The Documentary Podcast

In the late '90s, in daring feats of DIY networking on rooftops across Romania’s capital, Bucharest, teenagers are stringing computer cables between tower blocks to share an internet connection. This guerilla infrastructure starts out scrappy, but it sprawls into an impressive improvised network that catches the attention of telecom giants. Told by those who built it, this is the extraordinary story of how a homemade system became the backbone of a city - a reflection of what the internet was meant to be and what it became.

Aviation is being reimagined for a changing planet: Vertical take-off passenger cars for city centres. Hydrogen powered planes for zero carbon travel. Hyper-sonic flights to take the London to Sydney journey to under two hours.
Kelly Latimer, US Aerospace engineer, flight test pilot, and former Flight Test Director of Virgin Galactic; Rob Miller, Net-zero aviation pioneer and Director of the Whittle Lab at Cambridge University, UK and Daniel Moczydlower, president of the Brazilian future aircraft innovators, Embraer-X, join BBC presenter Caroline Steel on stage in London, to discuss their trailblazing work and answer questions from a live audience at the Royal Geographical Society, London.

Amid the tents and the rubble Gaza is developing once again as an unlikely tech hub. Even before the 7 October 2023 attack and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas, NGOs, with the backing of Google, had sought to develop tech start-ups in the Gaza strip. The digital economy was one of the few areas in which young Gazans in particular could seek to earn money for their families. During the two years of war they struggled for food and water. Forced to move from place to place, most of them lost their homes, their work, sometimes their laptops and plenty lost family members. Now 80% of Gazans are unemployed and have no income. Many of them live amid the rubble in tents. Stable electricity and internet are difficult to come by. And yet co-working hubs have begun to pop up, giving well educated graduates a chance to work remotely for foreign companies as coders, software engineers and app developers.. Yolande Knell reports on how its tech workers give a glimpse of a brighter, possible future, open to the world beyond Gaza’s borders.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Assignment.

Nine Yards, the designers behind the Paris 2024 Olympic skatepark, get to work on their next big challenge: the rebuild of Olympiaplein, one of Amsterdam's oldest and most cherished skating spots. Sean Allsop joins designers Jesper Kuipers and Jeroen Van Eggermond in the Netherlands, as they work through sketches and plans before presenting their vision to local skaters for crucial feedback. Then the team head out onto the building site, with concrete trucks, tight deadlines, and one shot to get the surface smooth for skaters of all levels, before the gates open and a community gets to skate again. We explore how skating has evolved from an underground sport into an established movement, the community within skateparks, and the intricate detail that goes into every park.

The extremist content quietly spreading on TikTok and Instagram, targeting unsuspecting young people. Through what is disguised as innocuous lifestyle content, supporters of jihadist groups like IS and al-Qaeda reach audiences outside their echo chamber. This is a recruitment drive that signals a move from direct operational instructions to “do-it-yourself jihad", with the aim of potentially inspiring lone wolf attacks. The Global Jigsaw explores the tactics used to obscure and evade detection, the challenges this poses for platforms, and how it has become a relentless game of whack-a-mole.
Find out more about BBC Monitoring on our website: monitoring.bbc.co.uk
Contributors: Mariam Soussi, Mina al-Lami
Producer: Kriszta Satori, Elchin Suleymanov
Presenter: Krassi Ivanova Twigg
Music: Pete Cunningham