Podcasts by Lives Less Ordinary

An author, his cellmate, and a new beginning from 2023-12-11T00:30

When award-winning author Alex Wheatle was sentenced to nine months in prison at the age of 18, he thought his life was over.

Alex had been born in London to Jamaican parents, but grew up...

Scams and poetry in Moscow’s underbelly from 2023-12-04T00:30

Eric Ngalle is now a poet and academic in the Welsh capital of Cardiff, but it's his experiences as a people-trafficked teenager that inspire much of his work. When he was 17, he found himself b...

Introducing Amazing Sport Stories from 2023-11-30T15:00

Sport but not as you know it. A brand new sports storytelling podcast.

Imagine being stranded in the “death zone” on one of the world’s highest mountains. How about running 200 miles in a ...

Unmasking my best friend from 2023-11-27T00:30

Reality TV producer Johnathan Walton found himself in a plot he couldn't have dreamt up.

It all started when a woman helped him when he was locked out of his building's swimming pool. She...

Becoming Gamal, part 2: Behind the badge from 2023-11-20T00:30

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted in.

First as a black British boy adopted into a white family, then hoodwinked by his father and eventually begging on the streets of La...

Becoming Gamal, part 1: Magic and misadventure from 2023-11-13T00:30

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted in

As the first openly gay black officer in London's Metropolitan Police, he struggled to find his way while reckoning with his past. A...

The fisherman and the 'spy whale' from 2023-11-06T00:30

Joar Hesten's mission to save a whale rumoured to have escaped from the Russian navy.

Norwegian Joar Hesten was fishing for cod in the Arctic when he came across a beluga whale wearing a h...

Brazil's loneliest fan and his footballing fairytale from 2023-10-30T00:30

Tiago Rech went viral when he was the only supporter in the stands at his club's game.

In 2012 Tiago Rech was the only fan at a big away match for his beloved football team Santa Cruz FC. ...

Love, Loss and 'Project 22' from 2023-10-22T23:30

Fleur Pierets and Julian Boom wanted to wed in every country that allowed gay marriage.

After falling in love at first sight, the artist couple planned to make a statement to the world. So...

38 days: a family adrift in the Pacific from 2023-10-15T23:30

The Robertsons' boat was attacked by killer whales and started to sink fast

Douglas was 16 years old when his parents sold the family farm in England and took him and his three siblings o...

"My friends were arrested, or simply disappeared" from 2023-10-08T23:30

Tahir Izgil is one of the most highly respected living Uyghur poets. Tahir was born near Kashgar, in Xinjiang province, and from an early age he was immersed in the poetry of his culture. When t...

Bringing home the prime minister’s gold tooth from 2023-10-01T23:30

Juliana Lumumba had to fight to reclaim the remains of her father, Patrice Lumumba.

He'd been the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo and an anti-colonial hero. He was...

The Godmother of Beirut's nightlife from 2023-09-24T23:30

Under the boot of the Syrian army, Nicole Moudaber brought raves to Lebanon.

After sampling the delights of dance music whilst studying abroad in the nineties, Nicole made it her goal to ...

Dancing in the womb from 2023-09-17T23:30

A mother, a son, and the discovery of a shared dream.

Latifa Khamessi and her son Mohamed Toukabri from Tunisia were inseparable until aged 15 when he left for Europe to study dance. It w...

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 2 from 2023-09-10T23:30

From the page to the stage: William turns childhood fantasies into reality.

In London, William Lee Adams is feeling disillusioned with his job, when a Romanian singer on a horse appears o...

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 1 from 2023-09-03T23:30

A bond between brothers, a coming-out story, and an international song contest.

William Lee Adams is one of the leading voices covering the Eurovision Song Contest, criss-crossing the con...

Miracle on the ocean floor from 2023-08-27T23:30

Harrison Okene spent three days trapped in an air pocket in a sunken ship.

Harrison was the ship's cook, and he'd been in the bathroom when the tugboat he worked on had suddenly capsized i...

Indiana Jones: The kids who remade a blockbuster from 2023-08-20T23:30

In 1982, two Mississippi boys recreated a $22m film, shot-for-shot, on their pocket money.

Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala were aged 10 and 11. Their mission would take them seven years to ...

The woman who fell from the sky, part 2 from 2023-08-13T23:30

How a jump changed daring parachutist Tony Osornio's life forever.

Tony was Mexico's best precision skydiver and the first woman to join her country's army. She says she "belonged to the s...

The woman who fell from the sky, part 1 from 2023-08-06T23:30

Tony Osornio would go to dangerous extremes to keep skydiving.

She was born into a conservative family, and decided to marry the first man who asked in order to escape the restrictions of ...

Bradford 12: The Asian youth who took on the racists, part 2 from 2023-07-30T23:30

By 1981, Pakistani-born immigrant Tariq Mehmood had endured years of violent racism in Britain. When he heard that gangs of white skinheads – with a history of attacking Asians – were coming to ...

Bradford 12: The Asian youth who took on the racists, part 1 from 2023-07-23T23:30

As a Pakistani immigrant teenager in 1970s Britain, Tariq Mehmood endured homelessness and years of violent racism. He found shelter and wisdom in a library, and the strength to stand up to the ...

I save chimpanzees and they've saved me from 2023-07-16T23:30

Stany Nyandwi's rescued chimpanzees helped him through war and loneliness.

As a young boy Stany made money selling sugarcane and worked as a 'houseboy' for families in Burundi's capital ci...

Who is this kneeling man? from 2023-07-09T23:30

My search for the truth about my father and Martin Luther King’s assassination.

Leta McCollough Seletzky grew up knowing that her father was the ‘kneeling man’, photographed tending to the...

How I survived a pirate hijack from 2023-07-02T23:30

Marine engineer Chirag Bahri was trapped for eight gruelling months on a chemical tanker.

Chirag loved his job working in the engine rooms of huge commercial ships. But in May 2010, while ...

Love, war, and the cutting room floor from 2023-06-25T23:30

Mariam and Mohammed are Yemeni filmmakers who turned the lens on their own relationship.

Mariam Al-Dhubhani and Mohammed Al-Jaberi's love story started in friendship, and it didn't take lo...

He was almost a mass shooter – an act of kindness stopped him from 2023-06-18T23:30

Aaron Stark now works to raise awareness around why mass attacks happen.

Aaron had a chaotic and violent childhood, and by the time he was a teenager he was homeless, angry and traumatised...

Teenage dreams on the Indian Ocean from 2023-06-11T23:30

At the age of 13 Laura Dekker fought for her right to sail solo around the world.

Laura comes from a family of sailing enthusiasts, and her father taught her the ropes early. By 11 years o...

'Don't anger the monster', part 2 from 2023-06-04T23:30

Rowena Chiu was kept silent for 20 years by former film boss Harvey Weinstein. Rowena thought that speaking up about her alleged sexual assault by Weinstein would end up with him in court. But i...

'Don't anger the monster', part 1 from 2023-05-28T23:30

Rowena Chiu on surviving the Hollywood sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.

Rowena was just 24 when she became an assistant to Weinstein at his film company. She knew he was a difficult boss,...

Sugar sandwiches and smarts: a poor kid's fairytale ending from 2023-05-21T23:30

Raised by addicts, Dr Katriona O'Sullivan defied the odds to become a university lecturer.

Her parents were addicted to heroin, she was neglected and not fed. But for the care she receive...

Lola the bare-knuckle drag queen from 2023-05-14T23:30

Martial arts kept him out of jail, but drag artistry made him whole.

Diego Garijo was bullied for his femininity as a child, so as he grew up he toughened up his image. He was in trouble w...

I was there the night Emmett Till was taken from 2023-05-07T23:30

Wheeler Parker is Emmett Till's cousin and the last surviving witness to his abduction.

Emmett's brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked a wave of protest in America. The 14-year-old ...

Tanzania’s hip-hop politician from 2023-04-30T23:30

Joseph Mbilinyi pioneered Swahili rap and then turned to politics, but ended up in jail.

In the 1990s he'd become one of Tanzania's biggest stars under the stage name Sugu. He'd released a...

'Brother. do. you. love. me.' The SMS that changed our lives from 2023-04-23T23:30

Brothers Manni and Reuben Coe, and the text that prompted a lockdown rescue mission.

Manni was living in Spain when he received this troubling text from his younger brother Reuben. Reuben ...

'Prison Break' and my escape from Manus Island from 2023-04-16T23:30

Tricks from a hit TV show held the key to Jaivet Ealom’s audacious dash for freedom.

As a student in his native Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom became obsessed with the hit US TV show Prison Break....

The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid: Part 2 from 2023-04-09T23:30

ANC spy Sue Dobson infiltrated the South African government. Then her cover was blown.

After training, Sue had got a job within the government's propaganda unit, and she was feeding back ...

The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid, part 1 from 2023-04-02T23:30

Sue Dobson was a white South African who risked her life as an ANC secret agent

Sue was a student when she was first recruited as a spy for the African National Congress liberation movemen...

Bringing the Muppets to Moscow from 2023-03-26T23:30

Natasha Lance Rogoff’s daunting task of making Sesame Street in post-Soviet Russia.

In the early 90s, American journalist Natasha Lance Rogoff was covering the collapse of the Soviet Union...

Introducing: Love, Janessa from 2023-03-24T13:30

All episodes of our catfishing podcast are now available. You meet someone online. It turns out many others think they have fallen for the same person. It’s the story of the scammers and the unw...

My life in seven swimming pools from 2023-03-20T00:30

Amjed Tantesh is determined to teach kids in Gaza to swim no matter how many pools he has to build.

Finding freedom in the water as a child, Amjed wanted to train the next generation of Ga...

The Ukrainian opera singer nearly silenced by a bullet from 2023-03-13T00:30

Sergiy Ivanchuk dreamed of stardom, before he was shot in the chest by Russian soldiers.

He was a volunteer helping refugees escape Eastern Ukraine during the early days of the 2022 invasi...

I didn’t know I was part of an experiment from 2023-03-06T00:30

When Greenlander Helene Thiesen was just seven, two Danish men came to take her away.

In 1951, Greenland native Helene Thiesen was just seven years old when two Danish men knocked at the f...

Eyes on the prize: Pakistan’s first trans film star from 2023-02-27T00:30

Rejected by family and society, trans actor Alina Khan was forced to spend time on the streets of her native Lahore as a child. Through dance, she found an escape and a living, but also encounte...

Becoming Blair 'the Flair': a boxer on the run, part 2 from 2023-02-20T00:30

In the ring, Blair finds calm amidst the chaos of his life. Back in the US Blair Cobbs falls again on hard times; homeless in Philadelphia his boxing dream seems out of reach. But a string of l...

Becoming Blair 'the Flair': a boxer on the run, part 1 from 2023-02-13T00:30

From Beverly Hills to hiding from the law with his dad, Blair’s seen it all. To help him get through the tough times – and there’d be quite a few of those – Blair created a separate persona. Thi...

The mystery of the tartan twins from 2023-02-06T00:30

A baby left in a car, another in a telephone box. It would take decades to find out why.

When he was just a baby, David McBride made headline news in Northern Ireland. He had been discover...

Breaking my addiction to war from 2023-01-30T00:30

Fergal Keane's work as a war correspondent was destroying him, but he couldn't stop.

It was his job as a BBC journalist to help the audience make sense of the madness of war, but he knew t...

The fearless former nun fighting for India's seamstresses from 2023-01-23T00:30

From convent to marriage to factory floor, Thivya Rakini will stand up for herself, and you. From an early age she's fought for what's right. As a child living in Tamil Nadu, she stopped eating ...

Learning to live with the voices in my head from 2023-01-16T00:30

Debra Lampshire started hearing voices aged five. Comforting at first, they soon took control.The voices became so visceral and intense that Debra had to spend 18 years in a psychiatric hospital...

Rebel gunmen in Ugandan skies from 2023-01-09T00:30

Pilot Firoz Khimji witnessed his country's wars from above. Then conflict came for him.

For most of his life, Uganda had been unstable, but he'd been able to train as a commercial pilot de...

Coming out as India’s first gay prince from 2023-01-02T00:30

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil risked everything when he faced his parents and society

He was next in line to a centuries-old royal dynasty in the Indian state of Gujarat - and grew up in th...

The secrets of a slave ship in an Alabama swamp from 2022-12-26T00:30

Journalist Ben Raines went in search of a sunken ship with a dark history.

A phone call out of the blue had set him on his hunt for the Clotilda, an American vessel that had illegally tran...

Searching for my sister, the "keeper of memories" from 2022-12-19T00:30

Nakuset blocked out painful memories of being removed from her indigenous Canadian family

Nakuset only goes by one name and it means "The Sun" in her indigenous Canadian culture. Born into...

Guns, guards, snarling dogs: a child migrant’s story from 2022-12-12T00:30

Javier Zamora travelled alone from El Salvador to the US when he was just nine years old.

He had been living with relatives after his parents migrated to the US, but longed to be in his mo...

The Palestinian tapes, part 2 from 2022-12-05T00:35

In 2020, Mo’min Swaitat unearthed a treasure trove of lost Palestinian music in an abandoned building. Out of thousands of dusty cassettes there was one that caught his eye: a bright yellow tape...

The Palestinian tapes, part 1 from 2022-11-28T00:34

Mo’min Swaitat unearthed a vast trove of forgotten Palestinian music. Not only did it hold long-lost recordings of his own Bedouin family, but also a mysterious yellow cassette of protest songs ...

Bike-riding bank robber, part 2 from 2022-05-01T23:30

The FBI close in. “It’s a wake-up call when police are trying to shoot you.” Tom Justice’s fantasy is fading, he’s now robbing banks to fund his addiction and things are about to get a lot worse. ...

Bike-riding bank robber, part 1 from 2022-04-24T23:30

Olympic hopeful to audacious thief – the cyclist who turned to crime.Movies influenced Tom’s biggest life decisions. Slacker film Reality Bites made him give up becoming an Olympic cyclist, and hei...

The trailer from 2022-04-18T11:00

Astonishing true stories, jaw-dropping twists. Why would an Olympic hopeful rob a bank? How does someone keep their double life a secret? From the team behind Outlook, incredible personal stories f...

Introducing Lives Less Ordinary from 2022-04-13T11:00

Enter other people’s worlds. Welcome to the new weekly podcast from the Outlook radio team, finding amazing personal stories from around the world. Premieres on 25 April. With Emily Webb, Mobeen A...

The drag queen who ran for president of the United States from 2022-04-11T11:45

In the 1990s Terence Smith launched his campaign to run for United States president in drag, shocking voters and the media. His mission was not to win, but instead, to raise awareness about the Aid...

Lives Less Ordinary replaces the Outlook podcast from 2022-04-09T11:00

An announcement from the Outlook team: From Monday 25th April, this feed will become Lives Less Ordinary. It’s a new weekly podcast bringing you amazing personal stories from all over the globe, me...

Drawing is my language: the artist who recreates cities from memory from 2022-04-07T11:45

Stephen Wiltshire was born in London in 1974, and diagnosed with autism when he was three. Mute until he was five, he was sent to a specialist school where his teachers soon noticed his prodigious ...

How my father’s stories shielded me from civil war from 2022-04-06T13:16

Wayétu Moore was just five years old in 1990, when Liberia's first civil war broke out. The family were forced to leave their home near Monrovia, and to flee on foot to the relative safety of a rem...

Escaping a life on a dumpsite with classical music from 2022-04-05T11:30

Like many young people in his community, Simon Karuiki Ndungu grew up scavenging for things he could sell. His home was Korogocho, a Nairobi slum situated next to the city's main dumpsite. The pois...

Dressing Beyoncé: It started with a Barbie outfit from 2022-03-31T11:45

Artist Osman Yousefzada grew up in Birmingham, England in the 1980s after his parents moved to the UK from Pakistan. They were both illiterate, and while his father worked as a carpenter, Osman spe...

The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp from 2022-03-30T17:15

Lynn Price and Andi Andree were separated as young children and raised with different foster families - they didn't even know of each other's existence until they were introduced at the ages of 8 a...

I’m a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own from 2022-03-29T11:45

Prof Lucy Easthope is a leading authority on recovering from disaster. She has spent two decades working at the centre of numerous global catastrophes, including terrorist attacks, plane crashes, c...

My mum Poly Styrene, a punk icon from 2022-03-28T11:50

Celeste Bell's mother Poly Styrene was a punk icon who'd made her mark on music history before Celeste was even born. Her distinctive voice, neon outfits and mixed race heritage made her stand out ...

I survived an avalanche, but the real challenge came after from 2022-03-21T12:45

In his early twenties, Joe Yelverton and two friends climbed Eagle Peak in the Chugach mountain range in Alaska. His life changed in an instant when an avalanche hit them, killing his best friend S...

The child preacher who exposed a con from 2022-03-17T12:06

In 1944, Marjoe Gortner was just four years old when his parents had him ordained as an evangelical minister. He was dubbed ‘the miracle child’ and conducted his first marriage ceremony before he c...

Running an underground newspaper during the Syrian uprising from 2022-03-16T12:45

After pro-democracy protests broke out in 2011, Kholoud Helmi was determined to cover the human rights violations carried out by the Syrian government, as a reporter on the ground. So with the help...

Mountains took my family - but I love them from 2022-03-15T12:45

Scot Kate Ballard is the daughter of world-famous mountaineer Alison Hargreaves. In 1995, when Kate was just four, Alison was caught in a storm on K2 in the Himalayas and died. Despite the tragedy,...

Driven by jealousy: the Chippendales murder plot from 2022-03-14T12:50

Emily Webb explores the origins of The Chippendales with its co-founder and former lawyer Bruce Nahin. It started as a weekly club night in Los Angeles where male dancers stripped for women and it ...

Why I’m singing songs for my transgender dad from 2022-03-10T12:45

Singer-songwriter Frank Turner never got on with his distant and disapproving father. Things got even worse between them when Frank discovered the anarchist punk scene in his teens, and they eventu...

