Lives Less Ordinary
Episodes
Strangers to coworkers to friends to...sisters?
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cassandra Madison and Julia Tinetti met working at the same bar in their 20s and were struck by how similar they looked. Their adoption records didn't...
Taught to kill – my childhood under the Khmer Rouge
27 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Separated from her family and trained as a child soldier, Loung Ung's unbreakable spirit helped her survive Pol Pot’s regime, which killed nearly a ...
Bonus: Dear Daughter: Surviving my daughter's killing
23 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When 19-year-old Ann from Florida, USA was shot by her boyfriend in 2010, her family were thrust into a nightmare, one that meant taking the agonising...
I was taken as a baby…I didn’t know who I was, part 2
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Jackie makes sporting history for Ireland and uncovers the truth about her past.Taken from her mother as a baby and raised in an Irish institution, Ja...
I was taken as a baby…I didn’t know who I was, part 1
13 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A black girl in a white town, Jackie’s made to grow up silenced and alone. This episode contains outdated racial language that some might find offen...
Skepta’s Mum: How I raised a rap legend
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ify Adenuga grew up with strict parents. As a mum, she rewrote the rulebook and encouraged creativity in her children, with her son Skepta becoming an...
Me, dad and the zombie chickens
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman railed against Hollywood his whole career as the founder of cult B-movie production house, Troma, while his daughter Lily-Haye...
Growing up black in a white family – the truth behind my birth
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
M People star Andrew Lovell’s home life hid a terrible – yet beautiful – secret. It would take him decades to find out the truth.At the height o...
Music was my salvation: the homeless man and the piano
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
While Francois Pierron was homeless in London he taught himself to play a public piano at St Pancras train station – from scratch. His mastery of mu...
Hercules: the grizzly bear who became family
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Robin raised a bear cub who grew into an extraordinary companion.When Maggie Robin and her wrestler husband Andy brought home a bear cub in 197...
Sects, lies and videotape: a Syrian story, part 2
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
While filming in rebel-held Syria, Loubna Mrie is falsely accused of being a spy – an accusation that spirals into a life-threatening ordeal, trigge...
Sects, lies and videotape: a Syrian story, part 1
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
From a powerful Alawite family in Syria, Loubna Mrie trusted the Assad regime – until witnessing its violent crackdown led her to defy loyalty and s...
Sects, lies and videotape: a Syrian story, part 1
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
From a powerful Alawite family in Syria, Loubna Mrie trusted the Assad regime – until witnessing its violent crackdown led her to defy loyalty and s...
The couple who foiled New Zealand’s biggest drugs plot
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An ordinary couple foiled the country's biggest drugs deal, all by doing a good deed. It involves a boat, a fake funeral at sea and the criminal under...
I bought Macclesfield FC while drunk and it saved my life
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Smethurst bought a bankrupt football club while his life was unravelling – then they went on to make football history and save him in the proces...
Colm Tóibín: How an Irish boy with a stammer found his voice
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Colm Tóibín is a celebrated Irish writer, but as a child words didn't come easily. Navigating grief as a boy when his father died, he developed a s...
The gay Kenyan boyband star who refused to be defeated
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Willis Chimano is one of Kenya’s biggest pop stars. With the boyband Sauti Sol, he’s won a string of awards and even danced with President Barack ...
Laughter saved me: the comedian turning tragedy into comedy
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When she was 14, Krystal Evans survived a lethal house fire. Years later, to come to terms with what she’d experienced, she turned it into a stand-u...
Living a lie: discovering my dad faked who he was
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Joanne Briggs had always thought of her dad as a bit of a superhero. But he was hiding a dark secret.She only saw him a couple of times a year during ...
Fatima Whitbread: from abandoned baby to world champion
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Fatima Whitbread grew up in a UK children’s home. She found both a mother and a coach in one person – going on to break the javelin world record a...
One suitcase, three kids: a broke scientist pursues a dream
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Ijeoma Uchegbu arrived back in the UK as a single mum of three young children she soon found herself living in a homeless shelter; now she is a p...
I broke the most important rule: don't get attached
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Swedish youth worker Nicolas Lunabba had one strict rule: never get attached to the kids you help. Then 13-year-old Elijah moved in — and turned his...
Tulisa: I wanted fame, but it almost destroyed me
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
N-Dubz singer Tulisa Contostavlos survived betrayal and a tabloid sting.Tulisa was born into a family of musicians in Camden, London, and says music w...
The ragtag boy who was taken in by a football icon
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The incredible story of the football icon who changed a boy's life. Craig Bromfield's start in life was difficult: there was often no electricity in h...
