The Documentary

Singer and broadcaster Mônica Vasconcelos is slowly losing her sight. Originally from Brazil, she now lives in London, a busy city she finds harder and harder to negotiate safely. As her vision gradually fades, she goes in search of people who may show her new possibilities – new ways of being. They are, among others; her brother, who lives with the same eye condition, and who expertly masters the use of a white cane to navigate the city; her godson, Tiago, who takes her hand in the warm waves on the beaches of Brazil, and - in one of the last interviews he gave before his death - the writer and thinker Dr Oliver Sacks.Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who changed the way many people think about so called 'disabilities', and who Monica met in his New York flat. To her surprise, they found themselves discussing ways of approaching the onset of blindness not only with insight, but also with humour - especially at one magical moment when Sacks shared his own collection of canes with her. The canes, he explained, we

It is now a year since the German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw Germany’s borders open to thousands of stranded Syrian refugees. We follow five of them and for most it has been a year of uncertainty, a year of unending bureaucratic hurdles, and a year of struggle with German grammar.

The story of Cheran – a Mexican town that chased out the cartels, and the police and politicians who collaborated with them.

The final programme in the series brings together five of the speakers from the road trip

What's hiding in the undergrowth of Rachel Ruysch's bold and beautiful flower painting? This is a world where buds hiss like snakes, poppies twirl and tiny insects devour - a vibrant, fecund jungle, full of uncanny life. Cathy FitzGerald hears how this great Dutch artist was influenced by her unusual childhood as the daughter of Frederik Ruysch, maker of one of the world's great curiosity cabinets.

Drugs like crystal meth and opiates wreck the teeth as well as the mind. In America, more than just about any country, good teeth are a sign of success and so dentists like Dr Bob Carter are helping fix addicts’ teeth.

Elephant populations are being decimated but the conservation world remains divided over how best to deal with it.

Cathy FitzGerald invites us to discover new details in three old masterpieces, beginning with Pieter Bruegel the Elder's masterpiece The Harvesters.

Vladimir Hernandez returns home to oil-rich Venezuela, which is struggling to feed its own people in the midst of a spiralling economic crisis.

For Anna Ngyuen, a second-generation British Vietnamese theatre producer, fear and unexplained inherited traumas are what she associated with Vietnam all her life. Her parents fled the war-torn country in 1975 in the mass exodus that followed the Vietnam war. Does the Vietnam her mother feared still exist?

South Africa became a democratic country in 1994 after years of racial oppression. Thousands of men and women sacrificed their lives to bring that brutal system down. They finally won when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president. But many of them are still in jail – even though the country went through a much celebrated Truth and Reconciliation process. So why are they not free?

Michelle Fleury and Ben Crighton travel from Louisville in Kentucky to New York on the East Coast. Along the way they speak to miners, environmentalists, food bank volunteers, drug addicts and former school students about President Obama’s legacy. Although the economy seems to have recovered from the global financial crisis, they encounter anger and disillusionment, and find that much of the optimism that swept Obama into office in 2008 has been replaced by division in Washington and across the country.In the weeks before the 2008 US election, the BBC drove a bus coast to coast across the US asking people about their lives and their hopes and fears for the future. In the four-part series America Revisited we meet some of those same people again to find out why the country seems more divided than ever.Picture: Billy and Doug are retired miners who are worried about their pensions, Credit: BBC

In what is described as the fitting coda to his administration, President Obama will cut the ribbon of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture on 24 September. Journalists Jesse J Holland and Robin N Hamilton are onsite in Washington DC for BBC World Service to hear from the architects, curators, donors, and expectant visitors who have travelled hundreds of miles to celebrate its grand opening. Taking the last spot on America’s National Mall, the museum – a beautiful three-tiered structure sheathed in bronze metalwork - will open after what’s described as the hardest curatorial job in history. It has been more than ten years in the making. It’s a museum that will explain, celebrate and confront the African American experience. At a time of racial tension, its mission to heal is seen as vital too. Museum director Lonnie Bunch, congressman John Lewis and judge Robert Wilkins describe the challenges of creating a museum which aims to tell the story of America through the len

Five years after one of the longest armed struggles in modern Western Europe, Maria Margaronis travels to Spain ahead of important elections in the Basque Autonomous region. Hundreds of people died in the Basque conflict which finally came to an end when the separatist group ETA announced a permanent ceasefire. Now there is peace. But what has happened to the Basque dreams of an independent state? The issue hasn’t gone away: Arnaldo Otegi, a former member of ETA who helped broker the peace, has been banned from standing in the elections, to the outrage of his supporters. Produced by Mark Savage

When Peter White jets, sails or walks into a new city, it is the sounds, not the sights, which assail him. He sets off to Rio on the eve of the Paralympics. In Rio he finds a city poised with excitement as the Paralympics are set to begin. Like some of the arriving athletes, he is forced to navigate a strange environment without being able to see his way around.

Katty Kay reports from Washington on the much anticipated face-to-face encounter between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the crucial first Presidential Debate on 26 September. She explores the business of preparing candidates for their make-or-break one-on-one confrontations.

The story Yusra Mardini, the teenage Syrian refugee who swam to survive, and was then selected to compete in the pool for the refugee team at the Olympic Games in Rio. Freelance journalist Magdalena Sodomkova travelled with Yusra, her sister and other refugees as they approached the Hungarian border, eventually making their way to Germany, and beginning a new life in Berlin.

When President Obama stepped into the White House back in 2008, many hoped his mixed heritage would help unite the country but eight years on America has never appeared more polarised. From Dallas to Nashville Chloe Hadjimatheou retraces a journey she took before Obama’s election across the southern states and stumbles across a gay community under attack, unfettered poverty in trailer parks, the last abortion clinic in Missouri and convicted murderers to find out why liberal and conservative, black and white, religious and secular Americans harbour so much animosity towards one another. (Photo: People boarding a riverboat)

India has some of the world's most dangerous roads. The government says almost 150,000 people died on them last year. Nowhere saw more crashes than the booming city of Mumbai. The carnage is relentless, affecting people at every level of society. Neal Razzell meets the Mumbaikers who are saying, enough: a vegetable seller who fills potholes in his spare time after his son died in one; a neurosurgeon whose experience treating victims has led him to try to build trauma centres along one of the worst roads; and an unlikely combination of engineers, activists and police officers with an ambitious plan to bring the number of deaths on a notorious expressway down to zero. It’s hoped there will be lessons in Mumbai for all of India. The country is in the midst of an historic road-building push. By 2020, Prime Minister Modi wants to pave a distance greater than the circumference of the earth.Produced by Michael Gallagher

Peter White explores the American capital, Washington DC, through the sounds of the city. He finds a city struggling to develop a transport system, which properly caters for all communities and he explores the gulf between the well off and those living hard at heel.