The priest leading the fight for LGBT rights in Poland from 2022-03-09T12:45

Szymon Niemiec is a priest and an LGBTQ+ activist who founded Poland's first Gay Pride parade in 2001 - known locally as an 'equality parade'. Growing up in the Polish capital Warsaw, Szymon knew h...

My long-lost sister was a surrogate mother to my twins from 2022-03-08T13:46

Mark MacDonald had always known he was adopted and was comfortable with it - but when he and his wife Tina found they couldn't safely have children of their own, he went looking for his birth famil...

The giant window and the race against time from 2022-03-07T12:00

Tim Carey was a talented but little-known artist working with stained glass, when a huge opportunity fell into his lap. A mega church was being built in Kansas, and Tim was asked to build a huge wi...

The false confessions of a serial killer from 2022-03-05T09:32

In the 1990s the name 'Thomas Quick' struck fear into the hearts of Swedes across the country. He had confessed to more than 30 murders, and was convicted of eight. He became known as Sweden’s most...

Becoming an elder in the community I was stolen from as a baby from 2022-03-03T12:06

Dianne O'Brien was born in the 1940s and grew up in an Irish-Australian family near Sydney. But when she was just 14, her world was torn apart: her beloved mother died, her father abandoned her and...

The violin that saved a Jewish family from 2022-03-01T12:06

Natalie Cumming's violin helped her family survive starvation, persecution, and torture. It accompanied them in their year long trek across Russia as they sought refuge from the Bolsheviks. Her gra...

My stolen ‘magic’ guitar, found after 45 years from 2022-02-28T12:06

Randy Bachman is behind some of the biggest rock hits of the 60s and 70s. He was lead guitarist for The Guess Who, frontman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and, all the while had his beloved Gretsch gu...

Soweto Uprising: What happened to my dad? from 2022-02-26T12:00

In 1976, the Johannesburg township of Soweto erupted into protest. Students were furious with the government decision to make Afrikaans a language of instruction in South African schools. Afrikaans...

The blind skateboarder going for gold from 2022-02-23T14:51

When Justin Bishop was eight years old, he was diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and was told that one day he would go blind. Two years later he fell in love with skateboardin...

My symphony to a soccer ‘bad-boy’ from 2022-02-21T12:45

Osmo Tapio Everton Räihälä is a Finnish composer who is crazy about Everton football club. Growing up almost two thousand miles away wouldn’t stop him from living and breathing everything Everton, ...

Exposing Nigeria’s cough syrup crisis, for my brother from 2022-02-19T12:15

Nigerian Ruona Meyer was inspired by her famous journalist father - Godwin Agbroko - to become an investigative reporter like him. When he was killed, her grieving brother became addicted to codein...

The forgotten story of a pioneering Olympic champion from 2022-02-18T11:05

American sprinter Wyomia Tyus grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia, in the racially segregated South. When she was 14, tragedy struck her family - their house burned to the ground, and her father die...

Attacked and accused of lying – my long fight for the truth from 2022-02-16T14:12

Donna Palomba's life changed in September 1993, when she was sexually assaulted in her family home in Connecticut. A month after the attack, Donna was called to the local police station and accused...

The dramatic journey of Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsleigh from 2022-02-14T12:13

The comedy film classic Cool Runnings, about a Jamaican bobsleigh team's surprising efforts to get to the Winter Olympics, was inspired by a real story. Dudley Stokes was an officer in the Jamaica...

The man who had a baby from 2022-02-11T14:32

A few years ago, Freddy McConnell decided to have a baby. A decision that is a big deal for most, but that is even more complicated for Freddy, because he is trans. Freddy started his transition in...

The artist who started out drawing war as a child refugee from 2022-02-10T12:45

Petrit Halilaj was born in Kosovo in 1986 and grew up in the small town of Runik. He always loved drawing and had a rare talent for it. When war broke out in Kosovo and Serbian troops moved into th...

Gaming with Tourette’s: Sweet Anita’s success story from 2022-02-09T12:45

This programme contains offensive language. Sweet Anita has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition which causes her to make involuntary sounds and movements. Her specific type of Tourette’s ...

The refugee pilot who helped Afghans flee the Taliban from 2022-02-08T12:45

Afghan-American pilot Zak Khogyani was just nine years old when he fled his home in Afghanistan. Being forced to leave his family and belongings behind was not easy, but he eventually managed to se...

The first African in Greenland from 2022-02-07T12:45

As a 16-year-old boy in Togo, Tété-Michel Kpomassie knew he had to escape. It was the late 1950s, and his father had ordered him to train as a priest in a snake cult. But Tété-Michel was terrified ...

"No equality - even in death" from 2022-02-05T10:00

Many African American cemeteries in the US have fallen into disrepair over the years - one of them is Geer cemetery in the city of Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in the 19th century when ra...

How books helped me bond with my captors from 2022-02-03T12:45

Growing up in rural Colombia, Professor María Antonia Garcés was obsessed by books and reading, and later on this passion would help her get through a really difficult chapter. In 1982 María Antoni...

Mafia, a murder cover-up and a sister’s battle for justice from 2022-02-02T12:00

Perween Rahman’s assassination in 2013 was one of the most high profile target killings in Pakistan that year. She ran an influential NGO, the Orangi Pilot Project, and had exposed how the mafia we...

The crumbling old house that hid a treasure trove of art from 2022-02-01T12:45

In 2006 Thomas Schultz and his business partner Lawrence Joseph made a business plan. They were looking for a property to buy, do up and sell. Thomas had his eye on a little cottage near his home i...

My love affair with the instrument that reminds me of home from 2022-01-31T12:45

Syrian musician Maya Youssef is in love with her qanun, a traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument. Like a family member, it’s got her through some difficult times and it consoled Maya as she...

Anne Frank’s stepsister: How I survived Auschwitz, part 2 from 2022-01-27T12:06

Eva Schloss and Anne Frank had been childhood friends and neighbours in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Both their families had a horrific experience at Auschwitz and after the war, Eva became Anne’s post...

Anne Frank’s stepsister: How I survived Auschwitz, part 1 from 2022-01-26T12:55

Eva Schloss and Anne Frank had been childhood friends and neighbours in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Eva remembers Anne’s nickname was ‘Miss Quack Quack’ because she always loved talking. Then, like th...

Solving the puzzle: Crosswords, anorexia, and me from 2022-01-25T12:45

Anna Shechtman began writing crossword puzzles as a teenager - but developed an eating disorder around the same time. She became one of the youngest crossword creators to publish a puzzle in the Ne...

The freediver who found salvation underwater from 2022-01-20T12:45

Alenka Artnik grew up in Slovenia in a loving but complicated family. Her father was an alcoholic, and her brother was addicted to drugs. Years of pain and grief meant that Alenka found herself fee...

Caring for my mum&the secrets of her sickness from 2022-01-19T13:08

After a lifetime of caring for her sick mother, Helen Naylor began to suspect that her mum had a very rare condition called Munchausen's Syndrome, a psychological disorder where according to the NH...

My surprise Paralympic entry from 2022-01-18T12:45

Marie Harrower’s mother taught her not to let her blindness hold her back. This helped Marie become a physiotherapist and win a place at the 1976 Paralympics. She tells Outlook's Antonia Quirke her...

Family and forgiveness, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu from 2022-01-17T12:45

We are celebrating the life of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who spoke to Outlook in 2014 with his daughter, Mpho Tutu van Furth, about family and forgiveness. They had written a book together ...

I sailed the oceans in a Scientology jazz band from 2022-01-13T12:45

In 1968 Neil Sarfati was 23 and feeling "lost", when a conversation with a neighbour introduced him to Scientology. What began as self-help movement born out of the teachings of the founder, scienc...

Looking for the Liberian sister I left behind from 2022-01-11T12:45

Helene Cooper grew up in Liberia, fled during a bloody military coup and arrived in the US as a child refugee. Her background inspired her to become a journalist but there was one question that sti...

The factory worker who became Chile's first blind senator from 2022-01-10T12:45

In 2019, Fabiola Campillai was working in a factory where her husband Marco worked as a lorry driver. They were leading a quiet life in Santiago raising their children when a tear gas cannister cha...

A mother's battle for her son's education from 2022-01-08T22:34

Education has always been important to Virginia Walden Ford. As a child she was part of the process of desegregating schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Years later, as a parent, she watched as her s...

A quizmaster’s accidental route to fame from 2022-01-06T12:45

Jay Flynn worked in a pub and loved hosting pub quizzes every week. When pubs were ordered to close at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, he started his own virtual pub quiz for f...

The tip-off and the 30-year treasure hunt from 2022-01-05T16:32

It began with drinks one Sunday when a woman told Reg Mead a story; her father was ploughing a field when he came across a pot full of ancient silver coins. He scooped up what he could and then plo...

The shocking truth about my three dads from 2022-01-04T12:02

Eve Wiley was 16 when she discovered she had been a sperm-donor baby. She was shocked, but also excited to meet her biological father as her own dad had died when she was young. When she met her do...

Kidnapped by Nazis as a baby from 2022-01-03T12:45

Ingrid Von Oelhafen grew up in Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, and she never knew her biological parents. As she got older, she discovered that she had a different name on her off...

I lost my heart to a herd of reindeer from 2021-12-24T06:00

In the Scottish Highlands at this time of the year you’ll find 150 reindeer roaming the Cairngorms National Park, and rather a lot of visitors coming to see them. These beautiful creatures are the ...

Falling for the stranger who saved me from 2021-12-23T12:45

In February 2019, Nupur Gupta was teaching at a yoga retreat in Goa when she got into difficulty in the sea. A Hungarian man called Attila Bosnyak who happened to be on the same yoga retreat was pa...

Lessons in grief from the South African wilderness from 2021-12-22T12:45

Sicelo Mbatha grew up in the remote South African region of Kwahlabisa, on the doorstep of a game reserve. Every day, he and his friends - including his best friend Sanele - would walk many miles t...

"We were going to hold our ground": Behind the lines of a Mohawk protest from 2021-12-21T13:25

Tracey Deer is an award-winning director who grew up on a Mohawk reservation near Montreal, Canada. When she was 12-years-old, a nearby reservation became involved in a land dispute known as the Ok...

Alaska: Drag, drugs and fighting the fame monster from 2021-12-20T12:00

Alaska 5000 is one of the most successful and beloved queens to emerge from RuPaul’s Drag Race. A dry wit comedy assassin, her drag style is glitzy, absurd and profoundly shaped by a lifelong love ...

Gerald and the giant vegetables from 2021-12-18T10:00

Gerald Stratford is a British gardening enthusiast whose photos and videos of his produce have earned him the nickname ‘the undisputed king of giant veg'. The septuagenarian set up his Twitter acco...

The father and daughter finding closure after a plane crash from 2021-12-16T15:11

*Contains some upsetting scenes* Gonzalo Dussan and his daughter Michelle still cannot comprehend how they are able to share their story. For years, they didn't speak about it, but recent developme...

My sister Banaz - killed for loving the wrong man from 2021-12-15T12:45

When Payzee Mahmod was 16, she was forced to marry a man twice her age. She grew up in the UK and her family was from a tight-knit Kurdish community where strict traditions of so-called ‘honour’ pl...

I was blamed for the 9/11 attacks from 2021-12-14T12:45

On 11th September 2001, Virginia Buckingham was head of Boston’s Logan Airport when two planes were hijacked after taking off from Logan and flown into New York’s World Trade Center. She immediatel...

The unsung pioneer of reggae's golden age from 2021-12-13T12:45

Leroy Sibbles grew up in the Kingston district known affectionately as the birthplace of reggae and burst onto the music scene as lead singer of The Heptones. Together they popularised the soulful ...

From 'half-nerd' to Hong Kong student leader from 2021-12-10T06:50

Nathan Law describes himself as an "ordinary person" and "half nerd" who, growing up in Hong Kong, just wanted to do well at school and get a good job. But his plans - and his whole life - were upe...

My real-life Cuban dance romance from 2021-12-08T12:45

JoAnn Jansen is a film choreographer, known for working with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Part of her journey to becoming a dancer herself has even been made into a film – the sequel to ...

The chicken who sailed the world from 2021-12-07T12:45

Guirec Soudée had always dreamed of sailing around the world. He set out at the age of 21 in a rusty 30ft boat, with no communication equipment and little sailing experience. He'd wanted to take a ...

The cult, the crocodile and my journey back to love from 2021-12-06T12:56

This podcast contains references to child sexual abuse.Juliana Buhring was born into a religious cult that she says brought her up with a warped idea of love. She was separated from her mum at the ...

The 'deepest man on earth' from 2021-12-04T10:00

Herbert Nitsch is a free diver, he dives without breathing equipment. In 2012 he broke a new world record, diving to a depth of 253 metres but on the way back up things went wrong. This episode was...

The teenager who baked her way out of a crisis from 2021-12-02T12:45

When Kitty Tait was in her early teens, she started struggling with anxiety and depression. Her family tried various activities, like art and dog walking, to try and help her, but nothing worked. T...

Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea from 2021-11-30T12:45

Filmmaker Yonghi Yang grew up in Japan in the 1960s, as part of Osaka's large ethnic Korean community. Facing anti-Korean prejudice in Japan, and inspired by the North Koreanregime’s promise of a s...

The choir without vocal cords from 2021-11-29T17:02

Doctor Thomas Moors has understood the power of the voice since he was part of a boys' choir in Belgium. He took that knowledge with him into his career and now specialises in ears, nose and throat...

The bionic gloves that brought music back to me from 2021-11-25T12:45

For many years, acclaimed Brazilian pianist Joao Carlos Martins graced the world's most famous concert halls, performing as a pianist and celebrated interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. He...

My anonymous teen story became a playground sensation from 2021-11-25T09:02

In 2005, when London schoolgirl Jade LB was just 13, she got a computer for her birthday and began writing a fictional story on it – the sometimes raunchy, sometimes disturbing adventures of a 17-y...

Matt Goss: Life and loss in a superstar boy band from 2021-11-23T19:35

In the late 80s, the British group Bros was one of the most successful pop acts in the world. Made up of lead singer Matt Goss, his twin brother Luke, and childhood friend Craig Logan, Bros quickly...

The Jewish prisoner, the treasure hunters and the secret diary from 2021-11-22T12:45

A few years ago, Menachem Kaiser went to Poland to uncover his family history. All he knew was that his grandfather survived the Holocaust but the rest of his relatives were killed. In search of hi...

Fighting the apartheid my grandfather created from 2021-11-20T10:00

Wilhelm Verwoerd has spent most of his life wrestling with his surname and what it represents. His grandfather, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, is widely known as the 'architect of apartheid' in South Africa ...

I still believe I'm lucky even after breaking my neck from 2021-11-18T15:30

In 2017 Ed Jackson had everything to look forward to. A professional rugby player, the 28-year-old had just signed another two-year contract with the Welsh team Dragons, and he and his girlfriend L...

Harvard Law School’s first Deafblind graduate from 2021-11-17T12:45

Haben Girma is a Harvard Law School graduate, an attorney, she's been invited to the White House... and she's Deafblind. Haben has published a book called Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered H...

Hostage: A spider, starvation and solitude in the desert from 2021-11-15T12:07

While travelling through West Africa in 2018, Canadian Edith Blais and her companion Luca Tacchetto were kidnapped. They were taken to the desert in a lawless area of Mali where groups linked to al...

The Holocaust survivor who became a TikTok star from 2021-11-10T13:56

Lily Ebert was just a teenager when war broke out across Europe. Born into a large Hungarian-Jewish family, she was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp after Germany invaded Hungary in 1944. S...

'Love finds a way' - a bond that overcame decades of separation from 2021-11-09T12:00

Jeanne Gustavson met Steve Watts as an undergraduate at university in Chicago, but her family disapproved of their interracial relationship. The pressure became too much, and Jeanne broke up with S...

'Honour' made my father a murderer from 2021-11-08T12:45

At the age of 16 Amina was happy and in love with a local boy in Jordan. She dreamt of their wedding and future together. But then she discovered a secret about her sister, which brought 'shame' o...

The medical textbook that inspired me to flee my homeland from 2021-11-04T12:45

Dr Waheed Arian spent his early childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan conflict. He and his family would often hide in cellars to escape the fighting and they were soon forced to ...

The man and the shark from 2021-11-03T12:37

Almost every day for 40 years, expert diver Jim Abernethy has been swimming with sharks at a patch of shallow crystal-clear ocean in the Bahamas known as Tiger Beach. At any given moment Jim can be...

Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history from 2021-11-01T16:34

Grace M. Cho grew up Korean-American in a small town in Washington state. Her mother, Koonja, was a Korean woman who met Grace’s white-American father – a merchant marine – on a US military base in...

I found my son 32 years after he was kidnapped from 2021-10-30T09:00

In 1988 Li Jingzhi’s 2-year-old son was abducted from a hotel lobby in China and disappeared without a trace. She never stopped looking for him, appearing on numerous Chinese television shows and d...

Miss Pat: The Chinese-Jamaican matriarch of reggae from 2021-10-28T11:00

In the late 1950s, Patricia Chin – aka Miss Pat – abandoned a career in nursing and, with her husband Vincent, started selling old jukebox records out of a grocery store. Their business moved to do...

People used to stare at me. I fight back with my paintbrush from 2021-10-27T17:26

American artist Riva Lehrer was born with spina bifida. She endured countless medical procedures through her childhood and adolescence and was told she would never have a job, a romantic relationsh...

"I'm a fighter": The Dalit lawyer taking on the caste system from 2021-10-25T11:45

Manjula Pradeep was born in Western India to a Dalit family, a community considered to be on the lowest rung of the caste ladder. Growing up she experienced discrimination and indignity because of ...

