This World - Episode Guide

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to east Africa to uncover the stories behind the nation's favourite drink. While we drink millions of cups of the stuff each day, how many of us know where our tea actually comes from? The surprising answer is that most of the leaves that go into our everyday teabags do not come from India or China, but are bought from an auction in the coastal city of Mombasa in Kenya.

From here, Simon follows the tea trail through the epic landscapes of Kenya and Uganda and meets some of the millions of people who pick, pack and transport our tea. Drinking tea with everyone from Masai cattle herders to the descendants of the original white tea planters, Simon learns that the industry that supplies our everyday cuppa is not immune to the troubles of the continent - poverty, low wages and child labour.

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Vietnam to uncover the stories behind the nation's morning pick-me-up. While we drink millions of cups of the stuff each week, how many of us know where our coffee actually comes from? The surprising answer is that it is not Brazil, Colombia or Jamaica, but Vietnam. Eighty per cent of the coffee we drink in Britain isn't posh cappuccinos or lattes but instant coffee, and Vietnam is the biggest supplier.

From Hanoi in the north, Simon follows the coffee trail into the remote central highlands, where he meets the people who grow, pick and pack our coffee. Millions of small-scale famers, each working two or three acres, produce most of the coffee beans that go into well-known instant coffee brands.

Thirty years ago Vietnam only produced a tiny proportion of the world's coffee, but after the end of the Vietnam war there was a widescale plan to become a coffee-growing nation, and Vietnam is now the second biggest in the world. The coffee industry has provided employment for millions, making some people very rich indeed, and Simon meets Vietnam's biggest coffee billionaire. But he also learns that their rapid success has come at a cost to both the local people and the environment.

Robert Peston travels to China to investigate how this mighty economic giant could actually be in serious trouble. China is now the second largest economy in the world and for the last 30 years China's economy has been growing at an astonishing rate. While Britain has been in the grip of the worst recession in a generation, China's economic miracle has wowed the world.

Now, for BBC Two's award-winning strand This World, Peston reveals what has actually happened inside China since the economic collapse in the west in 2008. It is a story of spending and investment on a scale never seen before in human history - 30 new airports, 26,000 miles of motorways and a new skyscraper every five days have been built in China in the last five years. But, in a situation eerily reminiscent of what has happened in the west, the vast majority of it has been built on credit. This has now left the Chinese economy with huge debts and questions over whether much of the money can ever be paid back.

Interviewing key players including the former American treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Lord Adair Turner, former chairman of the FSA, and Charlene Chu, a leading Chinese banking analyst, Robert Peston reveals how China's extraordinary spending has left the country with levels of debt that many believe can only end in an economic crash with untold consequences for us all.

As Brazil prepares to host the World Cup, Copacabana Palace follows the lives of the staff and guests at one of Latin America's most iconic hotels.

Brazil now boasts more billionaires than Britain, and the Copacabana Palace is a magnet for Brazil's new wealthy elite. In its 90-year history, the hotel has played host to everyone from Orson Welles to Justin Bieber and the king of Sweden.

Today, manager Andrea Natal heads a staff of 600, who cater for the rich and famous guests' every whim. But luxury doesn't come cheap; the starting price for a night at the Copacabana Palace is £400 and the price for their VIP suites isn't even made public. But in a country where one in five people still live below the poverty line, the reality for many of the hotel's staff is very different.

This documentary for This World reveals how the hotel's story reflects the fortunes of the entire nation and how Brazil is increasingly a country of extraordinary extremes.

In Britain we give thousands of tons of our unwanted clothes to charity shops every year. But where do they actually go? It turns out most don't ever reach the rail of the local charity shop, they are exported to Africa. And even though we have given them away for free, our castoffs have created a multimillion-pound industry and some of the world's poorest people pay good money to buy them.

In this revealing film for BBC Two's This World, Ade Adepitan tells the fascinating story of the afterlife of our clothes. He follows the trail to Ghana, the biggest importer of our castoffs. One million pounds' worth of our old clothes arrive here every week. Ade meets the people who make a living from our old castoffs, from wholesalers and markets traders to the importers raking in a staggering £25,000 a day. But not everyone is profiting.

With cheaply made western clothes flooding the market, the local textile industry has been decimated. Ade visits one of the last remaining cloth factories and finds it on its knees. And the deluge of our clothes isn't just destroying jobs, it has also had a seismic effect on Ghanaian culture. Western outfits are fast replacing iconic West African prints and traditional garb. Ade travels to remote villages to find everyone wearing British high street brands.

