Documentary On One - Rté Documentaries

In 1999, Sarah Mac Donald travelled to East Timor as a journalist undercover. Whilst violence erupted around her, Sarah became godmother to a little Timorese boy, Natalizio. But as the years went by, she lost touch with him and his family. 20 years after they last met, Sarah is returning to an independent Timor Leste, in search Natalizio. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part 2 of 2. As Derek Conlon finds out he’s been poisoned and dragged into a world of Russian espionage, he realises that’s just the start of his problems. With relations between UK and Moscow deteriorating, Derek escapes to a new life. But the nuclear poison Polonium-210 appears to have decided his fate. (Originally produced by Sky News Storycast)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep 1 of 2. When ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in a nuclear poisoning in London in 2006, an Irish man got caught up in the crossfire. Derek Conlon accidentally drank from the same radioactive cup used to poison Litvinenko – dragging him into a Russian world of espionage, murder and deceit. (Originally produced by Sky News Storycast)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The amount of children being targeted by online predators is increasing every year. The strange man on the street used to be the person we warned our children about. Now, that stranger can be in your house, via an online device. We meet the people who police the internet, a survivor, and the Garda unit focused on stopping online child abuse. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A pioneering adventure in overseas aid, when the Irish Red Cross assembled a 100-bed hospital and shipped it to bombed-out Normandy post-World War II. A group of young Irish doctors, nurses and support staff followed, bringing hope and healing to the shattered town of St-Lô as the survivors struggled to rebuild their lives among the ruins. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On a wet October Saturday over forty years ago a greyhound finished a race at Mullingar race track. The event was to turn Irish gambling upside down. Based in the small Irish towns of Listowel and Abbeyfeale, a quiet local betting coup in the days leading up the race saw bookies faced with paying out odds of almost a thousand to one. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sam Millar’s life reads like pure fiction. After joining the IRA as a teenager, he spent years on the notorious blanket protest in Northern Ireland. He later admitted to taking part in a massive, seven million dollar armed robbery in the US before starting a new life as a writer of award winning crime novels. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Helen Oxenham is getting a medal from the Queen of England – although Helen doesn’t have much time for the Queen. It’s for her work with victims of domestic violence in Australia. How did a woman, born in Cork and raised in Crumlin, Dublin end up there? Partly because of two men – both German – one she loved and one she came to despise. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two 15-year old Dublin girls were mitching, drinking and shoplifting. Then they hear a group of handsome men singing - with shaved heads and saffron robes. Hare Krishnas. The girls decide to join them – for the men and the free food - but soon they are hooked on the strict life and become Hare Krishna nuns. But the dream sours. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shane Healy has gone the distance in life. After spending years in an orphanage as a child, he travelled widely before hitch-hiking around the US, where he discovered he was a naturally talented athlete. It took more than that to get him to the 1996 Olympics where he ran for Ireland. Now after years away from the sport, Shane is back. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1972, a group of Irish protest riders gate crashed the Olympic Games road cycling race in Munich, Germany. They’d hatched a secret plan to scupper the official Irish Olympic cycling team. But events at the Games threw their own plans into chaos. Almost 50 years later a family is still trying to recapture a lost Olympic dream. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1981, heroin took hold of certain parts of Dublin. It changed everything for the communities it was affected by. The impact of addiction on the people there was devastating. But these communities weren’t going to just take it and the people decided to fight back against the dealers. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He was cheered on an open-topped bus through Dublin. Then he was homeless and jobless. He swept floors and slept on a campbed in the National Stadium. He stole his passport to flee Cuba - had a lucky meeting with a Shaolin monk, who saved him – met three Mayomen, who helped keep him safe - and now he teaches yoga to prisoners. Some life. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Felix Gretarsson lost both his arms in a work accident in Iceland in 1998. In the years that followed, his life spiralled into an abyss as he lost his health, status, relationship and sense of identity. After turning his life around, Felix now lives in France, where he’s waiting to receive the world’s first full double arm transplant. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Conor Walsh was a minimalist piano composer from Co. Mayo, whose musical career was just beginning when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2016 aged 36. Within days of his burial, Conor's sister found 37 unpublished tracks on his laptop, and so began his family’s journey to release his posthumous debut album, The Lucid. (2020)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The unravelling of a story of an orphaned Irish boy lost in South Africa in the 1880s, who it's told was cared for by a local tribe, until he was found by a man who then traced his family back to Ireland. Could this be true and how could it happen? Narrated and produced by Sarah Blake. Research by Rosemarie Gilchrist. Sound Supervision by Mark McGrath. Additional recordings by Jason Murphy and Liam O’BrienReadings by Sheelagh Dempsey, Warren Gatchel, Sarah Binchy and Ian McGlynn. (2016)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In December 2016, Eileen Kenny lost a long battle with cancer. It was not the only battle that Eileen fought in the previous years. Dissatisfied with her treatment, and seeking answers, she had been through a struggle with both her treating doctor and the Irish Medical Council. A struggle that has left her family without closure. (2019)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1996, Gardaí deployed on UN peacekeeping duties in Cyprus saw two men killed. Unarmed, and caught up in the violence within the UN buffer zone, Garda Frank Flood witnessed both killings at close hand. Now, for the first time in almost a quarter-of-a-century, Frank is returning to Cyprus to revisit those events and find out more (2019)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thousands of Irish people live with HIV today. You can’t see it in their face. Many of them are living in the shadows, fearful of judgement. The numbers of people being diagnosed with HIV are higher than they have ever been. We meet four people affected by HIV and find out what it is really like to be HIV positive in Ireland today. (2019)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When an 81 year old woman, in good health, pitched an idea into us about death and dying, we had to find out more. So in early 2019, we began following Gray Cahill as she put a plan in place for when she dies. In planning ahead, she's also looking back over her life. As Gray says, “Dying is part of living, and living is part of dying.” (2019)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.