My private trauma was leaked to the press – so I fought back
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Jenny Evans was sexually assaulted and confidential details appeared in a national newspaper, she decided to investigate – uncovering police co...
How Paramore’s singer revived her grandad’s lost album
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hayley Williams’ grandpa Rusty nurtured her musical dreams – now, she’s returning the favour.As the lead singer of American rock band Paramore, ...
Miriam Toews: A loud voice in a town once ruled by silence
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The award-winning author who used her strict Mennonite upbringing to tell its unspoken stories.Miriam Toews is one of Canada’s most acclaimed noveli...
Introducing Cyber Hack: Evil Corp
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars – Russia’s most wanted hackers. Just who are Evil Corp? In season 3 of Cyber Hack, we follow t...
Trapped underground: my 54-hour cave rescue
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trapped underground: my 54-hour cave rescue. For George Linnane, an experienced caver from England, being underground is his happy place, somewhere h...
Stabbed as a boy – and becoming a poet for a lost generation
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Aged 16, coming out of an audition, budding British actor Dan Whitlam was caught up in a fight with a group of boys in London. He was stabbed twice i...
Tim Berners-Lee: The man who dreamed of a World Wide Web
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on the unique upbringing that inspired a tech revolution. Tim Berners-Lee has well and truly chan...
The baby-dinosaur hunter who ended up in Hollywood
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Horner inspired a character in Jurassic Park after the dino discovery of a lifetime.Jack has been fascinated by fossils for as long as he can rem...
The escape from Vietnam that tore my family apart
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the chaos of the helicopter evacuation from Saigon in April 1975, Doan Hoàng Curtis' sister was somehow left behind. It would haunt her family for...
Enter the new dragon: the Bruce Lee of Afghanistan
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Abbas Alizada was eight when he first saw a Bruce Lee film. He fell in love with kung-fu, copying his hero’s moves and his look before an online pos...
Jane Goodall: In her own words
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This extra edition of Lives Less Ordinary is to remember the remarkable conservationist and primatologist Jane Goodall, who has died at 91. The life s...
Sweet surprise: I found my birth mother in my local bakery
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vamarr Hunter always felt a special bond with the owner of his favourite local bakery — but never imagined she could be his long-lost birth mother. ...
Zarna Garg: The rise of an ‘unstoppable’ comedy star
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Once a homeless teen in Mumbai, now Zarna Garg’s a top comedian, touring with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.Zarna Garg was in her 40s living in New York ...
I sent three innocent teenagers to prison for life
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ron Bishop was 14 when he says police forced him to make false statements on the witness stand during a 1984 murder trial. His testimony helped senten...
Cesar Millan: The ‘dog boy’ who became the Dog Whisperer
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cesar Millan is known for training dogs on TV. What’s less well-known is that he migrated illegally to the US from Mexico and slept rough before mak...
Sole survivor: Eight days in the jungle after my plane crashed
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How a romantic getaway ended in disaster.Dutch financier Annette Herfkens boarded Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 in November 1992, embarking on what was ...
Coming up in the new season of Lives Less Ordinary
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A heads-up on some of the extraordinary stories to look forward to from September - from a long-lost son, to the sole survivor of a plane crash, to Af...
Hold Fast! 8. Our duty is done
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the Avontuur draws closer to Hamburg and its final port of call, the crew begin to reflect on what they’ve been through and what awaits them in t...
Hold Fast! 7. I want to hug a cow
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After 188 days without setting foot on land, the Avontuur finally arrives in Horta, in the Azores. But it's by no means certain whether the crew will ...
Hold Fast! 6. Unicorn poo
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the crew of the Avontuur fight their way out of the Gulf of Mexico and battle a hurricane that delays their journey back across the Atlantic, ship’...
Hold Fast! 5. No better mirror than the sea
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The crew of the Avontuur begin to wonder whether they will ever be able to get off the ship. As they become resigned to their new life of being comple...
Hold Fast! 4. Taking the biscuit
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Unable to step off the ship, tensions are rising amongst the crew of the Avontuur and coping mechanisms begin to emerge. When the dry store is raided ...
Hold Fast! 3. The world as you know it no longer exists
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of the Atlantic, the crew of the Avontuur receive a satellite email with news from land that throws everything they’d been counting on...
Hold Fast! 2. I didn’t know the sea was so big
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Avontuur begins the second leg of its journey, setting out from Tenerife to cross the Atlantic. At work in the galley preparing breakfast, ship’...
Hold Fast! 1. Signs from the universe
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
15 people, 188 days at sea, one extraordinary ship: how the Avontuur was locked out at sea during the Covid-19 pandemic.What would you do if your worl...
