The Documentary Podcast: Archive 2014

One boat, two families; trying to escape war in Syria, desperate to start a new life in Europe. In October 2013, dozens of migrants aboard that boat died, as it travelled across the Mediterranean Sea. But some eventually made it to Malta. What happened next?

The richest man of all time was 14th Century monarch King Mansa Musa, who reigned over Mali from 1312 to 1337. His fortune came from gold and salt, and control of trade routes.

A startling 300-year journey of a Stradivarius violin through the lives of geniuses, dictators, refugees, and the Milwaukee thieves who stole it from violinist Frank Almond.

How ordinary people – soldiers, mothers, nurses, even children – experienced World War One and the little-known human side of the world's first truly global conflict. With stories of love, loss, hope and fervour.

Assignment follows Abdi Nor, a winner of the annual US green card lottery, as he attempts to escape from a life of poverty in Kenya and realise the American dream.

Is karaoke now an art form? Music critic Katie Puckrik hits the clubs in Portland, Oregon, to find out.

Tupac Shakur trained as an actor, posed as a street thug and became a best selling rapper, but he died in 1996. Mythologised and revered, is Tupac a modern Black American folk hero?

The Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste or Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra, is the only symphony orchestra in Central Africa. It was founded in the mid-1990s by Armande Diangienda. In the beginning a small handful of would be musicians, made long arduous daily journeys to rehearsals that lasted seven hours, Monday to Friday. They waited patiently to take turns on the few available instruments - and gradually taught themselves to play.

Music pulsates in Lisbon, from the traditional and dramatic Fado to the contemporary Kuduro – a strain of Angolan dance music that combines electronic music with Caribbean inflections, born in the late 1980s. Musicians, such as the modern fadist and guitar player Lula Pena, the post-bossa nova Antonio Zambujo, and the incandescent Buraka Som Sistema, echo this rich musical landscape.

An international NGO, Women without Borders, based in Vienna, with years of experience working in the field of counter terrorism, is pioneering a strategy of using mothers of Jihadist fighters and supporters to help counter the radicalisation of young men and women.