BBC Radio Podcasts from The Outlook Podcast Archive

The astronaut who made a quilt in Space

Astronaut Dr Karen Nyberg launched a sewing project from the International Space Station

The drag queen who ran for president of the United States

Joan Jett Blakk ran for office in 1992 to raise awareness about the Aids crisis

Drawing is my language: the artist who recreates cities from memory

Austistic savant Stephen Wiltshire has a gift for drawing the world in perfect detail

How my father’s stories shielded me from civil war

When war came to Liberia, Wayètu Moore’s dad was determined to protect her from reality

Escaping a life on a dumpsite with classical music

Extraordinary first person stories from around the world

Dressing Beyoncé: It started with a Barbie outfit

Artist Osman Yousefzada's love of clothes came from watching his mum sew for neighbours

The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp

Lynn Price and Andi Andree didn't find out they were sisters until the ages of 8 and 9

I’m a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own

Disaster recovery expert Lucy Easthope used her skills to cope with personal tragedy

My mum Poly Styrene, a punk icon

Poly Styrene brought her distinctive voice and neon outfits to the 1970s punk scene

I survived an avalanche, but the real challenge came after

Joe Yelverton's life changed in an instant when he was hit by an avalanche in Alaska

The child preacher who exposed a con

Marjoe Gortner's life as an evangelical conman and his Oscar-winning undercover act

Running an underground newspaper during the Syrian uprising

Kholoud Helmi paid a high price to start one of Syria's only independent newspapers

Mountains took my family - but I love them

Kate Ballard lost her mum and brother to the Himalayas but finds joy on the slopes

Driven by jealousy: the Chippendales murder plot

Co-founder Bruce Nahin gives the inside story on the male strip club's troubled past

Why I’m singing songs for my transgender dad

Musician Frank Turner was estranged from his father for years; now they’re finally close

The priest leading the fight for LGBT rights in Poland

How Szymon Niemiec combined his faith and activism to found Poland's first Gay Pride

My long-lost sister was a surrogate mother to my twins

When adoptee Mark found his long-lost sister Rachel, it led to a remarkable offer

The giant window and the race against time

Artists Tim Carey and Narcissus Quagliata built the world's biggest stained glass window

The false confessions of a serial killer

Thomas Quick was Sweden’s most notorious serial killer. Then he retracted his confessions

Becoming an elder in the community I was stolen from as a baby

How Australian Dianne O'Brien discovered her Indigenous heritage - and her calling

The violin that saved a Jewish family

Natalie Cumming's violin helped her family survive starvation, persecution, and torture

My stolen ‘magic’ guitar, found after 45 years

Solving the mystery of rock star Randy Bachman’s beloved guitar which disappeared in 1976

Soweto Uprising: What happened to my dad?

Janet Goldblatt's father was murdered, but the full story would take decades to emerge.

The blind skateboarder going for gold

When skateboarder Justin Bishop went blind, he worried he’d lost the sport he loved

My symphony to a soccer ‘bad-boy’

How a Finnish composer’s muse would steal the show on the biggest night of his career

Exposing Nigeria’s cough syrup crisis, for my brother

Why Ruona Meyer joined the frontline in the war against codeine cough syrup

The forgotten story of a pioneering Olympic champion

Wyomia Tyus was the first person to win gold in the 100m in two consecutive Olympic Games

Attacked and accused of lying – my long fight for the truth

In 1993 Donna Palomba was assaulted in her home, then police accused her of making it up

The dramatic journey of Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsleigh

Dudley Stokes drove Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsleigh and inspired the film Cool Runnings

The man who had a baby

Freddy McConnell is a trans man who decided to have a baby

The artist who started out drawing war as a child refugee

Petrit Halilaj was just 13 years old when his drawings were beamed all over the world

Gaming with Tourette’s: Sweet Anita’s success story

Sweet Anita overcame loneliness and isolation to become a famous gamer online

The refugee pilot who helped Afghans flee the Taliban

Zak Khogyani was forced to flee his home. Now he's helping others in the same position

The first African in Greenland

It took Tété-Michel Kpomassie eight years to reach the Arctic from his home in Togo

"No equality - even in death"

Reclaiming the lost history of an African American cemetery

How books helped me bond with my captors

María Antonia Garcés was a hostage in Colombia. Her love of literature helped her survive

Mafia, a murder cover-up and a sister’s battle for justice

Who was behind Perween Rahman’s murder? Her sister was determined to uncover the truth

The crumbling old house that hid a treasure trove of art

It was a tiny, dilapidated cottage but inside the garage was something truly remarkable

My love affair with the instrument that reminds me of home

Syrian virtuoso musician Maya Youssef fell in love with the qanun as a child

Anne Frank’s stepsister: How I survived Auschwitz, part 2

How Anne Frank’s diary led Eva Schloss to find her brother’s hidden Holocaust paintings

Anne Frank’s stepsister: How I survived Auschwitz, part 1

The extraordinary Holocaust testimony of Eva Schloss and her memories of Anne Frank

Solving the puzzle: Crosswords, anorexia, and me

How Anna Shechtman recovered from anorexia and changed the world of crosswords

The freediver who found salvation underwater

Alenka Artnik overcame grief and pain to become a world champion freediver

Caring for my mum & the secrets of her sickness

After a lifetime of caring for her ill mother Helen Naylor began to ask was it all a lie?

My surprise Paralympic entry

Marie Harrower’s mother taught her not to let her blindness hold her back

Family and forgiveness, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Celebrating the life of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu with an interview he did in 2014

I sailed the oceans in a Scientology jazz band

Neil Sarfati toured on board a ship with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard

Looking for the Liberian sister I left behind

Civil war separated Helene Cooper from her sister. Years later she went back to find her

The factory worker who became Chile's first blind senator

How a tear gas cannister changed the course of Fabiola Campillai’s life

A mother's battle for her son's education

At risk of losing her son Virginia Walden Ford fought to change the US education system.

A quizmaster’s accidental route to fame

How quizmaster Jay Flynn started the UK's most in-demand pub quiz by accident

The tip-off and the 30-year treasure hunt

A story told over drinks in the 1980s set two metal detectorists on a very long hunt

The shocking truth about my three dads

DNA tests revealed that Eve Wiley's biological father was not the man she thought

Kidnapped by Nazis as a baby

Ingrid Von Oelhafen discovered she'd been part of an experiment during World War II

I lost my heart to a herd of reindeer

Tilly Smith went to Scotland to look after a herd of reindeer 40 years ago and never left

Falling for the stranger who saved me

When Nupur Gupta found herself in trouble out at sea, Attila Bosnyak appeared at her side

Lessons in grief from the South African wilderness

Working as a wilderness guide helped Sicelo Mbatha confront the loss of his best friend

"We were going to hold our ground": Behind the lines of a Mohawk protest

Tracey Deer's community were involved in a 78 day siege with the Canadian government

Alaska: Drag, drugs and fighting the fame monster

Dream chasing and Drag Racing with Alaska 5000, and the restorative power of Catwoman

Gerald and the giant vegetables

Septuagenarian Gerald Stratford went viral with videos of his enormous vegetables

The father and daughter finding closure after a plane crash

Gonzalo and Michelle Dussan were two of only four survivors of a plane crash in 1995

My sister Banaz - killed for loving the wrong man

Payzee Mahmod on the tragedy that broke her family and her campaign to end child marriage

I was blamed for the 9/11 attacks

Virginia Buckingham ran the Boston airport from which two of the hijacked planes took off

The unsung pioneer of reggae's golden age

How Leroy Sibbles of The Heptones created some of the most influential rhythms in reggae

From 'half-nerd' to Hong Kong student leader

For democracy campaigner Nathan Law, the important thing is not to hate himself

My real-life Cuban dance romance

JoAnn Jansen learned to dance in the arms of a revolutionary – now she teaches film stars

The chicken who sailed the world

Guirec Soudée sailed around the world with just his chicken Monique for company

The cult, the crocodile and my journey back to love

Juliana Buhring's search for true love would catapult her into the record books

The 'deepest man on earth'

Herbert Nitsch broke the record for deepest free dive but fell asleep on the way back up

The teenager who baked her way out of a crisis

When Kitty Tait was struggling with her mental health, she opened a bakery

Why my parents sent my brothers to live in North Korea

When Yonghi Yang was six, her parents made a choice the family have lived with ever since

The choir without vocal cords

The Belgian chorister-turned-doctor who conducts a choir for people without vocal cords

The bionic gloves that brought music back to me

Joao Carlos Martins thought he'd never play piano again, then he was gifted bionic gloves

My anonymous teen story became a playground sensation

In 2005 a London schoolgirl uploaded a story to her blog that took on a life of its own

Matt Goss: Life and loss in a superstar boy band

The Bros lead singer on fame, fans, and what happened after the pop bubble burst

The Jewish prisoner, the treasure hunters and the secret diary

Menachem Kaiser’s family quest led to a top-secret underground Nazi city

Fighting the apartheid my grandfather created

Wilhelm Verwoerd’s grandfather was the prime minister of South Africa in the 1960s

I still believe I'm lucky even after breaking my neck

Ed Jackson almost died after he mistakenly dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool

Harvard Law School’s first Deafblind graduate

While Haben Girma was at Harvard she developed new technology to help her communicate

Hostage: A spider, starvation and solitude in the desert

Edith Blais was kidnapped by armed militants and held captive in the Sahara for 450 days

The Holocaust survivor who became a TikTok star

Lily Ebert survived Auschwitz. Now she shares her story with millions of followers online

'Love finds a way' - a bond that overcame decades of separation

Jeanne's family opposed her relationship with Steve. They split, but she never forgot him

'Honour' made my father a murderer

Amina’s father brutally attacked her and her sister for ‘shaming’ their Jordanian family

The medical textbook that inspired me to flee my homeland

Waheed Arian left war-torn Afghanistan to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor

The man and the shark

When a shark got a hook caught in its throat, a diver intervened

Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history

Grace M. Cho learned to cook traditional Korean food to comfort her traumatised mother

I found my son 32 years after he was kidnapped

Li Jingzhi’s child was abducted in 1988. They were finally reunited 32 years later

Miss Pat: The Chinese-Jamaican matriarch of reggae

Patricia Chin created a musical empire that started in a Kingston grocery store

People used to stare at me. I fight back with my paintbrush

How disabled artist Riva Lehrer's portraits challenge myths about disability

"I'm a fighter": The Dalit lawyer taking on the caste system

Manjula Pradeep is an Indian activist helping other Dalit women fight caste prejudice

Ice Prince: The making of a Nigerian hip hop star

How personal loss and violent conflict shaped the career of Panshak Zamani aka Ice Prince

The secret that nearly destroyed our marriage

Cheryl was married to Bobby Love for 30 years before she found out the truth about him

The locked-in boy and the brain experiment

Why neurologist Phil Kennedy experimented on his own healthy brain

The spy who pretended to be homeless

Tom Marcus went undercover as a homeless man to stop extremist attacks in Britain

‘Born lucky’: Escaping the Khmer Rouge

Sieu Do’s idyllic childhood took a brutal turn when he found himself in a labour camp

The uncomfortable truth hidden in my DNA

Former policeman Hiram Johnson's quest to solve a family mystery

The man who (re)painted the Mona Lisa

Adebanji Alade recreated a masterpiece - but he's never seen the real thing

Agent Orange: A Vietnamese grandmother's last battle

Tran To Nga is fighting to get compensation for victims of the toxic herbicide

The Somali prisoner, the secret language and the life-saving book

Mohamed Barud’s fellow prisoner tapped out Tolstoy's Anna Karenina through his cell wall

The inside story of a Muslim drag queen

Amrou al-Kadhi on their complex identity - Muslim, gay, non-binary drag queen

"The camera was my shield" - a refugee films his journey

The footage Hassan Akkad captured would help make his name as a filmmaker

My teacher became my torturer

Mirsad Solakovic was just 13 when his teacher came to school and pointed a gun at him

The immigration lawyer who hid her undocumented past

Qian Julie Wang started working on immigration cases and faced a life-changing dilemma

Addicted to my son's addiction

David and Nic Sheff, whose struggle with addiction inspired the film Beautiful Boy

A footballing legend's gambling secret

How Steph Shilton saved husband Peter from a 45-year addiction

I went backpacking and became an accidental celebrity

Dan Tyler left England to get away from it all. He ended up finding a new course in life

Finding healing in the sea that took my family

Geraldine Mullan swims to remember her family who died when their car veered into the sea

The heavy metal boys from the dump

The heavy metal band who grew up on Cambodia's biggest rubbish dump

The sinking of a pirate radio ship

Nick Richards was a DJ with an offshore radio station, but the ship was falling apart

I hit puberty, then burned down my family home

As a teenager Nikki Owen's mental health and behaviour quickly spiralled out of control

I stole a safe, and faced the dilemma of my life

The burglar who discovered a terrible crime - but risked life in prison if he reported it

The first beauty queen in a free South Africa

Basetsana Kumalo was crowned Miss South Africa after the country's first democratic vote

The epic road trip that taught me how to live again

After surviving cancer in her twenties, Suleika Jaouad felt she'd forgotten how to live.

Why this Covid doctor hid his homeless past

Emmanuel Taban, a former street kid now recognised for his life-saving medical work

The murder case that started a cyber sleuth revolution

Todd Matthews became obsessed with identifying 'Tent Girl,' a decades-old unsolved crime

The secretaries who inspired the hit movie 9 to 5

Karen Nussbaum is the co-founder of 9to5, a movement that gave rise to a box office smash

Escaping after an IS massacre

Ali Hussein Kadhim was a captured Iraqi soldier who narrowly avoided execution

I ran away from slavery; now I help others escape

Analiza Guevarra escaped abuse but can’t return to her family in the Philippines

The schoolgirl fraudster who found redemption in ballroom

Shannon Balenciaga discovered the underground ball scene in prison – and became a legend

'If you cut out part of my brain am I still Jody?'

Brain surgery cured Jody Smith's seizures and there were other surprising side effects

Disco and drama: The story of Ride On Time

Worldwide fame came at a moral price for an Italian DJ who made a huge 1980s dance hit

Helping refugees saved my life

At 28, Kon Karapanagiotidis started a charity that would become a lifeline for thousands

From Gaza to NASA: A Space Odyssey

Palestinian Loay Elbasyouni was part of the team that launched a helicopter from Mars

From rehab to ten thousand reservations - the many lives of chef, Erin French

Erin French runs one of the US’s hardest-to-book restaurants. But it’s been a rough road

We left as kayakers and came back as dissidents

Andrzej and Jacek escaped Communist Poland on an adventure. Life would never be the same

The secret link between two gymnasts

Jennifer Bricker was born without legs and idolised Olympic gymnast Dominique Moceanu

Undercover in a nursing home at the age of 83

Sergio Chamy was in for a shock when he answered a job advert for men in their 70s to 90s

The joy of skiing blind

Blind skier Mike Brace has dedicated his life to Paralympic sport

The painful secret I hid from my twin

When Alex lost his memories his identical twin helped him restore them, or some of them

Danny Trejo: The ex-con who cracked Hollywood

He’s played the tough guy in a long list of films but in his 20s faced the death penalty

Josephine Baker: My mother, the superstar singer and spy - Part 2

Jari Hannu Bouillon was a baby when he went from a Finnish orphanage to a French castle

Josephine Baker: My mother, the superstar singer and spy - Part 1

Josephine Baker adopted 12 children from around the world – Jari was one of them

The mountain between us

How two climbers became connected after a fateful expedition on a mountain in Tibet

I found the Titanic during a top-secret Cold War mission

For 70 years people searched for the wreck of the Titanic. Then came Robert Ballard

The improbable rise of Europe’s 'Tofu King'

How German vegetarian Bernard Drosihn took on the ‘meat police’ and won

I changed my name to change my life

Hakeem Oluseyi beat drug addiction and dropped his old name to become a star scientist

Tarantulas, Gandalf and my dying brother's bucket list

Royd Tolkien’s brother Mike left him a daring list of tasks to complete after he died

I saw a smile on the suicide bomber's face

In 2006 a suicide truck bomb left Iraqi teenager Qusay Hussein severely injured and blind

The criminal double life of a stage actor

Jack Charles is a venerated Aboriginal Australian actor, but he once had an addiction.

The Omani football nerd who went from player to pundit

How Rumaitha Al Busaidi became the first female football commentator in the Arab world

Helping the drug addict who stole my dog to get into rehab

When Brayden Morton found the woman who stole his dog, he was determined to help her.

What Susan did on Death Row

Susan Kigula led a choir, got a degree and changed Ugandan law as she waited to be hanged

'Horses saved my life' - how a boy from West Philly made polo history

A chance discovery catapulted Kareem Rosser into the elite world of polo.

The 80s song that brought back my memories

A car accident wiped all of Thomas Leeds' memories and he had to start again.

