgunned, many were killed by the helicopter gunship fire and tanks at the command of Saddam’s well trained and brutal troops. BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir revisits the exodus.

Illegal miners have invaded three Ghanaian gold mines in recent months. We visit the largest where some locals are claiming that the land is rightfully theirs. The multinational owners disagree, and are demanding the military force them off their concession. For its part, the government has remained largely silent, until now. Ed Butler visits the mine and speaks to all sides in a dispute that could have big implications for Ghana's economy and security.