Ice Prince: The making of a Nigerian hip hop star from 2021-10-23T09:00

Growing up in the city of Jos in central Nigeria, Panshak Zamani better known as Ice Prince, never set out to become a musician. But through personal loss and the violent crisis he saw unfolding on...

The secret that nearly destroyed our marriage from 2021-10-21T11:45

For nearly 30 years Bobby and Cheryl Love lived a very ordinary married life together in New York. They raised four children, worked hard, attended church…but Cheryl could never shake the feeling t...

The locked-in boy and the brain experiment from 2021-10-20T11:45

Erik Ramsey was seriously injured in a car crash when he was 16 years old. He became locked-in and lost all voluntary muscle function except for the ability to move his eyes up and down. His father...

The spy who pretended to be homeless from 2021-10-19T11:45

Tom Marcus - not his real name - was a spy; an undercover agent for the British security agency, MI5. For several months, he pretended to be a homeless man living on the streets of London. He went ...

‘Born lucky’: Escaping the Khmer Rouge from 2021-10-18T15:58

According to Cambodian folklore, Sieu Do was born with a ‘cloak of good fortune’. His family believed it helped them to survive under the brutal regime in the late 1970s. Sieu was a teenager who co...

The uncomfortable truth hidden in my DNA from 2021-10-16T08:30

Hiram Johnson is a former policeman who decided to use his investigative skills on his own family. He grew up knowing nothing about this father’s ancestry. In his quest for answers, he uncovered a ...

The man who (re)painted the Mona Lisa from 2021-10-14T13:34

When some film producers asked artist Adebanji Alade if he'd like to take up a challenge to repaint Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa in just a month, he thought it sounded like a bad idea - but he sai...

Agent Orange: A Vietnamese grandmother's last battle from 2021-10-12T16:15

When Tran To Nga was growing up in Vietnam during the 1950s, she had a close relationship with her mother - an important figure in the resistance movement against the regime of South Vietnam. Durin...

The Somali prisoner, the secret language and the life-saving book from 2021-10-11T14:39

Mohamed Barud was losing hope in a Somali prison, when an inmate in a neighbouring cell devised a secret language and tapped out the Russian novel Anna Karenina through his wall... for Mohamed, the...

The inside story of a Muslim drag queen from 2021-10-09T08:30

Amrou al-Kadhi - who goes by the pronoun ‘they’ - was raised Muslim, but even as a kid Amrou was different. They had no interest in playing with boys their age, and instead loved dressing up with t...

"The camera was my shield" - a refugee films his journey from 2021-10-08T15:12

Hassan Akkad was an amateur filmmaker forced to flee Syria, having been detained twice by regime forces. His destination was the UK, and on the way he used his camera to document the toughest chapt...

My teacher became my torturer from 2021-10-05T11:45

Mirsad Solakovic grew up in a Bosnian Muslim family during the 1980s, in a country where people from a range of different ethnic groups and religions lived side by side. This harmony was shattered ...

The immigration lawyer who hid her undocumented past from 2021-10-04T11:45

Qian Julie Wang arrived in the United States from China at the age of 7. Her family didn’t have permission to be in the country and so she always told people she’d been born there. But after fulfil...

Addicted to my son's addiction from 2021-10-02T08:32

When US journalist David Sheff realised that his beloved teenage son Nic was addicted to the highly-dangerous drug crystal meth, he tried to do everything to help him. Could this family break free ...

A footballing legend's gambling secret from 2021-09-30T15:55

Footballer Peter Shilton stood in goal for England 125 times and faced Diego Maradona's infamous 'Hand of God' goal - but off the pitch he battled a secret gambling addiction for 45 years. Then a c...

I went backpacking and became an accidental celebrity from 2021-09-29T11:45

After Daniel Tyler dropped out of school and fell in with the wrong crowd, he decided to go backpacking to escape it all. The Englishman ended up on a tiny Malaysian island and was living a relaxed...

The secret mission to rescue women kidnapped by IS from 2021-09-28T11:45

For five years, a young Yazidi woman called Leila was held captive by the Islamic State group. She ended up in Al-Hol, a large and volatile internment camp in northern Syria holding thousands of IS...

Finding healing in the sea that took my family from 2021-09-27T14:50

Geraldine Mullan lived with her husband John and their two children Tomás and Amelia in a town on the beautiful Irish coastline of County Donegal – a salty inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. They all lov...

The heavy metal boys from the dump from 2021-09-25T08:32

Cambodia's biggest rubbish dump was home to thousands of children, picking through rubbish to sell. From this bleak wasteland emerged a band, Doch Chkae - young musicians who grew up in extreme pov...

The sinking of a pirate radio ship from 2021-09-23T11:45

Nick Richards was a DJ for Radio Caroline, an unlicensed offshore radio station operating off the coast of the UK. This was the late 1970s, and millions of people were tuning in, but there were pro...

I hit puberty, then burned down my family home from 2021-09-22T12:31

When Nikki Owen was 18, she set fire to the family home while her mother was still inside. Her mother escaped but Nikki found herself in court, accused of intending to kill her. This was the culmi...

I stole a safe, and faced the dilemma of my life from 2021-09-20T11:45

Matthew Hahn used to burgle houses in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for a drug habit. One fateful night in 2005 he stole a safe from someone’s home, hoping that its contents would fund his next...

The first beauty queen in a free South Africa from 2021-09-18T08:32

Basetsana Kumalo is easily one of South Africa’s most recognisable celebrity figures. She shot to fame as Miss South Africa in 1994, just months after Nelson Mandela was elected president. Basetsan...

The epic road trip that taught me how to live again from 2021-09-16T11:45

After graduating from university, Suleika Jaouad had moved to Paris, found love and was starting to pursue her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. But a leukaemia diagnosis at 22 put an end ...

Why this Covid doctor hid his homeless past from 2021-09-14T11:50

Emmanuel Taban spent his childhood as a witness to the violent civil war in Sudan. He grew up in what is now South Sudan but, by the time he was a teenager, he'd spent time in prison – falsely accu...

The murder case that started a cyber sleuth revolution from 2021-09-13T11:50

For decades, no one knew who ‘Tent Girl’ was – a female corpse found in the woods, wrapped in a tent canvas. That was until Todd Matthews, whose father in law discovered the body, became consumed b...

Escaping after an IS massacre from 2021-09-09T11:30

Ali Hussein Kadhim was a new Iraqi army recruit when the Islamic State group first emerged. As the militants approached, he and thousand of other unarmed cadets fled their base in Tikrit, but they ...

I ran away from slavery; now I help others escape from 2021-09-08T11:45

Analiza Guevarra made the painful decision to leave her family behind in the Philippines in order to find work abroad. She felt she had little choice: the family was in debt, and despite working se...

The schoolgirl fraudster who found redemption in ballroom from 2021-09-07T11:00

Shannon Balenciaga was a fashion-obsessed teen who found herself in prison after cooking up a multi-million dollar fraud scheme. Living behind bars at such a young age, she thought her life was ove...

'If you cut out part of my brain am I still Jody?' from 2021-09-06T11:45

Jody grew up with many anxieties, especially around death. His father and brother both died while he was still in his teens. Years later he started to have seizures. He was diagnosed with epilepsy ...

Helping refugees saved my life from 2021-09-02T11:45

Kon Karapanagiotidis has always felt like an outsider. Growing up as the child of poor Greek migrants in rural Australia, he was bullied and subjected to racist taunts that left deep scars. But as ...

From Gaza to NASA: A Space Odyssey from 2021-09-01T11:45

Engineer Loay Elbasyouni was part of the team that created an innovative type of helicopter that flew over the surface of Mars in April 2021. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, performed the first ev...

From rehab to ten thousand reservations - the many lives of chef, Erin French from 2021-08-30T11:45

A decade ago Erin French's life was in tatters. She was in rehab having lost her restaurant, her home and even custody of her son. Today, she runs one of the hardest to book restaurants in the US. ...

We left as kayakers and came back as dissidents from 2021-08-26T11:49

In the late 1970s, a bunch of fun-loving young Polish guys fed up with living under communism built themselves some kayaks and set off on an adventure. Despite their initial lack of experience, equ...

The secret link between two gymnasts from 2021-08-25T12:04

Dominique Moceanu was part of the so-called Magnificent Seven, the USA women's gymnastics team who took gold at the 1996 Olympic Games. But she had a rough time, and was speaking out during the rec...

Undercover in a nursing home at the age of 83 from 2021-08-24T11:45

After his wife died, 83-year-old Sergio Chamy was feeling lost and alone, so when he spotted a job advert in a newspaper looking for gentlemen in their 70s to 90s, he answered it. He was more than ...

The joy of skiing blind from 2021-08-23T11:45

Mike Brace lost his sight after a childhood accident - but he adapted fast and soon discovered the freedom and excitement he craved in the sport of blind skiing. Having represented Great Britain at...

The painful secret I hid from my twin from 2021-08-21T08:30

When Alex Lewis was 18 he had an accident that caused him to lose his memory. The only person he could remember was Marcus, his identical twin brother. He became the person Alex most relied upon to...

Danny Trejo: The ex-con who cracked Hollywood from 2021-08-18T19:08

Die, go insane or go to jail: these were the options Danny Trejo saw for himself as a young man growing up in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Pacoima. Under the wing of his career-criminal uncle, ...

Josephine Baker: My mother, the superstar singer and spy - Part 2 from 2021-08-17T11:45

When Jari Hannu Bouillon was growing up, his mother was one of the most famous women in the world. Josephine Baker had shot to fame in the 1920s in Paris as a dancer, singer and actress. She also w...

Josephine Baker: My mother, the superstar singer and spy - Part 1 from 2021-08-16T11:45

In the 1920s a young dancer from the US took Paris by storm. Her name was Josephine Baker and she was known for her risqué performances, most famously when she danced while wearing a skirt made of ...

The mountain between us from 2021-08-14T08:32

In the 1990s, Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker were earning reputations as some of the best mountain climbers in the world. Jenni, Alex's wife, was a constant support. But after a fateful expedition on a...

I found the Titanic during a top-secret Cold War mission from 2021-08-12T11:47

For more than 70 years oceanographers and scientists searched for the wreckage of the most famous ship in recent history - the Titanic. Then in 1985 Robert Ballard was on a classified US Navy missi...

The improbable rise of Europe’s 'Tofu King' from 2021-08-11T11:45

When Bernard Drosihn was growing up in 1970s Germany he rebelled against the predominantly meat-heavy diet. These were the days when no one around him had even heard of vegetarianism. He later spen...

I changed my name to change my life from 2021-08-10T11:45

James Plummer Jr grew up navigating poverty and instability; his dad was a drug dealer and he moved around a lot, changing schools, houses and states multiple times. One day, when he was nine years...

Tarantulas, Gandalf and my dying brother's bucket list from 2021-08-09T12:46

Royd Tolkien is the great-grandson of JRR Tolkien - writer of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Growing up, Royd and his younger brother Mike were very close, but also very different - Mike was...

I saw a smile on the suicide bomber's face from 2021-08-05T11:50

In August 2006, 17-year-old Qusay Hussein was playing a game of volleyball with his brothers and friends in his home country Iraq.  As they were playing a man drove a truck onto the local sports pi...

The criminal double life of a stage actor from 2021-08-04T11:50

Jack Charles is a venerated Aboriginal Australian actor, but at one point addiction led him to a life of crime. For years, after curtain fell, he'd slip away to burgle houses. He spoke to Outlook's...

The Omani football nerd who went from player to pundit from 2021-08-03T11:50

Rumaitha Al Busaidi is credited with being the first female football analyst in the Arab world, but she started as a footballer in the first national women's team of Oman. When their funding was cu...

Helping the drug addict who stole my dog to get into rehab from 2021-08-02T11:06

Canadian Brayden Morton was devastated when his beloved dog Darla was stolen from him. He ended up tracking her down but when he encountered the thief, he saw a distressed young homeless woman with...

What Susan did on Death Row from 2021-07-31T09:09

Ugandan Susan Kigula was a young mother when she was sentenced to hang for murder. She always maintained her innocence and sang songs of sorrow in a choir she formed with her fellow inmates on deat...

'Horses saved my life' - how a boy from West Philly made polo history from 2021-07-29T11:45

Kareem Rosser grew up in one of Philadelphia’s most deprived neighbourhoods - an unlikely environment to discover a love for the elite game of polo, also known as the sport of kings. He shares his ...

The 80s song that brought back my memories from 2021-07-28T11:45

In the aftermath of a car accident at 19 years old, Thomas Leeds was left with no memories of his childhood, of his family and friends, even cultural references were all wiped away. As Thomas bega...

The train driver asking men to open up about mental health from 2021-07-26T12:13

Heather Waugh is Scotland’s only female freight train driver, and she’s committed to improving the mental health of her male colleagues. Her work was inspired partly by a traumatic incident she wit...

The Paralympian who was trapped inside her body from 2021-07-24T08:32

When Victoria Arlen was a child, she had dreams of being an athlete. But at the age of 11 she became unwell and lost consciousness, only to wake up years later in a hospital bed locked into her bod...

Recording my first album as a man from 2021-07-22T11:50

Cidny Bullens is a singer-songwriter whose career first took off in the 1970s, touring with Elton John and singing on the soundtrack for the movie Grease. Solo success would follow with two Grammy ...

Punk, God, and my search for truth from 2021-07-21T12:00

When 17-year-old Paloma Romero travelled to the UK in the early 1970s, she was in search of freedom and opportunities that didn't exist in her native Spain, ruled at the time by the dictator Franco...

Seven months trapped in an airport from 2021-07-20T11:50

Hassan Al Kontar always dreamed of being a journalist, but it was a dream he felt he couldn't pursue in his native Syria, so in 2006 he moved to the United Arab Emirates. But when the Syrian confli...

From songbird to birdsong expert from 2021-07-19T11:50

Professor Gisela Kaplan has had a lifelong bond with birds. As a lonely child in post-war Berlin, she would visit a family of swans for company. They made her feel safe and comfortable, offering ...

Trapped in a "metal coffin" on the ocean floor from 2021-07-17T08:32

In 1988, after colliding with a fishing trawler at the surface, the Peruvian submarine Pacocha sank to the bottom of the Pacific ocean. With 22 men trapped inside, with no water, a fire on board an...

A decade without Dan: The search for my brother gave me purpose from 2021-07-15T13:53

On the 15th of July, 2011, 24-year-old Dan O’Keeffe went missing from his parents’ home in the state of Victoria, Australia. The family reported him missing but as there were no suspicious circums...

From intensive care to the Olympic podium from 2021-07-14T11:00

Keeth Smart is an all-time great in the US in the sport of fencing. He was the first American to be ranked the number one fencer in the world. But in 2004 he suffered a devastating defeat at the Ol...

Birdwatching with the men who kidnapped me from 2021-07-13T11:30

In 2004, young biologist Diego Calderón was captured while on a field trip in the Colombian Andes. His captors were Farc guerrillas, who held him for three months, seeking a ransom payment. Life in...

Banned from voting for my wife, so we changed the law from 2021-07-12T11:00

When Desmond Meade’s wife Sheena ran for public office in Florida, he wanted nothing more than for her to win. But there was one thing he couldn’t do – vote for her. As an ex-felon, Desmond had a l...

A plane crash left me lost in the Amazon from 2021-07-08T11:45

Antônio Sena is a Brazilian pilot who survived a dramatic plane crash in the Amazon rainforest earlier this year. He found himself alone, with very little food, and hundreds of kilometres from the ...

Stories from Syria's secret library from 2021-07-07T11:45

In 2015 the Syrian town of Darayya was under siege. Its residents were being subjected to almost constant shelling, no-one could enter or leave, food was running out and there wasn’t enough medicin...

Rugby star Gareth Thomas: Strong, vulnerable and HIV positive from 2021-07-06T11:45

Gareth Thomas is one of the most successful and famous Welsh rugby players of all time. He's also celebrated for being the first rugby player in the world to come out as gay. But when he was diagno...

My unknown song became a political anthem in Hong Kong from 2021-07-05T11:45

Matthew 'Kashy' Keegan knew from a very young age that he wanted to be a pop star. He just didn't know how. He spent years writing and making music and knocking on the doors of the music industry b...

The siege and the cat that saved my life from 2021-07-01T11:45

Aged 16 Amra Sabic El-Rayess was a grade-A student with a bright future ahead but then one day when she got to school almost all her ethnic Serb classmates were gone. This was Biha? in Bosnia Her...

Making friends with the man who stole my paintings from 2021-06-30T11:45

In 2015, Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova had two of her paintings stolen from a gallery in the Norwegian capital Oslo. Months later, a surprising encounter with one of the thieves in the courtroom l...

Life as the UK's first black TV reporter from 2021-06-29T11:45

Sir Trevor McDonald grew up in Trinidad, but when he got a job with the BBC World Service, he moved to the UK. He went on to become the first black television reporter and one of the country's most...

Discovering my sister's inner world from 2021-06-28T11:00

A complicated sisterhood: growing up, Arifa Akbar and her older sister Fauzia had shared everything from a bedroom, to secrets, to favourite movies and books. They'd moved from Lahore, Pakistan to ...

My life collecting the folk songs of Iraq from 2021-06-24T11:50

Sa'di al-Hadithi is one of Iraq's best-loved vocalists, known for researching, collecting and translating the folk songs and poetry from the area around the city of Haditha, where he grew up. Raise...

I survived Chechnya's 'gay purge' from 2021-06-23T11:06

In March 2017 Amin Dzhabrailov was dragged out of the hair salon where he worked and bundled into the boot of a car. It was the start of an unprecedented crackdown targeting LGBT people in the Russ...

My mother, India’s forgotten disco diva from 2021-06-22T11:00

In 2014, Debayan Sen was cleaning the family attic in Kolkata when he made an unexpected discovery: a dusty, old vinyl record called Disco Jazz. What astonished him was that his mother Rupa was on ...