The train driver asking men to open up about mental health

Heather Waugh is committed to preventing suicides

The Paralympian who was trapped inside her body

How Victoria Arlen swam for gold after years of being unable to speak or move

Recording my first album as a man

The singer-songwriter Cidny Bullens finally decided to transition aged 61

Punk, God, and my search for truth

Punk icon Palmolive walked away from two pioneering bands looking for spiritual answers

Seven months trapped in an airport

Hassan Al Kontar had to live at Kuala Lumpur airport after he got stuck in a legal limbo

From songbird to birdsong expert

Former opera singer Gisela Kaplan on how she became an expert in bird communication

Trapped in a "metal coffin" on the ocean floor

42 metres down on the seabed with 22 sailors inside: the story of the submarine Pacocha

A decade without Dan: The search for my brother gave me purpose

The loss of Loren O’ Keeffe’s brother led her to help families with missing loved ones

From intensive care to the Olympic podium

How fencer Keeth Smart won an Olympic medal months after being diagnosed with leukaemia

Birdwatching with the men who kidnapped me

Diego Calderón was taken hostage in Colombia on a biology field trip

Banned from voting for my wife, so we changed the law

Desmond and Sheena Meade’s historic battle to give ex-felons the right to vote in Florida

A plane crash left me lost in the Amazon

Brazilian pilot Antônio Sena survived 36 days alone after crashing into dense rainforest

Stories from Syria's secret library

Under siege: how a group of friends risked everything to create a literary sanctuary

Rugby star Gareth Thomas: Strong, vulnerable and HIV positive

Rugby legend Gareth Thomas was blackmailed and lived in fear before revealing he was HIV+

My unknown song became a political anthem in Hong Kong

A phone alert revealed Matthew Keegan had become an overnight pop star 5,000 miles away

I ran with the men, and changed history

Kathrine Switzer was attacked for running in the men-only 1967 Boston Marathon

The siege and the cat that saved my life

Amra Sabic El-Rayess turned 16 as Bosnia Herzegovnia plunged into civil war

Making friends with the man who stole my paintings

Artist Barbora Kysilkova formed an unlikely friendship after the theft of her paintings

Life as the UK's first black TV reporter

Broadcasting legend Sir Trevor McDonald looks back on his life and career

Discovering my sister's inner world

A story of sisterly love, migration and art

Fire, ice and thunder: A chase on the high seas

Taking down the Thunder, the world's most notorious poaching ship

My life collecting the folk songs of Iraq

How vocalist Sa'di al-Hadithi is preserving Iraqi folk music for posterity

I survived Chechnya's 'gay purge'

Amin Dzhabrailov escaped his homeland after being kidnapped and tortured

My mother, India’s forgotten disco diva

Rupa Biswas Sen’s long-lost Indian disco record became an underground hit after 30 years

Hunting 'The Serpent': the diplomat turned detective

An unlikely investigator on the trail of serial killer Charles Sobhraj

Frank Sinatra's Australian showdown

When Ol’ Blue Eyes made Australia see red

A top Iranian chess umpire and her impossible decision

Shohreh Bayat was one of Asia’s top chess umpires until she was faced with an ultimatum

Living without time: The cave experiment we didn't want to end

Fifteen people lived in darkness to see what it did to their perception of time

The quiet Louisiana grandma who became an environmental warrior

Sharon Lavigne campaigned to stop a plastics factory being built in her riverside parish

Andy Cole: Goals, glory and the battle for his life

Manchester United star Andy Cole went from top scorer to transplant survivor

The spies in my house

Confronting the Stasi agent who watched me for fifteen years

‘Aids Angel’ – I gave love in a time of prejudice and fear

Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of HIV+ gay men abandoned by their families

The doctor treating children 8000 miles away

Afghan refugee Meena Said is saving the lives of children in her homeland

Saving the songs of the Sahara

The defiant life of desert music pioneer Fadimata Walet Oumar

Keeping up with Australia's rebellious Buddhist nun

Robina Courtin went from being a radical feminist to martial arts expert to Buddhist nun

The perilous world of a ‘cult deprogrammer’

Rick Alan Ross went from selling cars to trying to rescue people from cults

Fighting to free my daughter from the Nxivm 'sex cult'

Catherine Oxenberg discovered her daughter India’s self-help group was a dangerous cult

My big fake wedding: uncovering an outlandish deception

Benita and Paolo's was a whirlwind romance that turned into a nightmare

The nightclub fire that rocked Romania

Following a blaze in a Bucharest club, a sports newspaper uncovered deadly corruption

London’s revolutionary kiss-in

Ted Brown is a black LGBT rights pioneer who helped organise the UK’s first Gay Pride

Rickie Lee Jones: Why music became my bridge to the world

The US singer hit the big time in her early 20s, winning a Grammy for her first album

Going to sea to honour my son

Yayi Bayam Diouf's son was a fisherman who lost his life trying to get to Europe

My forbidden love for a US soldier

What happens when an Iraqi student and a soldier from the invading US army fall in love?

Dancing behind bars in Burkina Faso

After dance helped Bougobali resist the urge to murder, he decided to teach prisoners too

What my father wouldn’t tell me

Carol Benjamin’s quest to understand the scars and silences of her revolutionary family

The black ballerina who didn't give up

Julie Felix says she was told she was the wrong colour to be a swan

What really happened on the 'Sex Raft'

The true story behind an infamous social experiment

How did this man find two lost Rembrandts?

Jan Six is an art dealer whose ancestor was painted by the Dutch Master Rembrandt

Secrets of my family's lost café

Old photos of her grandfather's café led Meriel Schindler to some shocking family truths

The music star who was born into a cult

Musician Mikel Jollett grew up in Synanon, a drug rehabilitation programme-turned-cult

I was the sole survivor of a plane crash

Stranded on a mountain, 11-year-old Norman Ollestad had to find a way to survive alone

How I sang for my freedom

Banned songs and fake identities: the Kurdish performer on the run

The surfer who fought apartheid to become a world champion

Cass Collier learnt to surf on segregated beaches – now he's fighting apartheid's legacy

Hunting for my past in a Hong Kong stairwell

Claire Martin was abandoned at two days old. For years she looked for blood relatives.

The daring prison escape of an Argentine footballer

Claudio Tamburrini used bed sheets and a metal bolt to escape imprisonment and torture

My mother’s fake name and secret past

Justine Cowan's English mother invented a fictional childhood

I became a supermodel overnight and didn't know

As a teenager, Lisa Ray took some photos in India that made her an instant sensation

From saving goals to saving lives

Former ice hockey star Clint Malarchuk nearly died three times, now he helps others

My mission to save the 'Russian spy whale'

Fisherman Joar Hesten is trying to help a whale rumoured to have escaped the Russian navy

My life as a millennial Yoruba priestess

Omitonade’s world of deities, divination, and mobile phones

Singing for my murdered sister helps me heal

Opera singer Joshua Hopkins' musical journey to deal with the grief of losing his sister

My 30-year fight for justice for my mum

Lee Lawrence was 11 when his mother was shot during a police raid on their home

Hunting for a monster in the desert

Palaeontologist Nizar Ibrahim searched the Sahara for a Spinosaurus dinosaur skeleton

Sin, sexuality and how Beyoncé became a lifeline

Writer Paul Mendez’s turbulent teenage life as a gay Jehovah’s Witness and RnB superfan

Bringing down a dictator

One lawyer’s perilous journey to bring a war criminal to justice

Searching for a serial killer from my bedroom

Paul Haynes spent nearly a decade trying to catch the 'Golden State Killer'

The bowl of porridge that changed my life

Elizabeth Nyamayaro was saved from starvation as a child by a UN aid worker in Zimbabwe

The break-up that cost me my voice

The triumphant return of Shirley Collins, the 'first lady' of English folk

Secrets & Lies: China’s dissident cartoonist

Badiucao's double life and the price of operating in secret

Secrets & Lies: Family secrets

Two very different stories of family secrets exposed

Secrets & Lies: Imposters

The pop star and the 'fake heiress'

Secrets & Lies: Fraudsters and forgers

The art of deception - two extraordinary stories

Secrets & Lies: Messages hidden in music

A trio of tales with a musical note

Secrets & Lies: The man who stole the President’s secrets

One writer risked prison to leak material about Uzbekistan's authoritarian former leader

Secrets & Lies: Lives lived in shame

Two stories of people who spent a lifetime denying who they were

Secrets & Lies: The undercover operatives

Stories from a spy's daughter and Ghana's most famous undercover journalist

Secrets & Lies: What my parent hid from me

Two stories involving parents who concealed life-changing secrets from their children

Secrets & Lies: Lives destroyed online

Two unnerving stories about how quickly lies can spread online

Spain's fearless barnacle-hunting sisters

Isabel and Susana González risk their lives to collect barnacles along Spain's coastline

The architect who lost his sight but gained a vision

Chris Downey went blind almost overnight, one month later he was back being an architect

From classical piano to rock stardom in Japan

Japanese rock star Yoshiki shares the personal story behind his songs

Abandoned at sea for three years

Sailor Vikash Mishra lived on a leaky cargo ship after its owners ran out of money

The child spy and her secret agent parents

Sue-Ellen Doherty was trained by her parents to spy for Australia during the Cold War

Fear and fantasy TV in the siege of Aleppo

The Syrian medic who found solace in TV as he ran rebel Aleppo’s only children’s hospital

The birthday gift that survived the Holocaust

In 1942 Sylvia Cohn wrote her daughter a book of poems. They're her "greatest treasure"

Married to a psychopath: my husband’s double life

Mary Turner Thomson’s life took a chilling turn after meeting the “perfect” man online

The child labourer who became a star of Mexico's food scene

Eduardo Garcia picked fruit, then served time in prison, before achieving culinary fame

The actress turning her back on Bollywood to follow her dad's dreams

Sonia Mann's father wrote her a letter on her birth, which has guided her life ever since

The photoshoot that helped me grieve for my baby

A gifted photoshoot provided Ashley Jones comfort after her daughter died at 21 months

I hated the word 'albino'

Mala Bhargava learned to accept her white hair and skin when her face became famous

The sport I love damaged my brain

Former rugby player Alix Popham can't remember some of his finest moments on the pitch

The Cuban dad who became a lifeline for Chernobyl's children

Manuel Barriuso was a medical translator in an historic humanitarian operation

An Orthodox rapper in Jerusalem

Nissim Black is an American rapper who converted to Hasidic Judaism

My son found his birth mother using Google Earth

The story of Sue Brierley’s adopted son Saroo became the Oscar-nominated film Lion

Taking over my parents' legendary jazz venue

Ben Jaffe's parents turned Preservation Hall into a New Orleans jazz institution

New York to Saigon: taking beers to my friends in a warzone

An epic mission to raise the morale of Chickie Donahue's friends fighting in Vietnam

Egypt's only woman rally driver who "dances with the dunes"

Yara Shalaby, Egypt's only woman rally driver who learned to “dance with the sand dunes"

Jail Time Records - songs from a Cameroon prison

Music producer Vidou H made an album while wrongly accused of murder

We discovered we were stolen as babies

Maria Diemar and Daniel Olsson were adopted from Chile and brought up in Sweden

Swimming with polar bears – a photographer’s 'crazy' dream

Israeli photographer Amos Nachoum is known for his close-up encounters with predators

Mary Wilson: her life as a Supreme

How Mary Wilson became a Motown star and why she hated The Supremes’ early hits

Setting up a fake mafia to catch El Chapo

Crime boss is just one of the many undercover roles played by FBI agent Mike McGowan

The scavenger who found a brass symphony

A trombone took Ronald Kabuye from the streets of Kampala to a world-famous stage

The making of the 'Wish Man'

How a poor boy who was abandoned by his mother grew up to grant children’s dying wishes

The voyage of The Fisherman's Friends

How a group of friends with a love for sea shanties went from Cornwall to the Albert Hall

The broken computer that unlocked my fortune

From 'dumpster baby' to millionaire: Freddie Figgers uses his tech mastery to help others

The record-breaking runner who hated her legs

Mimi Anderson's desire for thinner legs took her from the treadmill to ultra-marathons

My life by Whitney Houston's side

Robyn Crawford and the superstar singer were inseparable for two decades

Inside the hospitals of lockdown Wuhan

Filmmaker Hao Wu got unprecedented footage from four hospitals during Wuhan's lockdown

That time I DJed from space

The astronaut who headlined a rave while he was in orbit and other extraordinary gigs

The gourmet chef who used to beg for food

How a childhood on the streets of India prepared Sash Simpson to become a top chef

Escaping lockdown in the Coral City

The urban reef webcam bringing together a community around the globe

Who says I can't go to school?

How an Afghan girl defied the Taliban by setting up a secret classroom

My abuser used an alien plot to brainwash me

Jan Broberg and her mum Mary Ann share how a trusted friend kidnapped Jan – twice

The rap star saved by a nursing home

After losing his memory T La Rock forgot he was famous and had to learn to rap again

The Iranian avocado quest that led to prison

The saga to free journalist Jason Rezaian from Iran’s most notorious prison

'Document everything. Trust no one'

Omar Mohammed went undercover to expose IS atrocities in his blog Mosul Eye

‘I am sinking. This is not a joke. MAYDAY’

Disaster struck when Kevin Escoffier’s boat split during the perilous Vendée Globe race

The Beninese singer hustling for success in New York

Shirazee endured homelessness and a threat of deportation as he pursued his music dreams

The match-making tree and other tales of unexpected romance

From the world's most romantic postbox to a persecuted couple’s perilous ocean voyage

Moana: the Polynesian family behind the smash hit songs

Musician Opetaia Foa'i fought for the Disney movie to stay true to Pacific culture

Tasting the desert with Chile's leading forager

Patricia Pérez sells the rare herbs she finds in the Atacama desert to Chile's top chefs

I ran with the men, and changed history

Kathrine Switzer was attacked for running in the men-only 1967 Boston Marathon

Defending my dream cost my mother her life

Two-time US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey turned to poetry after her mother's murder

The video that turned our lives upside down

When a mum hit record on her son crying she couldn't have predicted the global reaction

The rebel musicians fighting India’s caste system

The Casteless Collective is a protest band who challenge caste oppression through song

Seven songs to mourn seven black men

Joel Thompson is behind a composition about the killing of black men in the USA

My husband came back from the dead

How an accident and a case of mistaken identity changed one couple's lives forever

Why I made a film in which I kill my dad

When Kirsten Johnson’s dad got dementia she found an unusual way to cope

Elza Soares: invincible queen of samba

Singer Elza Soares survived poverty and public scandal to become a music legend in Brazil

The tale of the little Countess's little cello

How a 180-year-old miniature cello shaped the musical dreams of two American girls

How I became ‘Mr Vaquita’

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho faces poachers and pirates to save the world's rarest marine mammal

The student who fought to pass Mexico’s historic ‘revenge porn’ law

Ana Baquedano campaigned to change the law in Mexico after an ex shared her nude selfie

The family murder that launched our campaign

Brothers Luke and Ryan Hart are trying to change the conversation around domestic abuse

My brother’s illness made me a “sickle cell warrior”

Tartania Brown is one of few sickle cell doctors in New York who also has the condition

The "five careers" of Bettye Lavette

Bettye Lavette was a teenage singing star. Five decades on, she's a star once more.

After facing death row, the inmate who turned investigator

Sohail Yafat turned his miscarriage of justice into a fight for all prisoners in Pakistan

The sisterhood vs the man who gave them HIV

Diane Reeve rallied together women who had contracted HIV from the same cheating lover

Surviving civil war with a tracksuit and tennis racquet

Sam Jalloh, the barefoot player turned pro, coaches kids to achieve their tennis dreams

My music bus healing a gang divide

Justin Finlayson turned his London bus into a music studio to help at-risk young people

The Godfather of Hollywood sound

Walter Murch is a superstar sound designer. His ingenuity transformed cinema

Discovering Stalin's million-dollar wine cellar

Wine merchant John Baker on trying to buy Josef Stalin's secret wine collection

“The best ending to 2020…

...that I can possibly imagine.” It’s time for the BBC Inspirations Awards.

The epic Arabic poem that was born in a stable

Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh began writing Uruk's Anthem while imprisoned in a stable

Who do you think you are?

Stories of people whose identities were a mystery begging to be solved

The 'Supervet': from bullies to bionic limbs

Noel Fitzpatrick is an Irish vet who makes ground-breaking bionic limbs for injured pets

Becoming 'brothers' with my guard in Guantanamo Bay

How a Mauritanian inmate and an American guard were brought together by a movie

The secretaries who inspired the hit movie 9 to 5

Karen Nussbaum is the co-founder of 9to5, a movement that gave rise to a box office smash

The man behind Mindhunter: face to face with serial killers

John E. Douglas spent his FBI career speaking to some of America's most violent criminals

The sailor and the pirate king

Indian sailor Sudeep Choudhury was kidnapped at gunpoint by pirates in the Niger Delta

Rufus Wainwright: My music and my mother

Born into folk music royalty, Rufus took special inspiration from his mum Kate McGarrigle

Bonus podcast: The Conversation, BBC 100 Women

Has the Covid-19 pandemic triggered change that could be seen as positive in the future?

My Falklands War: the woman with the white gloves

How a farmer ignored military threats and rallied her community to save injured soldiers

I learned my mum's identity via SMS

It would take My Huong decades to uncover the truth about her birth family in Vietnam

Speaking through music: Me and my non-verbal sister

Ian Brennan’s sister, who has Down's syndrome, taught him to communicate through music

Fighting plastic pollution in paradise

How Kristal Ambrose rallied a group of kids to get a plastic ban in the Bahamas

The photo that exposed apartheid

The Soweto Uprisings and the story behind South Africa's most iconic photo.

Zero-gravity highs and history-making lows

Kathy Sullivan is a former US astronaut who has made history both at sea and in space

The firefighting vets of Brazil

Carla Sassi and her team have been rescuing animals as wildfires burn around them

A spy in the family

I was betrayed to the East German Secret Police

Separated from my kids at the US-Mexico border

Guatemalan Rosayra Pablo Cruz was helped by a surprise visitor while she was in detention

The IS orphans rescued by their grandpa

He couldn’t save his daughter after she joined IS but could he rescue her seven children?

Fire, ice and thunder: a chase on the high seas

Taking down the Thunder, the world's most notorious poaching ship

Skin: the scream that made me a rock star

How Skin, lead singer of the ground-breaking British band, Skunk Anansie, found her voice

A scandal at the Oscars: Marlon Brando & me

Millions watched Sacheen Littlefeather refuse an Oscar in a stand against stereotyping

In bed with an assassin

Photographer Jason P. Howe had a relationship with a Colombian woman with a dark secret.

Unmasking a horror film icon

Kane Hodder is best known as on-screen killer Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th films

James Rhodes: My love letter to music

The British pianist is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Music became his lifeline

The wild ride of a Tamil comic book pioneer

The Indian comic book enthusiast bringing his favourite characters to a Tamil audience.

CJ Daugherty’s world of literary escapism

Books were the best-selling author’s “magic carpet ride out” of an abusive childhood home

The twists and turns of the Rubik's Cube

Meet champion cuber Feliks Zemdegs, and the inventor behind the puzzle Erno Rubik

Revelations from El Salvador that healed my family

Discovering the history of his homeland helped Roberto Lovato understand his father

'She came back to the clinic dancing'

The Sierra Leonean doctor whose life-changing work earned her screen time with the Queen

Painting for our lives

Three fascinating portraits of people who used a paintbrush to transform their lives

The celestial treasure hunters

An unlikely duo’s insatiable and dangerous hunt for space rocks

The stay-at-home mum who became a bodybuilding star

Kiran Dembla is an Indian celebrity trainer – but it's a long way from where she started

I set up a radio station for aliens

Electronics whizz John Shepherd spent years trying to contact alien life, with music

On the frontline against chemical warfare

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon braves bombs and bullets investigating chemical weapon attacks

The black child raised by white supremacists

How Shane McCrae took to poetry to make sense of his difficult and abusive upbringing

Adventures of the of the bootleg-busting brothers

Rob and Jason Holmes were first recruited as undercover agents when they were children

The Guatemalan grandparents storming the disco

Love, grief and fame: how disco has shaped the lives of Favio Vasquez and Maria Moreno

Half a rotten apple: growing up in 70s China

Writer Xiaolu Guo on a childhood in the aftermath of China’s Cultural Revolution

A dangerous obsession

Why women’s rights advocate Julie Lalonde stayed silent about being stalked for a decade

The space genius who needed a guide to life on earth

How a bereaved astrophysicist was helped by notes from her late husband

The downfall of "The Screamers"

Atlantis was a fringe psychotherapy commune who moved to guerrilla controlled Colombia

The actor who’s been saying the same lines for 32 years

Catherine Russell has played the same part more than 13,000 times – without a sick day

Farming and Phil Collins taught me about love

Learning lessons about love and life from a ewe and a lamb

The black reverend who bought a Ku Klux Klan shop

How Reverend David Kennedy fought to shut down a shop selling racist paraphernalia

Abducted in war, saving lives in peace

Aminata Conteh-Biger was one of thousands of women abducted in Sierra Leone’s civil war

Why I didn’t make a sound for 12 years

Marie McCreadie on her agony becoming mute at 13 and her shock and joy learning the cause

Sarajevo Siege - the band that drowned out the bombs

How do you get Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson to play in a warzone?