My way out of the woods
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A corporate high-flyer ended up living in a forest after a spiral of debt, shame and secrecy.After avoiding a mounting debt to his landlord, Australia...
Sex, love, Rock 'n' Roll... and The Sopranos
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Green is an American writer who has been dizzyingly successful, but she describes herself as a 'clueless girl'. At times, she didn't even realis...
Why I wore iron underwear on Kabul’s busiest street
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Artist Kubra Khademi was so enraged by the constant sexual harassment faced by women in Afghanistan that she created a bespoke suit of armour, forged ...
Kidnapped at four: How I found my way home
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After being kidnapped, a promise to return to his mother helped Antonio Salazar-Hobson through his darkest hours.Antonio Salazar-Hobson was four years...
The penguin that followed a teacher home
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While visiting friends in Uruguay, British teacher Tom Michell saw a penguin covered in oil and tar on a beach. Tom cleaned the bird as best he could ...
Meeting the monster: My 14 days with Joseph Kony
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Judith Obina Okumu's imagination, Joseph Kony was a monster. As leader of the Lord's Resistance Army he'd fought a decades-long war against the gov...
The Grandmother of Juneteenth, still battling for change at 98
15 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Opal Lee is now affectionately known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth. She led the campaign for the 19th June, the day in 1865 when enslaved people in...
The man who woke up in the future
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Dr Pier Piccioni woke up after a car accident, 12 years of his life had been erased.Dr Pierdante Piccioni is an unwilling time-traveller. Twelve ...
The mortician, the "werewolf" and the keeper of brains
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alexandra Morton-Hayward unlocks the secrets of the human brain but her own betrays her. Every night Ally Morton-Hayward has a headache so painful it ...
José Mujica: Guerilla, president and occasional romantic
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Remembering the former president of Uruguay: José 'Pepe' Mujica. He started life as a flower farmer on the outskirts of Montevideo. As a young man he...
The true story behind Brazil’s Oscar winner, I’m Still Here
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marcelo Rubens Paiva was 11 when armed men came and took his father away. Brazil was under a military dictatorship at the time. Marcelo's father was a...
The blind Holocaust survivor who caught a fugitive Nazi
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lothar Hermann found out his neighbour was ‘architect of the Holocaust’ Adolf Eichmann.Lothar Hermann’s German-Jewish family perished in the Hol...
Searching for green in a concrete world
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kwesia X grew up in south-east London, surrounded by busy roads and tower blocks. As a teenager her mental health spiralled after a member of her fami...
Painting faces in search of myself and my mum
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Juano Diaz was taken in to care aged six, his mother was battling alcoholism and he wasn't being cared for. But Juano missed his mum and with no photo...
The former wrestler who wants your brain
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Former Harvard athlete Chris Nowinski turned World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) star after a reality TV show catapulted him into the world of profess...
Swimming blind: my journey to self-acceptance
13 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Paralympic pools to the English Channel, Melanie Barratt took on the toughest swim of her life — laying to rest her demons, and honouring her b...
The painful secret I hid from my twin
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After a terrible motorbike accident 18-year-old Alex Lewis was left with no memory of his previous life. The only person he could remember was Marcus,...
Introducing Dear Daughter
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A bonus episode from Dear Daughter - the award-winning podcast from the BBC World Service. You can find more episodes by searching for 'Dear Daughter'...
Rewind: An author, his cellmate, and a new beginning
30 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How a book-loving prisoner showed a young Alex Wheatle the path to self-belief.Alex had been born in London to Jamaican parents, but grew up in care i...
My hunt for the Gutenberg – the rare book that solved a family mystery
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Visontay thought he knew everything about his family’s past, but there was one shadowy character he was aching to know more about: his grand...
Rewind: The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid Part 2
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 propa...
Rewind: The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid Part 1
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sue Dobson was a white South African who risked her life as an ANC secret agentSue was a student when she was first recruited as a spy for the African...
Held hostage by al-Qaeda: my desert odyssey
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Edith Blais was kidnapped by armed militants and held captive in the Sahara for 450 days.As a young French-Canadian who had overcome her teenage agora...
The unmaking of a child soldier
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a boy, Ishmael Beah was forced to kill. How do you turn a soldier back into a child? Ishmael Beah was just 13 when war reached his village in Sierr...
The WW2 spy and the little leaf that saved her
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1942, several years into the Second World War, the British government sent out a series of bulletins requesting any personal photos the public migh...
How’d you get so rich? A dream to change my family’s fortune
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Reggie Nelson grew up on an East London council estate in a British-Ghanaian family that struggled with alcoholism, domestic violence and money worrie...