Hunting 'The Serpent': the diplomat turned detective from 2021-06-21T11:06

There are disturbing descriptions throughout this episode. In the 1970s a serial killer was on the loose in South East Asia. His name was Charles Sobhraj, better known as 'The Serpent'. When tour...

Frank Sinatra's Australian showdown from 2021-06-19T08:30

In 1974, Australian concert producer Robert Raymond got the gig of his life – organising the comeback tour of his musical idol, Frank Sinatra. The anticipation in Australia was huge and the tour so...

A top Iranian chess umpire and her impossible decision from 2021-06-17T13:22

As the only female Category-A International Arbiter in Asia, Shohreh Bayat has represented Iran at chess tournaments all around the world. That position came with a big responsibility and a lot of ...

Living without time: The cave experiment we didn't want to end from 2021-06-16T12:48

Christian Clot is an explorer who travels to the world's most inhospitable places to try and survive. But recently, he worked with scientists on something a little different. Christian took 14 othe...

The quiet Louisiana grandma who became an environmental warrior from 2021-06-15T14:25

69-year-old Sharon Lavigne has six children and 12 grandchildren and, by her own admission, has never been one for public speaking. She has lived in St James Parish in Louisiana her whole life. It'...

Andy Cole: Goals, glory and the battle for his life from 2021-06-14T11:45

Andy Cole is one of England’s most successful footballers, notably part of the legendary Manchester United squad that won a historic treble in 1999. His path to the top wasn’t easy – as a young pla...

The spies in my house from 2021-06-12T08:45

Arrested, interrogated and watched: Ulrike Poppe was a dissident in the former GDR and spent 15 years being spied on by the East German secret police - the Stasi- who installed secret microphones i...

‘Aids Angel’ – I gave love in a time of prejudice and fear from 2021-06-10T12:46

As a young woman in the mid-1980s, Ruth Coker Burks had a chance encounter with a man with Aids, who had been left to die alone in a quarantined hospital room in Hot Springs, Arkansas in the US. Sh...

The doctor treating children 8000 miles away from 2021-06-09T15:11

Meena Said is an endocrine surgeon working in California. Her days are spent treating and operating on patients, many of whom have very complex medical needs. But after a hard day at work, rather t...

Saving the songs of the Sahara from 2021-06-08T12:13

Fadimata Walet Oumar learned how to sing and dance in northern Mali under the light of the desert moon. Her people, the Tuaregs, traditionally lived as nomads on the fringes of the Sahara but succe...

Keeping up with Australia's rebellious Buddhist nun from 2021-06-07T11:45

Robina Courtin grew up in Melbourne, Australia. As a teenager attending Catholic school she felt she was both holy and a rebel. Eventually she became a hippie, then a radical feminist, and then got...

The perilous world of a ‘cult deprogrammer’ from 2021-06-02T11:40

Rick Alan Ross was selling and restoring cars when his grandmother’s Jewish nursing home was secretly infiltrated by a Christian group that tried to convert her. Rick started investigating, which l...

Fighting to free my daughter from the Nxivm 'sex cult' from 2021-05-31T11:06

In 2011, the former Dynasty actor Catherine Oxenberg and her 19-year-old daughter India took a course from the self-help organisation Nxivm (pronounced Nexium). It was a pivotal experience for Indi...

My big fake wedding: uncovering an outlandish deception from 2021-05-29T08:32

A fake wedding, a double life and forged documents. In 2013 investigative journalist Benita Alexander was making a documentary about 'super-surgeon' Paolo Macchiarini and his pioneering synthetic o...

The nightclub fire that rocked Romania from 2021-05-27T11:50

When Tedy Ursuleanu went to see a gig at the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, in the autumn of 2015, she was lucky to escape with her life. A fire swept through the venue, which only had o...

London’s revolutionary kiss-in from 2021-05-25T12:59

Ted Brown is a black LGBT rights pioneer who helped organise the UK’s first Gay Pride march in 1972, featuring a mass ‘kiss-in’ that, at the time, would have been considered gross indecency, which ...

Rickie Lee Jones: Why music became my bridge to the world from 2021-05-24T15:09

Rickie Lee Jones was making up songs from the age of four. Part of a musical family - her grandparents were vaudeville stars in Chicago - she says music acted as an "accidental bridge" between her ...

Going to sea to honour my son from 2021-05-20T18:03

Yayi Bayam Diouf's son was a fisherman, until poor catches drove him to pursue a new life in Europe. But on the hazardous crossing from Senegal to the Canary Islands, his boat went down in a storm,...

My forbidden love for a US soldier from 2021-05-19T13:31

Mortada Gzar experienced violence and persecution as a gay teenager under Saddam Hussein's regime. He tells Jo Fidgen how he tried to immerse himself in religion to overcome his feelings, later ser...

Dancing behind bars in Burkina Faso from 2021-05-18T12:14

After striking doctors refused to treat his dying son, Agibou Bougobali Sanou was so angry that he was tempted to kill in revenge. Dancing helped to relieve this urge, so he decided to go into a da...

What my father wouldn’t tell me from 2021-05-17T11:45

Carol Benjamin's family was perfectly ordinary - until the military took over in Brazil in the 1960s. Her father Cesar, who was just a schoolboy at the time, became an underground revolutionary in ...

The black ballerina who didn't give up from 2021-05-15T08:30

Growing up in London, Julie Felix always dreamed of dancing on the city's most famous stages, but she says she ended up leaving the UK in the 1970s after a ballet company excluded her because of th...

What really happened on the 'Sex Raft' from 2021-05-13T11:45

In 1973 Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés decided to create an experiment to find out what drives people to commit acts of violence. He put a group of men and women from different parts of th...

How did this man find two lost Rembrandts? from 2021-05-12T12:41

Jan Six is a Dutch art dealer whose ancestor, also called Jan Six, was painted by the Dutch Master Rembrandt in the 17th century. So when, in 2016, Jan uncovered a lost painting by Rembrandt, the n...

Secrets of my family's lost café from 2021-05-11T11:45

Meriel Schindler grew up in London in a family of émigrés. They were Jewish and had fled Austria in the late 1930s as Hitler's Nazi Party took over and the violent persecution of Jews turned into t...

The music star who was born into a cult from 2021-05-10T11:45

Mikel Jollett started life in a California-based cult called Synanon. What began as a drug rehabilitation programme that helped his father kick a heroin addiction later turned into a cult where chi...

I was the sole survivor of a plane crash from 2021-05-08T08:32

When a plane carrying 11-year-old Norman Ollestad, his father and his father’s girlfriend got caught in a snowstorm and crashed into the remote California mountains in 1979, Norman was the only sur...

How I sang for my freedom from 2021-05-06T13:14

When Kurdish folk singer Nawroz Oramari was a teenager growing up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he was told he'd be executed if he was caught singing - he and his father even had to sign a pledge sayin...

The surfer who fought apartheid to become a world champion from 2021-05-05T11:45

Cass Collier grew up surfing with his dad in apartheid South Africa, where signs designated the beaches as "whites-only", "blacks-only", or "coloureds-only" areas. The rules were enforced, often br...

Hunting for my past in a Hong Kong stairwell from 2021-05-04T11:30

In 1960, Claire Martin was abandoned in a Hong Kong stairwell at just two days old. Like many babies at the time she was taken to the UK for adoption, but growing up, she became more and more deter...

The daring prison escape of an Argentine footballer from 2021-05-03T11:45

In November 1977 two men kidnapped minor league footballer Claudio Tamburrini. He was taken to a detention centre run by the Argentine Air Force where he was tortured and imprisoned. The country ha...

My mother’s fake name and secret past from 2021-04-29T17:10

American lawyer Justine Cowan grew up in a wealthy neighbourhood of San Francisco; her childhood was full of privilege, with music lessons and horse riding. It was a lifestyle that seemed fitting f...

I became a supermodel overnight and didn't know from 2021-04-28T11:45

Lisa Ray was just a teenager when she fell in love with the glamour of 1990s Mumbai. She was dipping her toe into modelling when a serious car crash at home in Canada left her mother paralysed and ...

From saving goals to saving lives from 2021-04-27T12:11

In 1989, Canadian ice hockey goaltender Clint Malarchuk was playing for top National Hockey League team the Buffalo Sabres, when he suffered a horrific injury to his neck. Knowing his mother was wa...

My mission to save the 'Russian spy whale' from 2021-04-26T11:45

Norwegian fisherman Joar Hesten was fishing for cod in the Arctic when he came across a white whale wearing a harness. He freed the mysterious beluga from the straps, and then saw the harness was l...

My life as a millennial Yoruba priestess from 2021-04-24T08:30

Beyoncé, mermaids and Satan? Outlook Weekend is in Nigeria looking at the mysteries and misconceptions surrounding the traditional Yoruba religion – and what it takes to be a modern devotee of this...

Singing for my murdered sister helps me heal from 2021-04-22T11:45

In 2015, Nathalie Warmerdam was murdered by her ex-partner. She was one of three victims that day; he also killed two other former partners, Anastasia Kuzyk and Carol Culleton. Basil Borutski was f...

My 30-year fight for justice for my mum from 2021-04-21T11:45

Lee Lawrence was 11 years old when his mother, Cherry Groce, was shot during a police raid on their family home in Brixton, south London. The police had been looking for Lee’s brother, Michael, who...

Hunting for a monster in the desert from 2021-04-20T11:37

Following a chance encounter with a Moroccan fossil hunter, palaeontologist Dr Nizar Ibrahim embarked on a search for the skeleton of the elusive Spinosaurus dinosaur. Presenter: Jo FidgenProduce...

Sin, sexuality and how Beyoncé became a lifeline from 2021-04-19T11:00

Paul Mendez is a British writer, Beyoncé superfan and once devout Jehovah's Witness. Growing up in the Midlands, where his Jamaican grandparents settled, Paul was all about preaching, paradise and ...

Bringing down a dictator from 2021-04-17T09:00

In the late 1990s, lawyer Jacqueline Moudeina took on one of the most important cases in African legal history – the trial of Chad's former dictator Hissène Habré. He's a man who had massacred and ...

Searching for a serial killer from my bedroom from 2021-04-14T11:45

Paul Haynes’ search for an elusive serial killer started when he was out of work and had to move back to his childhood home; this soon took over his life and became a full-time occupation. He then ...

The bowl of porridge that changed my life from 2021-04-13T11:45

When Elizabeth Nyamayaro was eight years old a severe drought hit her small Zimbabwean village. She was saved from starvation by a local United Nations aid worker, who gave her a bowl of porridge a...

The break-up that cost me my voice from 2021-04-12T15:59

Shirley Collins grew up in a folk music-loving family in Sussex, England, during World War Two, and announced her intention to become a folk singer when she was still just a teenager. Her career wo...

Secrets and Lies: China’s dissident cartoonist from 2021-04-10T09:00

Badiucao is one of China's most famous dissident cartoonists. His art is political and provocative - from poking fun at powerful Chinese figures like President Xi Jinping, to capturing the final da...

Secrets&Lies: Family secrets from 2021-04-08T11:45

In episode nine of Outlook's Secrets and Lies series we bring you two extraordinary stories of family secrets unravelled. Growing up in California, Rachel Mason and her brother Josh didn't kno...

Secrets&Lies: Imposters from 2021-04-07T11:45

This episode of our Secrets and Lies series is all about imposters. From the Outlook archive, we have two stories of lies so audacious that, when exposed, they caused shockwaves globally. Fab Morv...

Secrets&Lies: Fraudsters and forgers from 2021-04-06T11:45

In this episode we're reaching into the archive and retrieving stories of secrets and lies from the world of art. Over many years Shaun Greenhalgh created art forgeries in his garden shed in the ...

Secrets&Lies: Messages hidden in music from 2021-04-05T11:45

In this episode of our Secrets and Lies series we've delved into the archive to bring you incredible stories of secrets hidden in music. Advertising executive Juan Carlos Ortiz grew up in Colombia...

Secrets&Lies: The man who stole the President’s secrets from 2021-04-03T08:30

For many years, Uzbekistan was a particularly dangerous place to be a journalist. Speaking out against the government of former president Islam Karimov could lead to torture and a lengthy spell in ...

Secrets&Lies: Lives lived in shame from 2021-04-01T11:45

It's Secrets and Lies season on Outlook and we're revisiting some of the most fascinating stories from our archive on the theme. In this episode we hear about secrets borne out of shame. When Gai...

Secrets&Lies: The undercover operatives from 2021-03-31T07:30

In this episode of Outlook's Secrets and Lies series we're revisiting two astonishing stories from our archive about life undercover. As a young woman Ieva Lesinska was faced with an agonising cho...

Secrets&Lies: What my parent hid from me from 2021-03-30T11:45

We're delving into the Outlook archive to bring you stories about parents who kept shocking secrets from their children. In April 1997 a woman dressed as a nurse walked into a Cape Town hospital ...

Secrets&Lies: Lives destroyed online from 2021-03-29T11:45

It's secrets and lies season here on Outlook and we have two stories about the way lies and fake news online can wreak havoc in our offline lives. Monika Glennon is a Polish-born estate agent liv...

Spain's fearless barnacle-hunting sisters from 2021-03-28T08:00

Isabel and Susana González hunt percebes, also known as gooseneck barnacles. They're rather ugly crustaceans that can fetch thousands of dollars per kilogram at auction. To collect them, the Gonzál...

The architect who lost his sight but gained a vision from 2021-03-25T12:45

Chris Downey was always an intensely visual person - he was an architect working in California, a baseball coach and an avid cyclist. But at the age of 45 he went blind very suddenly after doctors ...

From classical piano to rock stardom in Japan from 2021-03-24T14:53

Yoshiki is one of Japan's biggest stars. Although he started as a classical pianist, he went on to become an extraordinary drummer who transformed the music scene in Japan with his wild performance...

Abandoned at sea for three years from 2021-03-23T14:16

Long stretches at sea are part of life for a merchant seaman so when Indian marine engineer Vikash Mishra accepted a job on a cargo ship in the Gulf, he expected a lengthy period away from his youn...

The child spy and her secret agent parents from 2021-03-22T12:45

For Sue-Ellen Kusher, nee Doherty, growing up in the suburbs of Brisbane was far from normal. Both her parents worked for the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation, ASIO, and in the early day...

Fear and fantasy TV in the siege of Aleppo from 2021-03-17T12:00

Ten years ago, Hatem was a student watching both season one of Game of Thrones and the Syrian revolution unfurl. But when the peaceful protest movement turned into devastating civil war, he wanted ...

The birthday gift that survived the Holocaust from 2021-03-16T12:46

For her 11th birthday in March 1942, a little girl called Eva Cohn asked her mother Sylvia to send her some of her own poems. At the time, Eva and her sister Myriam were in a Jewish children's home...

Married to a psychopath: my husband’s double life from 2021-03-15T12:45

Mary Turner Thomson’s life took a chilling turn after meeting the “perfect” man online. She had a call from her husband's "other wife" and discovered how life could be stranger than fiction. She t...

The child labourer who became a star of Mexico's food scene from 2021-03-14T08:30

The celebrated chef, nicknamed ‘Fast Eddie’, began picking fruit as an undocumented child in the US. He was deported having served time in prison for selling drugs - after turning himself in. Eduar...

The actress turning her back on Bollywood to follow her dad's dreams from 2021-03-11T12:45

Sonia Mann's life has been guided by the letter her father wrote her on her birth. In September 1990, when she was just 16 days old, her father was killed in the Indian city of Amritsar, when he wa...

The photoshoot that helped me grieve for my baby from 2021-03-10T12:50

Ashley Jones and her husband lost their daughter Skylar at just 21 months old to spinal muscular atrophy. Ashley poured her grief into the photos she had of her daughter. She had always been a keen...

I hated the word 'albino' from 2021-03-09T12:48

When Mala Bhargava was growing up, she found it hard to accept her appearance. Born with albinism, she had white hair and pale eyes and impaired vision. Her Indian mother was ashamed; she felt Mala...

The sport I love damaged my brain from 2021-03-08T12:45

From the time he started playing rugby at the age of four, Alix Popham and everyone around him knew he was destined for big things. He didn't disappoint, representing his country, Wales, more than ...

The Cuban dad who became a lifeline for Chernobyl's children from 2021-03-04T12:00

In 1990, Manuel Barriuso was a professor of Russian literature in Havana when one morning he was ordered to the city's paediatric hospital. Unknown to him, a plane-load of seriously ill children – ...

An Orthodox rapper in Jerusalem from 2021-03-03T12:45

Nissim Black grew up in the American city of Seattle, where he made his name rapping about drug dealing and drive-by shootings. These were all subjects that were familiar to him, and his music was ...

My son found his birth mother using Google Earth from 2021-03-02T12:45

Sue Brierley adopted her son, Saroo, after he had been found wandering the streets of Kolkata as a five year old. He had got on a train that took him across India and away from his birth family, an...

Taking over my parents' legendary jazz venue from 2021-03-01T12:45

In 1961, American couple Allan and Sandra Jaffe were on their honeymoon when they stumbled upon some of their favourite jazz musicians playing at a small art gallery in New Orleans. Within days the...

New York to Saigon: taking beers to my friends in a warzone from 2021-02-28T08:30

A crazy idea thrown around a neighbourhood pub soon became the adventure of a lifetime. In 1967 New-York-City-native Chickie Donahue crossed oceans and hitched rides across a warzone to hand-delive...

Egypt's only woman rally driver who "dances with the dunes" from 2021-02-25T12:45

Yara Shalaby is Egypt's first female rally driver. She's mastered the sport in some of the country's toughest desert terrain, while also putting up with a lot of detractors - people telling her tha...

Jail Time Records - songs from a Cameroon prison from 2021-02-24T12:45

Vidou H was a music producer and DJ with an enviable life in Cameroon, but everything changed when he and his brothers were falsely accused of murder. He was sent to a tough overcrowded prison to a...

