The Documentary Podcast Folgen

Dr Solelwa Sifumba in Johannesburg, South Africa, recently left the profession after experiencing such chronic anxiety that it even led to her considering taking her own life. She is joined by two fellow doctors in the UK, as they discuss burnout and the mental health challenges of working in constant crisis mode since the pandemic began. They tell host Nuala McGovern about the difficulty in their profession to say they are not ok. We also talk to two therapists in the United States and UK.

Jacques Cousteau called Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, ‘the aquarium of the world’. It is home to one of the most critically endangered species on earth. The vaquita is a small porpoise facing total extinction, whose numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen. In particular, the vaquita get caught in the nets used to catch totoaba. Casting nets for this large marine fish is illegal. But the totoaba’s swim bladder is believed to have potent medicinal properties in China, and sells for thousands of dollars in a trade controlled by Mexican organised crime. So efforts to save the vaquita have brought conflict to poor fishing communities in northern Baja California – people who often rely on an illicit income from totoaba. On New Year’s Eve, 2020 one fisherman was killed and another seriously injured in an altercation between local boats and an NGO ship patrolling to stop the sinking of illegal nets that kill the vaquita. Linda Pressly reports from the coast of Baja California on a dangerous clash of interests. Can the vaquita be saved? Producer: Michael Gallagher Producer in Mexico: Ulises Escamilla Haro (Image: Illustration of a vaquita in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. Credit: Greenpeace/Marcelo Otero)

Forty years after the death of reggae singer Bob Marley, British writer and dub poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, remembers the day Jamaica came to a standstill for the singer’s funeral. Bob Marley was laid to rest on the 21 May 1981, 11 days after dying from skin cancer. The extraordinary day saw the island come together to mourn their most famous son – and to celebrate his life and work.. Among those remembering this extraordinary day – I3s singer Judy Mowatt, reggae musician Michael Ibo Cooper, reporter Robin Denselow and Edward Williams who was a 13-year-old boy living in Kingston at the time.