The Documentary Podcast Folgen

An estimated four million people – mostly women and children – have escaped from Ukraine and its war. Host Karnie Sharp hears from two Ukrainian mental health professionals who discuss the impact of war on the minds of children. One is a psychiatrist who remains in the capital Kyiv, and the other a child psychologist who fled the country a few weeks ago and is now safe in Germany with her family.

What are the big mysteries that people want to understand about life? How to be happy. How to accept old age and death. Wit questions sent in from all over the world, Buddhist nun Sister Dang Nghiem and Sufi Imam Jamal Rahman offer their wise words on some of life’s eternal questions.

In April 2015, more than 1000 refugees and migrants drowned when the old fishing boat they were travelling on sank in the Mediterranean. It was the area's worst shipwreck since World War Two. But the people who died are not forgotten. Not by their families and friends, and not by a professor of forensic pathology at the University of Milan.“There’s a body that needs to be identified, you identify it. This is the first commandment of forensic medicine,” says Dr Cristina Cattaneo.Assignment tells the story of the raising of the fishing boat from the Mediterranean's seabed, and Dr Cattaneo's efforts to begin to identify the people who lost their lives on that moonless night on the edge of Europe.Producer/presenter: Linda Pressly(This programme was originally broadcast in December 2020)(Image: Ibrahima Senghor, a survivor of the tragedy of 18 April, 2015 - he was prevented from boarding the boat in Libya. Credit: Ibrahima Senghor)