We discovered we were stolen as babies from 2021-02-22T18:20

In 1975, when Maria Diemar was two months old, she was flown more than 8000 miles from Chile to Sweden to meet her adoptive parents. They couldn't have children of their own, and thought they could...

Swimming with polar bears – a photographer’s 'crazy' dream from 2021-02-18T12:45

The list of underwater predators that Amos Nachoum has photographed is long - it includes the Nile crocodile, the great white shark, orcas, anacondas and many other creatures that most of us would ...

Mary Wilson: her life as a Supreme from 2021-02-17T12:45

Last week the singer Mary Wilson died at the age of 76. She was born to a poor family in Mississippi, the daughter of an itinerant worker and a mother who couldn't read or write, but she grew up to...

Setting up a fake mafia to catch El Chapo from 2021-02-16T12:45

Infiltrating mobs, taking down contract killers and busting drug rings; this was the job of Special Agent Mike McGowan during his 30 year career in the FBI. He was already the expert in undercover ...

The scavenger who found a brass symphony from 2021-02-15T12:45

Ronald Kabuye grew up in the Katwe slums of Kampala, Uganda, scavenging for food and trying to sell scrap metal for cash. One day in the street he saw a performance by the M-Lisada marching band, a...

The making of the 'Wish Man' from 2021-02-14T09:00

Frank Shankwitz was the co-founder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organisation that since 1980 has granted hundreds of thousands of wishes for children with life-threatening medical conditions. ...

The voyage of The Fisherman's Friends from 2021-02-10T13:00

As the craze for sea shanties (started by Scottish postman Nathan Evans) continues to grow on social media worldwide, Outlook returns to Port Isaac, a tiny English village, where in 2019 Emily Webb...

The broken computer that unlocked my fortune from 2021-02-09T14:32

Freddie Figgers was abandoned as a baby by some rubbish bins. An elderly couple took him in and taught him right from wrong. He taught himself how to build a computer. When his beloved adoptive fat...

The record-breaking runner who hated her legs from 2021-02-08T16:37

Mimi Anderson started running at the age of 36. She wanted more shapely legs and so hit the gym. Mimi had a history of eating disorders, but her newfound love of running forced a change in her re...

My life by Whitney Houston's side from 2021-02-04T16:23

Robyn Crawford and Whitney Houston met as teenagers on a summer's day in 1980 and become inseparable for two decades. Robyn was Whitney Houston's personal assistant, for a while her lover, and alwa...

Inside the hospitals of lockdown Wuhan from 2021-02-03T15:42

When Chinese-American film director Hao Wu was approached to make a film about the 76 days of lockdown in Wuhan, he was eager to do it. Based in New York and unable to get back into China as the co...

That time I DJed from space from 2021-02-02T12:00

Four extraordinary stories that explore the thrills and chills of live music performances. PJ Powers, the South African singer who became the first white pop star to perform live to a black audie...

The gourmet chef who used to beg for food from 2021-02-01T17:12

Food has always been crucial in Sash Simpson’s life. Growing up alone on the streets of Chennai in India, it was the lack of food that he remembers. But after a chance encounter at a bus station hi...

The dark truth behind my songs from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Allison Moorer is an Oscar-nominated country music star. But shaping her lyrics and music are the traumatic deaths of both of her parents, in a murder-suicide, when she was just a teenager. She spe...

The Somali pirate tapes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Per Gullestrup was the consummate businessman, doing deals with international firms as CEO of a Danish shipping company. Then Somali pirates attacked one of his cargo ships and he had to learn how ...

A tale of two video games from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s a video game extravaganza on Outlook… Lual Mayen was born in what’s now South Sudan but his family had to flee from conflict in 1993. They made it to Uganda and set up home in a refugee camp....

A star is gone: Judy Garland's last act from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Judy Garland was a musical icon who spent her whole life in the spotlight. In 1969, she was in London for what would be her last ever UK shows. At the time, Rosalyn Wilder was a young production as...

I was jailed for having a stillbirth from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Teodora Vásquez is from El Salvador and in 2007 was pregnant and planning her future. However, when she had a stillborn baby Teodora was arrested and eventually sentenced to 30 years in prison for ...

My life as an undercover CIA agent: Part Two from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amaryllis Fox tells Jo Fidgen how she was head-hunted by two different spying agencies while studying at Oxford and Georgetown Universities. She was recruited by the CIA aged 21 and within a few ye...

My life as an undercover CIA agent: Part One from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When she was 21 Amaryllis Fox was recruited by the CIA, the American intelligence service, and became one of its youngest undercover agents. In part one of the interview, she tells Jo Fidgen how he...

Telling jokes about my refugee past from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Comedian Hung Le was born in Vietnam but had to flee to Australia during the Vietnam War. As a child, he had three heroes: Charlie Chaplin, Bruce Lee and his artist dad Thanh Nhon. All of these men...

Giving birth during a genocide from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Denise Uwimana was nine months pregnant when the Rwandan genocide started. As militia broke into her home and attacked her relatives, Denise's waters broke, her baby was coming. She tells Asya Fouk...

The man who makes Singapore laugh from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Comedian and performer Hossan Leong was one of the first to use Singlish, the English-based patois spoken in Singapore, on stage. He also tells Sharanjit how he kept making the country smile, even ...

Sunburnt, starving and stranded at sea from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After his boat capsized off the coast of Singapore, John Low spent four days alone clinging onto a flotation ring. When he was rescued he was badly sunburnt, starving and starting to hallucinate. ...

Girls don’t fight? I became a champion from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sharanjit Leyl is taking Outlook on a tour of her city – Singapore – through the extraordinary stories of people who live there. Growing up in Singapore, ‘Mighty’ May Ooi was told that ‘girls don’t...

How hunger made me a top chef from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week Outlook is coming from Singapore and today Rico Hizon takes us on a tour of the city through the extraordinary stories of people who live there. Douglas Ng is a hawker – a street food s...

Escaping lockdown in the Coral City from 2021-01-31T09:30

Colin Foord and Jared McKay are childhood best friends with a passion for aquatic life. As a kid Colin developed a strong love of sea life and would construct his own aquariums. Later, when Jay was...

Who says I can't go to school? from 2021-01-28T14:24

Homeira Qaderi lived for reading and writing. In the mid-1990s, when she was 13 years old, the Taliban banned girls from going to school in Afghanistan, so she set up a secret classroom in her kit...

My abuser used an alien plot to brainwash me from 2021-01-26T12:45

Warning: This programme contains descriptions of mental and sexual abuse which you may find distressing.In the 1970s child sexual abuse was rarely talked about and for some people, barely understoo...

The rap star saved by a nursing home from 2021-01-25T13:24

T La Rock grew up in New York's Bronx and is seen by many as a pioneer of the Hip Hop music genre. He became the first artist to be recorded by Def Jam records and performed around the world, but t...

The Iranian avocado quest that led to prison from 2021-01-24T09:30

Jason Rezaian was the Washington Post's bureau chief in Tehran. But a tongue-in-cheek campaign to bring avocados to the country caught the attention of the authorities and landed him in Iran's most...

'Document everything. Trust no one' from 2021-01-21T12:00

When the Islamic State group seized control of Mosul in 2014, the local historian Omar Mohammed made a promise to himself and his city: document everything, trust no one. He created the anonymous b...

‘I am sinking. This is not a joke. MAYDAY’ from 2021-01-20T22:50

When skipper Kevin Escoffier’s boat broke in half during a storm during the famous Vendée Globe sailing race, he found himself drifting in a life raft, alone at sea. He sent out one text message be...

The Beninese singer hustling for success in New York from 2021-01-19T12:45

Shirazee is a Beninese musician who's had to hustle hard for success. Born Paolo Prudencio, he experienced a violent robbery, a freak casino win, and a stint of homelessness, before establishing hi...

The match-making tree and other tales of unexpected romance from 2021-01-18T12:00

Nick and Diane Marson's flight was diverted after the 9/11 attacks. In the wake of one of the darkest periods in modern history, they met each other and found love on a remote island. Their story i...

Moana: the Polynesian family behind the smash hit songs from 2021-01-16T10:30

Opetaia Foa'i grew up in Samoa surrounded by the island's rhythms, sounds and songs. But surviving wasn't easy and his family moved to the city of Auckland in New Zealand. As he grew up in this new...

Tasting the desert with Chile's leading forager from 2021-01-14T12:45

As a child Patricia Pérez would accompany her grandmother on incredible adventures in Chile's Atacama Desert. There they would search for unique herbs and plants by day and sleep in caves at night....

I ran with the men, and changed history from 2021-01-13T12:45

Kathrine Switzer is a US runner whose dream - back in 1967 - was to be allowed to run a marathon. Back then there was a belief that women were physically incapable of doing such long distances, and...

Defending my dream cost my mother her life from 2021-01-12T12:48

Former US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey began writing to express her feelings about her violent stepfather. She told Oulook's Jo Fidgen how it became her comfort and career, after her worst fears...

The video that turned our lives upside down from 2021-01-11T12:49

Aboriginal Australian mum Yarraka Bayles was so exhausted by her young son's distress at being bullied, she did the only thing she could think of and streamed a video of him crying to show her comm...

The rebel musicians fighting India’s caste system from 2021-01-07T15:00

Tenma and Arivu are members of The Casteless Collective - an ensemble protest band from the city of Chennai in southern India. They channel their outrage towards caste oppression into song. Arivu h...

Seven songs to mourn seven black men from 2021-01-06T12:47

In the aftermath of a highly-publicised killing of an African American man by police in 2014, composer Joel Thompson started channelling his anger and sadness into music. He began setting the last ...

My husband came back from the dead from 2021-01-05T12:45

Back in 2015, Santoshi Tamang was told that her husband Subash had died in a car accident in Saudi Arabia. He'd left their home in Nepal to work there to pay off the family's debts. His body was fl...

Why I made a film in which I kill my dad from 2021-01-04T12:45

American filmmaker Kirsten Johnson’s most recent film is called ‘Dick Johnson is Dead’, it’s about her dad, a man she has adored her whole life. A few years ago Dick was diagnosed with dementia. Sc...

Elza Soares: invincible queen of samba from 2021-01-03T10:32

Born in a Rio de Janeiro favela, Elza Soares overcame poverty, child marriage and public scandal to become one of her country's most beloved singers. She started out in the smokey nightclubs of Rio...

The tale of the little Countess's little cello from 2020-12-31T13:57

When Christine Walevska was given a rare, one-eighth-size Bernardel cello at the age of eight and a half, she fell in love with the instrument immediately and it set her on a path to becoming an in...

How I became ‘Mr Vaquita’ from 2020-12-30T12:10

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho is a Mexican biologist who’s braved poachers and cartels in a quest to save the world’s most endangered marine mammal - a tiny porpoise known as vaquita. There’s only a handful...

The student who fought to pass Mexico’s historic ‘revenge porn’ law from 2020-12-30T11:50

As a teenager, Ana Baquedano sent a nude selfie to her boyfriend in exchange for a promise to delete it. Instead, he shared it. Ana was bullied, harassed and suffered from depression. But then she ...

The family murder that launched our campaign from 2020-12-29T12:00

Brothers Luke and Ryan Hart spent years trying to help their mum leave their abusive father. However, just a few days after they succeeded, their father killed her and their sister. Determined that...

My brother’s illness made me a “sickle cell warrior” from 2020-12-28T12:00

Tartania Brown is from New York City and she has sickle cell anaemia, a genetic disorder that affects red blood cells and can be fatal. At one stage, Tartania didn’t know if she would reach her 20s...

The "five careers" of Bettye Lavette from 2020-12-26T13:00

Bettye Lavette was a 16-year-old growing up in Detroit when she had her first hit, My Man, in 1962. In 2009 she performed at President Obama's inauguration celebration and called it "the greatest d...

After facing death row, the inmate who turned investigator from 2020-12-24T12:00

Sohail Yafat was in his 20s and working in an IT college in Lahore when he was wrongfully incarcerated for murder and facing death row. Behind bars he continued to fight for justice, while also qui...

The sisterhood vs the man who gave them HIV from 2020-12-23T12:00

Diane Reeve is a Texan martial arts teacher who discovered that her boyfriend had knowingly infected her and many other women with HIV/Aids. She then tracked down a number of his former partners, r...

Surviving civil war with a tracksuit and tennis racquet from 2020-12-22T12:00

Sam Jalloh learned to play tennis barefoot, with a racquet fashioned out of plywood. He'd grown up poor in Freetown and his motivation to play was at first driven by the allure of a fresh tracksuit...

My music bus healing a gang divide from 2020-12-21T12:50

Justin Finlayson is a former bus driver on a mission to save young lives. He comes from an area of London which suffers from a long term gang divide. When the violence got particularly bad back in ...

The Godfather of Hollywood sound from 2020-12-19T21:32

Walter Murch is a superstar sound designer, who's worked on some of Hollywood's biggest films like The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. His work has immersed audiences in everything from the c...

Discovering Stalin's million-dollar wine cellar from 2020-12-17T12:45

In 1998, Australian wine merchant John Baker was puzzled when he received a cryptic message and a list of wines he, on initial inspection, had never heard of. Once he cracked the code, he realised...

“The best ending to 2020… from 2020-12-17T06:00

...that I can possibly imagine.” It’s time for the BBC Inspirations Awards - a celebration of incredible people and stories. A perfect antidote to a challenging year. Find out about this year’s w...

The epic Arabic poem that was born in a stable from 2020-12-16T16:01

Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh was confined to a deserted stable for having banned books in his possession while serving as a conscript in the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. It was i...

Who do you think you are? from 2020-12-15T12:46

In 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in Texas. Several years later, he apparently resurfaced in Spain, and he was reunited with his family. But all was not as it seemed. Private inves...

The 'Supervet': from bullies to bionic limbs from 2020-12-14T13:15

Growing up on a farm in Ireland as a lonely and unpopular child, Noel Fitzpatrick found solace in an invented superhero, ‘Vetman’, who rescued all the broken animals of the world. He’s now a pionee...

Becoming 'brothers' with my guard in Guantanamo Bay from 2020-12-10T12:45

In 2002, Mauritanian engineer Mohamedou Salahi was detained by American intelligence services. They believed he was a senior figure in al-Qaeda and took him to Guantanamo Bay, the notorious US pris...

The secretaries who inspired the hit movie 9 to 5 from 2020-12-09T12:45

Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 has long been an anthem for working women around the world. She wrote it on the set of a movie - the hit 80s comedy 9 to 5 starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and of course Dolly...

The man behind Mindhunter: face to face with serial killers from 2020-12-08T12:52

In the 1970s John E. Douglas was a relatively young FBI agent who would travel around the US teaching police officers the bureau's tactics. John knew he was inexperienced compared to the seasoned d...

The sailor and the pirate king from 2020-12-07T12:45

Indian sailor Sudeep Choudhary was kidnapped at gunpoint by Nigerian pirates. He and his crew were taken to a swampy jungle prison in the Niger Delta where human skeletons hung in the trees. The ho...

Rufus Wainwright: My music and my mother from 2020-12-05T21:30

Rufus Wainwright was once described by Elton John as 'the greatest songwriter on the planet'. He's the son of two North American folk music legends – Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle but w...

Bonus podcast: The Conversation, BBC 100 Women from 2020-12-04T10:09

Celebrating the BBC 100 Women list 2020, Kim Chakanetsa and a panel of inspirational and influential women discuss whether some changes made because of Covid-19 restrictions could be seen as positi...

My Falklands War: the woman with the white gloves from 2020-12-03T12:45

Sovereignty over the Falkland Islands - known in Argentina as the Islas Malvinas - is still the subject of a dispute between Britain and Argentina. Now that the last landmine has been cleared from ...

I learned my mum's identity via SMS from 2020-12-02T12:45

In the last chaotic days of the Vietnam War, thousands of children were sent away to be adopted in safer countries. Four-year-old My Huong went to Australia and it would be many years before she re...

Speaking through music: Me and my non-verbal sister from 2020-12-01T17:36

Jane is Ian Brennan’s older sister. She has Down’s syndrome and is largely non-verbal but the two of them have communicated through music their whole lives. Ian has shared that knowledge with commu...

Fighting plastic pollution in paradise from 2020-11-30T12:40

When Kristal Ambrose, who's from the Bahamas, had to hold down a sea turtle's flippers so that plastic could be removed from its intestines, she vowed never to drop plastic again. And her mission q...

The photo that exposed apartheid from 2020-11-29T09:45

It’s South Africa’s most iconic photograph – a dying 12-year-old school boy, Hector Pieterson, being carried away after he was shot by police during the 1976 Soweto Uprisings. The picture - taken b...

Zero-gravity highs and history-making lows from 2020-11-26T12:45

As a child Kathy Sullivan always dreamed of adventure, little did she know she would grow up to make history both in the depths of the ocean and in space. Kathy was one of Nasa's class of 1978, the...

The firefighting vets of Brazil from 2020-11-25T12:30

After wildfires broke out on an ecologically-rich Brazilian wetland area called the Pantanal, firefighting vet Carla Sassi and her team flew in to rescue wounded and trapped animals. She spoke to O...

A spy in the family from 2020-11-24T12:45

Peter Keup's family was shaped by the division of West and East Germany after the Second World War. He grew up in the East, cut off from relatives across the border. But when Peter’s parents applie...

Separated from my kids at the US-Mexico border from 2020-11-23T16:42

Rosayra Pablo Cruz tells how she fled Guatemala in April 2018 with two of her children after an attempt on her life and death threats against her eldest son. Hoping to be granted asylum in the Unit...

The IS orphans rescued by their grandpa from 2020-11-21T21:18

Patricio Galvez is a Chilean musician who has lived in Sweden for the last 30 years. In 2014 his daughter Amanda travelled to Syria with her children and joined the Islamic State group. When she wa...

Fire, ice and thunder: a chase on the high seas from 2020-11-19T15:08

The Thunder was the most notorious and elusive poaching ship in the world; for ten years governments had struggled to catch it. Then, in 2014, a crew from the organisation Sea Shepherd - known for ...