In April 2013, 18-year-old Shirin became one of thousands of people trapped inside the Rana Plaza building when it collapsed in the worst industrial disaster in the 21st century. In this moving documentary for BBC Two's This World, Shirin and some of the other survivors tell their remarkable story of survival and escape. Many were rescued by ordinary local people who risked their own lives crawling into the rubble to save them. But Clothes To Die For also reveals the incredible growth of the Bangladeshi garment industry and the greed and high level corruption that led to the Rana Plaza tragedy. This tiny country has become the second largest producer of clothes in the world after China, transforming the country and providing employment for millions of people, most of them young women. As the personal stories of survivors reveal, in Bangladesh even a wage as low as £1.50 a day can be completely life-changing and many don't want that opportunity taken away. Producing goods for several British and European high street stores, the tragedy at the Rana Plaza sent shock waves around the world about the safety of the Bangladesh garment industry. As one local factory owner said 'At the end of the day if the retailers want more compliant factories they have to pay us more. Get the retailers together and make sure they pay us five cents more. Not even ten, we don't even want ten cents, we want five, we're happy with five cents on each garment'.

In 2013 the movie Philomena was shown in cinemas across the world and earned four Oscar nominations. The film was based on the true story of Philomena Lee, who was forced by the Catholic Church to give up her illegitimate son for adoption, and detailed her journey with journalist Martin Sixsmith to find her child 50 years later.

In the weeks and months after the film went out, Martin was contacted by other mothers who had their own stories to tell. Now, Martin Sixsmith goes on a journey to investigate the Irish Catholic Church's role in an adoption trade which saw thousands of illegitimate children taken from their mothers and sent abroad, often with donations to the Church flowing in the other direction. In Ireland and in America, Martin hears the moving stories of the parents and children whose lives were changed forever and discovers evidence that prospective parents were not properly vetted - sometimes with tragic consequences.

In America, thousands of prisoners are locked up in solitary confinement for years, even decades. With unique access to the punishment wing of a supermax prison, award-winning director Dan Edge paints a shocking picture of this hidden and often violent world.

Filmed over six months in Maine State Prison, this film follows the institution's new warden as he tries to reform the system and release some of the prison's most dangerous inmates back into the general population. Unsurprisingly, some of his staff are nervous and resistant to the reforms and he faces a prison culture which has always emphasised punishment over rehabilitation. The film also features younger inmates, inside for less serious crimes, who are driven to shocking self-harm and even suicide by the mental stress of being locked up alone for 24 hours a day.

In 2013, four gunmen walked into a crowded shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya and set about systematically murdering shoppers. The entire attack was recorded by more than 100 security cameras. Drawing on the thousands of hours of footage, this is the chilling and dramatic account of a terrorist attack that shocked the world.

Featuring moving interviews with the men, women and children who came face-to-face with the terrorists and survived, such as Amber Prior. She had already been shot in the hip - and her two young children had witnessed people killed around them - when she made a remarkable decision to confront a gunman.

As well as documenting the brutality of the gunmen from the Somalian group al Shabaab, who killed 67 people, the film charts the extraordinary bravery of the plainclothes police officers and civilians who risked their lives to rescue trapped shoppers.

Twenty years on from the Rwandan genocide, This World reveals evidence that challenges the accepted story of one of the most horrifying events of the late 20th century. The current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has long been portrayed as the man who brought an end to the killing and rescued his country from oblivion. Now there are increasing questions about the role of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front forces in the dark days of 1994 and in the 20 years since.

The film investigates evidence of Kagame's role in the shooting down of the presidential plane that sparked the killings in 1994 and questions his claims to have ended the genocide. It also examines claims of war crimes committed by Kagame's forces and their allies in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and allegations of human rights abuses in today's Rwanda.

Former close associates from within Kagame's inner circle and government speak out from hiding abroad. They present a very different portrait of a man who is often hailed as presiding over a model African state. Rwanda's economic miracle and apparent ethnic harmony has led to the country being one of the biggest recipients of aid from the UK. Former prime minister Tony Blair is an unpaid adviser to Kagame, but some now question the closeness of Mr Blair and other western leaders to Rwanda's president.

International investigative documentary series. When Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and murdered 20 small children, many believed it was a tragedy that would change America's attitude to gun violence forever.

Filmed by award-winning director Jezza Neumann, Surviving Sandy Hook follows three families involved in the shooting over two years as they try to make sense of the tragedy, comprehend America's complex relationship with guns and violence, and find a way to move on and rebuild their lives.

