The Documentary Podcast

Four reigning Arab monarchs have passed through the UK's Royal Military Academy Sandhurst or its associated institutions - the kings of Bahrain and Jordan, the Emir of Qatar and the Sultan of Oman, alongside a long list of lesser sheikhs and princes, and many of the region's military chiefs of staff. Is training at Sandhurst Military Academy, bolstering militarised monarchies in the Arab world?

Lucy Ash examines the Russian military strategy of deception, maskirovka, from the 14th Century to the current crisis in Ukraine.

If the statistics can be believed, over the last 30 years the gap between rich and poor in the West has grown as cavernous as it was in the Nineteenth Century. In the US, for example, the richest 1% of the population is estimated to own more than 40% of the country's wealth. And it is a similar picture across the planet.

But who are the 1%? How have they made their wealth? And why have the rest of us seemingly been left behind? Robert Peston speaks to leading policymakers and opinion shapers as he charts the new consensus that inequality is the biggest economic challenge we face.

As part of the BBC's A Richer World season, Rustam Qobil visits a desert where people have lost their sea, health and loved ones to a man-made disaster.

He meets 86 year-old Khojabay who lives in Kazakhstan in the middle of a vast toxic desert made of mud, dust and pesticides – once The Aral Sea. 40 years ago his village was a seaside fishing port surrounded by freshwater lakes and barley fields, and he could catch up to 400 kilos of fish in one go.

However, 26,000 square miles of sea is now called Aralkum or ‘The Aral Sands’ locally. When the Soviets started building dozens of dams and canals in the 1960s they deprived the Aral Sea of its two main tributaries and the sea started shrinking.

Rustam Qobil travels to ‘The Aral Sands’ and hears from the people whose lives and families have been affected.

My Africa offers a series of inspiring snapshots of a continent working towards future prosperity. In the third part of this series, Alan Kasujja travels to Tanzania to investigate how its unique blend of modern and traditional music is attracting the world’s attention and helping social mobility – Africa doing things its own way, and leading.

The Chinese Cricket Association has set itself the target of achieving Test match status and playing against the likes of England, Australia and South Africa by 2020, and a grass roots campaign to get the game taught in schools is well underway. Fred Dove investigates China's attempts to make itself a cricketing nation, and meets some of China's finest cricketers.

Australia is one of the most popular destinations for asylum seekers escaping their home countries. But Australia doesn’t want them.

Asylum seekers dreaming of a life in Australia are being banished to camps in Papua New Guinea. Fariba Sahraei presents.

As part of the BBC's Richer World season, Alan Kasujja travels to three countries in his native east Africa to meet young Africans determined to build a better future.

In the second programme, Alan travels to Rwanda, a country notorious for the genocide that took place there in 1994. Yet a bright new future beckons for some of its youth, as young female schoolteacher Jessie trains them in the high technology that promises to transform the nation.

The imperial summer palace in Beijing was looted and destroyed by French and British troops in 1860. Chris Bowlby discovers why.

One year on from the massacre in Kiev’s Maidan square, when more than fifty protestors were killed.

It was the events on Maidan that led to Ukraine’s pro-Russian president fleeing the country, sparking a confrontation over Crimea and now in the east of the country. So what did happen on Maidan square, an event that has pushed the world to the brink of a new cold war? Gabriel Gatehouse investigates/