The Documentary Podcast

Wildfires continue to burn across the continent. Thousands of people have been evacuated on the Greek island of Crete, as well as in western France, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. A blaze in central Spain has burned almost 80,000 hectares over the last week and is now considered the largest recorded wildfire in Spanish history. With temperatures hitting more than 40 degrees Celsius in south-western France, firefighters, planes and helicopters have been battling fires there. Muriele in France and Julian in Spain share their experiences of escaping the flames. Robin – on holiday with his family – describes what it was like as the fire approached their French campsite. “The pool was getting filled up with ash, you could see all black pine needles, bits of bark that were burnt, it blocked out the sun,” Robin tells us. We also bring together volunteers in France, helping to provide food and shelter for people displaced from their homes.

What does it mean to inherit a faith that served as a fortress for your father, but feels like a contradiction to you? Throughout his childhood in Oxford, Silas Gray was surrounded by the sights, sounds, and symbols of his father’s Rastafarian identity. He was even named after the Rastafarian spiritual figurehead, Emperor Haile Selassie I.
But this legacy weighs heavily. It anchors him to a complex world leader he’s not sure he’s aligned with. And he feels like an imposter carrying a name associated with a faith he doesn’t practise.
Desperate to find a version of this legacy he can comfortably own, Silas decides to do what his father spent forty years dreaming of but never actually did: he books a flight to Ethiopia and travels to the Rastafarian spiritual motherland of Shashamane, the land granted to the global black diaspora by the Emperor himself.
Silas encounters a living, breathing community where three generations of Rastafarians exist under one roof.
This is a deeply personal pilgrimage about a son trying to see what his father sees, heal a generational disconnect, and finally make peace with his name.

The 1st of July 1916 is still one of the deadliest days in the history of warfare. Nearly 20,000 men from the British Army and 6,000 German soldiers were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The World War One battle would last another four months and was one of the first examples of industrial warfare; three million men fought in it, over a-million soldiers were wounded, missing or killed. Jordan Dunbar investigates how, 110 years on, the battle still affects people and communities, and discovers new insights about its impact on his own family and on the history of Ireland.

Ed Butler investigates how one of Europe’s most wanted drug smugglers, Jos Leijdekkers, ended up in Sierra Leone while evading justice.
He also explores reports linking Leijdekkers to the family of Sierra Leone’s president, including claims that he has married the president’s daughter.
for more programmes like this search Business Daily wherever you get your BBC Podcasts
Presenter/producer: Ed Butler

In Kenya, a young lawyer is bringing a legal case against the Kenyan government, regulator, and several multinational agrochemical companies.

He’s working alongside activists and health practitioners, and they claim that hazardous pesticides and herbicides, designed to make farming for efficient, are damaging the health of farmers in Kenya.

They are demanding changes to regulation, as well as increased education and compensation for people who they claim, have had their health severely affected by high exposure to these products.

For Assignment, Josephine Casserly travels to Kenya to follow lawyers, health practitioners and scientists as they face the challenges of gathering evidence to support their case.