The Documentary Podcast

When Aleks Krotoski was six years old she lived in a world surrounded by people with leprosy, or Hansen's Disease as it's officially known. Both her dad and step mum worked at the US's last leper home, the National Hansen's Disease Centre in Carville Louisiana, tucked away in a bend of the mighty Mississippi. Today she makes a return journey to find out if the stigma of leprosy still exists and how the disease is being treated.

Twenty years ago the music track, Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) became a global hit. It featured a wise-sounding man giving a graduation-style speech addressed to the Class of ‘99, set to an uplifting backing track. It was the work of Australian filmdirector Baz Luhrmann, using music from his film Romeo and Juliet. But those facts do not tell the whole story. Far from it. In this programme Lee Perry (the wise-sounding man himself) tells the strange story of The Sunscreen Song; who really wrote the words, how Baz Luhrmann came to them – and why the song made such a deep and lasting impression on so many people.

Precipitous mountain roads, specially-modified bikes, and deadly consequences. Simon Maybin spends time with the young men who race down the steep roads of Colombia’s second city Medellin. Marlon is 16 and he’s a gravitoso - a gravity biker. He hooks onto the back of lorries or buses climbing the precipitous roads to reach high points around the city. Then, he lets gravity do its thing and - without any safety gear - hurtles back down the roads, trying to dodge the traffic. This year, two of his friends have died gravity biking and Marlon has had a near-fatal accident. But he’s not quitting. So what drives young men like him to take their lives into their own hands? And what’s being done to stop more deaths? Presenter/producer: Simon Maybin (Image: Marlon with his bike ready to ride back down into Medellín. Credit: Simon Maybin/BBC)

(This programme contains audio effects that may cause discomfort to people living with hearing conditions. There is a modified version of this programme, with quieter effects, on this page https://bbc.in/2TrInga) What does life sound like for someone whose hearing has suddenly changed?

Audrey Brown looks back at the life of the former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who has died in Singapore aged 95.