The Documentary Podcast

*** This programme contains scenes of a sexual nature and discussion of sexual assault, including child sex abuse ***
Neha Vyaso is one of the most successful intimacy co-ordinators in Bollywood. She has worked with some of Bollywood's biggest names, including actors Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone and Konkona Sen Sharma, and directors like Hansal Mehta. Having worked on more than 50 projects for clients including Netflix, Amazon and Tinder, she is reshaping how sex and desire is shown on screen - and how it is filmed. We join her in a workshop with two actors, who are getting comfortable with each other, their roles, and the techniques of consent and conversation that Neha is an advocate of. As they work on the choreography of their sex scene, Neha articulates how it’s a fine balance between the demands of a script, a director's vision, a character's emotional arc, and what an actor can consent to.

China is installing solar panels and wind turbines so fast that its greenhouse gases emissions may now have peaked. If this trend is confirmed, it would be a major milestone in the fight against climate change because China is the world's largest polluter. The BBC’s Beijing Correspondent Laura Bicker has travelled across China to see the country’s clean energy revolution first hand. She’s visited solar farms in the deserts of Inner Mongolia and in the tea plantations of Yunnan. Laura even discovered a huge lake with panels floating on the surface!

Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Africa and last year, his brother, Robert Jnr, was convicted on drugs charges. The BBC's Khanyisile Ngcobo has been tracking the public's perception of the Mugabe family in Zimbabwe.
In Indonesia, the posts of a woman called Emak Farida, 'Mother Farida', have gone viral on social media. From a remote village in East Kalimantan province, Farida's soothing posts documenting her daily life have found a devoted following amongst a generation of young people who've moved to big cities for work but still yearn for the village life and the family they've left behind. BBC Indonesian's Lesthia Kertopati reports.
When war broke out in 2020 between Ethiopia's federal government and the the Tigray region of the country, many women in Tigray joined the armed forces, in part to avoid sexual violence, as reports of women being assaulted by soldiers started to appear. As the regional factions draw closer to war once again, BBC Tigrinya's Hana Zeratsyon has been speaking to female veterans of a war that went on to cost 600,000 lives and hearing about their complex reasons for fighting, their experiences in the army and their return to civilian life.
The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts.
 
Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India.
 
If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.
Presented by Faranak Amidi.
Produced by Laura Thomas, Caroline Ferguson and Hannah Dean.
(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

“Stockpiling peace” preppers share their experiences

Forty years ago, a Filipino soldier serving under Ferdinand Marcos Sr, was ordered to attack civilians opposing the corrupt regime. After wrestling with his conscience, Gregorio ‘Gringo’ Honasan found he could not do it. Along with other soldiers who resigned from their posts, he founded the Reform for Armed Forces Movement, and they planned to storm the presidential palace and arrest the Marcoses. The coup, however was foiled when an insider leaked the plan to the government. Honasan and his men retreated back to their headquarters, but they knew the Marcos’s forces were on their way to them. Then, Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, broadcast an appeal on the Catholic radio station Radio Veritas, calling for support from the public. Hundreds arrived at the camp to form a human shield around the rebel soldiers. They brought guitars and sang to the Marcos military. Meanwhile nuns, among them Sister Mary John Mananzan, handed out flowers. Jay Behrouzi speaks to Senator Gregorio Honasan, now 78 and retired from politics, and 88-year-old Sister Mary John, who is still an activist, to hear their firsthand accounts of that day, and how their faith has sustained them in the years since.