We found our baby on the subway

The couple who adopted a baby they found abandoned in a New York station

My ancestors changed the lives of slaves in the US

Nettie Washington Douglass unites the bloodlines of two ex-slaves who became iconic names

Ice Prince: The making of a Nigerian hip hop star

How personal loss and violent conflict shaped the career of Panshak Zamani aka Ice Prince

I discovered my dad was a best-selling sex writer

Dying of Alzheimer's, Ira Alterman asked his daughter to help him write his final books

"This is what a barrister looks like"

Alexandra Wilson is the young black woman changing the face of Britain’s legal system

Surviving a chemical attack by a doomsday cult

How a bag leaking sarin in Tokyo led Atsushi Sakahara to seek answers from a cult member

My ancestors were both slaves and slave owners

How a black Victorian footballer led Malik Al Nasir to discover his own complex history

Vietnam's first family of rock ‘n’ roll

How a bunch of pre-teen kids became the biggest rock 'n' roll band in wartime Saigon

Life without parole: Our fight for freedom

A mother’s life sentence for a drug offence and the young lawyer who promised to free her

How the tigress of basketball fought back

Malebogo Molefhe rediscovered her love of basketball after being shot and paralysed

Documenting my cellmates' names in blood and rust

Mansour Omari risked his life to record the names of his cellmates in a Syrian prison

The boldest human experiment of the last century?

Why eight people were sealed inside a glass dome in the Arizona desert in the 1990s

My father and our time machine

Creating a play for my theatre obsessed father, before he lost his memory

I bought a ghost town - then got trapped there

Brent Underwood was snowed in at an abandoned California mining town with a haunting past

Becoming South Africa's first black rugby captain

Siya Kolisi's journey from a poor South African township to Rugby World Cup victory

My soldier dad's goodbye tape

How Tricia Davies Nearn got to know a father lost in war

The trans boxer learning the many ways to be a man

Thomas Page McBee wanted to understand the relationship between masculinity and violence

A descendant of chiefs: my long journey home

How Jesse Thistle, a homeless Indigenous man, found his identity and his calling

The girl who cycled her father 1,200km to safety

When Covid hit, Jyoti Kumari and her injured dad had to return to their home village

Disco and drama: The story of Ride on Time

Worldwide fame came at a moral price for an Italian DJ who made a huge 1980s dance hit

Sewing to protest in a Chilean prison camp

Student Cristina Zamora found courage in creativity when she was taken from her baby

The 'bride and groom of the Syrian revolution’

Noura and Bassel's secret prison wedding and their struggle for freedom in Syria

The chess game that changed a homeless boy’s life

Tani Adewumi fled Nigeria and became a chess champion in New York at just eight years old

The rebel past of a Tibetan Lama

Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche reflects on a life of conflict, hedonism and disco dancing.

The woman who woke up in the future

Naomi Jacobs went to bed aged 32 but woke up thinking she was 15, her adult memories gone

The Great Escape of Bonga

Bonga Kuenda, the man who sang – and sprinted – for Angolan independence

Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica

How one of Jamaica’s top surfers Imani Wilmot empowers women to ride the tide

The man giving former extremists a second chance

Why do people become radicalised? Noor Huda Ismail was on a mission to find out

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part two

From prisoner to recording artist – how BL Shirelle found love, happiness and success

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part one

Selling crack and writing poetry – BL Shirelle’s turbulent childhood in Philadelphia

A Nightmare in Joshua Tree

Claire Nelson was hiking in the US wilderness when she slipped and fell into a canyon

My life in the eye of the storm

Russel Honoré was the black army General who led the Hurricane Katrina relief effort

The war story that led to our love story

Eva and Sami’s love for each other grew as he shared his experiences of the war in Syria

The detective and the diamond heist

Belgian detective Patrick Peys had to solve the biggest diamond robbery in history

The first date that led to a dramatic mountain rescue

Rachel Colenso and her partner were stranded on a Swiss mountain in a fierce blizzard

The boy, the wish and the nuclear weapons

Why a terminally-ill teenager went to the Soviet Union to broker a nuclear peace deal

The narcotics cop and a daughter hooked on heroin

Kevin Simmers' heart-breaking dilemma when he discovered his daughter was a heroin addict

The barber saving lives one haircut at a time

British hairdresser Tom Chapman gets men to share their problems in his barber's chair.

Conjoined twins can now look into each other’s eyes

It took almost two years to separate two sisters conjoined at the back of their heads.

The supermodel who escaped a cult

Hoyt Richards was a jet-setting supermodel, but he became enthralled by a doomsday cult

When trash met thrash: Paraguay's landfill musicians

How a youth orchestra of tin-can violins and X-ray drums got the attention of Megadeth

Fosse and Verdon: the legacy of a dancing family

Two superstars of dance, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, remembered by their daughter Nicole

I found my son 32 years after he was kidnapped

Li Jingzhi's child was abducted in 1988. They’ve finally been reunited 32 years later

The tycoon who became 'Mr Toilet'

Jack Sim is a Singaporean multi-millionaire who grew up without a working toilet

The 25 day sit-in that changed history

Judy Heumann on the longest ever occupation of a federal building in US history

Discovering my grandfather's secret Nazi past

Growing up Julie Lindahl had been forbidden from looking into her family history

The stolen Picasso and the forest quest

Why writer Mira Feticu looked for a stolen Picasso in a Romanian forest

23 years longing to find my mum

Omar and Hassan Mohamed are two Somali brothers who never stopped looking for their mum

Name, shame and jail: Ghana's undercover journalist

Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas uses some impressive disguises to go undercover.

The coral crusaders: finding beauty in a murky world

How two punk rocker best friends created the world's first urban reef webcam

Attila the Nun

Arlene Violet, the American nun who took on the mob

Making movies helped me heal after my dad's murder

Rwandan director Joël Karekezi explores the trauma he experienced during the 1994 genocide

How did this diver cheat death?

Diver Chris Lemons was trapped on the North Sea bed for around 35 minutes without air

Mean streets to sporting elite

Racism, gang life and the quest to build America's first black high school rowing team

The secret surrogate

I didn't tell my child I'm a surrogate mum

My Dad, Muhammad Ali

What is it like to be the daughter of a man who called himself The Greatest?

Why I talk to warlords

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda negotiates with warlords for the release of child soldiers

The day the music stopped

Violinist Min Kym was at the height of her career when her priceless violin was stolen

Chimps taught me how to be a mother

Dr Jane Goodall's work with chimps has revolutionalised our understanding of primates

The unmaking of a boy soldier

As a boy, Ishmael Beah was forced to kill. How do you turn a soldier back into a child?

Greg Louganis: the Death-Defying Diver

Blood, gold and secrets at the Olympic pool.

The literary heroes that helped me cope as a carer

When Sam Mills became a carer for her schizophrenic father, fiction became her lifeline

Rufus Wainwright: My music and my mother

Born into folk music royalty Rufus took special inspiration from his mum Kate McGarrigle

The trailblazing nurse who began life in care

How Elizabeth Anionwu went from life in a children's home to becoming a medical pioneer

A girl on the run and a girl with no name

Two listeners share extraordinary personal stories

The mystery of Ecuador's lost mastertapes

An eccentric grandfather and an old suitcase of songs and secret loves

Caring for my dying father made me a better doctor

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor. When her dad got ill her work became personal

"Look after her" - the story of a hidden WW2 child

Lien de Jong was a Jewish child who hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands

The adventurer’s son who went missing in the jungle

When adventurer Roman Dial's son went missing, he set out to find him

I played violin during my brain surgery

Dagmar Turner played to prevent any damage to her violin skills

Ups and downs in a vertical world

Ian Powell is a climbing hold designer who rebuilt his life after years of drug addiction

Touched by magic

Magicians who used their craft to overcome social awkwardness, sexism and bullying

Fire and justice: my life after Grenfell

Antonio Roncolato was one of the last survivors to escape London’s Grenfell Tower fire

The deserted island and the lost graves

Carina Hoang and her siblings ended up stranded on an island in the South China Sea

Dynamo: turning illness into magic

Crohn's disease has hampered the world-famous magician all his life

We risked our lives to save my brother's heart

Hamed Amiri’s family fled from Afghanistan to get a heart operation for his brother

Hamilton: overcoming hearing loss to make its music

Alex Lacamoire collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the epic sound of Hamilton

We missed our baby’s birth because of Covid-19

How one couple travelled across the world to meet their baby son

The lawyer, the chemical giant, and the contaminated water

Robert Bilott took on a case for one farmer. It became a fight for 70,000 people.

The teenager who survived the Manchester bombing

Freya Lewis has rebuilt her life after the attack at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017

Wrongfully convicted of murdering my parents

After 17 years in prison Marty Tankleff has been sworn in as a lawyer.

Voyage to the bitter deep

Victor Vescovo and John Ramsay explored the deepest points of the world's five oceans

My powerful sideburns and other beard stories

MJ Johnson has an award winning beard, but due to coronavirus its days might be numbered

The forbidden marriage and the legal loophole

The clerical error that allowed two women to make LGBT history in Costa Rica.

Heavy Metal's Groundbreaking Grandma

Meet Inge Ginsberg: Holocaust survivor, Hollywood composer and heavy metal grandma

How do you deal with coronavirus in a war zone?

Thierry Durand helped to set up the only dedicated covid-19 hospital in the city of Aden.

The cookbook that became a lifeline

How the eccentric but pioneering chef Julia Child became a role model for Julie Powell

My part in a historic hostage rescue

The Israeli commando who crossed continents on a high risk hostage rescue operation

Behind the doors of the lockdown museums

A virtual tour of some the world’s best loved museums by the people who look after them.

The Australian who woke up speaking Mandarin

Ben McMahon suffered a brain injury which impacted his use of language

Students by day and hostage negotiators by night

Miles Hargrove asked his old school friend to negotiate with his dad’s kidnappers

The weird world I was warned to keep secret

Pauline Dakin's family life was full of mystery, fear and unpleasant surprises.

My search for my sister, the "keeper of memories"

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

The woman in lockdown with 70 spiders

When Covid-19 hit, zookeeper Caitlin Henderson ended up in lockdown with 70 spiders

How I created the first Chinese Superman character

Cartoonist Gene Luen Yang on how he helped create the first Chinese Superman character

The refugee lawyer prosecuting IS war crimes

Rez Gardi became the first Kurdish refugee to graduate from Harvard Law School

Beyond the bushfires: a koala doctor's story

Cheyne Flanagan's fight to rescue and re-home Australia's koalas

Wynton Marsalis: the making of a jazzman

How a reluctant trumpet player became the most celebrated jazz musician of his generation

Trying to get my penpal out of prison

A letter, a murder and a boxer’s dying wish turned a teenager’s life around

The woman behind Senegal's Sex and the City

Kalista Sy created a TV series that's taking Senegal by storm

Hiding my sexuality to be a black role model

Becoming one of the first African American actors on children's TV came with an ultimatum

Blades, bullets and my escape from 'murder city'

Rollerblading led Jessel Recinos into bad ways, but eventually became his salvation

They thought my husband was a spy

Matthew Hedges was on a work trip in the UAE when he was accused of being a British spy

My journey to become the first Native American US Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo survived prejudice and abuse to become one of America's most acclaimed poets

The Covid-19 nurses: Sharing our stories

Hannah Gray and Bianca Dintino are two ICU nurses tackling the pandemic on two continents

I became ‘dad’ to a baby ocelot

Harry always felt out of place but found ‘home’ with a baby ocelot in the Peruvian jungle

Love and defection on the dancefloor

Cuban ballet stars Mayara Piñeiro Contido and Etienne Díez found love in exile

The actor who preferred to die rather than stop filming

Massimo Troisi delayed heart surgery to make 'Il Postino'. He died before filming ended.

How the Donut King lost his crown

Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy once presided over an empire of donut shops across California

The psychiatric nurse who overcame a life of addiction

From age 14 to 37 Anthony Brown was homeless and became addicted to drugs and alcohol

The mayor and the art heist mystery

Mayor Knut Kreuch's mission to solve one of Germany’s biggest art thefts

The Tale of the King of the Wild Blue Sky

The highs and lows of America's first flying newsman, Jerry Foster

Mr Motivator: from homeless to household name

TV star and fitness instructor Derrick Evans wants to help people keep fit in lockdown

The face-blind portrait artist

German artist Carlotta has a brain disorder: she can’t recognise faces, not even her own

I turned my cleaning obsession into a hit business

Trauma led Lynsey Crombie to compulsive cleaning but now she’s sharing her skills on TV

My revolutionary 70s summer camp

Jim LeBrecht remembers a revolutionary summer camp in the 1970s for disabled teenagers

Hiding the truth behind my NFL stardom

New England Patriots star Ryan O'Callaghan used football as a cover for his sexuality

Stranded in the jungle on our honeymoon

It began when Holly Fitzgerald and her husband Fitz’s plane crash-landed in Peru…

The lightning bolt that made me a music maestro

Tony Cicoria developed an obsession with classical music after he was struck by lightning

Why I dive on my birthday

How diver Cliff Devries got back in the water after being paralysed from the neck down

I believe my dog’s nose saved my life

Psychologist Claire Guest had a special bond with her dog that may have saved her life

Literary SOS

Sally Bayley was rejected by her family but eventually found solace in Shakespeare

The NYC doctor hiding his fear fighting Covid-19

Rob Gore is a doctor working with coronavirus patients in New York

Why I thought my baby had devil’s eyes

Catherine Cho had been a mother for two months when she experienced post-partum psychosis

How to home-school: Lessons from Bolivia and Alaska

Brisa de Angulo set up her first school when she was 14 years old

Coming out made me a world-class rugby referee

Nigel Owens survived a suicide attempt before accepting his sexuality and finding success

The school teacher who couldn’t read

John Corcoran worked as a teacher for 17 years - even though he couldn’t read

My patients fought Aids, I fought the system

Cliff Morrison pioneered a new way to care for Aids patients as a nurse in San Francisco

My Fiancé – Jamal Khashoggi

Hatice Cengiz was engaged to journalist Jamal Khashoggi when his death shocked the world.

Inside the mind of a teenage neo-Nazi

Former neo-Nazi leader Christian Picciolini now helps people escape extremist groups

My life as a frontline doctor in Afghanistan

Marzia Salam Yaftali on dealing with the Taliban, misogyny and the threat of coronavirus

How I turn prisoners into violin virtuosos

Tito Quiroz found himself in a tough Mexican prison, tasked with teaching music lessons

I fled North Korea for playing the wrong song

Pianist Kim Cheol-woong defected from North Korea after playing a western song

Crowns and controversy at Miss World 1970

Jennifer Hosten became the first black Miss World at a particularly historical ceremony

My close encounters with Escobar’s hippos

Jonathan Shurin studies the ecological effects of hippos once owned by the drug lord

How to thrive in isolation

These scientists cut themselves off from society to carry out research

The violin maker's salvation

Hans Benning found love through his work repairing the world's most priceless instruments

My love letter ticket out of Venezuela

José Gregorio Márquez won a love letter contest - with a letter to his neighbourhood

Radio in Italy's coronavirus red zone

83-year-old Pino Pagani is a radio presenter in the virus-hit town of Codogno

'I fight hate with a pocketbook of peace'

Kia Scherr lost her husband and child in the 2008 Mumbai attacks - she grieved with love

'I stopped talking - but then I found music'

Music writer Pete Paphides developed selective mutism as a child

A Syrian love story that started with a resume

The social media call out for CV advice that resulted in an online wedding

Once upon a time in Wakaliwood

BBC Inspirations 2016 nominee Isaac Nabwana is known as 'Uganda's Tarantino'

Bringing music to people in pain

BBC Inspirations 2018 nominee Jorge Bergero plays between concert halls and care homes

Akram Khan: from curry to choreography

Celebrated dancer Akram Khan’s first stage was his family's Indian restaurant

Befriending a princess - and helping her escape

In 2018, Tiina Jauhianen agreed to help her close friend Sheikha Latifa escape from Dubai

The choir without vocal cords

The Belgian chorister turned doctor who conducts a choir for people without vocal cords

Thai cave doctor: 'I feared I'd killed them'

Richard Harris anaesthetised the trapped boys believing they had no chance of survival

Signing to save lives in the Australian bushfires

Sean Sweeney interprets major emergency announcements into sign language

From child bride to literary sensation

Indian writer Baby Halder overcame difficult circumstances to become a global best-seller

The prison escape and the wooden keys

Anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin's remarkable escape from a South African prison

Photographing firefighters on the streets of Lagos

Akintunde Akinleye has won awards for his photographs of pipeline explosions in Lagos.

The Superheroes of Lagos

In Lagos, Nigeria young cartoonists are creating a new kind of superhero.

Killing on campus: Nigeria's criminal fraternities

How Nigeria's university fraternities morphed into violent criminal gangs

Lagos road trip challenge

One day, four extraordinary individuals, nine hours of Lagos traffic

Nigeria’s rebel artist families

Outlook is in Lagos with rebel artists Wole Soyinka, Femi Kuti, and Afrobeats star Falz.

‘My heart goes out to the mums’

The mum who’s found compassion for the mothers of murderers after her own family tragedy

My father was killed by 'Prime Evil'

Candice Mama forgave her father’s killer, notorious apartheid murderer Eugene de Kock.

The rapper who woke up deaf

Dutch rapper Sor was on the brink of stardom when he suddenly lost his hearing.

My family are sex workers - education saved me

Eliska Tanzer grew up illiterate in a family of sex workers, but defied all expectations

The mother choosing to love her 'enemy'

A mother who stepped into the world of her son's killer to stop further acts of violence

Flying my South African flag at the top of Everest

Saray Khumalo on what it took to become the first black African woman to summit Everest

I survived Joseph Kony - I want my children back

Nakout Sylvia was abducted and held as a sex slave by the Lord’s Resistance Army.

For the love of radio

How radio around the world has helped communities and listeners in unexpected ways

How a stage-fight nearly ended my acting career

Actor Conor Madden suffered a brain injury when a stage-fight went wrong.

How I ended up marrying 'my mother'

A gay couple from California technically became mother and daughter as a legal workaround

The star student with an agonising secret

Dan-el Padilla Peralta went from an undocumented US immigrant to a Princeton professor.

The Canadian cop who uncovered a police scandal

When a First Nations teenager was found frozen to death Ernie Louttit wanted answers

Michael Johnson: how the world's fastest man learned to walk again

US Olympic champion Michael Johnson had to learn to walk again following a stroke.

Discovering my dad was a music superstar

Anoushka Shankar found out that her father was Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar.

The avid hunter turned pioneering conservationist

An encounter with a Bobwhite Quail made Lebanese hunter Assad Serhal rethink his life.

I knocked out sexism in British boxing

Jane Couch fought both in the ring and in court to make women’s boxing legal in Britain

The making of a disco star

Marcia Barrett was a lead singer of the chart-conquering disco band, Boney M

I brought my daughter’s killer down

Karen Edwards on the anguish she felt after the murder of her daughter Becky.

The film tickets that destroyed a family

When Neelam Krishnamoorthy’s two children died in a fire, she began a fight for justice.

I grew up in a secret nuclear city

Nadezhda Kutepova exposed the deadly legacy of a secret nuclear plant in Soviet Russia.

Saving my zoo from Australian wildfires

Zookeeper Chad Staples took animals into his own home to save them from the raging fires

The daughter and the double agent

The Latvian forced to make an agonising choice in a world of Soviet-era spying

I was a teenager at Auschwitz

Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus was only 14 when she was taken to a Nazi concentration camp

The student who became my son

Tim King was a teacher in Chicago who took in a student after their mother died

Our secret tunnel that saved the city

Edis Kolar guarded a lifesaving tunnel built in his basement during the siege of Sarajevo

The virtuoso musician detained as a child

South African double bassist Leon Bosch was arrested for protesting against apartheid

The black woman who cared for a Klansman

The temping job that took a young African-American woman into the home of a KKK member

Life as a lone identical twin

David Loftus on rebuilding his life after the tragic death of his twin brother

I was shot while performing a vasectomy

Dr Andrew Rynne, an Irish contraceptive pioneer, was attacked by a disgruntled ex-patient

Forced to teach in a ‘re-education’ camp

Sayragul Sauytbay says she was made to work in a detention camp for Chinese Muslims

‘I’m going to say sorry to the whales’

Vittorio Fabris’ treacherous journey from Venice to Nantucket was inspired by Moby Dick.

The first beauty queen in a free South Africa

Basetsana Kumalo was crowned Miss South Africa after the country's first democratic vote

How I built a billion dollar business

Janice Bryant Howroyd: the first African-American woman to run a billion dollar company

The pianist who learnt to play on a paper piano

Andrew Garrido’s family couldn’t afford a piano so he taught himself on a paper keyboard

My nightmares about the policeman who framed me

Winston Trew was falsely accused of stealing and spent 50 years trying to clear his name

I prayed to God to make me a girl

Abby Stein grew up in a Hasidic family and was born male but she felt she was a girl

The Welsh miner who made wrestling glamorous

"Exotic Adrian Street" got abuse for his flamboyant outfits - but they made him a star

Making horse-racing history in a hijab

Teenager Khadijah Mellah became the first Muslim woman to ride and win in Britain

The Godfather of Hollywood sound

Walter Murch is a superstar sound designer. His ingenuity transformed cinema forever

2020 The power of sight

'Seeing' maths; changing how the world sees you; and helping to restore sight.

Inventing a surgery to cure myself

Doug Lindsay’s mystery illness baffled doctors, so he had to cure himself

The hunt for a calypso king's lost music

Costa Rica's 100-year-old calypso king and the worldwide search for his lost recordings

Shooting hoops in South Sudan

Malat Wei and Jess Markt are taking wheelchair basketball and their story to South Sudan

Why I risked my life to present a TV programme

Presenter Mozhdah Jamalzadah’s focus on women’s rights made her some dangerous enemies

Finding the perfect hairdresser changed two lives

Troy Winget and Andrea Quint Fleck found there was more between them than a good haircut

The barefoot tennis player who turned pro

Sam Jalloh’s war-torn journey to becoming a top tennis player in Sierra Leone

The family story that became a TV novela

A Brazilian tale of love, betrayal and revenge

Why I announced I had cancer, on the radio

DJ Mark Radcliffe tells us why he told listeners he had cancer, live on his radio show

Don’t call me the 'Indiana Jones' of Syria

Amr al-Azm leads a network of archaeologists battling to save Syria’s monuments

The murder that stopped me writing crime fiction

Fact and fiction blurred for writer Mads Peder Nordbo when he came across a murder

I believed I was my dead sister

After Gail Gallant’s sister died, her mother told Gail she was her sister reborn

Footballer Mark Bright: What I’ve learnt about love

What British player Mark Bright learnt from being fostered as a young child

Fighting the apartheid my grandfather created

Wilhelm Verwoerd's grandfather was the prime minister of South Africa in the 1960s

Harvard Law School’s first Deafblind graduate

While Haben Girma was at Harvard she developed new technology to help her communicate

The dark truth behind my songs

A murder-suicide devastated Allison Moorer’s youth but now inspires her country music

The Somali pirate tapes

Danish ship owner Per Gullestrup had to learn how to negotiate with Somali pirates

A tale of two video games

The creators behind one of the best and one of the worst computer games ever made

A star is gone: Judy Garland's last act

Behind the scenes at Judy Garland’s final UK shows with the woman who got her on stage

The uncomfortable truth hidden in my DNA

Hiram Johnson embarked on a quest to solve a family mystery

I was jailed for having a stillbirth

Teodora Vásquez was jailed for murder in El Salvador after having a stillborn baby.

My life as an undercover CIA agent: Part Two

After being recruited by the CIA Amaryllis Fox became an undercover spy

My life as an undercover CIA agent: Part One

Before Amaryllis Fox was a CIA agent, she smuggled a rare interview out of Burma

Telling jokes about my refugee past

Comedian Hung Le fled Vietnam as a child and grew up in Australia

Giving birth during a genocide

The Rwandan woman whose waters broke as militia were attacking her family home

The man who makes Singapore laugh

Comedian Hossan Leong on how he kept smiling while facing a life threatening illness

Sunburnt, starving and stranded at sea

John Low spent four days stranded at sea, with only a flotation ring to cling on to

Girls don’t fight? I became a champion

As a child, May Ooi was not allowed to practise martial arts. She is now a champion

How hunger made me a top chef

Singaporean Ang Song Kang started working in a kitchen because he had no food at home

The heavy metal boys from the dump

The heavy metal band who grew up on Cambodia's biggest rubbish dump.

The policewoman fighting fake news

Rema Rajeshwari is using storytelling to combat the spread of deadly rumours in India

Our parents' secret gay porn empire

Rachel and Josh Mason had no idea their unassuming parents ran an iconic gay porn shop

Pulling a plane doesn’t make me strong

How police officer Grant Edwards, once Australia’s strongest man, faced his inner trauma

The Treasure Hunters

Stories of two very different men recovering lost and stolen treasures

The secret world of our dying son

Mats Steen found friendship and escape in an online fantasy land

Confronting my grandma and my nation over FGM

Ifrah Ahmed went through FGM as a child. Now she fights to ban the practice in Somalia

Why my mother lied about her race

In her 40s Gail Lukasik discovered that her ‘white’ mother was in fact multiracial

The street kid and the plastic camera

Photographer Vicky Roy got his break taking photos of his friends on the streets of Delhi

Remembrance 2019: in love and under siege

For Remembrance Day, we're re-visiting this remarkable story of love in war-zone

A mother's battle for her son's education

At risk of losing her son Virginia Walden Ford fought to change the US education system

Life as the UK's first black TV reporter

Broadcasting legend Sir Trevor McDonald looks back on his life and career

Finding the whale that nearly killed me

The epic search for the whale that landed on a filmmaker’s kayak and changed his life

The inside story of a Muslim drag queen

Amrou Al-Kadhi on their complex identity: Muslim, gay, non-binary drag queen

Why I love the woman who killed my son

Tiki Finlayson forgave the woman who killed her son in a drink-driving accident

The 'deepest man on earth'

Herbert Nitsch broke the record for deepest free dive but fell asleep on the way back up

The rebel lawyer transforming Malaysia

Cecil Rajendra set up the first legal aid clinics in shacks

The diver trapped inside an iceberg

Jill Heinerth was exploring submerged frozen caves when crisis hit

Joining the racist gang that tormented me

Actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje joined a racist gang as a teenager for his own protection

The priest who came out at 91

After a life of hiding his sexuality, former priest Stanley Underhill finally feels free

The making of the 'Wish Man'

How a poor boy who was abandoned by his mother grew up to grant children’s dying wishes

The struggle of Soweto's 'Lion King'

It was a long road to the recording studio for Lebo M who wrote songs for the hit movie

The rescue dog that rescued me

Sean Laidlaw rescued Barrie from Syria in 2018 and now she helps him to overcome his PTSD

I stole a plane to escape the military

53 years ago Theo Van Eijck flew from Malta to Libya to start a new life

My child and spouse came out as trans

The story of how a family coped with two seismic revelations and are now closer than ever

The painful secret I hid from my twin

When Alex lost his memories his identical twin helped him restore them, or some of them

How cooking landed me in a Syrian prison

Chef Majeda Khouri got arrested for cooking food for displaced people in Damascus

‘Dad please don’t sell my sister, sell me’

Shari Ho from Taiwan was sold as a slave by her father when she was just seven years old

How we pulled off 'the rescue of the century'

Vernon Unsworth oversaw the huge operation to save 12 Thai schoolboys trapped in a cave

The Afghan physio who survived a landmine

Shukrullah Zeerak wanted to help others after he lost his leg in a landmine explosion

How Superman saved my life

Screenwriter Joe Straczynski wished for a hero to rescue him from his abusive childhood

Mental Health Day: Dancing and delusions

Dancer Kevin Turner and his mum Avis tell us how they coped with his bipolar disorder

Curing my own deadly disease

David Fajgenbaum was nicknamed 'The Beast' before he became ill with a deadly disease

Pirates stole my son

Howie Truong was separated from his baby son Kai as they fled Vietnam by boat

The accident that taught me how to die

After being electrocuted by 11,000 volts, Dr BJ Miller now devotes his life to the dying

Why I didn’t make a sound for 12 years

Marie McCreadie on her agony becoming mute at 13 and her shock and joy learning the cause

London bus driver fighting crime with music

Justin Finlayson turned his bus into a music studio to keep youths out of trouble

Exposing the scandal that's cost me my life

Vicky Phelan on the medical scandal that gave 221 women inaccurate smear test results

Learning to sing by copying divas on DVDs

Rising star Vuvu Mpufo discovered opera as a teenager at her home in South Africa

Scammed by my friend, the fake heiress

Rachel DeLoache Williams was conned out of tens of thousands of dollars by Anna Sorokin

The false confessions of a serial killer

Thomas Quick was Sweden’s most notorious serial killer. Then he retracted his confessions

Derren Brown: the magician’s secrets

Illusionist Derren Brown on how he used magic to overcome his social awkwardness

My partner killed our baby

Hera McLeod has used her grief and anger to become an advocate for child protection

I defaced a picture of Assad and knew I had to flee

Reading Virginia Woolf inspired a Syrian woman to lead protests against the president

'Honey, I brought home a crocodile'

Gilberto ‘Chito’ Shedden adopted a wild crocodile in Costa Rica

Modern birth: The man who had a baby

Freddy McConnell is a transgender man who decided to have a baby

Modern birth: Having a dead man’s baby

Liat Malka fulfilled a dead man’s dream of having a baby by using his sperm and IVF

Modern birth: The fertility doctor who impregnated his patients

Matthew White and Heather Woock found out they were siblings and uncovered a scandal

Modern birth: Why I gave my sister my womb

Lolita Wästerlund was born without a uterus, so her sister Linda offered up hers

The TV action hero fighting bullies

Why German action star Carsten Stahl became an anti-bullying crusader

How I fixed my own brain

Sarah Vallance’s fight to put her life together after suffering traumatic brain injury

Discovering my ‘mum’ stole me at birth

In 1997 a baby is stolen from a Cape Town hospital, 17 years later she learns the truth

The acid attack meant for someone else

Andreas Christopheros had acid thrown in his face in a case of mistaken identity

I raised 1,000 children but gave my own away

Sindhutai Sapkal is known as the ‘mother of orphans’, but had to give her own child away

Dr Palipana, the quadriplegic ER medic

How a car accident turned Dinesh Palipana into a quadriplegic emergency doctor

How not to be a rock star

Cora Bissett got a five album deal when she was just 17, but then faced a huge backlash

The boy, the wish and the nuclear weapons

Why a terminally ill teenager went to the Soviet Union to broker a nuclear peace deal

The love story behind a lost Leonardo

How a long-lost painting was restored, attributed to da Vinci and sold for $450,000,000

From homeless kid to hero of Africa's biggest slum

Kennedy Odede is known by some as the unofficial mayor of Kibera

Keeping my country's burned past alive

How Brazilians are coping with the loss of the National Museum and their history

'If you want to live, squeeze my hand'

How scientist Steffanie Strathdee saved her husband from a deadly superbug

Spain's fearless barnacle-hunting sisters

Isabel and Susana González risk their lives to collect barnacles along Spain's coastline

How Springsteen became my lifeline

The working class British-Pakistani teen who found a musical hero in The Boss

Why I thanked the man who shot me

Wesley Hamilton says that getting shot was “the best thing that ever happened to me”

Forgiving myself after killing a classmate

Lis Cashin accidentally killed a friend with a javelin and spent years overcoming guilt

Building a hospital on a rubbish dump

Aged 82, Edna Adan Ismail works 14 hour days in a Somaliland hospital she fought to build

An unlikely friendship in Guantanamo Bay

How a Mauritanian inmate and an American guard were brought together by a movie

The male countertenor who replaced a leading lady

Polish singer Jakub Jozef Orlinski is something of a rarity in the operatic world

‘Please... need rescue… SOS!’

When Beatrice De Smet got a desperate SMS from her husband, she knew she had to act fast

My baby was swapped at birth

A South African family continues their search after a hospital mix-up 21 years ago

Bassem Youssef: Egypt’s revolutionary comedian

From heart surgeon to Arab Spring satirist – the rise and fall of Bassem Youssef

Our wedding made LGBT history in Costa Rica

How a clerical error led to the first legal gay marriage in Costa Rica

The Blind Boys of Alabama: a life in music

From gospel to the Grammys – the life and times of America’s octogenarian boyband

The secret missionary who lost her faith

Amber Scorah was a Jehovah's Witness in China when she started to doubt her beliefs

Exposing Nigeria’s cough syrup crisis, for my brother

Why Ruona Meyer joined the frontline in the war against codeine cough syrup addiction

Secret SMS texts saved my family from IS

The Yazidi man who had to resort to smugglers and his smartphone to rescue his family

My escape, thanks to a Russian mail-order bride

A story of family secrets, pirated films and an unexpected transformation

Yacht race disaster: alone in a vicious sea

Nick Ward was the last man to be rescued in ocean racing's biggest disaster

Why would beggars steal my little brother?

Samuel Abdulraheem was playing outside his home in Nigeria when he was snatched

The ingredients for a happier life

Why Olivia Potts quit her career in criminal law and became a pastry chef

The sad tale of the laughing cab driver

When Moustafa Chamseddine ended up in a Syrian jail, laughter became his only comfort

Pollen detective: Forensics’ secret weapon

Patricia Wiltshire uses her deep knowledge of plants to help police solve serious crime

James Rhodes: I'm alive because of music

The British pianist is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Music became his lifeline

I came out during a lie detector test

Former military man Todd Ross was interrogated and harassed during Canada’s ‘LGBT purge’

The selfie that changed my life twice

How a selfie with Chancellor Angela Merkel revolutionised a Syrian refugee’s life

Why I started a Holocaust survivors’ band

Saul Dreier was 89 years old when he bought his first drum kit and started a klezmer band

Exposing my twin – the paedophile priest

Margaret thought their bond was unbreakable, then she learned about her brother’s crimes

I had a baby and thought I was Cameron Diaz

Jen Wight suffered unsettling delusions after becoming a mother

The dating scam that made a friendship

Maria Grette met 'Johnny' on a dating site. He was sweet, kind - but not who he seemed

Was this father wrong to help convict his son?

Roger Stringer believed his son Zac fired the rifle that killed his other son

Andy McNab: soldier, writer, psychopath

The former elite soldier on how learning to read aged 16 taught him empathy

Chasing El Chapo

Drew Hogan made it his mission to take down the world's most wanted drug lord, El Chapo

Wrestling stardom nearly tore us apart

The Knight family’s passion brought them together but success threatened everything

Voyage from the Pacific Islands to Hollywood

Opetaia Foa'i fought for Disney's smash hit Moana to stay true to Pacific culture

The heart of a heart surgeon

Stephen Westaby has operated on 12,000 hearts

Why music on a bus gave me a panic attack

Maryam Zaree's birth was a family secret until a bus ride unearthed traumatic memories

The IS orphans rescued by their grandpa

He couldn’t save his daughter after she joined IS but could he rescue her seven children?

A kid in Australia’s doomsday cult

When he was a baby, Ben Shenton’s mum gave him to a notorious, drug-taking cult

Using boxing to help DRC’s 'outcasts'

Kibomango’s fight to save the DRC’s child soldiers in the boxing ring

Reclaiming Pepe, my cartoon frog

How cartoonist Matt Furie is taking back his creation Pepe the Frog from far-right groups

Solving international crime from our sofas

Cracking the MH17 air crash case: the men behind Bellingcat

What I found in the minds of serial killers

John E. Douglas spent his FBI career speaking to some of America's most violent criminals

My fugitive dad made me get a nose job

Margo Perin has spent years unravelling her mysterious childhood and her family's secrets

Uncovering my family's showbiz past

In a Paris cab, Claire Belhassine discovered that her grandad was a Tunisian singing star

The unmasking of China's secret cartoonist

Badiucao has paid a high price for the dissident cartoons he made in secret

Thrown overboard: a stowaway's survival

The extraordinary story of Jemal Damtawe, an Eritrean man who spent a lifetime on the run

Overcoming IS terror with books

Dr Alaa Hamdon is on a mission to rebuild a library destroyed by the Islamic State group

My Mormon mum, my gay rights hero

Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black’s mum inspired him to fight for marriage equality

The child who saved my life – and vanished

The story of an 11-year-old Iraqi girl and the man whose life she inadvertently saved

Becoming a star: the busker with albinism

Lazarus Chigwandali went from performing on the streets of Malawi to working with Madonna

The man who stole the president's secrets

One writer risked prison to leak material about Uzbekistan's authoritarian former leader

My dad the unlikely meth dealer

James Lubbock watched his dad transform from clean-living family man to major drug-dealer

My brother’s sickle cell disease made me a doctor

After Tartania’s brother Christopher had three strokes, she decided to become a doctor

The failed escape and the ‘stolen’ son

After a disastrous effort to flee East Germany, Andreas Laake was set on finding his son

The online post designed to ruin my life

How a scandalous lie made Monika Glennon fight back against anonymous internet trolls

The war in Iraq and the war inside my head

After the Iraq War, a US marine’s inner battle to adapt to civilian life

Raising my baby in a Thai prison

A Miss South Africa contestant jailed in Thailand, facing the death penalty and pregnant

Born the wrong colour - so I had to die

A South African woman who discovered a letter that revealed the shame around her birth

From bedridden granny to dancing queen

Cathrine Mathebe went from being bedbound to leading a squad of dancing pensioners

The secrets of a Soweto chef’s success

Fine dining chef Lesego Semenya is on a mission to kick snobbery out of Joburg’s kitchens

The Cuban aristocrat with a revolutionary secret

Natalia Bolivar, a rich socialite, used her high class status to help topple a dictator

My dream of ballooning over Iraq

Murtada al-Hachimi fought for years to organise a hot air balloon festival in Iraq

My children were injected with HIV

Jennifer Merry’s haemophiliac sons were infected by contaminated blood in a UK hospital

Why I wrote an apology to myself

Playwright Eve Ensler’s father abused her. Writing his apology has helped her find peace

The amateur sleuth and the lost babies

Historian Catherine Corless uncovered a national scandal in Ireland

In bed with an assassin

Photographer Jason P. Howe had a relationship with a Colombian woman with a dark secret

The scientist in the treetops

Nalini Nadkarni is a tree canopy scientist who works with prisoners

The song that helped me grieve

Music journalist Jayson Greene kept a grief journal after the death of his daughter

Why an ex-jihadist embraced an Islamophobe

The friendship between a former extremist and a reformed anti-Islamist protester

Looking for the Liberian sister I left behind

After fleeing Liberia, Helene Cooper later decided to return to find her sister

The Welsh miner who made wrestling glamorous

Exotic Adrian Street received abuse for his flamboyant outfits - but they made him a star

Why I want combat armour made for women

Battlefield lawyer Rebecca Lipe’s campaign for US servicewomen to have better body armour

I’m more than my husband’s shameful crime

Maddie Corman stayed with her husband after he was caught with child abuse material

Aleppo: In love and under siege with a newborn

Filmmaker Waad and her medic husband, Hamza, documented their life during the Syrian war

How to give up

Why extreme swimmer Beth French doesn’t regret giving up on her life’s ambition

Interviewing Mumbai's Mafia Don

Journalist Hussain Zaidi risked everything to document his city's criminal underworld

I trained to be a surgeon when I couldn’t read or write

Ethiopian child bride Mamitu Gashe became a surgeon after she almost died in childbirth

'Honour' made my father a murderer

Amina’s father brutally attacked her and her sister for ‘shaming’ their Jordanian family

I can't make long-term memories

Hum Fleming has epilepsy. A side effect means her memories mostly fade after six months

The designer who won’t wear yellow

Why China’s most famous fashion designer Guo Pei wasn’t allowed to wear yellow as a child

Elza Soares: invincible queen of samba

Singer Elza Soares survived poverty and public scandal to become a music legend in Brazil

The heiress giving away her Disney fortune

Abigail Disney felt her family was ruined by the wealth from their Hollywood empire

What really happened on the 'Sex Raft'

The true story behind an infamous social experiment

The perfect stranger and the ice lake rescue

Timofey Yuriev was possibly the best person to save two dogs trapped in an icy lake

The secrets uncovered by a body detective

Sue Black can tell from a cadaver what the deceased's mother ate during pregnancy

How I turn prisoners into violin virtuosos

Tito Quiroz found himself in a tough Mexican prison, tasked with teaching music lessons

Opioid crisis: the doctor who got addicted

Lou Ortenzio got addicted to opioids as he was prescribing them to his patients in the US

The friendship born of murder

How the father of a victim became buddies with the killer's family

Survivor 195: Taking down Larry Nassar

Elite US gymnast Rachel Haines was abused by convicted paedophile Larry Nassar for years

The massacre that made me a mortician

Camilo Jaramillo survived a massacre and found solace in becoming a mortician

The words that saved John Dwayne Bunn

A wrongfully convicted illiterate teenager found his freedom in books and letters

Sarajevo Siege - the band that drowned out the bombs

How do you get Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson to play in a warzone?

From homeless child to top firefighter

Sabrina Cohen Hatton survived homelessness to become a leading firefighter in the UK

Keeping wrestling alive in Afghanistan

Teacher Abbas and his wrestling gym are back with a vengeance after a terror attack

How did this diver cheat death?

Diver Chris Lemons was trapped on the North Sea bed for around 35 minutes without air

The voyage of The Fisherman’s Friends

How a group of friends went from singing in their local pub to national stardom

Life as a Nepalese 'living goddess'

Rashmila Shakya on life after growing up in a temple where she was worshipped as a goddess

Using comedy to unpick my past on air

Comedian Rosie Waterland started a podcast with her mum to examine their difficult past

Losing my dad in the Challenger space disaster

Richard Scobee watched as the Space Shuttle Challenger took off, it would change his life

The backflip that shocked the Olympics

Surya Bonaly performed an ‘illegal’ move that cemented her name in figure skating history

The family murder that began our campaign

Luke and Ryan Hart are trying to change the conversation around domestic abuse

Can my robot save my country?

Richard Yim has invented a robot to try to rid Cambodia of landmines

My revenge against 'revenge porn'

Ana Baquedano fought to change the law in Mexico after an ex shared her nude selfie

The sailor and the secret

Guy Oliver’s secret took him from being on a warship to designing superyachts

Leaving America's 'most hated family'

Libby Phelps grew up in the infamous anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church

The wrestling star helping a grieving mum

Kendo Nagasaki has helped Lyn Rigby cope after her son was killed in an extremist attack

The African girl raised by Kim Il-sung

Monica Macias had two dads: Equatorial Guinea's brutal leader and the North Korean despot

The Iranian Avocado Quest that led to prison

The struggle to free journalist Jason Rezaian from Iran’s most notorious prison

We found love in the wake of 9/11

In the wake of tragedy, Nick and Diane Marson were able to find each other and love

Risking my life to see mum

The reporter in Mogadishu who fears attack when he travels the six miles to visit his mum

The masterplan that got me out of prison

How an inmate serving life in prison came up with a masterplan to turn his life around

The ‘Lion Mama’ who fought off three rapists

Nokubonga Qampi stepped in when her daughter was attacked

Inside the minds and chat rooms of IS

Rukmini Callimachi is a US reporter whose work has brought her close to so-called IS

Having a baby with a man who died years ago

How an Israeli man’s dying wish to father a child was fulfilled

The world champ who didn't want to box

Michael Bentt made it to the top of his game, but he never actually wanted to box

Sketching celebrities in the courtroom

Jane Rosenberg has sketched everyone from 'El Chapo' to Harvey Weinstein in court

The secret world of our dying son

Mats Steen found friendship and escape in a fantasy online land

Fighting Ebola in a war zone

Facing militias and machetes, the DRC doctor trying to stop Ebola in a war zone

Taking on America's rich and famous

Gloria Allred has represented the accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and R Kelly.

An epic walk home from school

Tsering and Nima risked their lives to get home in a gruelling trek across the Himalayas

My daughter’s killer feels like ‘family’

Eddy Hekman has forged an unlikely relationship with the man who killed his daughter

Soweto Uprising: what happened to my dad?

Janet Goldblatt's father was murdered, but the full story would take decades to emerge

The Mormon mums of gay sons

We meet the Mama Dragons - the Mormon mums 'breathing fire' for their gay sons

Fifteen and alone at sea

After a traumatic incident, Australian Susan Berg overcame a fear of water and swam again

Befriending the woman I'd have to dissect

How anatomist Vic Spitzer got to know the woman who donated her body to him for research

Confronting my racist past

Mac Otts unravelled generations of racism in his family

The detective and the diamond heist

Belgian detective Patrick Peys had to solve the biggest diamond robbery in history

Held captive by a cult for 30 years

Katy Morgan-Davies was born into a cult in south London and held as a virtual prisoner.

I went through puberty at two years old

Patrick Burleigh was born with precocious puberty, meaning his body developed too quickly

Surviving death row after being tricked into drug trafficking

Nokwazi Memela was tricked into becoming a drug mule

The Korean athlete exposing sexual abuse

Former tennis player Eunhee Kim has lifted the lid on sexual abuse in South Korean sport

The Danish woman who went to fight IS

Joanna Palani on why she took the drastic decision that's led to her imprisonment

Cherno Samba: Struggles of a virtual football star

The London footballer's career slumped, but on a virtual football game he became a legend

The wild world of Germany’s punk princess

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis became famous for her wild parties and bold outfits

Justice for my sister Marie Colvin

Cat Colvin believed the journalist had been deliberately killed by the Syrian Government

The celestial treasure hunters

An unlikely duo’s insatiable and dangerous hunt for space rocks

The disability activist who was 'born red'

Carly Findlay has a rare skin condition that covers her body with scaly red skin

Why I photograph sex workers

Photographer Bruce Gilden’s latest series features a group of sex workers in Miami

My pen pal Abu Hamza

London vicar Stephen Coles on his correspondence with the radical cleric Abu Hamza

The frontline music therapist

Composer Nigel Osborne teaches children in war zones how to play instruments

‘I still feel the bullets in my head’

James Myers survived being shot in the face five times

The brothers who made Mary Poppins sing

Richard M. Sherman reveals the secrets behind some of Disney’s most beloved songs

The truth about my ‘hero’ grandfather

Silvia Foti uncovered shocking evidence about her grandfather who was seen as a war hero

My son’s death was ‘absolutely beautiful’

Nurse Jessica Hanson’s own loss inspired her to change the way others experience death

The story that saved my child's life

Louise Beech's daughter was ill and losing hope. A bedtime story turned things around

Life lessons from Indian sex workers

Ashok Alexander worked with sex workers to tackle HIV in India

Vietnam's first family of rock ‘n’ roll

How a bunch of pre-teen kids became the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band in wartime Saigon

I accidentally discovered that I’m a psychopath

Dr Jim Fallon was studying his own brain when he made a disturbing discovery

'My Editor Was Killed by Pablo Escobar'

Journalist Maria Duzan reported from the frontlines of Colombia’s drug wars

Flipper’s Trainer Turned Dolphin Saviour

When star dolphin Flipper died, its trainer Ric O’Barry turned to activism

The Mother Choosing to Love her 'Enemy'

Latifa Ibn Ziaten vowed to save radicalised young men after her son was killed by gunman

The Triplets Separated by a Secret Study

How three identical triplets found each other, despite being intentionally split up

Bringing Down a Dictator

One lawyer’s perilous journey to bring a war criminal to justice

Hong Kong’s Rebel Pop Star

Denise Ho was a pop sensation but risked it all in the name of democracy

Using a Tampon Nearly Killed Me

Lauren Wasser lost both her legs after suffering a rare case of toxic shock syndrome

What Stopped Me from Becoming a Killer

Hyppolite Ntigurirwa saw his father killed in the Rwandan genocide. He wanted revenge

The North Korean Diver and the Octopus

Park Myongho defected from North Korea and now spends his days diving for octopuses

Sewing to Survive

The Cambodian child dressmaker who achieved her fashion dreams

Making Contact with a Remote Tribe

The Indian anthropologist who made friendly contact with a remote Sentinelese tribe

The Mountaineers Breaking Race Barriers

Rosemary Saal was part of the first all African-American team to climb Denali

A Sex Tape was Used to Silence Me

Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova was blackmailed after investigating corruption

The Story of My Face Transplant

Cameron Underwood's operation united him with the mother of his donor and his surgeon

My Life as a Millennial Yoruba Priestess

Omitonade’s world of deities, divination, and mobile phones

The Making of a Fashion Icon

André Leon Talley went from a modest life in North Carolina, to Vogue magazine

The Transgender Boxer Making History

Patricio Manuel is the first professional transgender boxer in the United States

Breaking the Silence on Domestic Abuse

Maria Maidana has spoken out about her experience of abuse to help others in Argentina

Police killed our sons, together we seek justice

Maria Hamilton and Doretha Lock were united by the shooting of their sons in the US

Escape From Abu Ghraib

The dramatic life of a scientist who refused to build an atomic bomb for Saddam Hussein

The Pop Star with a Prison Past

Nathi Mankayi spent four years in a South African prison. He’s now a music sensation

One of the ‘Most Dangerous People’ in the World

The tobacco industry saw campaigning doctor Judith Mackay as a serious threat

A Sister's Search for Justice

Stefano Cucchi died after he was arrested. Ilaria Cucchi wanted the truth

Discovering I’d Been Sterilised

Navajo woman Jean Whitehorse learned she’d been sterilised when her appendix was removed

Addicted to My Son's Addiction

The American father and son whose struggle with addiction inspired the film Beautiful Boy

Cutting Stars’ Hair and Overcoming Addiction

Former drug addict Chris McMillan on how he created Jennifer Aniston’s iconic hairstyle

My Road Trips with Martin Luther King

How a white teenager accidentally became the personal chauffeur to a civil rights leader

The Volunteer Who Caught a Killer

Therese Tang is a volunteer with Missing People Sweden

I Learned My Mum's Identity via SMS

It would take My Huong decades to uncover the truth about her birth family in Vietnam

Extraordinary Senses: The Chef Who Couldn't Taste

Grant Achatz was running a famous restaurant when he was diagnosed with tongue cancer

Rescued by a Cruise Ship in a Hurricane

Edward Potter's fishing boat sank during Hurricane Irma

The Corrupt Cop and The Innocent Man

How one man’s lies led to the wrongful conviction of 62 people and an unlikely friendship

Extraordinary Senses: Smelling Things That Don't Exist

Alix Fox says certain emotions and locations elicit phantom smells

Extraordinary Senses: The Cyborg Who Hears in Colour

Neil Harbisson underwent a controversial surgery to allow him to hear colour

Extraordinary Senses: Amputee Who Could Touch Again

Dennis Aabo Sørensen was the first amputee to feel touch through a prosthetic

Extraordinary Senses: The Attack that Made Me a Maths Genius

Jason Padgett was a party animal before a vicious attack turned him into a maths prodigy

Frank Sinatra's Australian Showdown

When Ol’ Blue Eyes made Australia see red

Eric Idle: My Life with Monty Python

Eric Idle is a founding member of Monty Python, a group who changed the face of comedy

A Note in the Wreckage of the Lockerbie Bombing

Paul Hudson's daughter died in a plane crash. Her notebook was found at the site

Sword Swallowing to Overcome Fear

MisSa Blue shocks audiences with her highly dangerous stunts

Finding Out if my Mum Tried to Kill Me

Annie Price was badly burnt as a baby in a caravan fire - how it started was a mystery

Fighting for Pakistan's Condemned Prisoners

A murder, a Christian, and a miscarriage of justice

I Run a Radio Station from My Garden Shed

For decades Deke Duncan has run a radio station with only one listener - his wife

Top Peruvian Chef: My Recipe for Life

Chef Martin Morales was forced to flee Peru during a bloody guerrilla conflict

Escaping Dubai with a Princess

In February, Tiina Jauhianen tried to help her friend Princess Latifa escape from Dubai

The Bed that Saved Me from the Taliban

Greek pilot Vasileios Vasileiou hid in a bed frame to survive a Taliban attack

T La Rock, The Man Who Forgot He Was a Rap Legend

After losing his memory, T La Rock forgot he was famous and had to learn to rap again

Putting My Hospital on a Tractor

Dr Evan Atar Adaha had to pack up his hospital and transport it to flee bombing in Sudan

I Found My Twin on YouTube

Anaïs had no idea her identical twin sister Samantha was on the other side of the world

Persuading a Serial Killer to Confess

The nightmarish experience of representing a murderer changed lawyer Kathleen Zellner

Mumbai Attacks: Playing Dead to Survive

Police officer Arun Jadhav had to play dead under the bodies of his deceased colleagues

A Nightmare in Joshua Tree

Claire Nelson was hiking in the US wilderness when she slipped and fell into a canyon

Steve Jobs: The Father Who Denied Me

Lisa Brennan-Jobs eventually reconciled with her dad after a complicated relationship

Watching a Pirate Film with Somali Captors

Journalist Michael Scott Moore was held hostage by pirates for two and a half years

The Breaking Point of a Child Gymnast

Eileen Chai spent her childhood competing for Singapore but the pressure proved too great

The Teenagers Who Wrote Their Way to The Palace

Four prize-winning writers who travelled thousands of miles for a royal reception.

South Africa's Abalone Underworld

What have giant sea snails got to do with gang violence and crystal meth in Cape Town?

Looking for Grandad - from New York to Samoa

Discovering the story of a grandfather's lost love

Regrets of a Punk Bank Robber

Gilles Bertin, the frontman of a French punk band ended up going on the run for 28 years

The Retiree who Broke the Lottery

Jerry Selbee found a way to crack the Lottery and ended up winning millions

The Homeless Woman Scouted as a Model

Lorna Tucker was living on the streets when she was noticed by a model scout in London

Greg Louganis: The death-defying diver

Blood, gold and secrets at the Olympic pool

From Prison to Rock God Video Director

When William McLellan was locked up in Spain, he went on a journey of introspection

Asked to Prove My Loyalty with Murder

During her time in a political cult as a teen, Sonja Larsen was given a shocking task

Confronting The Nun Who Despised Me

Elizabeth Coppin survived prison-like conditions in institutions run by Catholic nuns

The Locksmith and the Love Letters

Colombian locksmith Humberto Restrepo writes love letters for other people

Adventures of the Counterfeit Catching Brothers

Rob and Jason Holmes were first recruited as undercover agents when they were children

Spying on My Estranged Father

Why artist Jessamyn Lovell decided to become a private investigator.