Skin: the scream that made me a rock star from 2020-11-18T12:30

Skin is the lead singer of Skunk Anansie, the multiplatinum-selling band whose political, in-your-face music stood out from the 1990s UK music scene. Skin had to forge her own path as a black, quee...

A scandal at the Oscars: Marlon Brando&me from 2020-11-16T14:36

When Hollywood legend, Marlon Brando won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather in 1973, he chose not to accept it. Instead he asked a young Native American woman called Sacheen Littlefea...

In bed with an assassin from 2020-11-14T16:00

Jason P. Howe was a British conflict photographer covering the war in Colombia, when he met a young woman at a bus stop. Her name was Marilyn, and they started a relationship that would last severa...

Unmasking a horror film icon from 2020-11-13T00:01

Kane Hodder has been dubbed ‘cinema’s most prolific killer’ for the long list of on-screen murderers he has portrayed over the last 40 years. He is best known as the man behind Jason Voorhees’ icon...

James Rhodes: My love letter to music from 2020-11-11T12:00

British concert pianist James Rhodes is a star in the world of classical music. He's won awards, had several hit albums, performed in top venues all over the world and Oscar-nominated actor Andrew ...

The wild ride of a Tamil comic book pioneer from 2020-11-10T13:00

This edition of Outlook is devoted to the impact of comic books and three remarkable journeys taken by artists and publishers who fell in love with comics as children. Indian comic enthusiast Vija...

CJ Daugherty’s world of literary escapism from 2020-11-09T12:30

Christi Daugherty – also known as CJ Daugherty – is a best-selling writer of Young Adult thrillers and crime novels. As a child, she would lose herself in books and literary adventures as a way of ...

The twists and turns of the Rubik's Cube from 2020-11-07T12:00

Outlook's Saskia Edwards goes in search of the elusive creator of what must be one of the most maddening games - the Rubik's Cube. On route she meets one of the fastest cubers in the world, Feliks ...

Revelations from El Salvador that healed my family from 2020-11-05T14:07

Born to Salvadoran immigrants, Roberto Lovato grew up in 1970s San Francisco. His father Ramon was involved in suspect business dealings, and could sometimes be angry and violent. As their relation...

'She came back to the clinic dancing' from 2020-11-04T13:20

Jalikatu Mustapha is one of just four eye doctors in the whole of Sierra Leone. Her work was recently recognised by Queen Elizabeth II. Jalikatu shared an online chat with the British monarch in wh...

Painting for our lives from 2020-11-02T12:47

Ben Quilty was one of Australia's most famous painters when he entered into an unusual friendship with a condemned man, Myuran Sukumaran, a convicted drug smuggler on death row in Indonesia. He was...

The celestial treasure hunters from 2020-10-31T22:32

Mike Farmer and Robert Ward have spent decades travelling the world in pursuit of meteorites. Their awe-inspiring and insatiable hunt led to fortune – but also unexpected danger. It's a story of co...

The stay-at-home mum who became a bodybuilding star from 2020-10-29T12:30

In her 30s Kiran Dembla was a full-time stay-at-home mum living in the Indian city of Hyderabad. She spent her days cooking and cleaning and caring for her children. Kiran always had the sense that...

I set up a radio station for aliens from 2020-10-28T12:00

John Shepherd is a self-taught electronics whizz. From a young age he was fascinated by science and electricity. He'd spend his days collecting discarded radio and tv sets and re-fashioning them in...

On the frontline against chemical warfare from 2020-10-27T16:43

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a British chemical weapons expert whose work in Syria has attracted global attention. But working in a warzone is dangerous and not only has Hamish had to smuggle himsel...

The black child raised by white supremacists from 2020-10-26T12:00

Shane McCrae is an award-winning African-American poet and writer whose work often addresses the black experience in the US. Poetry for him was a way of making sense of his difficult and abusive up...

Adventures of the of the bootleg-busting brothers from 2020-10-24T20:32

Rob and Jason Holmes were first recruited as undercover agents when they were children. They were in Atlantic City on the lookout for black market goods - like replica designer clothes, sunglasses,...

The Guatemalan grandparents storming the disco from 2020-10-22T11:45

Guatemalan grandparents Favio "El Lobo" Vasquez and his wife Maria Moreno first met on the disco dance floor over 30 years ago. Despite being from rival dance groups they ended up falling in love a...

Half a rotten apple: growing up in 70s China from 2020-10-21T11:45

Writer Xiaolu Guo grew up in 1970s China, in a tiny village by the East China Sea. She'd been left there to live with her grandparents, and didn't know where her parents were. When they returned to...

A dangerous obsession from 2020-10-20T13:32

Canadian Julie Lalonde looked to all the world to be a fearless warrior for women's rights. Her job involved telling political and military leaders, mainly men, how to behave but every time she sto...

The space genius who needed a guide to life on earth from 2020-10-19T11:40

Sara Seager is an MIT astrophysicist. She has made it her life’s work to peer into the spaces around stars – looking for exoplanets outside our solar system, hoping to find the one-in-a-billion wor...

The downfall of "The Screamers" from 2020-10-17T21:30

If you visited the controversial Atlantis commune in southern Colombia back in the 1990s, you’d have probably heard some disturbing noises. The group practiced primal screaming, a form of psychothe...

The actor who’s been saying the same lines for 32 years from 2020-10-15T13:11

Groundhog Day... deja vu... are phrases that tend to have negative connotations. Repetition is often equated with monotony. Not so for Catherine Russell. She holds the world record for the most the...

Farming and Phil Collins taught me about love from 2020-10-14T11:30

Simon Dawson was on a wayward path after a difficult childhood. He says his mother would tell him directly that she didn't love him. Things were at their lowest when their family house burnt down a...

The black reverend who bought a Ku Klux Klan shop from 2020-10-13T12:34

In 1996, an African American reverend called David Kennedy faced one of his biggest fights. A new shop had sprung up in Laurens, his small town in South Carolina, selling white supremacist memorabi...

Abducted in war, saving lives in peace from 2020-10-12T11:45

During Sierra Leone's civil war Aminata Conteh-Biger was abducted by armed rebels. After her release, she began a new life in Australia but has since returned to help the women she'd left behind, b...

Why I didn’t make a sound for 12 years from 2020-10-10T21:32

Marie McCreadie moved to Australia from the UK as a young girl in the 1970s. It was the start of a new adventure for the whole family, but then one day when Marie was 13 she lost her voice, leaving...

Sarajevo Siege - the band that drowned out the bombs from 2020-10-08T13:12

By 1994, the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo had been under siege for two years. Sniper fire and shelling were a daily threat to the residents stuck in the city. Though life was tough, artistic creativ...

We found our baby on the subway from 2020-10-07T11:45

In 2000 Danny Stewart found a newborn baby boy, tucked in the corner of a New York subway station on his way home from work. The discovery hit the headlines, but when no one came forward to claim t...

My ancestors changed the lives of slaves in the US from 2020-10-06T11:30

Nettie Washington Douglass tells Anu Anand what it's like to carry the names and bloodlines of two African-Americans who were born into slavery but famously devoted their lives to fighting it, in t...

I discovered my dad was a best-selling sex writer from 2020-10-03T21:32

Sara Faith Alterman was eight when she accidently discovered that her prudish dad was secretly a globally successful writer of adult books. Growing up, it was never discussed, but when he was dying...

"This is what a barrister looks like" from 2020-10-01T17:29

Alexandra Wilson is a young black British barrister - and as a result sometimes gets mistaken for the defendant in court. Growing up in Essex she never imagined herself becoming a lawyer, but the m...

Surviving a chemical attack by a doomsday cult from 2020-09-29T12:00

When Atsushi Sakahara boarded a crowded train on the Tokyo subway in 1995, he found himself in the middle of a targeted chemical attack. Years later he went looking for answers from a notorious doo...

My ancestors were both slaves and slave owners from 2020-09-28T12:44

Malik Al Nasir was casually watching a TV documentary when a face jumped out at him – it was a photograph of the black Victorian football star Andrew Watson. He was stunned at the close resemblance...

Vietnam's first family of rock ‘n’ roll from 2020-09-26T21:32

In the 1960s, a bunch of musically gifted, pre-teen siblings from Saigon put together a rock ‘n’ roll group. For a while the CBC Band was the biggest music act in South Vietnam, even headlining the...

Life without parole: Our fight for freedom from 2020-09-24T15:55

Brittany K. Barnett, an African American lawyer, grew up in the shadow of the US war on drugs in the 1980s. Like many others in her community in rural east Texas, Brittany’s mother was addicted to ...

How the tigress of basketball fought back from 2020-09-22T11:45

Malebogo Molefhe is a trailblazing basketball player from Botswana. The only girl in a game played by boys, she was called the 'tigress' and rose to be captain of her country's first ever women's n...

Documenting my cellmates' names in blood and rust from 2020-09-21T11:30

Mansour Omari spent nearly a year in a Syrian government prison in 2012. We hear his account of life in an underground cell and how, against the odds, he managed to smuggle out the names of his fel...

The boldest human experiment of the last century? from 2020-09-19T21:32

When an intrepid crew of eight entered Biosphere 2, a giant air-tight greenhouse in the Arizona desert in September 1991, no one knew how it would pan out. It was an experiment to see if humans cou...

My father and our time machine from 2020-09-17T11:30

Artist Maleonn spent his childhood in the back of a theatre, watching his parents at work. Maleonn’s mother was an actress, and his father directed “very noisy” and “incredibly colourful” Beijing o...

I bought a ghost town - then got trapped there from 2020-09-16T11:30

Brent Underwood is a young American entrepreneur who spent his life savings on the remains of an abandoned 19th century mining town in California. He was fascinated by its Wild West history, but wh...

Becoming South Africa's first black rugby captain from 2020-09-15T11:45

South African rugby star Siya Kolisi came from a poor township and tells Outlook's Mpho Lakaje about his journey from water boy to becoming the national team's first black captain and leading the S...

My soldier dad's goodbye tape from 2020-09-14T11:45

Tricia Davies Nearn’s father, David, was killed in the Vietnam War when she was just two years old. Growing up without him, she knew there was something missing, even with a loving family around he...

The trans boxer learning the many ways to be a man from 2020-09-10T11:06

With only five and a half months of training, Thomas Page McBee became the first transgender man to box at the famous Madison Square Garden arena in New York City. He's an author and journalist by ...

A descendant of chiefs: my long journey home from 2020-09-09T11:01

Today, Jesse Thistle is a celebrated professor of Indigenous history in Canada. But as a child, he was a high school drop-out, raised by his disciplinarian white paternal grandparents and cut off f...

The girl who cycled her father 1,200km to safety from 2020-09-08T13:40

When India went into lockdown in response to the coronavirus crisis, millions of migrant workers staying in the cities were left unemployed and stranded. Jyoti Kumari and her dad Mohan Paswan were ...

Disco and drama: The story of Ride on Time from 2020-09-07T13:25

Daniele Davoli was a DJ playing the clubs of Italy when he produced a song with his band Black Box that would define 1980s house music. Ride on Time became a smash hit in the UK, with its driving b...

Sewing to protest in a Chilean prison camp from 2020-09-05T21:32

Just two months after Cristina Zamora had given birth to her baby daughter in 1974, she was taken by Augusto Pinochet's security forces and thrown in jail where she found a creative way to cope. Em...

The 'bride and groom of the Syrian revolution’ from 2020-09-03T12:00

Noura Ghazi is a human rights lawyer from Damascus, campaigning for people and prisoners who were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime. Right at the start of the Syrian uprising, she met softwa...

The chess game that changed a homeless boy’s life from 2020-09-02T12:00

Tani Adewumi and his family fled their home in Nigeria under threat from the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. They ended up living in a homeless shelter in New York. It was there Tani discovered...

The rebel past of a Tibetan Lama from 2020-09-01T12:21

Yeshe Losal Rinpoche is a Lama who runs a monastery and Buddhist centre in rural Scotland. As you might expect his days are filled with meditation and contemplation, but life hasn't always been so ...

The woman who woke up in the future from 2020-08-31T12:00

In 2008, Naomi Jacobs went to bed in her home in Manchester as a 32-year-old woman. When she woke the following morning, her world had changed. Overnight, her memories had gone. She didn't recognis...

The Great Escape of Bonga from 2020-08-29T21:33

Bonga Kuenda is one of Angola’s most notable musicians, a master of the semba - traditional Angolan music. He was born during Portuguese colonial rule, and before music, Bonga had forged a career i...

Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica from 2020-08-27T12:00

Imani Wilmot was born into a surfing family – her father is known as the 'godfather' of Jamaican surfing and her brothers are also avid boarders, so she took to it like a duck to water. She was goo...

The man giving former extremists a second chance from 2020-08-26T12:19

Noor Huda Ismail believes he narrowly avoided becoming radicalised as a teenager in Indonesia. But he got the shock of his life when he was a journalist covering the 2002 Bali bombings and recognis...

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part two from 2020-08-25T12:00

After being involved in a shoot out with an undercover police officer outside her home in Philadelphia, BL Shirelle faced years behind bars. But it was in prison where she would meet her future wif...

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part one from 2020-08-24T12:00

BL Shirelle had a talent for writing poetry from a young age. But while she was growing up in Philadelphia, her mother struggled with addiction and eventually BL became involved with drugs too. By ...

A Nightmare in Joshua Tree from 2020-08-22T21:32

Travel writer Claire Nelson was hiking in Joshua Tree, California when she slipped off a boulder and fell 15 feet into a canyon. She was trapped, and completely alone in the scorching hot wildernes...

My life in the eye of the storm from 2020-08-20T12:00

Born during a hurricane, Russel L. Honoré grew up as a black man in Louisiana during segregation, but he found his calling in the military. He rose through the ranks to become a Lieutenant General,...

The war story that led to our love story from 2020-08-19T12:00

Eva and Sami (not their real names) fell in love in Paris over coffee and cigarettes, but Sami could not escape the painful memories of his experiences back home during the Syrian civil war. He’d l...

The detective and the diamond heist from 2020-08-18T12:00

In the late 1990s, Belgian detective Patrick Peys joined the Diamond Squad. Based in Antwerp's Diamond District, this was the world's first police unit dedicated to solving diamond crime. And soon,...

The first date that led to a dramatic mountain rescue from 2020-08-17T11:30

In 2003, Rachel Colenso and her partner went on a first date climbing Piz Badile in the Swiss Alps. What was meant to be a romantic getaway ended up being a disaster when they were engulfed in a fi...

The boy, the wish and the nuclear weapons from 2020-08-15T09:32

In 1986 American teenager, Jeff Henigson, was diagnosed with brain cancer and given two years to live. He had just one wish: to travel to the Soviet Union, meet the country’s leader Mikhail Gorbach...

The narcotics cop and a daughter hooked on heroin from 2020-08-13T11:00

Kevin Simmers devoted his life to the war on drugs as a narcotics officer in Maryland in the US. He spent years sending dealers and users to prison. But when his own teenage daughter got addicted t...

The barber saving lives one haircut at a time from 2020-08-12T11:20

When British barber Tom Chapman got his first hairdressing job his manager congratulated him and said "be prepared to be a psychiatrist and a therapist as well as a hairdresser". These words stuck ...

Conjoined twins can now look into each other’s eyes from 2020-08-11T09:00

Ervina and Prefina Bangalo were born in Mbaïki, in the Central African Republic, with the back of their heads joined together. Their chances of surviving were incredibly low. By chance, Italian doc...

The supermodel who escaped a cult from 2020-08-10T11:00

Hoyt Richards has been called the first male supermodel. In the 1980s and 90s he jet-setted around the world doing shoots for Versace and Ralph Lauren, and moving in the same circles as stars like ...

When trash met thrash: Paraguay's landfill musicians from 2020-08-08T21:32

The Recycled Orchestra run by Favio Chavez, began as a safe haven for kids living in the Cateura slum. It turned into a global phenomenon when it caught the attention of rock royalty and actual roy...

Fosse and Verdon: the legacy of a dancing family from 2020-08-06T11:08

Nicole Fosse is the daughter of two American dance superstars – Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. Their legendary collaboration led to the reinvention of the modern musical, and huge stage and screen succ...

The tycoon who became 'Mr Toilet' from 2020-08-04T14:31

Jack Sim is a Singaporean multi-millionaire tycoon with an unusual nickname: Mr Toilet.
His obsession with toilets has had him mingling with presidents, A-list celebrities, he's even had a reso...

The 25 day sit-in that changed history from 2020-08-03T11:15

When Judy Heumann was growing up in the 1950s, expectations for someone like her were low. Her disability wasn't her main problem, it was other people's prejudices. Judy Heumann was the first perso...

Discovering my grandfather's secret Nazi past from 2020-08-01T21:32

Growing up, Julie Lindahl felt a sense of shame hung over her family, but had no idea why. Her father’s dying words confirmed she needed answers. And so began a seven year search for information. S...

The stolen Picasso and the forest quest from 2020-07-30T11:00

A few years ago, writer Mira Feticu received an anonymous letter with instructions on how to find a stolen Picasso, buried under a tree in a Romanian forest. The painting, the Tête d'Arlequin or Ha...

23 years longing to find my mum from 2020-07-29T11:00

When war broke out in Somalia in the 1990s, Omar Mohamed’s dad was killed and he was separated from his mum. Omar, who was only four at that time, picked up his disabled younger brother Hassan and ...

Name, shame and jail: Ghana's undercover journalist from 2020-07-28T12:00

Anas Aremeyaw Anas is very well known in Africa, even though almost no one knows what he looks like. Anas is a trained lawyer-turned-investigative reporter in Ghana, and a frequent presenter of the...

The coral crusaders: finding beauty in a murky world from 2020-07-27T12:00

Colin Foord and Jared McKay are childhood best friends with a passion for aquatic life. As a kid Colin developed a strong love of sea life and would construct his own aquariums. Later, when Jay was...