Gilles Rousseau, whose daughter Lauren was a teacher murdered in the attack, has found his campaign for moderate reform met with implacable resistance from America's gun lobby. Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jessie was killed, believes that the malaise in American society goes deeper than gun control and has begun a crusade to get a message of hope to some of the country's most deprived and violent fringes. This a deeply moving film about grief, hope, love and guns. Part of the award-winning This World strand.

The arrest of Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'el Chapo' Guzman in February 2014 was hailed as a victory in America's war on drugs, but the truth behind the capture could be just another murky chapter in the scandal-ridden history of US involvement in Latin America and the Mexican drug wars.

BBC2's award-winning This World strand investigates the American authorities' relationship with the biggest and most powerful criminal organisation in the world, the Sinaloa Cartel, a multi-billion dollar international corporation with franchises in 58 countries. Despite its leader's arrest, the cartel is still enjoying extraordinary success, and this programme examines allegations that the group has been given an easy ride in return for informing on other cartels.

High-level informants, immunity deals, government-sanctioned gun trafficking and a mysterious go-between charged with carrying messages between the DEA and the cartel: a picture emerges of a dirty war being fought with little regard to the thousands of victims of the violent conflict being fought for control of Mexico's drug-smuggling routes to America.

For years we have looked on in envy at a French way of life that combined high living standards, generous welfare benefits and superb public transport. But now Robert Peston investigates how economic stagnation is threatening the treasured 'social model', and how a potential political earthquake could undermine the very fabric of the European Union itself.

In the wake of the great economic crash of 2008, as other countries embarked on financial belt-tightening, the French shunned austerity and eventually voted in a left-wing president who instead promised tax rises and a continuation of the high public spending the country was accustomed to. Now even Francois Hollande has had to perform a U-turn and is promising reforms. This in turn has led to a surge in support for the right-wing politics of Marine Le Pen and the Front National, with their ferociously anti-European agenda.

Like left-wing anti-austerity movements in Greece and Spain, Le Pen promises to shield the French from the rigours of global competition. 'There is no more left and right. There are nationalists and globalists. That's the big demarcation line that determines the fate of the world today.' As the Front National achieves ever more electoral gains and Le Pen has a realistic run at the presidency of France, the consequences for the rest of Europe, including Britain, could be enormous.

More than sixty young British women have travelled to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria, lured by a combination of slick marketing, social media and religious fervour. With access to the friends and family of the some of the girls, Britain's Jihadi Brides reveals how the sophisticated recruiting tactics of IS have shattered so many lives.

Christianity is facing the greatest threat to its existence in the very place where it was born. Jane Corbin travels across the Middle East to some of the holiest places in Christendom and finds that hundreds of thousands of Christians are fleeing Islamic extremists, conflict and persecution. From the Nineveh plains in Iraq to the ancient city of Maaloula in Syria, Kill the Christians reveals the story of how the religion that shaped Western culture and history is in danger of disappearing in large parts of its ancient heartland.

The inside story of how a small band of fanatical jihadi fighters became the world's richest terror army ever. Featuring the first major TV interview with an imprisoned senior leader of the so-called Islamic State, Peter Taylor looks behind its medieval savagery and investigates how it became so fabulously rich and resilient. Part of a season of films on BBC Two about the Islamic State.

The inside story of how and why the worst Ebola outbreak in history wasn't stopped before it was too late. Award-winning filmmaker Dan Edge traces the roots of the outbreak back to the jungles of Guinea and tracks down key witnesses and survivors responsible for its spread across West Africa. They include the father of Patient Zero, the child who was believed to be the first person to die in the outbreak, as well as a young woman considered to be among the first to bring Ebola across the border from Guinea to Sierra Leone.

The film includes revelatory interviews and candid admissions of failure from key government officials and those responsible for the woeful international response to the disaster. From the jungles of Guinea to the slums of Monrovia, the film exposes tragic missteps in the response to the epidemic. It's a real-life disaster movie that sounds a warning: the world is not safe from future epidemics.

When an elite team of American special forces stormed a compound in Pakistan and killed the world's most wanted terror target it was the high point of Barack Obama's presidency. But as more and more informationemerges, the doubts about the official account of Osama Bin Laden's death have been raised - to the point where veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has now alleged that the whole story was fabricated. For the BBC's award winning This World strand, Jane Corbin examines the evidence for this supposed conspiracy and uses a treasure trove of newly released documents to reconstruct Bin Laden's life in his secret compound.