Winning a Boxing Title while on the Run

These days Martin Murray is a successful boxer, but he used to be a fugitive

At the Centre of a Match Fixing Scandal

Nchimunya Mweeta was a star footballer at his club, but he was involved in corruption

The Story of Spain's 'Stolen' Babies

Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno discovered they'd been bought by their families

The Great Escape of Bonga

Bonga Kuenda, the man who sang – and sprinted – for Angolan independence

Telling My Dad's Khmer Rouge Story

French-Cambodian filmmaker Neary Adeline Hay on uncovering her dad's past

Held Hostage on the Chechen Frontline

Elena Nikitina was kidnapped off the street after a night out

Kony 2012: My Breakdown After Viral Fame

Jason Russell on the public breakdown that followed his viral Kony 2012 campaign

Coming Out of a Coma to a Media Storm

Being attacked by a deer was just the beginning of the nightmare for Dr Kate Stone

The Mafia Bride Who Fought Back

After Piera Aiello’s Sicilian Mafia husband was murdered, she decided to turn informer

The Fraud and the Missing Boy

Meet the private investigator who helped expose the man who posed as a missing boy.

Trapped Inside a Flooding Elevator

The race against time to escape an elevator that's filling with water

Confessions of an Art Forger

How a talented art forger imitated some of the greatest artists of all time

The Stalker Inside My House

Amanda Playle's stalker turned out to be the person she least suspected

The Mystery of Ecuador's Lost Mastertapes

An eccentric grandfather and an old suitcase of songs and secret loves.

Inside the Mind of a Forensic Pathologist

Dr Richard Shepherd has worked on some of Britain's most high profile crime scenes.

Our Near-Death Sub-Zero Border Crossing

Razak Iyal and Seidu Mohammed got frostbite as they crossed into Canada undetected

Bringing Down the Man Who Gave Us HIV

Diane Reeve's boyfriend infected her and other women with HIV in the US

Fighting Discrimination with a Fairytale

Valeriu Nicolae is a European diplomat from a Roma background

My Dad, Muhammad Ali

What is it like to be the daughter of a man who called himself The Greatest?

Injured By A Boat Propeller

The Australian Mum who was trapped under a boat in a crocodile infested river

Refusing To Be Ashamed After Rape

After Sohaila Abdulali was raped in Mumbai, she was determined not to let it define her.

Crossing Continents to Find my Parents

Tuy Gentry Buckner’s epic search to find his birth family in Vietnam

Opening my Romanian Secret Police File

Anthropologist Katherine Verdery found out Romania's secret police thought she was spy

Helping Pakistan's Forgotten Prisoners

Haya Zahid is a top human rights lawyer fighting for justice in Pakistan’s prisons

Heavy Metal's Groundbreaking Grandma

Meet Inge Ginsberg: Holocaust survivor, Hollywood composer and heavy metal grandma.

The 35 Year Game of Tag

How a close knit group of friends go to extreme lengths to keep playing Tag forever

Saving My Cellmates From Death Row

Kenyan Pete Ouko was a prison inmate turned lawyer who got six people off death row

Fighting for a Woman's Right to Love

Khalida Brohi started campaigning after her cousin died in a so-called honour killing

Awake but Trapped Inside My Body

Victoria Arlen woke up in hospital, locked into her body. All she had were her thoughts

The Love That Survived IS

Hezni and Jilan Murad were separated when so-called Islamic State targeted Yazidis

The Stranger Who Rescued Me

Rukhiya Budden's life changed when she left the Kenyan orphanage where she grew up

Coaching the death row football team

Moses Akatugba managed a football club in a Nigerian prison

I Took Her Hand and Then We Jumped

Rolf Sorman was one of the survivors of the Estonia ferry disaster 24 years ago

The Photo That Exposed Apartheid

The Soweto Uprisings and the story behind South Africa’s most iconic photo

Harlem's Legendary Ballet Dancer

Looking back on the life of Arthur Mitchell, pioneering African-American ballet dancer.

Being the Mother of a Sociopath

Being the Mother of a Sociopath

Life Without a Womb

At the age of 16, Tasha Bishop found out she didn’t have a uterus

The Elephant Whisperer of Thailand

Lek Chailert fights for the welfare of elephants working in logging camps.

How I Grew Up in a Cave

Christina Rickardsson spent her first years living with her mother in a Brazilian forest

The Transy Book Heist

The elaborate and oddball scheme to steal some of the world’s most valuable books

Dream Holiday that Ended in Tragedy

Penny Farmer spent nearly 40 years tracking down her brother's killer

From a Remote Jungle Tribe to LA

When he had to flee his isolated community in Vietnam, Rich ended up in the big city

Travelling Home Next to My Coffin

Moses Supercharger was so ill due to HIV, he was taken to his home village for burial

Sex Trafficked by My Friend

Grizelda Grootboom on how she survived horrifying abuse in South Africa

The woman who woke up in the future

Naomi Jacobs went to bed aged 32 but woke up thinking she was 15, her adult memories gone

Uncovering My Father’s Hidden Past

Louisa Deasey didn't know much about her dead father, until a message came from Paris

Looking for Vietnam's Fallen Soldiers

US Veteran Bob Connor is helping find mass graves in Vietnam

Going Undercover for My Son

Doreen Giuliano went to extreme lengths to challenge her son's verdict

Running for my life and my people

Running saved Julius Achon from a life of poverty

From Prison Kitchen to Celebrity Chef

Chef Jeff learnt to cook while he was serving a 10 year prison sentence

Soni Sori – India’s fearless tribal leader

The story of an ordinary life turned upside down

I remember when I was a newborn

Rebecca Sharrock can remember everything she's ever said, done or felt

First he gave his liver, then his heart

Heather Krueger was dying and needed a donor fast, when a handsome stranger stepped in

Saving Lives on Chicago's South Side

Dr Abdullah Pratt and the South Side's fight for a trauma centre.

Guatemala's Accidental Revolutionary

How a grandmother launched some of the biggest protests in Guatemalan history

Boy Who Survived Being Shot Eight Times

Waleed Khan was 12 years old when militants attacked his school in Peshawar in 2014

Viv Albertine: Pioneering Punk Star

Viv Albertine of The Slits felt she had to hide her punk star past from her daughter

Kofi Annan: In His Own Words

An in-depth interview with the former UN Secretary-General - he spoke to Outlook in 2012

The Making of a Disco Star

Marcia Barrett was a lead singer of the chart-conquering disco band, Boney M

I Got a Slave for My Birthday

Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane from Mauritania went from slave owner abolitionist

Tennis Star to Black Panther Writer

Nigerian American author Nnedi Okorafor on writing Black Panther

You Tuk-Tuk my Breath Away

The love story between a rickshaw driver from Delhi and a Swiss tourist

Born in Prison, Destined for Crime?

Deborah Jiang-Stein spent the first year of her life in prison and almost returned there

The Iraqi Ballerina Who Won't Stop Dancing

Leezan Salam has risked her life to keep dancing in Baghdad

My Golden Voice Saved Me from Addiction

Ted Williams was homeless in the US when a recording of his "golden voice" went viral

Playing Dead to Survive Afghan Siege

Breshna Musazai was shot three times during a siege by militants at her university

I Didn't Realise I was Homeless

Filmmaker Elegance Bratton slept on the streets of New York and New Jersey for eight years

The Music Bus Crossing the Gang Divide

Justin Finlayson is a London bus driver working to stop gang violence

Keeping Love Alive on Death Row

Yemi Hailemariam’s long, hard struggle to save her fiancé from execution in Ethiopia

The Story of the Baby Found in a Cinema Toilet

Rob Weston was abandoned in 1956 and spent decades trying to find his family

From Kenyan Street Child to Sushi Master

Brian Ochieng learned to cook when he was living rough on the streets of Nairobi

Giving a Voice to Young Women in Yemen

Amani Yahya is one of Yemen's best known female rappers

Grieving with a Herd of Elephants

Françoise Malby-Anthony mourned the loss of her husband with their elephants

The Leading Lawyer Who Once Robbed Banks

Shon Hopwood used to be a bank robber but in prison he discovered he had a talent for law

The king of the wild blue sky

The stormy life of Jerry Foster, America’s first flying newsman

The Impact of Taking the Wrong Train

When Siraj Khan ran away from home at the age of 10, his entire life was transformed

Bringing Mexico's Missing People Home

Graciela Perez Rodriguez has helped create a DNA database to find people who are missing

Dancing with Madonna Kept Me Alive

Salim Gauwloos danced on Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour. But he was keeping a secret

Why I Had to Bury My Husband Twice

Fabiola Hernández Guevara didn't realise she was praying at her husband's killers' grave

Like Fresh Water in the Desert

Nelly Ben Or is a Polish concert pianist who survived the Holocaust with the aid of music

Inside The Mind of a Big Wave Surfer

Rodrigo Koxa surfed a record breaking wave that had once nearly killed him

Mandela - The Private Life of A Public Man

On the centenary of Nelson Mandela's birth, we hear rare insights into his private life

Two Men, a Boat and a Dramatic Rescue

A dramatic tale of adventure, disaster and unexpected friendship in the Southern Ocean

Helping people prepare for death

Henry Fersko-Weiss guides people during their last moments

Teaching Maths to My Former Enemies

Carlos Cano, the Colombian paramilitary teaching survivors of the conflict.

The SOS Note Hidden In a Halloween Toy

The cry for help written in a labour camp in China hidden in a Halloween decoration

Pride and Pain of Being Mandela's Grandson

Ndaba Mandela was raised by his famous grandfather and had to adjust to all it came with

The Baby I Found Buried Alive

Azita Milanian discovered a newborn buried alive, 20 years later they were reunited

An Artist's Last Hours on Death Row

Australian artist Ben Quilty taught a condemned drug smuggler how to paint

Hunting My Brother's Killer

Lee-Anne Cartier began investigating her brother's suicide when things weren't adding up

21 Years Fighting for My Friend's Freedom

Carl King's 21 year fight to overturn his childhood friend's wrongful murder conviction

Foster Parents to a Bomber

Ron and Penny Jones fostered Ahmed Hassan, who planted a bomb on the London Underground

I Treated New York's First AIDS Patients

Dr Joseph Sonnabend is an HIV/AIDS pioneer and a musical composer

Sex, Drugs and Rolls Royces

Hugh Milne was the bodyguard of Indian 'free love' guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Outlook Weekend: Saved by Nature

Chris Packham struggles with human interaction but has a unique bond with animals

On Top of the World with My Dad

Ajeet and Deeya Bajaj are the first Indian father-daughter duo to climb Mount Everest

The Outlook Inspirations Awards 2018

Nice Leng'ete, Brisa de Angulo and Livey Van Wyk are named as the winners

Tessa Thompson: Defying Hollywood typecasting

US film star and Inspirations 2018 judge on overcoming racism as Marvel's Valkyrie

The Al-Qaeda Bomb Maker Turned MI6 Spy

Former extremist Aimen Dean explains why he joined the UK's Secret Intelligence Service

Confessions of a Rock Star

One of the biggest stars of Christian rock revealed a secret and her career took a turn

Singing to Recover from School Shooting

Drama teacher Melody Herzfeld shielded 65 students during the Parkland school shooting

Inspirations: Caring for Kids in Prison

Faith Kalungia provides support to children growing up in prisons in Zambia

Inspirations: From Mute teen to Rapper

Isaiah Acosta was born without a jaw, but ended up becoming a rapper

Inspirations: Battling Guns in Trinidad

Caron Asgarali was shot in the face in 2013 and has campaigned against crime ever since

What Gay Conversion Therapy Did to Me

Raised in a religious family Garrard Conley entered therapy to try and turn him straight

Outlook Weekend: The Blink

Rikke Schmidt Kjaergaard was trapped inside her own body, all she could do was blink

Inspirations: My Dance Troupe School

How Seyi Oluyole's dance group is inspiring youngsters to study whilst they learn dance

The Policeman Who Toppled a Guru

Police officer Ajay Pal Lamba who brought down Indian demigod Asaram Bapu accused of rape

Hunting Down the Feather Thief

How a fishing enthusiast tried to solve the mystery of a heist of rare bird feathers

Inspirations: Delivering Babies Under Gunfire

Dr Marzia Salam Yaftali runs the last public hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz

Inspirations: 'Miss Taxi' Standing Up to Sexism

Esenam Nyador is one of just a handful of female taxi drivers in Ghana

My Appointment with a Serial Killer

Canadian journalist Lorraine Murphy's encounter with the notorious Robert Pickton

Inspirations: Ending FGM in My Village

Aged eight, Nice Leng'ete was destined to undergo female genital mutilation

Saving Lives Before They Get to ER

As well as treating bullet wounds, Dr. Rob Gore wants to stop violence in the community

Outlook Weekend: Literary SOS

Sally Bayley was rejected by her family but eventually found solace in Shakespeare

Inspirations: Comforting My Dead Son's Fans

Alison Cope's son Joshua Ribera - known as Depzman to his fans - was killed in 2013.

Fighting Deadly Cough Syrup Addiction

The Nigerian doctor willing to risk her life to end codeine cough syrup addiction

Inspirations: My Prison Carpool Service

In 2012, Kristal Bush created a carpool service for the families of prisoners.

How I Solved My Best Friend's Murder

Sheila Wysocki became a private investigator to solve her friend's cold case murder.

Inspirations: Returning Lost War Medals

Major Zachariah Fike is on a mission to reunite lost war medals with their owners

Global Protests After My Fiancée Was Shot

Monica Benicio tells us her memories of her fiancée who was killed in March this year

Inspirations: I Fell From The Sky

Emma Carey taught herself to walk again after surviving a terrible accident.

What Susan Did on Death Row

Susan Kigula led a choir, got a degree and changed Ugandan law as she waited to be hanged

Inspirations: Making Peace with Football

Kenyan Fatuma Abdulkadir Adan turned to football to bring peace to her community

Dancing Blind With My Horse

Verity Smith is a blind international dressage rider but competes against sighted riders

Inspirations: I Grew a Tropical Forest

Mbarouk Mussa Omar has planted over a million trees in the Zanzibar archipelago

Trying to Prove My Father Was a Killer

Sandra Brown believes her dad, a child rapist, was behind her schoolmate's disappearance

Inspirations: Saving a life on Everest

Mountaineer Leslie Binns gave up his dream of conquering Everest to save another climber

Outlook Weekend: Am I Baby Paul?

A kidnapped baby, an abandoned child and a web of secrets that spanned over 40 years

Inspirations: Busting Taboos on My Motorbike

Zenith Irfan is challenging stereotypes and fulfilling her father's dream in Pakistan

Life as the Enemy of the Mafia

Anti-mafia chief prosecutor Nicola Gratteri lives under 24/7 armed protection

Inspirations: Me and My Wheelchair in Space

South African activist Eddie Ndopu wants to be the first wheelchair user in space

Flint: Exposing the Water Crisis that Poisoned my Kids

Mother of four LeeAnne Walters helped to expose the water crisis in Flint, Michigan

Inspirations: My School for Survivors

Brisa de Angulo set up a charity for survivors of sexual assault in Bolivia

My Son Didn't Talk to Me When I Fled Syria

Musician Raghad Haddad claimed asylum in the UK and fought for her family to join her

Outlook Weekend: What's Up Chapo?

Drew Hogan made it his mission to take down the world's most wanted drug lord, El Chapo

Inspirations: My Wheelchair Superhero

Mohammad Sayed created a comic superhero called Wheelchair Man, based on his life story

A Hitman was Hired to Kill Me

Nancy Shore survived being shot in the head by a hitman at her home in Texas in 2012

Top Indian runner's landmark win

Dutee Chand - the fastest woman in India - won a historic case for the right to compete

Inspirations: Namibia's Outcast Mayor

Livey van Wyk went from being an HIV-positive teenager to the youngest mayor in Namibia

Inspirations: Orchestra for the Dying

Jorge Bergero is a cellist who performs for people who can't make it to concert halls

Outlook Weekend: The Voyage of Meg and Elena

The couple met online then had to battle the human and natural worlds to be together.

I Forgive the Man Who Took Me Hostage

Geert Kruit was a young boy when gunman Tom Polnaija took him hostage in a school siege

The Female Hunter Tracking Boko Haram

Aisha Bakari Gombi defied expectations when she took up arms against militants

I Wrote an SOS Note in my Own Blood

Minor Vidal was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest

How an Alien and a BMX Changed My Life

John Buultjens ended up playing the role of his violent father in a Hollywood film

Outlook Weekend: The Mountain Between Us

How two climbers become connected after a fateful expedition on a mountain in Tibet

I forgot I loved my wife

In 2016, Adam Gonzales woke up with no memory of having met his wife

Making a Bollywood Film for My Village

Gautam Singh made a Bollywood film to prove to his village that he really is a filmmaker

The KGB Spy with Two Families

The remarkable double life of Jack Barsky, an undercover agent in the US

Losing My Baby and Learning to Laugh

Stand-up comedian Lou Conran learnt to laugh again after giving birth to a stillborn baby

How a Nun Infiltrated Ecuador's Gangs

Nelsa Curbelo wanted to end gang violence, but had to befriend the gang members first

Outlook Weekend: The Laws of Love

Jim and John's union changed the course of US legal history

America's African late-night host

Trevor Noah's birth defied apartheid laws in South Africa in the 1980s

How I Survived Kidnap and Rape at 14

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at knifepoint from her bed in 2002 and held for 9 months

'I always assumed I'd go into space'

Dr Mae Jemison became the first woman of colour to go into space in 1992

Tyler Perry: Film Star and Media Mogul

Tyler Perry went from a poor childhood in New Orleans to having his own film & TV empire

Outlook Weekend: Grizzly

Joyce Maynard had a pen pal nicknamed 'Grizzly'. Behind that name was a terrible secret.