Attila the Nun from 2020-07-25T21:33

Arlene Violet served as a nun for 23 years in the US state of Rhode Island. When she was there she realised that there were big problems locally: the mob ruled the streets and a Colombian drug cart...

Making movies helped me heal after my dad's murder from 2020-07-23T12:00

Joël Karekezi is a Rwandan director, scriptwriter and producer with a string of awards to his name. His films, such as Imbabazi: The Pardon, and The Mercy of the Jungle, deal with issues around the...

How did this diver cheat death? from 2020-07-22T12:00

British diver Chris Lemons was working on an oil well underwater in the North Sea in Scotland. He was connected to a boat with something called an 'umbilical chord', which also provided him with ai...

Mean streets to sporting elite from 2020-07-21T11:06

Arshay Cooper likens his childhood on the westside of Chicago to "what soldiers experience in war." His father absent, his mother battling an addiction to drugs, Arshay and his three siblings strug...

The secret surrogate from 2020-07-20T12:00

“Ana” (not her real name) lives in Georgia and is a single mother with two children of her own. She has also given birth to two other children for couples who couldn’t carry them themselves. In ret...

My Dad, Muhammad Ali from 2020-07-18T21:32

What is it like to be the daughter of a sporting legend? To many, Muhammad Ali was known as The Greatest, whether as a boxing hero, a pioneering civil rights campaigner, or a world-class entertaine...

Why I talk to warlords from 2020-07-16T12:05

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda’s office is a war zone, she goes to meet warlords and military commanders to persuade them to release the children in their ranks and from prisons. And it’s not always ju...

The day the music stopped from 2020-07-15T11:50

Violin virtuoso Min Kym was at the height of her career when she became the victim of a crime that made headlines around the world. She was a child prodigy whose family moved from South Korea to Lo...

Chimps taught me how to be a mother from 2020-07-14T11:46

60 years ago this week a young British woman called Jane Goodall entered the Gombe Stream National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika - where she made a discovery that changed our understanding ...

The unmaking of a boy soldier from 2020-07-13T13:40

Ishmael Beah was just a boy when war reached his village in Sierra Leone and he was forced to flee. In the chaos, he was separated from his family. He ended up with a group of other children at wha...

Greg Louganis: the Death-Defying Diver from 2020-07-11T21:32

Blood, gold and secrets at the Olympic pool.

Greg Louganis is one of the most celebrated divers in the US, and a record-breaking athlete. But Greg is also famous for one of the biggest sho...

The literary heroes that helped me cope as a carer from 2020-07-09T13:56

Sam Mills is a British writer who has always turned to fictional characters for answers in her life. Whether that was Roald Dahl's Matilda when she was younger or Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway as a...

The trailblazing nurse who began life in care from 2020-07-07T12:00

Elizabeth Anionwu spent her earliest years in a British children’s home. Her mother, a promising Cambridge University student, got pregnant by accident following a relationship with a Nigerian law ...

A girl on the run and a girl with no name from 2020-07-06T12:05

It's Outlook's 54th year on air and to celebrate, we're letting our listeners take over today's programme.

Margo Perin is an Outlook listener with a story of her own. As a child in the ...

The mystery of Ecuador's lost mastertapes from 2020-07-04T21:32

Daniel Lofredo Rota is an Ecuadorian DJ and musician on a quest to unravel a decades-old family mystery. His eccentric grandfather has left a clue: a grimy, battered suitcase filled with old tapes....

Caring for my dying father made me a better doctor from 2020-07-02T13:41

Dr Rachel Clarke spends her working life in the company of people who are dying, and she says they’ve taught her everything she needs to know about living. She works in palliative care for England’...

"Look after her" - the story of a hidden WW2 child from 2020-07-01T11:42

Lien de Jong was a young girl living in The Hague in the Netherlands when the Second World War broke out. The country was occupied, and her parents took a desperate decision to protect their child,...

The adventurer’s son who went missing in the jungle from 2020-06-30T11:24

Roman Dial is a science professor and explorer who's travelled to some of the toughest places on Earth. His son Cody Roman was raised to love the wilderness too, and used to join his father on expe...

I played violin during my brain surgery from 2020-06-29T11:00

In January 2020, Dagmar Turner was woken up in the middle of her brain surgery and handed a violin. It was her idea. She was an amateur but committed violinist and was willing to go to drastic leng...

Ups and downs in a vertical world from 2020-06-25T11:00

As a child in the US, Ian Powell had two great loves: art and rock climbing, and he was good at them both. By the early 1990s he had made a name for himself as a sculptor and professional climber, ...

Touched by magic from 2020-06-24T15:19

Magicians who used their craft to overcome social awkwardness, sexism and bullying - stories from the UK, Russia and Singapore.

British illusionist and writer Derren Brown talks to Emily W...

Fire and justice: my life after Grenfell from 2020-06-23T11:00

Antonio Roncolato was one of the last survivors to escape London’s Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. He had lived on the 10th floor for 27 years, and was only alerted to the fire when his son Christophe...

The deserted island and the lost graves from 2020-06-22T11:00

In 1979, a teenage Carina Hoang and her siblings boarded a rickety boat with other refugees fleeing Vietnam after the end of the war. They thought they were heading to a refugee camp, but when thei...

Dynamo: turning illness into magic from 2020-06-20T21:33

Steven Frayne, aka Dynamo, isn't your usual white-gloved magician pulling rabbits out of hats. His tricks have seen him walk on water and stroll down the side of a huge building. He's one of the wo...

We risked our lives to save my brother's heart from 2020-06-18T11:00

Hamed Amiri's family knew they would one day have to leave their home in Afghanistan to travel to the city of Southampton in the UK. It was one of the few places in the world where doctors were abl...

Hamilton: overcoming hearing loss to make its music from 2020-06-17T11:00

Alex Lacamoire is the award-winning orchestrator, arranger and conductor for the hit musical Hamilton. This hip hop homage to the revolutionary US statesman Alexander Hamilton - which was created b...

We missed our baby’s birth because of Covid-19 from 2020-06-16T11:06

Patrick and Enitan Goredema's baby was born to a surrogate mother in Tbilisi, Georgia at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. They travelled across the world to meet him.

Presenter: Emi...

The lawyer, the chemical giant, and the contaminated water from 2020-06-15T13:43

Robert Bilott is an American lawyer who, in the 1990s defended big corporations, including chemical companies. One day he got a call from a farmer called Wilbur Earl Tennant, whose cattle were dyin...

The teenager who survived the Manchester bombing from 2020-06-13T21:32

In 2017, Freya Lewis was just 14 when she was injured in a bomb blast after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in the U.K. She woke up in intensive care to the news that her best friend had bee...

Wrongfully convicted of murdering my parents from 2020-06-12T10:01

In 1988, when he was just 17 years old, Marty Tankleff woke to find his mother dead and his father dying. Police immediately took him in for questioning.
During the investigation, a detective ...

Voyage to the bitter deep from 2020-06-10T15:12

Victor Vescovo and John Ramsay are key members of the team behind the Five Deeps expedition, which took a one-person submarine to all of the deepest points in the world's five oceans. Victor, a mul...

My powerful sideburns and other beard stories from 2020-06-09T14:42

Michael J Johnson has a beard that can reach his chest, but he usually styles it to look like a pair of walrus tusks. His facial hair has won him awards at the US National Beard & Moustache Champio...

The forbidden marriage and the legal loophole from 2020-06-08T12:01

From 26th May same-sex couples have been able to marry for the first time in Costa Rica. Legislation ruling that a ban was unconstitutional has finally come into effect after eighteen months.  But ...

Heavy Metal's Groundbreaking Grandma from 2020-06-06T21:33

Inge Ginsberg has had many lives. After escaping the Holocaust, she ended up as a songwriter to the stars in Hollywood. Now, with perhaps her most unlikely incarnation yet, she performs heavy metal...

How do you deal with coronavirus in a war zone? from 2020-06-04T13:22

Thierry Durand helped to set up the only dedicated covid-19 hospital in the city of Aden. He was working as a coordinator for the aid organisation Medécins Sans Frontières in the capital, Aden, whe...

The cookbook that became a lifeline from 2020-06-03T12:01

From a young age, Julie Powell had been enthralled by a book in her mother’s pantry: Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was co-authored by one of America’s culinary titans - the eccentric but ...

My part in a historic hostage rescue from 2020-06-02T12:08

In June 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by militants. The plane and its 248 passengers were flown to Entebbe airport in Uganda, where all the Israeli and Jewish passe...

Behind the doors of the lockdown museums from 2020-06-01T11:15

Today we're travelling to the places you can't get to right now, like the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Brazil's National Museum and a treasure trove of cinema memorabilia in London. We meet the incr...

The Australian who woke up speaking Mandarin from 2020-05-30T21:32

Ben McMahon from Melbourne, Australia, has had an unlikely career in Chinese reality TV after waking up from a coma speaking Mandarin. When he was 18 years old, Ben suffered a head injury during a ...

Students by day and hostage negotiators by night from 2020-05-28T11:15

In 1994 Robert Clerx was studying in Colombia, when an old school friend, Miles Hargrove asked him for a very large favour. To help him buy back his father. The boys had been friends since Miles an...

The weird world I was warned to keep secret from 2020-05-27T11:15

Pauline Dakin is a Canadian journalist, broadcaster and a professor of journalism in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, her childhood was marked by many mysterious incidents a...

My search for my sister, the "keeper of memories" from 2020-05-26T11:39

Nakuset only goes by one name and it means "The Sun" in her indigenous Canadian culture. Born into an abusive household, her early days were difficult and it wasn't long before she and her sister S...

The woman in lockdown with 70 spiders from 2020-05-25T12:00

Caitlin Henderson loves spiders. For the last few months, she was working for a travelling spider exhibition in Australia. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, she had reached Queensland – the venues...

How I created the first Chinese Superman character from 2020-05-21T13:46

Gene Luen Yang grew up in a Chinese family in the United States, and when his mum bought him his first Superman comic, the story immediately resonated with him. Gene went on to become a cartoonist,...

The refugee lawyer prosecuting IS war crimes from 2020-05-20T14:40

Rez Gardi grew up in a refugee camp - the child of Kurdish human rights activists who had fled to Pakistan. For years she was denied an education, but she excelled anyway. Now she is a Harvard educ...

Beyond the bushfires: a koala doctor's story from 2020-05-19T11:29

Cheyne Flanagan is the clinical director of the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital in New South Wales, Australia. When the bushfires started raging across the country in 2019, her team mounted a huge re...

Wynton Marsalis: the making of a jazzman from 2020-05-18T11:50

Wynton Marsalis grew up in New Orleans in what’s been called America’s ‘first family of jazz’. His pianist father Ellis gave him a trumpet when he was six years old, but there was a slight issue - ...

Trying to get my penpal out of prison from 2020-05-16T21:32

When filmmaker Ray Klonsky was a teenager he received a letter from David McCallum, an inmate at a New York prison who was already more than 10 years into his sentence for a murder he said he did n...

The woman behind Senegal's Sex and the City from 2020-05-14T12:59

Kalista Sy is on a mission to show Senegalese women that they can be themselves. She’s created a TV series called “Maitresse d'un homme marié” which tackles subjects which are normally off limits i...

Hiding my sexuality to be a black role model from 2020-05-13T14:18

Francois Clemmons is a singer and founder of the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble in America, but he became famous as an actor when he played the role of Officer Clemmons in the hit children’s TV programm...

Blades, bullets and my escape from 'murder city' from 2020-05-12T13:34

Jessel Recinos loved the skate park in his hometown in Honduras, but it was there that he got drawn into a gang. When he was 16, Jessel was shot in the back - and barely survived, but as soon as he...

They thought my husband was a spy from 2020-05-11T13:38

Daniela Tejada said goodbye to her husband at the start of his work trip to the United Arab Emirates. She expected to see him in two weeks – but he disappeared.

Picture: Matthew Hedges ...

My journey to become the first Native American US Poet Laureate from 2020-05-07T12:30

Joy Harjo survived prejudice and abuse, failed marriages and single motherhood to become one of America's most acclaimed poets. In 2019, she was appointed the US Poet Laureate, becoming the first N...

The Covid-19 nurses: Sharing our stories from 2020-05-06T14:40

Around the world nurses are risking their lives to treat coronavirus patients. Intensive Care Units in particular have been described as the frontline of this pandemic. It's there that the sickest ...

I became ‘dad’ to a baby ocelot from 2020-05-05T13:00

When Harry Turner left the UK for Peru to clear his head, he never expected to become a father... and to a very unlikely baby. He told Rajan Datar how he helped save a baby ocelot in the Peruvian j...

Love and defection on the dancefloor from 2020-05-04T12:00

Cuban principal ballet dancers Mayara Piñeiro Contido and Etienne Díez found love in exile. They now perform as a couple on stages around the world.

Reporter: Colm Flynn
Producer: Ali...

The actor who preferred to die rather than stop filming from 2020-04-30T15:38

Il Postino: The Postman, was a hugely successful Italian film made in 1994, but behind the scenes tragedy had played out during production. The lead, Massimo Troisi was plagued by heart problems re...

How the Donut King lost his crown from 2020-04-29T12:00

Ted Ngoy was among the first Cambodians to find refuge in America from the Khmer Rouge. He was scratching a living at a petrol station when he got a whiff of a donut and something clicked in him. H...

The psychiatric nurse who overcame a life of addiction from 2020-04-28T12:58

The dramatic turnaround of a carnival runaway and drug addict who spent more than 20 years living on the streets. Today Anthony Brown is a psychiatric nurse and college professor. He has written a ...

The mayor and the art heist mystery from 2020-04-27T13:00

Knut Kreuch was a 13-year-old schoolboy in 1979 when his town in East Germany was shaken by an audacious and baffling art heist. Five very old and valuable paintings were stolen from a museum withi...

The Tale of the King of the Wild Blue Sky from 2020-04-25T21:35

In the 1970s, American helicopter pilot Jerry Foster changed the face of modern news reporting. He was often first on the scene at emergencies and daring rescue operations in the Arizona wilderness...

Mr Motivator: from homeless to household name from 2020-04-23T12:51

Jamaican-born Derrick Evans also known as Mr Motivator is a fitness instructor who became famous in the 1990s for his TV appearances in the UK. But his journey to fame wasn’t easy. He was given up ...

The face-blind portrait artist from 2020-04-22T11:21

German artist Carlotta has a severe form of prosopagnosia, or face blindness, a brain disorder that means she can’t recognise faces, not even her own. Her condition went undiagnosed for years, and ...

I turned my cleaning obsession into a hit business from 2020-04-21T11:40

Lynsey Crombie, also known as the 'Queen of Clean', is a successful media personality in the UK. On TV and in her social media posts she gives tips on how to keep your home sparkling clean. Cleani...

My revolutionary 70s summer camp from 2020-04-20T16:02

Jim LeBrecht experienced four blissful and free summers during the 1970s at a place called Camp Jened. This was a progressive camp for disabled teenagers in the Catskill mountains of upstate New Yo...

Hiding the truth behind my NFL stardom from 2020-04-18T21:32

For most teenage boys who play American football in high school, the National Football League is the dream goal. They will practice for hours every day to get that one chance to make it to the big ...

Stranded in the jungle on our honeymoon from 2020-04-16T12:10

When Holly Fitzgerald and her husband Fitz’s plane crash-landed in the Peruvian rainforest, their honeymoon of a lifetime travelling across South America quickly became treacherous. Holly was despe...

The lightning bolt that made me a music maestro from 2020-04-15T12:30

In 1994 Tony Cicoria was struck by lightning, and it had the strangest effect on him. Not only did he develop an insatiable desire to listen to piano music - something he'd never been interested in...

Why I dive on my birthday from 2020-04-14T12:30

Cliff Devries was a talented young diver hoping to make the US Olympic team when he discovered he had a life threatening tumour on his spinal cord. He was given less than a year to live. He opted t...

I believe my dog’s nose saved my life from 2020-04-13T12:30

Claire Guest always loved dogs, but she didn’t realise that a dog might save her life one day. She’s a psychologist and animal behaviourist who began researching whether dogs could smell illness in...

Literary SOS from 2020-04-11T21:35

When Sally Bayley was 14, she hit rock bottom. She was in care, had been rejected by her family and she wasn't eating. So who did she turn to when she was at her lowest? Shakespeare. Through readin...

The NYC doctor hiding his fear fighting Covid-19 from 2020-04-09T12:09

Covid-19 has claimed thousands of lives in New York, and medical professionals are working around the clock to treat patients coming into the emergency room. Rob Gore is one of those doctors fighti...

Why I thought my baby had devil’s eyes from 2020-04-08T12:40

Catherine Cho had a difficult birth with her son Kato, but she was recovering and excited to introduce the new baby to her family back home in the US. She and her husband James were stressed, trave...

How to home-school: Lessons from Bolivia and Alaska from 2020-04-07T12:18

Brisa de Angulo is no stranger to home-schooling; in fact she’s something of an expert. She teaches her three young children at home, on top of running A Breeze of Hope – the charity she founded to...

Coming out made me a world-class rugby referee from 2020-04-06T12:30

Now a household name in international rugby, Nigel Owens grew up in a small village in Wales. At the time, he didn’t know any openly gay people, so when he started feeling attracted to men he felt ...

The school teacher who couldn’t read from 2020-04-04T21:35

John Corcoran grew up in the US during the 1940s and 50s. As a kid, John was really looking forward to going to school like his older siblings. But once he got there, he realised he had a problem: ...

My patients fought Aids, I fought the system from 2020-04-02T13:41

Cliff Morrison moved to San Francisco to work as a nurse in the late 1970s, when people around him started dying from a mystery illness. It was the beginning of the Aids epidemic and Cliff found hi...

