BBC OS Conversations: Hajj pilgrims

Dating in Medellín, Colombia is being promoted to foreign men on YouTube, TikTok and other social media platforms. Lots of the videos, in English and Spanish, contain misogynistic language and suggest that the local women are both accessible and easy. These videos are part of a wider trend of “passport bros” many of whom are American men, seeking life abroad in places marketed by content creators as being good for meeting women. In theory, adult men going to meet adult women is not a problem, but Medellin has a huge problem with sexual exploitation. It is often nicknamed by the press as ‘the world’s biggest brothel’. Since the pandemic the city has introduced curfews for underage girls in some neighbourhoods while NGOs work against the issue.

22 Jan 202519min

How a town in Poland – once in Germany - is discovering its troubling past.Eighty years ago Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi extermination camp. Over 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were murdered there. However, there is an aspect of those terrible days which is less well known and which 80 years later is still being uncovered and still resonating: the death marches.As Soviet troops approached, in January 1945, SS soldiers at Auschwitz-Birkenau forced some 60,000 prisoners to march west, in freezing temperatures. Weak with hunger and disease, those who fell behind were shot.This is the story of how eight decades on the search for the truth behind one of those death marches is being uncovered. For years the history of a death march passing through the once proud German community of Schönwald was hidden.It is also the story of how descendants of the original inhabitants of Schönwald are having to confront the role some of their relatives may have played in the Nazi project, and how today’s Polish inhabitants of the town, which is now called Bojków, are grappling with what happened on their streets. Amie Liebowitz’s own great-grandmother was murdered Auschwitz-Birkenau, while her great-aunt was rescued by the Soviet forces. She speaks to those on both sides – German and Polish – who are uncovering this history.

21 Jan 202529min

In an old schoolroom in the Scottish Highlands, sculptor Michael Visocchi is working on Commensalis, a huge work that will be installed thousands of miles away, in Grytviken, an abandoned whaling station on the Antarctic island of South Georgia. Whaling ships and equipment were taken Grytviken and assembled there. Now it is an industrial scrapyard; ships rust on the shore, huge tanks decay and millions of left over rivets remain. Visocchi was struck by the similarity of shape of these rivets and the bumps of the barnacles on the bodies of living whales.Visocchi talks to presenter Julian May as he works on this project which is challenging in so many ways. South Georgia has no permanent population, so is a public artwork appropriate?

20 Jan 202526min

America through the looking glass, a world where nothing is as it seems. Gabriel Gatehouse follows a cast of characters who have propelled Trump into the White House – twice. Many of them are now set to take power and inject their reality-bending world views into America’s health, security and intelligence infrastructure.

19 Jan 202526min

When BBC Mundo journalist Ana Maria Roura found out she couldn't get pregnant, she decided to turn the camera on herself and document her struggle to become a parent through in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. Her documentary, Infertile, is available in Spanish and in English. Plus, the science of super-centenarians, with BBC World Service journalist Fernando Duarte.Presented by Faranak Amidi. Produced by Alice Gioia and Caroline Ferguson.(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

18 Jan 202526min

Vast areas of Los Angeles have been destroyed since these fires began on 7 January. Thousands of homes and businesses have been lost, and tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. We hear from Kelly, who had just minutes to gather a few possessions before her home was destroyed, and DJ describes seeing a nearby hillside glowing, the sky lit by flames, as he and his family fled. Teddy whose family had to abandon their house and lost their restaurant in the fire says “We landed in an Airbnb down in Mar Vista with our sons and grandkids,” Two firefighters from Los Angeles County Fire Department share their experiences of co-ordinating the response to the fires and explain why they are so difficult to put out.

18 Jan 202523min

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, once told Michael Goldfarb of people going to their deaths at Auschwitz asking who will say Kaddish for me? Kaddish is the Jewish prayer for the dead. On the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz' liberation Michael Goldfarb explores the origins and meaning of Kaddish. How did a prayer for the dead, in which death is not mentioned, become the centrepiece of Jewish mourning?

17 Jan 202526min

In many countries around the world, prison populations are bursting at the seams. However, in some Northern European countries, prisons are closing and reoffending rates are down, which many have attributed to a novel approach to justice - taking a mental-health first approach. Jenny Okolo, a forensic occupational therapist, seeks to determine whether global prison systems could benefit from a similar approach and whether the solution is as simple as it seems.

15 Jan 202522min