Not Knowing I Was Sweden's Most Wanted

Iraqi refugee Moder Magid was 22 when he was wrongly arrested on terror charges

Music Helped My Partner Back From Coma

Ellen Murphy played music at her partner's hospital bed to try to bring him out of a coma

The Rap Star Saved by a Nursing Home

After losing his memory 'T La Rock' forgot he was famous and had to learn to rap again

Mrs Sparkle: The Trauma Cleaner

Sandra Pankhurst clears up crime scenes and deep cleans for extreme hoarders

Outlook Weekend: The School Teacher Who Couldn't Read

John Corcoran managed to keep his secret until his daughter asked for a bedtime story

Social Media Saved My Life

Mohammed Al Samawi was guided out of a warzone in Yemen by four strangers on social media

Revealing my Mother's Secret Life

Hungarian writer András Forgách finds out about his mother's double life as a spy

My Father the FBI Fugitive

Tyler Wetherall spent her childhood keeping her dad's secret

From 'Mouthy' to 'Wisey'

Nequela Whittaker was a sweet girl at home and a vicious gang leader on the streets

Testifying Against my Parents for Love

The young Indian lovers whose relationship was condemned and ended in tragedy

Outlook Weekend: The Hit Maker

Songwriter Guy Chambers on co-writing Robbie Williams' biggest hits

Uniting Mostar through Rock Music

Oha Maslo set up the Mostar Rock School to teach children in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Free After 28 Years on Death Row

Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly 30 years on death row protesting his innocence

My Time with North Korea's Dictator

Author Hwang Sok-yong's peace mission involved an unusual relationship with Kim Il-sung

From English Rugby Coach To Fiji Chief

How Ben Ryan became a Fijian hero after delivering the country their first Olympic gold

The Supermodel who Took Down a Cult

Hoyt Richards was a jet-setting supermodel, but he became enthralled by a doomsday cult

Outlook Weekend: Attila the Nun

Arlene Violet, the American nun who took on the mob

I Studied the Brain but Lost My Mind

Barbara Lipska had 18 brain tumours which she says turned her into a 'heartless monster'

The Search for My Shipwreck Saviour

Para Paheer from Sri Lanka spent eight years trying to find the man who saved his life

The Star Who Thought She Was Monstrous

Lindi Ortega is a Canadian country singer who has struggled with body dysmorphic disorder

Football Fame Led Me to My Birth Mum

Australian Rules football star Peter Bell on how he was reunited with his birth mother

Outlook Weekend: Going For Gold

The family that spent years searching for gold treasure and two Indian women wrestlers

Acting My Way Out of Crime

Michael Balogun was a serial offender but is now performing on one of the UK's top stages

Promising Athlete to 'Sex Slave'

Shamere McKenzie survived a horrifying ordeal at the hands of a sex trafficker

Algeria's Accidental War Photographer

Zohra Bensemra became a conflict photographer after the civil war in Algeria

My Loneliness United 10,000 Strangers

Patrick Cakirli felt alone but has now helped thousands of people make friends in Denmark

Outlook Weekend: In My Element

Water, fire, air and earth. Four stories of people in their element

Helping Homeless Women Give Birth

Memuna Sowe is Britain's midwife of the year.

Why Trapped Cave Divers Call Edd

Edd Sorenson has rescued more divers from underwater caves than anyone else on the planet

I Applied to University from a Trench

Min Zaw Oo was a Burmese guerrilla, until a jungle epiphany led him to pursue peace

Blind Stand-up Comedian Nidhi Goyal

The Indian comedian Nidhi Goyal on cracking jokes about disability, sex and prejudice

Outlook Weekend: The Songbooks

Returning music to Afghan children and the man behind Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Walking in Fela Kuti's Footsteps

Seun Kuti is the son of one of Nigeria's biggest stars. He's a rising musician too.

The Marine and the Mongrel

Pen Farthing was a British Royal Marine when he turned his attention to animal welfare

The Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain

Joel Salinas is an American doctor who has a condition called mirror-touch synaesthesia

The Good Luck Flag Detectives

Rex and Keiko Ziak return good luck flags to the families of fallen Japanese soldiers

Escaping North Korea Twice

Jihyun Park was a slave bride, gave birth in secret and lived in a labour camp.

Outlook Weekend: Love You to Death

Stories exploring the transience of life and the immortality of love

Triumph and Tragedy in a Boy Band

Former a1 boy band singer Ben Adams on life as a teen idol

The Double Bass Saved My Life

Chi-chi Nwanoku, founder of Europe's majority black and ethnic minority orchestra Chineke

How My Mum Betrayed Me

As a girl Hannah Milbrandt thought she had terminal cancer but all was not what it seemed

How Dickens Helped Me Survive Anorexia

Through novels Laura Freeman was able to eat again after a decade of battling anorexia

Outlook Weekend: Tick Tock

People who've been given hours or months to live - and the astonishing ways they reacted

The Girl Who Acted Before Rosa Parks

Claudette Colvin, the unsung hero of the US civil rights movement

Fulfilling my Dad's Song Writing Dream

Suzan Felton set up a record label to produce the songs written by her late father

The trials of Chelsea's first black player

Paul Canoville was racially abused by fans but he paved the way for future black players

Calling a Ceasefire in Our US City

Erricka Bridgeford called a Baltimore ceasefire but could it go 72 hours without killing?

Outlook Weekend: Astronaut Dreams

A singing spaceman, a refugee who wants to beat gravity and a cosmonaut stuck in orbit

Why I Came Out as Gay on Nigerian TV

Bisi Alimi was a successful actor, but after his revelation he had to flee for his life

I Can't Forgive Boys Who Killed My Son

Denise Fergus on how she struggled to cope after the murder of her young son James Bulger

The Stalker Downstairs

German writer Dirk Kurbjuweit on how he and his family were tormented by their neighbour.

The Life and Loves of Asma Jahangir

Remembering Pakistan's human rights lawyer who broke new ground

The most unlikely Winter Olympic gold

Steven Bradbury became Australia's first Winter Olympic champion in extraordinary fashion

Outlook Weekend: The Re-run

Two people who had a shocker of an experience, and then an opportunity to put it right.

Making a Film for My Heroin Addict Mum

Adrian Goiginger's mother used fairy tales to shield him from the horror of her addiction

Cracking a $30m Case of Wine Fraud

How wine detective Maureen Downey uncovered a huge counterfeiting operation

Brazil's Fatal Air Crash Club Play On

Chapecoense's team lost many players in a disaster that shocked the football world

My Father was a Polygamous Cult Leader

Rachel Jeffs managed to escape the breakaway Mormon sect she grew up in

Outlook Weekend: Lost in the City

A child missing among millions in Manila and a blind man left alone in a rush-hour crowd

Home After 4 Years in Egyptian Prisons

Ibrahim Halawa went to visit his family in Egypt but ended up spending four years in jail

'Pakistan's Toughest Woman'

Nazo Dharejo defended her home against a gang of 200 attackers

The Man who Said No to Saddam Hussein

Hussain al-Shahristani refused to build an atomic bomb for the former President of Iraq

My Baby was Born Twice

Meet Margaret Boemer and the Nigerian doctor who saved her baby's life

Outlook Weekend: Things Only Adults Should Know

Stories of people who rebuilt their lives after a rough childhood

The Arctic Explorer who Hates the Cold

Jamaican-born Dwayne Fields walked to the North Pole after surviving a gun attack

Harlem's Legendary Ballet Dancer

Arthur Mitchell started the Dance Theatre of Harlem to train black ballet dancers

I Took on My Village Elders to End FGM

Nice Leng'ete dared to confront the Maasai tradition of female genital cutting

The Extremist in My Family

How a British family coped when one of its members joined militant group al-Shabab

Outlook Weekend: Stan and the 'Weird World'

What would you do if a person you trust wanted you to disappear into a secret community?

Training a Goldfish for the Big Screen

Peta Clarke is one of Australia's top animal trainers for films and stage shows

Liberian Refugee Becomes a US Mayor

Wilmot Collins has become the first black mayor in the US state of Montana

Imprisoned by My Father for 15 Years

Psychotherapist Maude Julien grew up in what she calls a 'cult of three' in France

When a Murderer Stole My Identity

What happened when an American journalist faced the biggest ethical dilemma of his life?

Outlook Weekend: What's a Family Anyway?

Two people trying to make sense of their families after finding out an explosive secret

Zimbabwe's Vegan Anti-Poaching Squad

The all-female anti-poaching unit trained by a former Australian sniper

Our Emergency Wedding

When Charles discovered his partner Joan had cancer they only had 24 hours to get married

Befriending the Soldier Who Blinded Me

Reconciliation between a British soldier and the boy he shot in Northern Ireland in 1972

The Boy I Killed ‘Became a Part of Me’

In 1977 Maryann Gray accidentally killed a child and it's haunted her ever since

Outlook Weekend: The Sanctuary of My Cell

Rusty Young took a guided tour of a Bolivian prison - he ended up staying for four months

The Zambian Mick Jagger

Jagari Chanda shot to fame as lead singer of a psychedelic band - but it wasn't to last

Violence and Forgiveness in Colombia

San Carlos town experienced horror during the civil war, now reconciliation is underway

Mexican Author Helping Child Migrants

Valeria Luiselli volunteers as an interpreter for undocumented migrants in the US

Capturing a Different Side of Baghdad

The Iraqi journalist who didn't want the pages of his diary to be just about war

Outlook Weekend: What's Around The Corner?

A student cycles round a bend on Bolivia's Death Road and a most unexpected thing happens

Making Prosthetics for Fellow Refugees

Asem Hasna lost his leg to a bomb in Syria. He then became a prosthetics designer

Making Top Violins in my Living Room

Amateur violin maker Danny Houck tries to build a copy of one of the world's best violins

Risking My Life to Save Precious Books

Dr Abdel Kader Haidara managed to hide thousands of ancient books from Islamist militants

Why My Family had to Disappear

Pauline Dakin's family life was full of secrets, fear and unpleasant surprises

Outlook Weekend: Lessons from Apes

Mothering tips from chimps and understanding the power of touch from a gorilla

Can Music Unite The Korean Peninsula?

Won Hyung Joon is trying to bridge the divide between North and South Korea through music

Posing as a Scientist to Save My Sons

Pat Furlong's sons were diagnosed with a devastating terminal illness

Rowing the Ocean in Memory of My Son

After his son Richard died, Laval St. Germain decided to row across the Atlantic solo

Not Letting #Gamergate Ruin My Life

Zoe Quinn fought back against online harassment

Outlook Weekend: The Gift

A bin bag and a designer watch, two stories of memorable presents

Venezuelan Mayor Who Went on The Run

Opposition mayor David Smolansky embarked on an epic 1200km escape to Brazil

Searching for Satan: The Hero Dog

Former US sergeant Ryan Henderson spent five years looking for the dog he loved

Molly Bloom: My High Stakes Gamble

Molly Bloom's life hosting celebrity poker games is now a Hollywood film - Molly's Game

The Execution That Made Me a Lawyer

The death of a teenage girl changed the course of Iranian-born Payam Akhavan's life

Outlook Weekend: Doubt and Other Cures

Stories of how football and falling in love persuaded extremists to change their minds

The Unlikely Film Star

The Hasidic Jewish man who broke the rules to become a film star

Imprisoned in Kenya with My Baby

Teresa Njoroge was faced with a choice - leave her child or take her to prison

Sharing a Bond with my Torturer

What happened when a former Sudanese child soldier was faced with his torturer

How my brother's accident saved lives

After a family tragedy, Marco Tulio Guerra created a stove, so rural cooking is safer

Outlook Weekend: Spurious Connections to Donald Trump

What do a comedian in a cake and a superyacht have to do with the president of America?

The Ultimate Dilemma: Kill or Be Killed

American rock climber Jason Smith was taken hostage in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan

Pulling a Tooth at Gunpoint

Martha Ruiz-Perilla was forced to operate on a teenage rebel in Colombia

Gathering music all over Mexico

The Mexican biochemist who helped discover the Buena Vista Social Club

The Mute Teen who Became a Rapper

Isaiah Acosta was born without a jaw, but ended up becoming a rapper

Outlook: How to Embarrass your Dad

The refugee who dreamt of ballet and the Nigerian lawyer who painted Beyoncé's face

Writing Brought Us to the Palace

We go inside Buckingham Palace to find out how four girls won a prestigious writing award

The Nun Rescuing Sex-Trafficked Women

Sister Rita Giaretta has dedicated her life to helping trafficked women in Italy

Turning the Lens on My Family's Story

How the producer of Bridget Jones' Diary realised his father's life could make a movie

The Narcotics Officer's Dilemma

Kevin Simmers saw addiction in a new light after a shock revelation from his daughter

Outlook Weekend: The Fix

Broken dreams, shattered bones and a few malfunctioning televisions

The Indian Nurse Held Hostage by IS

How 46 nurses were stranded in a hospital in Iraq and captured by so-called Islamic State

The Cowboy Bringing Care to Millions

Stan Brock once herded cattle in Guyana. He now flies medical care to millions of people

I Learnt my Dad was a Murderer from TV

Elisha Rose discovered her father was a multiple murderer whilst watching the TV news

Secret Life of a Chinese Cartoonist

Badiucao is one of China's most prolific and provocative cartoonists

The Gold Lion and the Bronze Horses

Decoding a pop song with a hidden message and hunting for Hitler's stolen art

Goldie: Making Peace With My Mother

UK dance music pioneer Goldie on how growing up in care inspired his art

The Costume Designer Behind Black Panther

Ruth Carter went from costuming her college plays to crafting outfits for Hollywood films

Surviving a Wildfire that Took my Crew

The Yarnell Hill Fire claimed 19 members of Brendan McDonough's firefighting crew

I am Grateful for my Narcolepsy

George Church thinks that narcolepsy helps him come up with his extraordinary ideas

Outlook: After the Race is Over

When the finish line is just the beginning, two stories that will stop you in your tracks

Helping the Homeless Find Loved Ones

Kevin Adler helps homeless people find their long-lost families in the US

Rebuilding my Beloved Raqqa

Syrian architect Mohammad Hassan on reconstructing his home city after so-called IS rule

Kidnapped from Prison as a Baby

Ignacio Montoya Carlotto was 36 when he learned he'd been stolen from an Argentine prison

Gang Life Prepared Me for the Kitchen

How Tim Raue overcame a troubled childhood to become one of the world's best chefs

Outlook Weekend: The Three Bears

Stuck in the jaws of death, chasing a polar bear in your briefs and in bed with a grizzly

Imprisoned By Saddam When I Was Four

Taban Shoresh was arrested by Saddam Hussein's soldiers and faced almost certain death

The Man Reuniting Rohingya Families

Kamal Hussein reunites Rohingya children separated from their parents

The US Child Who Was Married Aged 11

Sherry Johnson was married to her rapist in the US state of Florida

Tasmina, the First Horsewoman of Bangladesh

Horse racing is a man's sport in Bangladesh but Tasmina Hossain is trying to change that

Outlook: Life - The Second Time Around

The man who faked his own death and a writer who made a bot to talk with his late father

I buried my dreams and they came true

How a Zimbabwean mother of 6 with no education managed to obtain 3 university degrees

From Children's TV Star to Baroness

Floella Benjamin was a household name in Britain in the 1980s - she's now a Baroness

I am South Africa's 'Black Mamba'

Meningitis left MMA fighter Ronald Dlamini blind but he has since returned to the ring

The Saviour of the Icelandic Goat

Jóhanna Bergmann Þorvaldsdóttir is on a mission to save the Icelandic goat

Outlook Weekend: My Brush With The Law

A 'paint-off' in a packed US courtroom and a cartoonist locked in a South African prison

Daughters of Vietnam Enemies United

Cycling together even though their dads were on opposite sides of the Vietnam war

The Black Cop who Infiltrated the KKK

How an African American police officer ended up as a card-carrying member of the KKK

Choosing to Live in a Bolivian Prison

Australian backpacker Rusty Young was in San Pedro prison for more than three months

The Slackliner Who Saved a Life

American slackliner Mickey Wilson walked across the line of a chair lift to save a skier

Outlook Weekend: Defrosted

A frozen body and a frozen mind: two extraordinary stories of coming in from the cold

Climbing Everest with One Leg

Arunima Sinha, the first female amputee to reach the top of the world's highest mountain

I Saved 144 People From Militants

Norodin Alonto Lucman led many people to safety in a city under siege in the Philippines

The Lawyer who Painted Beyoncé's Face

The Nigerian artist who used to be a human rights lawyer

How I changed Boko Haram Imam's mind

The Nigerian psychologist who helped to deradicalise Boko Haram members

Outlook Weekend: 3067 Metres & Falling

Two incredible stories of gravity at work and what happens after you hit the ground

A Woman Inside North Korea's Army

Former soldier Lee So Yeon was trained to hate the USA but now she supports Donald Trump

Mexican earthquakes' human 'mole'

Rafael Lopez has been hunting for earthquake survivors the world over since 1985

From smuggled child to heart surgeon

How an undocumented migrant from Colombia managed to become a cardiac surgeon in the US

My 50 year search for my little sister

An extraordinary story from an Outlook listener on the search for her long-lost sister

Outlook Weekend: Meeting the Monster

Imagine meeting someone who's done a truly terrible thing. What would you do?

The Life of an 'Underground Astronaut'

Becca Peixotto is an archaeologist who can squeeze through 18cm gaps in underground caves

From Pussy Riot to Penal Colony

Maria Alyokhina on her life after being arrested for protesting at a Moscow cathedral

My Grandmother, Islamic State, and Me

Yazidi student Aido Khiro on winning a scholarship to fulfil his grandma's last wish.

Searching the Floods for my Missing Wife

An Indian man who didn't stop looking for his wife even after she was declared dead.

Outlook Weekend: Tough as Old Boots

How tough are you? Two tales of inspiring resilience.

"Every mission can be your last"

Iceland's coastguard Viggó Sigurðsson saves people from volcanoes, seas and glaciers

I was shot by my student

Kevin Lein was shot by his pupil, but campaigned to overturn his shooter's jail sentence.

“I kept my past a secret”

One man's difficult experience of growing up in Chile’s child care system in the 1980s

Fifteen minutes to save a life

RAF pilot Michelle Oulette's dramatic rescue of a badly wounded soldier in Iraq.

Outlook Weekend: No End Of Trouble

The extraordinary work of school teacher turned peace negotiator Dr Stephen Davis

Mogorosi Motshumi: A Life In Black And White

South African cartoonist depicting township life during apartheid.

Why I Kept a Bullet-ridden Pillow Case

Revd Canon Guli Francis-Dehqani had to flee Iran when her family was targeted.

Forced to Bury my Cellmates in Chad

Clement Abaifouta was imprisoned for four years under the dictator Hissene Habre.

Thawing Frozen Climbers on Everest

Ken Kamler is a doctor who was climbing Mount Everest when it was hit by disaster in 1996

A Taxi Driver's Extraordinary Journey

John Yaak is a former child soldier who now drives taxis in Brisbane.

Outlook Weekend: The Baddies

How two men far from home became bad guys in the movies

Repair Boy: jailed for watching soaps

Hak-Min Kim's obsession with gadgets put him in a North Korean jail - but also saved him.

Six Years as an al-Qaeda Hostage

Stephen McGown's dream trip turned into a nightmare when he was kidnapped by al-Qaeda.

Convicted of a murder I didn't commit

Christopher Scott confronted the man whose crime landed him in prison.

I Stopped Sewing and Started Striking

Kalpona Akter is a former textile worker who is taking on global clothing giants.

