The Documentary Podcast Folgen

The sailors held captive for years, and the man who managed to free them.Somali pirates made millions of dollars hijacking ships and holding their crews hostage, if no ransom was paid though, sailors could spend years languishing in captivity.When retired British Army Colonel John Steed set out to try to free what he called "Somalia’s forgotten hostages" he had no money and no hostage-negotiation experience, so how did he do it?Colin Freeman, who was himself taken hostage in Somalia, hears the remarkable stories of the sailors and their saviours.Producer: Joe Kent Sound: Rob Farquhar and Neil Churchill (Image: Armed Somali pirate standing on the coast looking to sea. Credit: Mohamed Dahir/AFP/Getty Images)ARCHIVE: Captain Phillips (Columbia Pictures) directed by Paul Greengrass

100 years ago English PEN was founded to create a “common meeting ground in every country for all writers.” and it quickly grew into an international organisation. The organisation has long campaigned for Freedom of Expression for writers. To mark the centenary, in a special edition of World Book Cafe, Ritula Shah and her guests discuss current threats to Freedom of Expression around the world and hear from writers, including Tsitsi Dangarembga, about the power and importance of storytelling.

Justin explores the Precambrian period: a kind of dark ages, spanning most of our planet's history, but about which we have very few fossil records. What we do know is that it contained two of the most important developments in evolution. One gave us a breathable atmosphere. The other made possible all the animals that now breathe it. The Natural History Museum's Imran Rahman introduces Justin to this strange bacterial world, while Aubrey Zerkle of the University of St Andrews explains why cyanobacteria may have been the greatest mass murderers in history.