Home  >  The Documentary Podcast  >  Coronavirus: Pilots and trainee doctors
The Documentary Podcast
Coronavirus: Pilots and trainee doctors
The Documentary Podcast
May 8, 2021

The pandemic has caused millions of job losses during the past year. The travel industry is one area that has been badly affected as many countries closed their borders or restricted entry. As a result, thousands of pilots are no longer flying and are out of work. Host Nuala McGovern hears from two pilots in Canada and the UK about what it’s like to lose a job that’s part of your identity and what the future has in store. We also return to the emergency situation in India. Medical students and junior doctors are having to delay internships, training and graduations to treat Covid patients. They tell us about the emotional strain when they find themselves in a situation of “playing God” and having to decide whose lives to try and save.

More Episodes



May 2, 2026
Mapping Epstein's global connections

The personal correspondence, photographs and papers of the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein have been released to the public in stages, beginning in December 2025, after an almost unanimous vote in the US Senate.

The released files run to three and a half million documents — emails, letters, photographs, videos, financial records, flight details — all are now open to public scrutiny. Many files remain heavily redacted, but what can be read has already had repercussions globally and revealed Epstein’s web of connections to powerful figures around the world.

Abdirahim Saeed, BBC Arabic, and Luiz Fernando Toledo, BBC News Brazil, share what they found about the files related to their regions.

The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts. Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India. If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.


26min 29sec

Coronavirus: Pilots and trainee doctors

--:--
--:--