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The Documentary Podcast Transcripts

BBC World Service · 1,993 episodes with transcripts

The best documentaries from the BBC World Service. Hear the voices at the heart of global stories. Where curious minds can uncover hidden truths and make sense of the world. From the global housing crisis to gerrymandering in US politics to the miracle doctor of Lourdes, we go beyond the headlines.

Spoken has transcripts of 1,993 The Documentary Podcast episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from May 24, 2026.

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Every The Documentary Podcast transcript in one script

1,993 episodes of The Documentary Podcast have transcripts. Fetch them all as speaker-labeled Markdown in one script — 1 credit each, and re-fetching one you already have is free:

archive.sh
curl -s -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  https://spoken.md/podcasts/73802620/episodes \
  | jq -r '.episodes[] | "\(.id) \(.title)"' \
  | while IFS=' ' read -r id title; do
      slug=$(echo "$title" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -cs 'a-z0-9' '-' | sed 's/-*$//')
      [ -f "${id}-${slug}.md" ] && continue
      curl -sf -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
        -o "${id}-${slug}.md" \
        https://spoken.md/transcripts/$id || rm -f "${id}-${slug}.md"
      sleep 0.34
    done

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Latest The Documentary Podcast transcripts

The Sarkozy affair

May 24, 2026

Tristan Redman (0:00)

You're listening to The Documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Tristan Redman, and this is the Sarkozy affair. Throughout this case, France's former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has denied any wrongdoing.

It's 2005, and we're in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. A French minister is on an official visit.

Fabrice Arfi (0:29)

There was a dinner, an evening event, at the French embassy.

Tristan Redman (0:32)

At the dinner, there are 80 guests. There are toasts.

This is Libya in the final phase of Muammar Gaddafi's rule. Colonel Gaddafi, the dictator, doesn't know it yet, But within a few years, he'll be deposed and then murdered by a mob. But for now, in our story, he's still in charge.

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