The Documentary

Chloe Hadjimatheou tells the astonishing story of a group of young men from Raqqa in Syria who chose to resist the so-called ‘Islamic State’, which occupied their city in 2014 and made it the capital of their ‘Caliphate’. These extraordinary activists have risked everything to oppose ISIS; several have been killed, or had family members murdered. IS has put a bounty on the resistance leaders’ heads forcing them to go into hiding. But the group continues its work, under the banner ‘Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently’. Chloe meets the group’s founders, who are now organising undercover activists in Raqqa from the relative safety of other countries. Producer: Rob Walker Editor: Richard Knight

To salute the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, David Cannadine, eminent professor of History at Princeton University explores the worldwide role and significance of the British monarchy.

Emily Thomas explores what our secrets tell us about who we are, and what happens when we reveal them. Now that it is easy to go online and tell strangers anything anonymously, are we more or less likely to confide in the people around us? She explores the link between identity and secret-keeping and asks how much of our identity is what we keep hidden.

In the chaotic city of Kolkata in India, Catherine Carr hears from the feminist Shakespeare enthusiast to the man dying of AIDS and the woman still a little bit in love with her colleague; from the father and son begging by the roadside to the teenager dreaming of Olympic success. The brief portraits have been woven together with the sounds of the city, to create an unpredictable and poetic experience of Kolkata. This series, part of the Identity series, invites strangers to pause on their way from A to B and asks them one simple question: ‘Where Are You Going?’ The encounters reveal funny, moving, poignant and sometimes astonishing details about the lives of others. Image: Ayushi, a student at Kolkata's Presidence University. Credit: Peter Jay

Norway's widely regarded as one of the world's most progressive societies, yet it's at the centre of an international storm over its child protection policies. Campaigners accuse its social workers of removing children - some from immigrant backgrounds - from their parents without justification, and permanently erasing family bonds. Tim Whewell meets parents who say they've lost their children because of misunderstood remarks or "insufficient eye contact" - and Norwegian professionals who call the system monstrous and dysfunctional. Is a service designed to put children first now out of control?

Justine Lang embarks on a journey to find out why women in India sacrifice their natural hair and why an increasing number of South African women want to buy it.

Many black people in Mexico’s remote Costa Chica area near the Pacific ocean feel ignored and neglected by the state. A lot of Mexicans don’t even know the Afro-Mexicans exist. Outside their towns, they often get stopped by police who don’t believe they can be Mexican. Some have even been deported, despite having Mexican ID papers. So who are the black Mexicans? Lucy Duran meets members of this ethnic community that is struggling for identity and recognition. They use their culture, such as the characteristic Dance of the Devils or Chilena music, to assert their identity and fight for their rights. Activists want the state to accept black people as a separate ethnic minority, distinct from indigenous people, but with the same rights. It is not only about being able to hold your head high. It’s also about money. Those fighting for official recognition say that they’re not eligible for the special kind of financial support that similarly isolated indigenous communities get. They blame their poverty on this lack

Everything is up for discussion in the salon, where intimate and frank conversations take place between a woman and her hairstylist. Whether you view a haircut as a luxury or a necessity, a hair salon is at the frontline of how we think about female identity. Six journalists from around the world pay visits to salons across the world, from Tokyo to Johannesburg to Beirut and back. We’ll hear how women view issues of race, class, wealth, sexuality and beauty through the hair on their heads. Step inside the salon, where every haircut tells a story.

This week's massive leak of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has given unprecedented access to the way the rich and powerful have used tax havens to hide their wealth. But within the eleven and a half million documents, there is also evidence of how some of the shell companies set up by the firm, or the individuals that owned them, have been the subject of international sanctions and have been used by rogue states and oppressive regimes including North Korea and Syria. Simon Cox reveals details from the leaked papers and travels to the British Virgin Islands where a small office run by Mossack Fonseca was used to create more than 100,000 companies. One of them was a front for a North Korean Bank that was later sanctioned by the United States for supporting the regime's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programme. According to the US, the BVI based front company managed millions of dollars in transactions in support of North Korea. Other companies set up by on the isl

The so-called Islamic State has brought terror to the streets of Paris and Brussels, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding many more. But how does the organisation operate in Europe? And who has masterminded the deadly attacks?The mastermind of the attacks in the French capital was a man called Abdelhamid Abaaoud. During the course of the programme Peter Taylor unveils how this man recruited and trained radicalised young men to carry out attacks. And he also details how the western intelligence services were engaged in a desperate race to stop Abaaoud from bringing terror to streets of Europe.