The legendary statistical showman Professor Hans Rosling returns with a feast of facts and figures as he examines the extraordinary target the world commits to this week - to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide. In the week the United Nations presents its new goals for global development, Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years looks at the number one goal for the world: eradicating, for the first time in human history, what is called extreme poverty - the condition of almost a billion people, currently measured as those living on less than $1.25 a day.

Rosling uses holographic projection technology to wield his iconic bubble graphs and income mountains to present an upbeat assessment of our ability to achieve that goal by 2030. Eye-opening, funny and data-packed performances make Rosling one of the world's most sought-after and influential speakers. He brings to life the global challenge, interweaving powerful statistics with dramatic human stories from Africa and Asia. In Malawi, the rains have failed as Dunstar and Jenet harvest their maize. How many hunger months will they face when it runs out? In Cambodia, Srey Mao is about to give birth to twins but one is upside-down. She's had to borrow money to pay the medical bills. Might this happy event throw her family back into extreme poverty?

The data show that recent global progress is 'the greatest story of our time - possibly the greatest story in all of human history'. Hans concludes by showing why eradicating extreme poverty quickly will be easier than slowly. Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years follows Rosling's previous award-winning BBC productions Don't Panic - The Truth About Population and The Joy Of Stats.

In November 2015, when gunmen attacked Paris, France declared war on the Islamic State. But that war - and France's 'year of terror' - began a year ago with the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

With unprecedented access to the French authorities and previously unseen footage, five-time Bafta-winning director Dan Reed reveals the untold story of the massacre and of the first Islamic State strike in Paris at a kosher grocery store.

Key witnesses, police officers and survivors - many speaking for the first time - piece together the dramatic attacks and the unprecedented manhunt that gripped the world for three extraordinary and terrifying days.

Following the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's involvement in Syria, the world is closer to superpower confrontation than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Now, a war room of senior former British military and diplomatic figures comes together to war-game a hypothetical 'hot war' in eastern Europe, including the unthinkable - nuclear confrontation.

Robert Preston presents a show exploring China's dramatic economic slowdown and the impact that it could have on Britain.

Reggie Yates investigates the reality behind the global super-rich's insatiable appetite for luxury goods. Top of the list are animals, but how much do we really know about where exotic skins and furs come from? And what is the real cost? To find out, Reggie visits Siberia in search of the world's most expensive fur.

In Australia he discovers the reality behind croc farming, and in Indonesia he goes deep into the forest in search of the pythons that end up as bags and phone cases. But how far can this trade go? As the fashion for animal products trickles down to the high street, is it sustainable?

The BBC's award-winning This World strand goes inside the world of Romania's super-rich Gypsy popstars - a world of fast cars, lavish houses and gangsters.

The Roma community is one of the most marginalised and impoverished in Europe and for years their traditional music has been their most famous export. Now a new type of Gypsy sound called Manele has swept across the country. Manele stars can earn 20,000 euros a night at opulent weddings, with cash showered over them by guests. Their videos can get millions of hits on YouTube.

But Manele is controversial - some of its lyrics glorify gangsterism and some of its biggest fans are notorious underworld figures. Filmmaker Liviu Tipurita takes us into the heart of this extraordinary world.

America's college fraternities are notorious for hard drinking and hard partying, but they are also accused of fostering a culture of brutality and sexual assault. During one term at the University of Central Florida, the BBC's award-winning This World programme follows the life of a group of frat boys as they embark on the pledging process, when new recruits have to prove themselves before they can become a fraternity brother.

Most kids are joining because fraternities provide access to a powerful network of alumni throughout the US. But each year, students die or are injured in barbaric initiation rituals, known as hazing, and some argue that the way fraternity system is set up allows sexual assaults to occur during drunken campus parties. Research has shown that fraternity men are three times more likely to sexual assault than non-fraternity men.

Film following the murder trial of a white police officer in Portsmouth, Virginia, accused of shooting an unarmed black teenager. On 22 April 2015, Officer Stephen Rankin responded to a report of shoplifting at a Walmart store. Minutes after arriving in the parking lot, he shot and killed William Chapman.

After Chapman's death, Rankin was fired from Portsmouth Police Department and charged with first-degree murder. Chapman was just one of 306 black men who were killed by police in the US last year, but just 14 police officers faced any charges - Rankin was one of them.

With extraordinary access to the prosecution and defence, as well as Chapman's family and friends and those closest to Officer Rankin, this powerful 90-minute documentary from award-winning filmmaker James Jones forensically follows the drama as the trial unfolds and unpicks Rankin's troubling prior record in the police department.