The DNA request that revealed my child had gone missing
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2010, Cathy Terkanian received a letter that turned her world upside down. It revealed that her daughter, Alexis, whom she’d had to place f...
My 'miracle baby', born 15 months after I lost my love
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, Ellidy Pullin’s life was turned upside down when her partner, Olympic snowboarder Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin, died in a tragic accident. The ...
Stolen as a baby, I called my abductor ‘Mom’
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the night of December 15th, 1997, a fire broke out in the home of Luz Cuevas and Pedro Vera, a couple living in Philadelphia with their two young s...
Black boy joy: defying stereotypes on the London stage
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan Calais Cameron dreamed of being an actor, but after a careers advisor told him this was unrealistic he took a different path as a tradesman. Unha...
The long climb back
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017 Australian Gus Taylor lost his lower leg in a terrible climbing accident. The climbing community rallied, hauled him out of depression and got...
The journalist who took down a billion-dollar company
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dan McCrum investigated a story at Wirecard that had him fearing for his safety.British journalist Dan McCrum usually writes about businesses for the ...
The cricket star who learned to fly
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ricky Ellcock’s rollercoaster life as a fast bowler and airline pilotBarbados-born Ricky Ellcock had twin ambitions as a boy – to become a cricket...
The bullet that ended our friendship
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Rousseau was accidentally shot in the head by his best friend and flatmate. When Paul met Mark in the first year of university in the US, they qu...
After doomsday: I outgrew a cult and became a professor
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jerald Walker grew up in the predominantly white, Worldwide Church of God – a doomsday cult that convinced its followers the world would end in 1972...
Naked and alone: the comedian trapped in a reality TV show
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nasubi had no idea his 15-month fight to survive was being broadcast on Japanese TV.In the late 1990s aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nas...
How my mysterious childhood became a best-selling novel
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Trent Dalton discovered he was on the fringe of one of Australia’s biggest crime stories. Back in the 1980s, when Trent was a kid growing up in Bri...
The sports scandal scoop that almost destroyed me
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998 Finnish journalist Johanna Aatsalo uncovered a huge news story: a member of the much-revered Finnish cross-country ski team had taken banned s...
Saved by goats after my fall from the sacred mountain
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When he slid off a 40-metre cliff in the jungle, Morgan Segui thought he was sure to die.Three minutes without air, three days without water, three we...
Looking for my son for 58 years, part 2
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bestselling writer Lesley Pearse never stopped looking for her son.An agent once told Lesley Pearse to "write what you know", but her own story is mor...
Looking for my son for 58 years, part 1
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bestselling writer Lesley Pearse's own story is wilder than any romance.An agent once told Lesley Pearse to "write what you know", but her own story i...
The Wicker Man: Learning to love the film that broke us
20 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dominic and Justin Hardy were young boys when their father, the director Robin Hardy, began a gruelling and obsessive quest to make The Wicker Man. No...
"He counted 3, 2, 1 – then stabbed me in the heart"
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kieran Quinlan was on his way to a party when a man with a knife attacked him. Kieran Quinlan was an aspiring boxer living in his hometown of Birmingh...
The US’s first black astronaut trainee reaches space at 90
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In May 2024, 90-year-old Ed Dwight Jr. from Kansas City, Missouri travelled to the edge of space – he was an honoured guest in the Blue Origin rocke...
Love, grief, and an AI chatbot
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua created an AI simulation of his deceased fiancée to help him deal with his loss.When gaming enthusiast Joshua Barbeau met Jessica, he knew he ...
A love story and a battle cry in the Ecuadorian rainforest
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nemonte Nenquimo’s passion for her rainforest home, and her love for an unlikely man, propelled her to achieve an historic victory for indigenous pe...
The boy who hid from Nazis in the woods, part 2
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maxwell Smart survived the Holocaust by living in a makeshift bunker on the forest floor.Maxwell Smart was just 11 years old in 1941 when the Nazis to...
The boy who hid from Nazis in the woods, part 1
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maxwell Smart survived the Holocaust by living in a makeshift bunker on the forest floor.Maxwell Smart was just 11 years old in 1941 when the Nazis to...
Never ever give up: how Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American endurance swimmer Diana Nyad faced down box jellyfish, cold and extreme fatigue to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida witho...
The hungry boy who devoted his life to muscle
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gilbert Alaskadi grew up in the African country of Chad. His family was poor, and he spent much of his childhood hungry, with people frequently making...
Buddhist chants and Ibiza trance: A Spanish boy’s odyssey
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Osel Hita Torres was a Spanish toddler when he was recognised by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of a well-known Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher...