Lives Less Ordinary

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 head wound …

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 sailing thro…

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 long before th…

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. At his low…

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 old she was s…

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 instea…

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, but nothing…

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 received from two i…

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 with the law,…

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 African Amer…

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 albums, toure…

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 has Down's s…

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. He watched …

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 good intelli…

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 movement in the 198…

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 – until the…

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 Gazans for Oly…

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 invasion, when his…

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 family home. …

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 encountered p…