The Pakistani author, Awais Khan, is working on his latest thriller, His Sister’s Secret, a look into the dark side of dating and family life. But Awais is also struggling with a familiar challenge for many authors - writer’s block – which is stopping him finishing the book he hopes could win him a global publishing deal. Join fellow author Paul Waters as he watches Awais take a radical step to tackle this problem and try to finish his first draft. Along the way Paul meets other international au...
Feb 05, 2024•27 min
A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. Elon Musk says Chinese electric vehicles could destroy competition. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Feb 04, 2024•26 min
The BBC revealed this week that more than half the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed since Israel launched its retaliation for the Hamas attacks in October. The war has left tens of thousands dead or injured…and an estimated 1.7 million people have been displaced. There are shortages of water, food, and medicines. This week, three US doctors who recently left Gaza share their experiences of working in a hospital in the territory with host James Reynolds. “Blast waves hit...
Feb 03, 2024•24 min
What does it mean to be a young Hindu in 2024? The world's Hindu population is projected to rise by 34%, by 2050 to nearly 1.4 billion. So how does one of the world’s oldest religions fit with today's world more than 4,000 years after its inception? In the second of three discussion programmes looking at religion in the 21st century, Rajeev Gupta is joined by 36-year-old Indian-born banker Om Dhumatkar who runs a YouTube channel explaining Hindu scripture, 23-year-old Prasiddha Sudhakar, a stude...
Feb 02, 2024•28 min
When Spanish football boss Luis Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso after her team’s world cup victory last summer, it set a match to Spanish gender relations. On every chat show, on every campus, in every couple’s bedroom, arguments started - does a kiss count as sexual violence? What is consent? Has feminism gone too far? 53% of Spaniards think it has, and that it is discriminating against men. Now, Rubiales is facing criminal trial. “Se acabó” (it’s over) trended after the kiss, but this battle is ...
Feb 01, 2024•28 min
Crude fakes in Uganda A BBC investigation has uncovered a network of fake social media accounts seemingly working together to promote the Ugandan government and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Online, an information battle appears to be going on – one being waged by hundreds of social media accounts set on pushing narratives in line with those of the Ugandan government. As part of a coordinated campaign, they have been artificially inflating support for EACOP online and viciously targeting ...
Jan 31, 2024•20 min
Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages, including children and babies, women, and elderly people. The exact numbers are still changing. Some of the hostages have been released under a deal brokered by Qatar, but many remain in captivity inside Gaza. Anna Foster talks to people who were there when the attacks happened at the kibbutzim and the Nova music festival.
Jan 30, 2024•28 min
The search is on to find new ways to document the lives of the homeless – nowhere is this more true than in America, with increasing numbers of people sleeping rough. Sue Mitchell talks to filmmaker, Leonard Manzella, who has risen to the challenge with his award-winning film, Shoeshine Caddie. The film follows a year in the life of 61-year-old African American, Adrian Spears. He certainly stands out in the sleepy Californian town where he makes a living shining shoes: dancing around with his bo...
Jan 29, 2024•27 min
Caucuses, primaries and Super Tuesday. Justin Webb, former BBC US correspondent, unpicks some of the terminology associated with the US election.
Jan 28, 2024•55 min
With concerns around further instability in the Middle East – as well as international trade – Yemen is the focus for many around the world. The Red Sea runs along part of the country’s coastline, and it is in these waters where cargo ships have been attacked. The US and UK have responded with air strikes against the Houthis, the armed political and religious group, which is responsible for targeting the ships. These events are against the backdrop of a recent civil war in Yemen and one of the w...
Jan 27, 2024•24 min
What does it mean to be a young Muslim in the world today? In the first of three discussion programmes looking at religion in the 21st century, a panel of young Muslims look at Islam and discuss their hopes, feelings and grievances on how they see their religion shaping up in the modern era.
Jan 26, 2024•27 min
While recent attention has focused on the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen, BBC correspondent Nawal Al-Maghafi investigates a different, hidden aspect of the country’s long civil war. The conflict in Yemen began in 2014. It has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In 2015, a coalition formed by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen. Its stated aim was to return the elected government to power, and to fight terrorism....
Jan 25, 2024•29 min
Since the devastating 2011 tsunami, Japan has been piloting risk reduction solutions in areas prone to severe damage from earthquakes and tsunamis. Better communication is key to these efforts - 35% of people living in affected areas in 2011 apparently did not hear the radio announcements. Sendai City is working to solve the challenge of reliable communications by developing an emergency announcement system that uses fully automated drones. These can quickly be dispatched to tell people to evacu...
Jan 24, 2024•34 min
What happens if you give a homeless person a house, with no strings attached? In 2007 Finland decided to switch to a radical new approach to homelessness called ‘housing first’, in which homeless people are simply offered their own apartment, with no expectations of them except paying the rent (usually covered by their benefits); alongside this they are given whatever support they need to remain housed, for as long as they need it. Proponents of 'housing first' argue that it is much easier for h...
Jan 23, 2024•24 min
Another chance to hear from production designer Maria Djurkovic, as she takes us behind the scenes of Harry Styles' movie, My Policeman, which was made in the middle of the pandemic. Lockdown presents a number of challenges, expected ones like social distancing and sick crew members. And unexpected ones, like studios being too full and staff being in short supply because more movies were being made during the pandemic, rather than less. Maria kept an audio diary during these unprecedented times ...
Jan 22, 2024•26 min
In the France World Cup squad, 11 were from Paris and there were also players born in the city's suburbs representing Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Qatar, Cameroon, Ghana, Portugal and Germany. What is it about Paris's banlieues that helps create such amazing football talent? We go inside the clubs that created Kylian Mbappe, William Saliba and Moussa Diaby, and speak to the coaches who helped launch their incredible careers. We also meet some of the street footballers who turned into international...
Jan 21, 2024•51 min
The inspiring story of nurse and mother Cindy Mullins from Kentucky in the United States has captured a lot of attention online and has raised awareness of a condition that affects millions of people around the world. Following an infection that led to sepsis, Cindy’s doctor told her she would need to have both of her arms and both legs amputated. Cindy and her husband, DJ, share their experiences and emotions with host James Reynolds. “I told the doctor to shoot it to me straight and he explain...
Jan 20, 2024•24 min
When the Russian Orthodox Church set up its own outpost in Africa in late 2021, just months before the invasion of Ukraine, it was considered a blatant challenge to the historic authority of the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa. It sparked a major split in the global Orthodox community. Moscow’s move was in response to Alexandria’s support for the newly independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. But it was also an opportunity for Russia to try to extend its influence across the African contin...
Jan 19, 2024•27 min
Migration is high on the political agenda in countries across Europe, as the number of asylum seekers rises once more. As well as those who risk life and limb on flimsy boats in the Mediterranean, thousands more come via the Balkans, many of them through Turkey and across the border into Bulgaria. They don’t stay there long. Their preferred destinations are further west, Germany perhaps or Britain. And while the migrants’ stories have become well-known in recent years, we hear relatively little ...
Jan 18, 2024•27 min
Jo Glanville meets Berliners who have researched the stories of the Jewish families who once lived in their homes. Marie, Hugh, Anke and Matthias all became fascinated by the history of the families who lived in their flats before them when the Nazis were in power and wanted to find out what happened to them. Their discoveries are an intimate portrait of how lives were turned upside down and offer a new way of honouring the memory of Berliners who lost everything in the Holocaust. Jo visits one ...
Jan 16, 2024•27 min
Thelma Schoonmaker is arguably the world’s most famous film editor, winning three Oscars in her 40-year career. Ever since Raging Bull, she has worked on all of Martin Scorsese’s major feature films like Goodfellas, Gangs of New York and Killers of the Flower Moon. She tells Francine Stock some secrets of the cutting room and about the other director in her life, her late husband Michael Powell, himself a major influence on Martin Scorsese.
Jan 15, 2024•27 min
The pandemic, an economic downturn and the cost of living crisis have all taken their toll on the global job market. In China, millions of young people are struggling to find a job and in India 42% of graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed. Host James Reynolds hears from graduates from India, the United States, Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana who either can’t find work or have changed direction from what they studied in order to find success - be it from English via waitressing to financia...
Jan 13, 2024•24 min
In Kenya, palliative care - which involves end of life care for terminally ill patients - is often treated with suspicion. There's a deep taboo around speaking about the death of a person before it happens, which is thought to be like welcoming it. Some feel that taking up end of life care indicates that you've lost faith in the power of a healing God to cure your illness. But serious and complex illnesses like cancer are becoming more common in Kenya, and end of life care is a much-needed servi...
Jan 12, 2024•27 min
Campaigners on the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda are locked in a battle over its development by foreign investors who are building exclusive resorts for wealthy clients. The development of Barbuda into a high-end tourist destination is supported by the government of Antigua and Barbuda, who say it’s essential to create jobs and for the economic future of the island. But others argue that it will fundamentally change the island’s ecology and unique way of life. Caroline Bayley travels to Barbu...
Jan 11, 2024•29 min
Five years after reporting on one of Mozambique’s worst cyclones, the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko returns to the city of Beira to meet the people on the frontline of climate change. With scientists predicting that such storms will become more powerful and dangerous because of global warming, work is underway to build the resilience to withstand this extreme weather. From builders learning techniques to construct stronger houses, to volunteers educating people in how to evacuate safely. The future of life...
Jan 10, 2024•27 min
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first recorded enslaved Africans in Virginia, America, in 2019 Ghana launched the ‘Year of Return’, an initiative to encourage the African diaspora to invest, settle and visit. After a positive response a 10-year follow-up initiative called ‘Beyond the Return’ was launched in 2020 to further promote investment, migration and tourism. As a result there has been an increase in visitor numbers, particularly from the United States with thous...
Jan 09, 2024•45 min
The poet, novelist and playwright Fred D’Aguiar was born in Britain, grew up in Guyana and now lives in Los Angeles. There he came across the story which became his most recent collection of poems, For the Unnamed. It was originally entitled For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico’s Sarco and Sepulveda’s Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852. That tells us what we know: the horses’ names, who owned them, where and when the race was run, and that the winning ...
Jan 08, 2024•27 min
It is four years since we reported the first cases of an outbreak of a mysterious viral pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in China. Within months, what become known as Covid-19, had spread around the world affecting most people in some way. The disease led to the creation of this programme. Since March 2020 – shortly after the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic – we began our first conversations. Four years on, we thought we would take the opportunity to return to Covid-19 and reunite so...
Jan 06, 2024•24 min
In 2016, the Philippines’ newly elected president, Rodrigo Duterte declared there was one, common enemy: the drugs trade. What followed was a bloodbath. Addicts, alleged traffickers, and many who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, were gunned down in the streets by the security services. The government put the number of people killed in the ‘war on drugs’ at 6,252, a figure that does not include the thousands killed by unknown assailants. Now some of those victims are speaking ...
Jan 04, 2024•28 min
The octopus is prized as the most intelligent of all marine species – immortalised in stories, poems and songs worldwide. In Madagascar it is also a vital source of income. Hazel Healy takes a journey into a pioneering Madagascan closure system which is enabling one particular species of octopus to flourish and protecting incomes for the most vulnerable. She learns how the system was first developed and how it is inspiring other coastal communities in Kenya and Indonesia. Hazel also learns how t...
Jan 03, 2024•24 min
