The Documentary Podcast

The dancer, Dane Hurst, has bought a former Rambert Company dance floor (deep, protective, roll out vinyl) to take back to his home in South Africa, for under-privileged kids to dance on. Modern Dance is like a magic carpet. It transported young Dane out of the volatility, violence and poverty of his childhood in segregated Port Elizabeth, to life as a Rambert student and dancer in London. He believes it can transport other young people.

On the last days of the civil war in Sri Lanka, in 2009, surviving in a bunker with what was left of his family, the only thing Santhan wanted to do was to sing. He lost his son and daughter in a shell attack. The other son was arrested. All was lost including his music. Priyath Liyanage tells Santhan's story on one man determined to keep singing despite the tragic consequences of war.

As the political atmosphere grows more hostile to the refugees who Angela Merkel famously welcomed in autumn 2015, five families continue with their attempts to settle in Berlin. Presenter Amy Zayed, follows their struggles with German bureaucracy.

Dave Edmonds travels to the mid-western city of St Louis (location for the musical 'Meet Me In St Louis', starring Judy Garland) for the US chess championships. The city has become a world centre for the game of chess. Its status has partly been achieved by funding from a controversial multi-millionaire, whose childhood included time in an orphanage. Rex Sinquefield is well known for his fascination with the game and his enthusiasm is shared by many others. There is a thriving chess centre, elite tournaments which attract some of the top players, a Chess Hall of Fame and chess lessons in local schools.

St Louis is one of America's most violent cities and has most recently been in the news for race riots which erupted when an unarmed black man was shot by police. Can the game of chess serve to lessen racial tension and unite its citizens across the board?

Producer: Mark Savage

The Eurovision Song Contest is the most watched entertainment show on the planet with 200 million people tuning in to see singers compete under their national flags. But backstage, it is as much about politics as pop. Ahead of this year’s competition in Stockholm, the Swedish Ambassador to London, Nicola Clase, explains why diplomats take it seriously.

For some Rudolf Kastner is a hero, for others a traitor. Mark Lawson explores the cultural retellings of a story that began in Nazi occupied Hungary in 1944. At the time Kastner, a lawyer and a journalist, was deputy chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee. He negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to save Jewish lives but did he pay for them with other Jewish lives? In this programme, Mark Lawson talks to those within Israel - including the playwright Motti Lerner, the Chief Historian of Yad Vashem Professor Dina Porat, and the literary critic Professor Dan Laor - who have all wrestled with Kastner's story and the issues it raises.

Image: A Hungarian woman looks for her relatives names on the Hungarian Jewish holocaust victims memorial wall in Budapest, Credit AFP/Getty Images

Human rights may aspire to be universal - they should belong to everyone, everywhere - but there has been resistance to them on philosophical or theological grounds by powerful states and world religions. Lawyer Helena Kennedy looks at these issues and the rise of the human rights movement since 1948.

Now that China has ended its One Child policy, one group of state employees may soon be out of a job – the country’s hated population police. Hundreds of thousands of officers used to hunt down families suspected of violating the country’s draconian rules on child bearing, handing out crippling fines, confiscating property and sometimes forcing women to have abortions. But with an eye on improving child welfare in the countryside, there is a plan to redeploy many of these officers as child development specialists. Lucy Ash visits a pilot project in Shaanxi Province training former enforcers to offer advice and support to rural grandparents who are left rearing children while the parents migrate to jobs in the big cities. If successful, the scheme could be rolled out nationwide to redeploy an army of family planning workers and transform the life prospects of millions of rural children.

For some Rudolf Kastner is a hero, for others a traitor. The story began in Nazi occupied Hungary in 1944. At the time Kastner, a lawyer and a journalist, was deputy chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee. He negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to save Jewish lives but did he pay for them with other Jewish lives?

Helena Kennedy looks at the philosophical foundations of the Universal Declaration, the founding document of all human rights discourse.