BBC DOCS AND SPECIALS
Each month, the BBC World Service offers new documentaries and specials selected specifically for U.S. audiences, with in-depth, relevant reporting. Typically one-hour, or two half-hours on a similar topic, they offer great content for any time of day, and satisfy audiences' needs for deeper narratives and more reflective listening.
Monthly offerings are available via ContentDepot, complete with promos and billboards. Click on individual titles to visit and subscribe to unique ContentDepot pages, where you can access programs as air windows open.
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Discussion and Documentary: New Germans
September 21 - October 18, 2024
One hour
In 2015, more than a million refugees were taken in by Germany, mostly from the Middle East; in 2024, many are now in the process of becoming citizens. A new citizenship law passed this year also means that many more recent arrivals are officially becoming German, against a backdrop of the sudden political rise of Germany's anti-immigration far right. Damien McGuinness meets "New Germans" across the country to see how their experience reflects the ways Germany is changing
Stories from the New Silk Road - Space
September 26 - October 23, 2024
Half hour
The space race is heating up with new entrants like India and private companies like SpaceX, but it’s the Chinese who are set to dominate by 2045. And central to the Space Silk Road is a controversial station in Patagonia, Argentina. The Espacio Lejano Ground Station has a powerful 16-story antenna, with an 8-foot barbed wire fence that surrounds the entire compound. With other facilities in countries from Bolivia to Peru, do China's space ambitions cross the known world and aim for intergalactic exploration, rare mineral discovery, and potential domination in space?
Katy Watson asks astronomers, space engineers and Argentinian residents: how is President Xi's Space Silk Road impacting their universe?
The Documentary: Saving a sinking city – Jakarta
October 3 - 30, 2024
Half hour
Jakarta is the fastest sinking city in the world. Is the solution a new capital?
Jakarta is facing all sorts of problems: deadly floods, land subsidence, extreme pollution, notorious traffic, and overcrowding. Indonesia’s outgoing President has come up with an extreme solution: moving the country’s capital a thousand kilometres away, to the middle of the rainforest. Will the new city be a futuristic utopia and a model for sustainable urbanisation or an eye-wateringly expensive, ecologically disastrous ghost town? BBC Indonesia reporter Astudestra Ajengrastri travels to the island of Borneo to find out if the ambitious plans could live up to reality.
World Questions: Mexico
October 12 - November 29, 2024
One hour
Drug violence, poverty, and democracy: a Mexican panel debates the country's big issues. As a new President takes power in Mexico, there are major challenges for her to face. Violence, crime, drug cartels, economic inequality, and migration all loom large in a large country that shares a long border with the USA. A new government contemplates politicising the judiciary to tackle corruption, but will it be positive for democracy?
Jonny Dymond and a panel of leading politicians debate questions on the big issues from people across Mexico.
The Evidence: Would you get sick for science?
October 19 - November 15, 2024
One hour
Why are some people deliberately infected with diseases? Human challenge trials are when volunteers are deliberately infected with diseases to help find vaccines or cures. In this episode of The Evidence, Claudia’s expert panel, including Chris Chiu of Imperial College London, Shobana Balasingham of Wellcome and Kondwani Jambo of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine look at what these trials have accomplished, how safe they are, and the long and oftentimes complicated history behind the practice.
The Forum: Insomnia
October 26 - December 13, 2024
One hour
Do you find it difficult to get a good night's sleep? If so, you are not alone. According to the US National Institutes of Health, between 6 and 30 percent of adults suffer from insomnia, or lack of restorative sleep. Since the establishment of sleep medicine a century ago, we have learnt a lot about what causes sleeplessness. And yet, as the never-ending proliferation of sleep aids demonstrates, its prevalence remains high.
Persistent lack of sleep can have serious consequences for your health and yet some writers and other creatives, seem to welcome it. Franz Kafka famously claimed that if he couldn't pursue his stories through the night, they would "break away and disappear". Iszi Lawrence discusses the past and present of research into insomnia, and its hold over our imagination with scientists, writers, and BBC News World Service listeners.
World Book Club: Kate Mosse
November 2 - December 31, 2024
One hour
Kate Mosse talks about her bestselling historical thriller Labyrinth. Ahead of its 20th anniversary early next year, the author Kate Mosse talks to Harriett Gilbert and readers from around the world, about her globally bestselling novel, Labyrinth. A historical thriller set between medieval and contemporary France where the lives of two women, living centuries apart, are linked in a common destiny. In 13th century Carcassonne, seventeen-year-old Alaïs is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the Grail. While 700 years later, archaeologist Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the French Pyrenees and sets out to investigate their origin.
The Documentary: Eyes to the skies
November 21 - December 17, 2024
Half hour
A week behind the scenes of Heathrow airport’s multi faith chapel. In many ways, St George’s is what you’d expect from a local chapel: friendly dedicated staff, weekly mass, an open door every day of the year. But being in the heart of Heathrow Airport makes its mission unique. With more than 20 multi-faith chaplains representing the major world religions, it offers sanctuary and support to 90 million plus people annually in the unpredictable environment of a mega airport. We spend a week with the chaplains, and the passengers and airport staff they encounter. Can faith and connection soar in this most transitory, stressful, and ethereal of spaces?
The Forum: Jewellery
November 23 - December 19, 2024
One hour
The timeless allure of precious ornaments. The earliest known precious personal adornments continue to puzzle archaeologists and historians: what were our ancestors using them for tens of thousands of years ago? Since then, why have we continued to ascribe so much value to what are either shiny metals or colourful stones? And why is no traditional wedding in places such as India complete without copious amounts of gold? These are some of the questions that Iszi Lawrence will be asking jewellery makers, art historians and World Service listeners.
Me and My Digital Twin
November 30 - December 27, 2024
One hour
How to build a digital you – Professor Ghislaine Boddington investigates. Ghislaine aspires to be interconnected with an AI digital companion that advises and supports her, keeps her healthy and represents her around the world. A twin that could live on after her death, or for as long as someone pays the subscription. This is not some private fantasy but, as technologies converge, a potential near-future for many of us - or at least those of us who can afford it. Researchers and companies are already experimenting with ways of combining virtual worlds, gaming avatars, fitness sensors, health apps and AI.
In practical terms, a digital bio-twin is made up of continuously measured multiple biological signals from your body. These might include your heartbeat, breath, temperature and muscle tension, as well as food intake, exercise and mental health - all fed into an avatar body. By combining AI and, for example, scanning our bodies and faces, cloning our voice and mannerisms, our virtual twin will become more and more like us.
In a journey that involves an MRI heart scan, dancing in a Belgium basement and a discussion about digital death, Ghislaine explores how existing technology is making a digital human twin possible. She hears from cardiologists, engineers, performance artists and tech entrepreneurs as she learns how to build her own digital twin.
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