My Fiancé – Jamal Khashoggi from 2020-04-01T12:30

On the 2nd October 2018 Hatice Cengiz and journalist Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The purpose of their visit was to collect some papers they needed to get married. They ...

Inside the mind of a teenage neo-Nazi from 2020-03-31T12:30

At nearly 14 years old, Christian Picciolini was recruited into a neo-Nazi group in his hometown of Chicago. Throughout his 8 years of membership, he took part in violent attacks, actively enlisted...

My life as a frontline doctor in Afghanistan from 2020-03-30T13:12

Marzia Salam Yaftali is the Chief Physician of the only hospital in Kunduz - she discusses her experience of the Taliban, misogyny and the threat of coronavirus.

Presenter: Emily Webb
...

How I turn prisoners into violin virtuosos from 2020-03-28T23:35

Tito Quiroz used to wave up at the inmates of the prison next door to his university in Ensenada, Mexico, and they'd wave back from their cell windows. Then, one day, he got the opportunity to go i...

I fled North Korea for playing the wrong song from 2020-03-26T15:34

Kim Cheol-woong grew up in an elite family and excelled at the piano. When he was interrogated by North Korean authorities for playing a western song, he decided to defect. But to find safety, he h...

Crowns and controversy at Miss World 1970 from 2020-03-25T16:08

Jennifer Hosten was the first woman of colour to win the Miss World contest, taking victory against a backdrop of protest. She became a heroine for women all over the world, and then became her hom...

My close encounters with Escobar’s hippos from 2020-03-24T18:27

Jonathan Shurin is an ecologist with an unusual research brief. He studies a group of hippos in northwestern Colombia who trace their origins to the private zoo of drug lord Pablo Escobar. When Esc...

How to thrive in isolation from 2020-03-23T18:25

Many listeners will be staying home at the moment – following the advice of some governments around the world to slow the spread of coronavirus. The sense of confinement will be familiar to a team ...

The violin maker's salvation from 2020-03-21T23:35

Hans and Nancy Benning met in Germany while studying the art of lutherie-repairing stringed instruments. Their love and work gave Hans the happiness he longed for growing up homeless and malnourish...

My love letter ticket out of Venezuela from 2020-03-19T14:17

José Gregorio Márquez entered a love letter contest with a letter to his neighbourhood in Caracas. He won the contest - but it pushed him further away from his childhood home.

Presenter: E...

Radio in Italy's coronavirus red zone from 2020-03-18T18:44

83-year-old Pino Pagani is the presenter of Radio Zona Rossa - or Radio Red Zone - in the virus-hit Italian town of Codogno. His show gives people a sense of community while in lockdown.

P...

'I fight hate with a pocketbook of peace' from 2020-03-17T13:32

Meditation teacher Kia Scherr lost her husband and daughter in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. She now spreads a message of peace - and has even worked with the Mumbai police.

Presenter: Rajan Da...

'I stopped talking - but then I found music' from 2020-03-16T17:19

Pete Paphides' parents moved to the UK from Cyprus in the 1960s to run a fish and chip shop. He was a shy and introverted child, and from the age of four to seven he stopped speaking – which he lat...

A Syrian love story that started with a resume from 2020-03-14T23:35

When Syrian Tamim Kbarh did a call-out on social media offering to help people improve their curriculum vitae, he got more than he bargained for. An impressive CV from Rahaf Al Iymoni dropped into ...

Once upon a time in Wakaliwood from 2020-03-12T14:14

BBC Inspirations 2016 nominee Isaac Nabwana makes action-packed films from his studio in Wakaliga, Kampala. His films have gained him an international fanbase - including US film-maker Alan Hofmani...

Bringing music to people in pain from 2020-03-11T13:33

BBC Inspirations 2018 nominee Jorge Bergero is the principal cellist at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He also plays for people in care homes, prisons and refugee camps, with his organisation Mú...

Akram Khan: from curry to choreography from 2020-03-10T14:35

Akram Khan is one of Britain's top contemporary dancers and choreographers. He started off dancing in his family's Indian restaurant, but has gone on to perform in some the world's most celebrated ...

Befriending a princess - and helping her escape from 2020-03-09T16:51

In February 2018, a princess from Dubai, Sheikha Latifa, tried to escape and start a new life abroad, away from her father, the ruler. Her best friend Tiina Jauhiainen tried to help her but Latifa ...

Thai cave doctor: 'I feared I'd killed them' from 2020-03-05T16:33

Australian diver Richard Harris anaesthetised the 12 trapped Thai boys and their coach to swim them to safety - he believed they had no chance of survival

Presenter: Emily Webb
Produce...

Signing to save lives in the Australian bushfires from 2020-03-04T14:07

Sean Sweeney was born hearing into a family where most members are deaf. During the recent Australian bushfires, he interpreted vital emergency information into sign language.

Presenter: E...

From child bride to literary sensation from 2020-03-03T15:46

Baby Halder grew up loving books, but by the age of only 12, she was married and no longer at school. She later fled to start a new life, and became a globally best-selling author.

Present...

The prison escape and the wooden keys from 2020-03-02T14:49

In 1978, anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin hatched an audacious prison escape plan. From his cell, he would make his own wooden keys to open the prison doors to freedom.

Presenter: Jo Fi...

Photographing firefighters on the streets of Lagos from 2020-02-28T14:20

Akintunde Akinleye is an award-winning photographer who’s spent much of his career in Lagos, Nigeria, photographing the firefighters battling pipeline explosions around the gridlocked city. One pho...

The Superheroes of Lagos from 2020-02-27T16:33

Outlook’s Abdulmalik Fahd drops in on Spoof Animations, one of Nigeria’s newest cartoon studios, where a new generation of Nigerians are drawing new kinds of superheroes. We talk to Ayodele Elegba ...

Killing on campus: Nigeria's criminal fraternities from 2020-02-26T14:53

In this special episode of Outlook, as part of our Lagos series, Helen Oyibo has been hearing remarkable testimony from three people whose lives have been affected by the confraternity system in Ni...

Lagos road trip challenge from 2020-02-25T14:19

Outlook’s Abdulmalik Fahd undertakes a challenge: to travel around Lagos by car and canoe to record four interviewees in one day. First stop a police station, to talk to Celestina Nwankwo Kalu, the...

Nigeria’s rebel artist families from 2020-02-24T17:04

In the first of four programmes from Lagos, Nigeria, Helen Oyibo meets the artists and revolutionaries who have shaped the country. A poet, playwright and essayist, Wole Soyinka became Africa’s fir...

‘My heart goes out to the mums’ from 2020-02-23T00:35

Jacke Van Woerkom is rebuilding her life after a horrific event in her family. The experience has also changed the way she looks at the parents of murderers. Surrounding herself with women who have...

My father was killed by 'Prime Evil' from 2020-02-20T16:36

Candice Mama’s father was murdered by Eugene de Kock a notorious police colonel in apartheid South Africa, when she was just eight months old. She grew up knowing this, but it was only when she was...

The rapper who woke up deaf from 2020-02-19T16:31

Dutch rapper Sor and his group, Black Acid, were rising rapidly through the Amsterdam music scene. They seemed poised to hit the big time when Sor was struck down by a mysterious illness, culminati...

My family are sex workers - education saved me from 2020-02-18T17:07

Eliska Tanzer was born in Slovakia into a very unusual family. Her mother’s family were Romany sex workers, while her largely absent father was a Nazi sympathiser. The local school refused to educa...

The mother choosing to love her 'enemy' from 2020-02-17T15:43

As part of the BBC World Service’s Crossing Divides season, Outlook is looking back at some extraordinary personal stories of transcending boundaries and crossing divides.

Latifa Ibn Ziate...

Flying my South African flag at the top of Everest from 2020-02-16T00:35

In May 2019 Saray Khumalo became the first black African woman to summit Everest. She defied those who didn't believe she could achieve her dream of climbing the world’s highest peaks. The trek to ...

I survived Joseph Kony - I want my children back from 2020-02-14T13:40

In 2003, Nakout Sylvia was kidnapped in Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army who murdered her husband and separated from her children. She was taken to a LRA stronghold in the Democratic Republic o...

For the love of radio from 2020-02-13T15:57

For World Radio Day, Outlook has put together some of our favourite stories about radio and how it has helped communities and listeners in unexpected ways.

We hear from Luis Huincache Panc...

How a stage-fight nearly ended my acting career from 2020-02-12T15:34

Conor Madden was playing Hamlet in Cork at the age of 24, the best role of his young career, when an on-stage accident changed his life forever. During a fight scene a sword fractured Conor’s skull...

How I ended up marrying 'my mother' from 2020-02-11T16:06

After lesbian couple Lillian Faderman and Phyllis Irwin had a son in 1970s California, they realised their young family had nothing legally binding them together. Because they couldn’t marry at the...

The star student with an agonising secret from 2020-02-10T15:21

As an undocumented immigrant to the US from the Dominican Republic, Dan-el Padilla Peralta found himself living in a homeless shelter with his mother and brother. One day he found a book on Roman a...

The Canadian cop who uncovered a police scandal from 2020-02-09T00:40

Ernie Louttit was a rare thing in the 1980s - a police officer and Cree, one of Canada's many First Nations groups. He also had a reputation for re-opening case files on First Nations people that h...

Michael Johnson: how the world's fastest man learned to walk again from 2020-02-06T13:01

US athlete and Olympic champion Michael Johnson is one of the greatest sprinters in history. In the 1990s, he tore through the record books with a series of thrilling gold medal wins. Even after he...

Discovering my dad was a music superstar from 2020-02-05T15:40

When Anoushka Shankar was young, she knew that the legendary Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar was an important figure in her family, but it was only when she was seven that she learned he was her f...

The avid hunter turned pioneering conservationist from 2020-02-04T16:31

As a young man in Lebanon, Assad Serhal was a keen hunter. But after an encounter with a Bobwhite Quail and its chicks, Assad was so moved that he decided to change course and dedicate his life to ...

I knocked out sexism in British boxing from 2020-02-03T15:28

When Jane Couch won the women’s boxing world title, it wasn’t even legal for her to box at home in Britain. The struggle to get her sport recognised would become her most gruelling fight, as she fa...

The making of a disco star from 2020-02-03T10:36

Sequins, spandex and Rasputin? Dust off your gold spandex for a dive into the world of 1970s disco. Marcia Barrett, a lead singer of the chart-conquering Boney M, discusses her life with the band -...

I brought my daughter’s killer down from 2020-01-30T15:38

Karen Edwards’ daughter Becky spent her teenage years battling an addiction to heroin. It was a difficult struggle and Karen was by her side to help. But in 2003, Becky went missing. Her body was f...

The film tickets that destroyed a family from 2020-01-29T16:00

After Neelam Krishnamoorthy’s children, Unnati and Ujjwal, were killed in a fire at the Uphaar cinema in Delhi in 1997, she and her husband sought to bring those responsible to justice. Two decades...

I grew up in a secret nuclear city from 2020-01-28T14:33

Nadezhda Kutepova was born in Soviet Russia, in a city that didn’t have a name. She grew up believing that her father made sweet wrappers at a local factory. But years after his death from cancer, ...

Saving my zoo from Australian wildfires from 2020-01-27T17:10

Chad Staples is a zookeeper at Mogo Zoo in New South Wales in Australia, with giraffes, gorillas and even tigers in his care. The wildfires sweeping Australia closed in on the zoo forced Chad and h...

The daughter and the double agent from 2020-01-26T00:35

As a young woman Ieva Lesinska was faced with an agonising choice. Defect to the US with her double agent father, or stay in Latvia with her mother and renounce him as a traitor. Ieva says it was l...

I was a teenager at Auschwitz from 2020-01-23T17:37

Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus is now 90 years old, but she was only 14 when she was taken to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland. She worked in the children’s hut and she’s now known...

The student who became my son from 2020-01-22T16:40

Teacher and principal Tim King was working in a school in Chicago when he met a student named Keith. Their relationship changed when Keith’s mother died after struggling with drug addiction and Tim...

Our secret tunnel that saved the city from 2020-01-21T15:24

Edis Kolar guarded a lifesaving tunnel built in the basement of his family home during the siege of Sarajevo. The secret passage provided a safe way to move people and supplies in and out of the su...

The virtuoso musician detained as a child from 2020-01-20T14:55

Today, Leon Bosch is one of the most respected classical double bass players in the world but as a teenager he was made a political prisoner in South Africa because of his peaceful resistance to th...

The black woman who cared for a Klansman from 2020-01-19T00:35

Stephanie Summerville tells us about her eye-opening experience as a casual worker. It was her first job and it thrust her into a shocking situation. She was providing respite care for a terminally...

Life as a lone identical twin from 2020-01-16T17:18

Identical twins David and John Loftus had an idyllic and happy childhood. They were so alike that as toddlers you could hardly tell them apart. They were very close growing up together. But after a...

I was shot while performing a vasectomy from 2020-01-15T16:44

Dr Andrew Rynne is Ireland’s first vasectomy doctor. He was an advocate for contraceptive rights in the Republic of Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s - at one point even facing prison time for sel...

Forced to teach in a ‘re-education’ camp from 2020-01-14T16:34

Sayragul Sauytbay is an ethnic Kazakh from Xinjiang in western China. In 2016, she was happily married with two children and loved her job as a head teacher at a kindergarten. But a year after – am...

‘I’m going to say sorry to the whales’ from 2020-01-13T14:30

talian Fishmonger Vittorio Fabris was inspired to sail from Venice to Nantucket by his favourite book, Moby Dick. But his epic voyage didn’t exactly go to plan. He faced storms and seriously damage...

How I built a billion dollar business from 2020-01-09T15:42

Janice Bryant Howroyd became the first African-American woman to build a billion dollar business. Growing up in the segregated south of the US, she struggled to find a good job so she launched her ...

The pianist who learnt to play on a paper piano from 2020-01-08T15:54

Andrew Garrido was desperate to play the piano but lessons were expensive and his family couldn't afford them. Andrew, undeterred, made a keyboard out of paper and taught himself. A decade later an...

My nightmares about the policeman who framed me from 2020-01-07T15:42

Winston Trew came to England from Jamaica in the 1950s and joined a group that aimed to educate children from the Caribbean about their history and teach them pride. After one of their meetings, he...

I prayed to God to make me a girl from 2020-01-06T15:26

Abby Stein grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, one of the most gender segregated societies in the world. Abby’s parents considered her their firstborn son but she was ad...

The Welsh miner who made wrestling glamorous from 2020-01-05T00:45

Adrian Street grew up in a mining town in South Wales, but he always loved dressing up. When he was a teenager he started working down the mines, but his dream was to become a wrestler. He was ridi...

Making horse-racing history in a hijab from 2020-01-02T14:00

London teenager Khadijah Mellah had only been riding for four months when she became the first Muslim woman to win a prestigious British horse race. Despite being the youngest competitor, she rode ...

2020 The power of sight from 2019-12-31T13:55

To celebrate the arrival of 2020, we're featuring three fascinating stories about vision. See what we did there? But these people do not have 20:20 vision, there is nothing average about the way th...

Inventing a surgery to cure myself from 2019-12-30T15:00

When Doug Lindsay was at college, he got ill very suddenly. It was the same mystery illness his mother and aunt had suffered from for most of their lives. Doctors were baffled. Doug had to drop out...

The hunt for a calypso king's lost music from 2019-12-29T00:30

The search for the lost music of Costa Rica's King of Calypso. Walter Ferguson spent many years serenading people with his songs, and recording individual cassettes for adoring fans, but they were ...

Shooting hoops in South Sudan from 2019-12-26T14:15

Diagnosed with polio as a child in Sudan, Malat Wei crawled for nine years before he got his first wheelchair. Now a wheelchair basketball star in the US and with the help of coach, Jess Markt, the...

Why I risked my life to present a TV programme from 2019-12-25T15:00

Mozhdah Jamalzadah is known as the 'Oprah of Afghanistan,’ due to being inspired by The Oprah Winfrey Show. She actually grew up in Canada after her family fled their home in Kabul. It was in Canad...

Finding the perfect hairdresser changed two lives from 2019-12-24T13:48

Andrea Quint Fleck and her hairdresser Troy Winget bonded over Andrea's hair, the spark was apparent at their first appointment in their home town of Calgary. By coincidence both had question marks...

The barefoot tennis player who turned pro from 2019-12-23T14:00

As a boy growing up in Freetown, Sam Jalloh became enamoured with the Sierra Leone national tracksuit. He wasn't particularly fashion conscious, but he was sporty, and he discovered that the only w...

The family story that became a TV novela from 2019-12-22T00:30

Aged eleven, Dirce de Assis Cavalcanti was taunted by one of her classmates. She was called the "daughter of a murderer". Not long after, Dirce found out that her father had indeed killed a man and...

Why I announced I had cancer, on the radio from 2019-12-20T13:41

British DJ Mark Radcliffe has a voice that's instantly recognisable to many people in the UK. He went from being a music obsessed teenager in the northern British town of Bolton, to hanging out wit...

Don’t call me the 'Indiana Jones' of Syria from 2019-12-19T17:07

As a teenager, Amr al-Azm aspired to be like Indiana Jones - but this fantastical Hollywood vision of archaeology was only fleeting, he grew up to fall in love with the real thing too. Amr is from ...

The murder that stopped me writing crime fiction from 2019-12-18T15:38

Mads Peder Nordbo used to write crime thrillers from his home in a quiet, Danish, village. It was a world he imagined but never experienced. But in 2013, fact and fiction blurred when he stumbled a...

I believed I was my dead sister from 2019-12-17T15:48

When Maria Gallant's baby daughter Gail died after a car crash, Maria prayed for God to give back her child. Within a year she had another daughter- she also called her Gail. Maria brought her up t...

Footballer Mark Bright: What I’ve learnt about love from 2019-12-16T15:49

British footballer Mark Bright spent his childhood in foster care. Though he was well looked after, no one told him they loved him until he was 18. Meanwhile, he was becoming a star striker and his...