During a summer of increasing tension across America, this film explores the reaction of a divided community to the prosecution of a local police officer. Part of the award-winning This World strand on BBC Two.

Around the world there has been a huge increase in the number of children being referred to gender clinics - boys saying they want to be girls and vice versa. Increasingly, parents are encouraged to adopt a 'gender affirmative' approach - fully supporting their children's change of identity. But is this approach right?

In this challenging documentary, BBC Two's award-winning This World strand travels to Canada, where one of the world's leading experts in childhood gender dysphoria (the condition where children are unhappy with their biological sex) lost his job for challenging the new orthodoxy that children know best. Speaking on TV for the first time since his clinic was closed, Dr Kenneth Zucker believes he is a victim of the politicisation of transgender issues. The film presents evidence that most children with gender dysphoria eventually overcome the feelings without transitioning and questions the science behind the idea that a boy could somehow be born with a 'female brain' or vice versa. It also features 'Lou' - who was born female and had a double mastectomy as part of transitioning to a man. She now says it is a decision that 'haunts' her and feels that her gender dysphoria should have been treated as a mental health issue.

This documentary examines Zucker's methods, but it also includes significant contributions from his critics and supporters of gender affirmation, including transgender activists in Canada and leading medical experts as well as parents with differing experiences of gender dysphoria and gender reassignment.

The European Union faces the biggest challenge in its 60-year history, with the rise of populist eurosceptic movements across the continent. As Britain prepares to begin the process of withdrawing from the EU, the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler asks whether the Union itself can survive.

At the 2016 European Championships, violent clashes between Russian and English supporters in Marseille put the spotlight on Russian hooliganism. Russian hooligans injured over 100 English supporters, beating two into a coma, and it raised serious concerns ahead of Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup.

In Born Too White, NHS doctor Oscar Duke (24 Hours in A&E), who himself has albinism, embarks on a personal journey to discover what life is like for people who share his condition in these countries.

With a mass-casualty terror attack in the UK seen as almost inevitable, this drama documentary dramatises what terrorism experts fear is the most likely scenario for Britain's next major terror attack. Counterterrorism police believe that the greatest threat to our security comes from Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attacks (MTFA), which can result in dozens of fatalities even if armed police respond within minutes. There are more than a thousand high-priority terrorism suspects in the UK, but there are only enough surveillance officers to monitor a fraction of these at any time.

Based on extensive research, The Attack: Terror in the UK tells the story of an Islamic State-inspired terrorist group planning a firearms attack and follows the ongoing police investigation. It focuses on Joseph, a young man who, while in prison for drug and firearms charges, is recruited, converted and radicalised by Islamic extremists - highlighting the fear that links are being forged between jihadists and street gangs with access to automatic weapons.

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to one of the most spectacular countries in the world - Colombia. For 50 years, Colombia has been in the grip of a brutal civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced seven million. But in late 2016, a peace deal was signed promising to end the conflict and finally bring peace to the country.

In this hour-long documentary for the award-winning This World strand, Simon explores Colombia at a pivotal point in its history. He travels into the jungle and comes face to face with the guerrilla army FARC, which is now promising to lay down arms. In the Pacific coast city of Buenaventura, Simon finds out more about the fearsome right-wing paramilitary gangs who now dominate the cocaine trade. As the FARC abandon the countryside, there is a fear that these groups will only grow in power. Travelling in the countryside, Simon meets the coca farmers who are demanding government support to stop growing coca and stop the flow of money to criminal gangs. With land ownership, poverty and drugs at the heart of Colombia's problems, it is in the countryside that the country's precarious future will be decided.

Johnny Kitagawa's legendary male-only talent agency trained young boys to become superstars. But for over 50 years, Japan has kept Kitagawa's dark secret – a long history of allegations of sexual abuse, made by boys in his agency. Even after the music mogul's death in 2019, the Japanese media remained largely silent. Why?

Journalist Mobeen Azhar explores the suffocating reality of being a J-pop idol and the influence that Kitagawa had on the media, and exposes the brutal consequences of turning a blind eye.

Taiwan is at the heart of a struggle between two nuclear powers – China and the United States - and there are fears it will become the next global conflict. President Xi Jinping insists Taiwan is part of China and must re-unify with the motherland. But Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen, says the island is already independent and must maintain its freedom and democracy.

Jane Corbin investigates how the Taiwanese government and young people are fighting what they say is Chinese disinformation, cyber attacks and dirty tricks.