The Documentary Podcast

Poet Thabiso Mohare travels to Cape Town to meet a new generation of writers, poets and playwrights and look at the theme of place and contested space in their work and the history of the city. He talks to Lauren Beukes, whose sci-fi visions of South African cities are internationally successful, playwright and novelist Nadia Davids about the undealt-with legacy of slavery in the city, and Thando Mgqolozana whose novels deal with a range of social issues.

Vladimir Putin, then a KGB agent, was caught up in dramatic events as East Germany collapsed. He saw crowds take control as communist power collapsed, and had to defend his KGB office in Dresden as demonstrators tried to break in. Chris Bowlby explores how this experience shaped Putin's career and behaviour today - his determination to restore Russian power, his fear of demonstrations, his sense of the power of nationalism.

Sixty years ago John Ford travelled to Monument Valley to make his greatest Western, The Searchers. Based on Alan LeMay’s novel, it is still a powerful tale of race, violence and redemption as Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) searches for his niece Debbie, abducted by a Comanche raiding party on the Texas frontier. But, as Mark Burman discovers, The Searchers is a gateway to the real and powerful story of the forging of Texas statehood and the rise and fall of the Comanche empire.

Wyre Davies investigates the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who had accused Argentina’s government of trying to cover up the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires, demanding to know how and why he died. The issue is dominating President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s final year in office. Nisman was found dead, with a gun by his body, the night before he was due to testify about the alleged cover-up in Congress. Was it suicide or was it murder?

Produced by Sarah Robbins and Arlene Gregorius

(Photo: Demonstrators hold up images of late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman in front of the Justice Palace in Buenos Aires, March 18, 2015. Credit to: REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci)

Poet Thabiso Mohare looks at the challenges, tensions and solutions facing South African writers. He talks to publishers, writers and poets about the issue of a small book-reading culture being exacerbated by the high cost of books in the country, and looks at how the spoken word scene has grown in the past 20 years to provide an outlet for new voices.

For centuries, students of medicine have dissected the dead. But the idea of wilfully donating one’s body to medicine is somewhat new. People donating their bodies to science has sufficed the medical demand for cadavers until recently. Now the burgeoning demand for bodies and body parts has created a strange new industry in America.

Turkey goes to the polls on Sunday in a critical general election. Many of the voters opposed to the ruling party of President Erdogan are putting their hopes in the HDP, which has its roots in Kurdish nationalism. If it gets the 10% of the vote it needed to enter parliament, it could block Erdogan’s plans to give the presidency more power. Maria Margaronis visited a run-down area of Istanbul - one of the HDP’s strongholds.

(Photo: Children in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul, stronghold of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. BBC Copyright)

Poet Thabiso Mohare talks to Johannesburg-based writers and poets about the changing cityscape and how the past impacts on the present in their work. He speaks to Ivan Vladislavic, who has documented the city in his novels and non-fiction work Portrait with Keys, to the prominent poet Lebo Mashile who talks about the emergence of the black female voice in the past 20 years, and the legacy of the past. And, he meets Niq Mhlongo, whose most recent book Way Back Home, looks critically at the struggle against apartheid, and how those who went into exile to fight for the movement are haunted by their experiences.

With the Fifa Women’s World Cup kicking off in Canada on 6 June, we join the Tibetan women’s soccer team, the Snow Lionesses, as they begin the match of their lives, including trying to achieve international recognition in the face of Chinese opposition, entrenched sexism in their own community and flagrant objection from Fifa, world football’s governing body.

Spats, tantrums and explosions from the archive. American satirist Joe Queenan presents.