In answer to the question, we hear from the father and son who share a passion for firearms, a nursery worker whose chances of having a baby have slipped away; a father whose child’s funeral was a like a festival, and one of the last hippies in Amsterdam. These brief portraits have been woven together with the sounds of Amsterdam, to create an unpredictable and poetic listen.

One question - Where are you going? - yields countless surprises about the lives of strangers. We hear from a pigeon-catching drug addict, a woman who is married to her cat, a man dicing with death in his day job and a mother who is travelling to see her daughter who has cancer. "It's not supposed to be that way round" she says. These unpredictable encounters come together to create a unique and fascinating audio portrait of New York City.

How are the ethics, philosophy and lifestyles of the internet pioneers determining the way we all live? Do we have any choice but to live the way they live, or rage against what? The machine? David Baker travels to Silicon Valley to find out what shapes those who are shaping the way we live.

Zaha Hadid was the first woman and first Muslim to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour. She designed the whale-like London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics Games and the extraordinary Maaxi Museum in Rome. Her designs were challenging and innovative and she was at the forefront of changing tastes in architecture and design today. After years of failing to get her designs built, her distinctive work became highly sought after, all over the world from Germany to the USA and from China to Iraq. Zaha Hadid talked to Razia Iqbal and an audience in London at the Royal Institute of British Architects about her work and the future of architecture. This programme was orginally broadcast in June 2013.

An unholy spat is stirring the Sangha, Thailand’s top Buddhist authority – who will become the next Supreme Patriarch, Thailand’s most senior monk? Meanwhile, allegations of ‘cheque-book Buddhism’, cronyism and corruption abound – including allegations about tax-evasion on an imported vintage Mercedes car. In Thailand, where the majority of the population profess Buddhism, seeking ordination isn’t unusual. But salacious stories about monks who commit serious crimes – everything from sex offences to wildlife trafficking – continue to shock. Watching quietly from the side-lines is the Venerable Dhammananda – female, and a Buddhist monk since 2003. Although the Sangha bars women from ordination, there are now around 100 bhikkhunis, as female monastics are known, in Thailand. And their growing acceptance by some Buddhist believers might partly be explained by a widespread disillusionment with the behaviour of some male monks. Linda Pressly explores the rifts and sexual politics challenging Thai Buddhism and its d

Rana Mitter meets South Korean pop producers, noise musicians and TV directors, to find out what has been driving the Korean Wave. He discovers how, as freedom and wealth bed down, South Koreans are breaking from the conformity that helped them pull off an economic miracle towards a more raucous, more individualist culture.

What will the world economy look like 30 years from now? And, how should we be preparing British schoolchildren today to find employment in it? Robert Peston travels to three cutting edge schools that claim to provide the way forwards for secondary education. Should the focus be on languages and cultural knowledge for an increasingly globalised world? Should we be striving to create more of the engineers and programmers that so many employers are crying out for? Or, with the unstoppable march of the robots gobbling up ever more human jobs, should we be preparing kids with the social skills to be future entrepreneurs, employing their own personal fleets of automatons?

In 1916 the United Kingdom came under attack from within. Irish nationalist rebels, allied with Germany, seized control of Dublin to proclaim an Irish Republic. Their first victim was an Irishman. Their action - violent, daring, impossibly romantic - would change the majority of Irish public opinion radically towards demands for full independence and push Northern Ireland's Unionists further towards partition. This was Britain's war within the war. One hundred years on, historian Heather Jones reassesses the armed struggle that came to be known as The Easter Rising

Lucy Ash meets the sheep farmers who took on the government because of what they claim is a threat to their traditional way of life.

From movies and TV to K-Pop, South Korean culture manages to punch far above its weight – across East Asia, and beyond. But how did this happen, and why is it so important to Koreans? Rana Mitter investigates.