Outlook Weekend: The Bomb Disposal Men

An expert and a volunteer risking their lives to defuse bombs.

Looking for Mum in a City of Millions

The boy searching for the family he lost in a Manila Market aged just four.

Dodging Bullets To Deliver A Baby

The female doctor running the last hospital in Afghan city Kunduz.

Mothering the Fans of my Murdered Son

Alison Cope's son was the grime artist Depzman. His grieving fans needed her support.

Starting a Rock Band in a Mexican Jail

Antonio Ruiz Gomez was in prison when he formed a band with fellow inmates.

Long Ride to Freedom

Accounts from the Freedom Riders of 1961. Offensive language has been bleeped

The Dyslexic Baby Dinosaur Discoverer

Palaeontologist Jack Horner's expertise means he's consulted on all Jurassic Park films

Rohan Marley: Bob's Rebel Son

Bob Marley's son Rohan on his famous dad, playing American football, and Rastafarianism.

The Serial Killer I Couldn't Catch

The detective on the hunt for Canada's most prolific murderer.

Fighting Farc with Morse Code Song

Juan Carlos Ortiz hid Morse Code messages in a song to communicate with hostages.

Outlook Weekend: My New Mum

Two extraordinary stories of gaining a second mum

I Took on the London Bridge Attackers

Geoff Ho was stabbed in the neck as he protected friends during the London Bridge attacks

The Mum Saving Musicians from Suicide

After Linda Phillips' guitarist son took his own life, she wanted to help other musicians

I Found Hitler's Horses

The Dutch art investigator on a mission to recover stolen works of art.

Lightning Bolt Made Me a Music Maestro

Tony Cicoria developed a passion for classical music after he was struck by lightning.

Outlook Weekend: How Was Your Holiday?

Holidays don't always turn out the way you expect.

Kenyan Runner's Marathon Escape

Moninda Marube escaped tribal violence and human trafficking to keep on running

A human chain saved my drowning family

When swimmers became caught in a rip tide, 80 people formed a human chain to rescue them.

Texting my dead father

James Vlahos created a chatbot to keep his father's memory alive.

Surviving a skydiving crash landing

Emma Carey plummeted to the earth after her skydiving instructor became unconscious

Outlook Weekend: Curses

The Biblical kind, the monthly kind, and the swearing kind...

Burmese Refugees Who Saved a US Church

Reverend Michael Spurlock and refugee Ye Win explain how they rescued a failing church.

Syria's Frontline Psychiatrist

Dr Roula counsels casualties of the Syrian conflict.

Pakistani Lawyer 'Trolling the Trolls'

Nighat Dad fights online abuse and set up the region's first cyber harassment helpline.

From Poverty to the Premier League

Footballer Moses Odubajo and his brothers brought themselves up after their mother died.

Outlook Weekend: Most Wanted

The man who says he killed Osama Bin Laden

The Record-Breaking Mountaineering Marriage

Married couple Nives Meroi and Romano Benet from Italy are record-breaking mountaineers

Air crash survivor turns TV singer

Kechi Okwuchi was one of only two survivors of a Nigerian plane crash that killed 107.

The shopkeeper defusing IS booby traps

The Syrian man who defuses bombs planted by so-called Islamic State.

Saved from drowning by a pair of boots

Fisherman John Aldridge was stranded at sea for 12 hours.

Outlook Weekend: The Perfect Body

The French supermodel who only ate three apples a day

From bomb survivor to Paralympian: "I count myself lucky"

Martine Wright lost her legs in the 2005 London bombings, but then became a Paralympian

The Day I killed Osama Bin Laden

Robert O'Neill says he fired the fatal shots that killed America's most wanted man.

Covering My Racist Tattoos

Former Neo-Nazi Angela King left prejudice behind when she was jailed for a hate crime

I was an Arms Dealer's 'Pleasure Wife'

Former model Jill Dodd on joining the harem of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

Outlook Weekend: The Art of Lying

A musician and a painter who became famous thanks to a lie.

Cassandro, the Cross-dressing Wrestler

How wrestling helped Cassandro overcome the trauma of sexual abuse

Face To Face With An IS Leader

Journalist Souad Mekhennet risks her life to talk to extremists.

The refugee who returned to the stage

Jasmin Geljo, was a famous actor in the former Yugoslavia until war broke out in 1992.

Defusing 119 bombs in Afghanistan

Kim Hughes is the British Army's most highly decorated bomb disposal expert.

Outlook Weekend: Waking Up In Strange Places

Donna Penner wasn't meant to wake up during her surgery

From Refugee to MBE

Akuja De Garang is the first person from South Sudan to receive the British honour.

I Made North Korean Propaganda

Song Byeok worked as an artist for the regime in North Korea before fleeing the country.

Six Seconds that Changed Music

The extraordinary story of the Amen Break.

Surviving Columbine Made Me an Addict

Austin Eubanks hid under a table during the notorious school shooting.

Outlook Weekend: The Letter

A bottle washes up on a beach with a letter inside - but who wrote it?

Delhi's Sharp Shooting Hero

Medal-winning shooter Ayisha Falaq rescued her brother-in-law who was being held hostage.

'Please Baba don't go out'

The journalist risking everything to document the effects of war in Yemen.

'It's very hard to sob and run'

Sex trafficking survivor Norma Bastidas completes world record triathlon.

Outlook Weekend: Emergency In The Grocery Store

Christine has a 'brain drain' in the supermarket

From Troubled Teenager to Opera Star

Ryan Speedo Green went from juvenile detention to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

The Secret Life of Ronnie O'Sullivan

Snooker star Ronnie O'Sullivan on his relationship with his dad who was jailed for murder

The Night My Club Was Attacked

A year after the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando we speak to the club's owner

How Trash Bags Changed My Life

One man's personal mission to restore dignity to the lives of foster children

Outlook Weekend: Dress Codes

Jo Fidgen tells the curious story of an African-American woman living with a neo-Nazi

Living With My Mother's Murder

Alex Hanscombe was 2 years old when his mum was killed in front of him in a London park

Nigeria's pioneering furniture boss

Ibukun Awosika went from helping at her granny's salt stall to running a furniture empire

Mandela inspired me to be a rugby star

Zimbabwean Tonderai Chavhanga grew up in poverty but became a record-breaking Springbok.

Restaurateur who escaped sex trade

Neli Delgado set up a chicken restaurant in Mexico City after her trafficking ordeal.

Outlook Weekend: Not My Time Yet

Stories of extreme survival

I've Eaten Thousands of Exotic Plants

Joseph Simcox is a 'botanical explorer' who travels the world eating rare plants.

Get Clean or I'll Take Your Leg

The businessman who gave an addict a prosthetic leg on the condition he change his life.

The Tower of London's Ravenmaster

Chris Skaife spends more time with ravens than with his own family.

A Tale of Two Cafes

The Indian tea-boy who ran away, lived on the streets, and is now his own boss.

Outlook Weekend: My Famous Father

Three women growing up in the shadow of their fathers.

From Hollywood To Homeless

David Raether went from doing his dream job to living rough on the streets of L.A.

Befriending my father's killer

Margot Van Sluytman's father was killed by a man she would become close friends with.

Fighting Uganda's Nodding Syndrome

Collines Angwech, the woman helping children with nodding syndrome in Northern Uganda

I danced in the rubble of my home

Ahmad Joudeh grew up in a refugee camp in Syria but was determined to become a dancer.

Outlook Weekend: Stolen

The violinist who lost her million dollar Stradivarius and the boy who stole a bus

The Musician of Mosul

The Iraqi who played the cello on his roof in defiance of so-called IS

The Professor Who Beat The Casinos

Ed Thorp used his brilliance at maths to make a fortune from gambling.

Our Love Beat Neo-Nazism

Duke was a Neo-Nazi and Catherine an African-American. Love seemed out of the question

Outlook Weekend: The Performance of My Life

A high wire walk across Niagara Falls and a Chinese ballet dancer who defected to America

Our Sons Shared One Heart

Sue Burton on how her son's heart saved the life of another mother's son

I helped Steve Jobs make his billions

Lawrence Levy was hired by Steve jobs to help rescue struggling company Pixar.

From cotton picker to brain surgeon

From humble beginnings in Mexico Dr Quiñones-Hinojosa has become a leading brain surgeon.

The singing star nun from Nepal

Ani Choying Drolma is a Buddhist nun and one of Nepal's biggest musical stars.

Outlook Weekend: Going For Gold

The family that spent years searching for gold treasure and two Indian women wrestlers

Using Football To Beat Tribal Violence

Kenyan Fatuma Abdulkadir Adan turned to football to bring peace to her community

Giving Birth During an Air Strike

The Yemeni doctor helping mothers caught up in the conflict to give birth safely.

Former enemies, now brothers for life

Najah from Iraq on the moment he was reunited with the Iranian soldier who saved his life

Finding Love on Death Row

Shujaa Graham fell in love with his nurse, Phyllis, when he was on death row.

Outlook Weekend: Off Script in North Korea

Two stories that expose what life is like in one of the world's most secretive countries

The Pastor Told She Was 'Cursed'

Kenyan Terry Gobanga was raped by a gang of men on her wedding day

Is there a doctor on the train?

The Indian medical student who delivered a baby on a busy train.

Peru's first Grammy winner

Susana Baca went from obscurity in Peru to international superstardom.

Living with a 15-minute memory

A rare insight into how a stroke affected an American woman at the age of 33.

Outlook Weekend: Caged

The vet saving zoo animals in Iraq and the ex-prisoner reforming life behind bars

The Girl Stolen by a Soldier

Nina Pinto was one of many children taken from East Timor during Indonesia's occupation.

I Dressed As a Man to Work in a Mine

Pili Hussein disguised herself as a man for 10 years so she could work down a mine.

From Child Soldier to Master Knitter

How a blinded former child soldier escaped the LRA and became a master knitter.

Outlook Weekend: Lucky You Were Passing

Two stories about people whose lives were transformed by a stranger.

The Day the Music Stopped

The story of world-famous violinist Min Kym and the crime that broke her heart.

Marrying The Firefighter Who Saved Me

Four years after the Boston bombings, Roseann Sdoia is set to marry the man who saved her

Finding love after an acid attack

Aarti Thakur and Prashant Pingle are both survivors of acid attacks.

The bus ride that changed a boy's life

RG Williams was thirteen when he made a decision that altered the course of his life.

Musicians flying the Haitian flag

Haiti's hottest DJ on why electronic dance parties grew during political unrest.

Outlook Weekend: Horse Power

Two stories of men whose lives were changed by horses. Then they changed the world.

The Jockey Who Cheated Death

Declan Murphy's obituary was released after a severe riding accident. But he rode again.

Syria's Monuments Man

Isber Sabrine is a man on a mission to document Syria's priceless antiquities.

Saving Lives After Haiti's Hurricane

Stories from the heroes of Hurricane Matthew, and where they are six months on.

Bringing Beauty to Haiti's No-Go Slum

Daniel Tillias has created a garden in Haiti's notorious slum, Cite Soleil.

Outlook Weekend: The Bodyguard

Inside the turbulent, surprisingly intimate and often violent world of bodyguards.

Joseph Kony called me "Mummy Bigombe"

Betty Bigombe negotiated face to face with the notorious leader of the LRA

Ahmed Kathrada: Anti-Apartheid Leader

The life and times of the leading South African activist who died this week.

Forced to teach the children of IS

Iraqi primary school teacher Riyad Aljoboury on life in schools under IS.

The female pilot on the frontline

Mary Jennings Hegar survived being shot down by the Taliban.

Outlook Weekend: Do The Hustle

Stories of people hustling their way out of tough situations

Teenager's Race To Save WW2 Stories

19-year-old Rishi Sharma is on a mission to collect stories of WW2 American veterans.

The Man Who Jumps off Tall Buildings

Chris 'Douggs' McDougall has risked his life doing more than 3,600 base jumps.

The Best Friends Who Became a Family

Best friends Natasha Bakht and Lynda Collins became first co-parents of their kind.

Writing My Cellmates' Names in Blood

Mansour Omari risked his life to document the names of his cellmates in a Syrian prison.

Outlook Weekend: Hospital Drama

Two hospital drama stories about a nurse and a surgeon who each face a shocking dilemma

The Pinball Champion Defying Expectations

Canadian Robert Gagno's success has helped him prove that autism doesn't define him.

Dr Miracle: I've restored 35,000 people's sight

Helena Ndume fled apartheid Namibia but returned years later to tackle cataracts

Paris' Frozen Zoo

Prince Louis Albert De Broglie owns Deyrolle the famous taxidermy shop in Paris

The Newly-weds Separated by Kidnap Ordeal

Pakistani Shahbaz Taseer didn't see his wife for nearly five years after being kidnapped

Outlook Weekend: Planes, Trains and Getaway Cars

Stories of three people on life-changing journeys

From Rio Favela to State Governor

Benedita da Silva, Brazil's first black female senator

Remembering My Missing Wife

KS Narendran's wife was aboard the plane MH370, which mysteriously vanished.

'Music is never enough - it has to be madness'

Maestro Goran Bregovic on why he thinks Balkan gypsy music is the best in the world.

Saving a lion in Mosul Zoo

Dr Amir Khalil risked his life to treat a lion living in a warzone in Iraq.

Outlook Weekend: The Things We Do For Love

Two stories to make your jaw drop and your heart melt.

The Man Who Fell Off A Skyscraper

Alcides Moreno is New York's miracle window cleaner

Japan's uninsurable rock star

Japanese musician Yoshiki tells us about the personal story behind his songs.

The dentist delivering babies in Syria

Mohammed Darwish is running an underground clinic in Madaya, a town under siege in Syria.

The truth about my sister's murder

Bill Genovese investigates the murder of his sister Kitty, whose story shocked the US.

Outlook Weekend: This Time It's Personal

Tales of taking on bullies, getting your own back and coming out on top.

My Hands Were Reattached After Attack

Simonne Butler on surviving a samurai sword attack.

A Mother's Quest to Find Her Son

Alla Makukh's son was taken captive during the Ukraine conflict

In Prison with My Friend's Murderer

A moment in prison made Australian Debbie Kilroy change her life

The Race to Rescue Stranded Whales

The volunteers trying to rescue hundreds of whales stranded in New Zealand.

Outlook Weekend: Birdbrained

Three stories about birds and the curious things they make us do.

A Nurse's Agonising Dilemma

The nurse who was asked a very unexpected question by a terminally ill cancer patient

The Artist Dressing Like His Ancestors

Peruvian artist Christian Fuchs recreates portraits of his ancestors by dressing up

I ate just 3 apples a day to model

The top model who starved herself so much to fit into catwalk clothes her bones ached.

Heroin addict turned film director

Garry Fraser was picked by director Danny Boyle to help direct his film T2 Trainspotting.

Outlook Weekend: Crime Scenes

Diving in a tar pit looking for a murder weapon, and taking on a machete-toting thief

India's Superstar Wrestling Family

Indian wrestler Geeta Phogat, whose family story became a Bollywood success.

Turning Myself into a Comic Superhero

Mohammad Sayed, the disabled boy who has designed a comic superhero called Wheelchair Man

Janitor By Day, Artist By Night

Robert Sundholm picked up a paintbrush at age 60 and took the New York art scene by storm

My Kidnapped Brother's Secret Code

Mike Haines' brother knew he was on a deadly mission in Syria.

Outlook Weekend: Incognito

Two men with good reasons for pretending to be someone they're not.

Together After 19 Years

The Eritrean couple reunited after years of war and political refuge

Art Spiegelman: Maus and my family's Holocaust story

Art Spiegelman's book Maus started a revolution in the comic book world

I gave birth to my grandson

The woman who became a surrogate mum for her own daughter.

Diving into a tar pit to find a murder weapon

Sargeant David Mascarenas swam through a tar pit to help uncover a murder in Los Angeles.

Outlook Weekend: Two Weddings and a Funeral

Life-changing events for a sports star, a cinema shooting and a woman who met her hitman

Ex Heroin Addict Turned Media Mogul

Suroosh Alvi founded VICE media, which is worth an estimated $4 billion.

Swim Champ Who Saved a Sinking Boat

Sarah Mardini pushed a boat to safety in the middle of the sea as she fled Syria.

Disaster Metres From Everest Summit

Mountaineer Leslie Binns gave up his dream of conquering Everest to save another climber.

The Spy Who Pretended To Be Homeless

Tom Marcus went undercover as a homeless man to stop extremist attacks in Britain.

Outlook Weekend: The Indestructibles

The mystery of a 30-year-old black box recorder and a mayor changing attitudes to HIV.

I Woke Up During Surgery

Donna Penner woke up during an operation and found herself unable to alert the doctors

Morehouse: Black to the Future

The college that aims to turn out America's next black leaders.

I felt so guilty for being kidnapped

Colombian priest Ana Victoria Bastidas, who was kidnapped for helping girls.

The pianist who escaped a shipwreck

Antimo Magnotta was entertaining guests on board the Costa Concordia when it hit a reef.

Outlook Weekend: Something Doesn't Add Up

A case of stolen identity, betrayal and a secret life

Reading the President's Letters

Fiona Reeves reads the thousands of letters sent to President Obama by Americans.

Phoning My Brother's Killer

Sikh Rana Singh Sodhi's brother was shot in a hate crime after the 9/11 attacks on NYC

How Two Friends Found a Lost Plane

Americans Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner tried to solve a 30-year-old mystery in Bolivia.

I Offer Extreme Marriage Counselling in China

Zhu Lifei from China has set up a business to break up extra-marital affairs.

Outlook Weekend: Love Against the Odds

Five countries, four husbands, three relationships, two women, one theme: love.

Former Child Fishing Slave Now Rescuing Others

James Kofi Annan was sold into slavery in Ghana.

Kenya's Karate Grannies

Elderly women in Nairobi are using martial arts as self-defence against sexual assault

The screams 'sound like war cries'

Greek coastguard Kyriakos Papadopoulos works on Lesbos saving people fleeing war by sea.

From Refugee to British Baroness

Arminka Helic went from fleeing war in Bosnia to joining the British House of Lords.

The Lawyer Fighting Back Against Revenge Porn

Carrie Goldberg was once harassed online by an ex-partner, she now defends other victims

Outlook Weekend: They Said I Was Crazy

Two amazing women both told they were crazy, but whose actions changed their countries.

The secret link between two gymnasts

Jennifer Bricker was born without legs and idolised the Olympic gymnast Dominique Moceanu

Finding Love in Wartime Iraq

US Army interpreter Nayyef Hrebid met Iraqi soldier Btoo Allami during the Iraq War

Ex-President: The Day I Was Shot

Jose Ramos Horta survived being shot at his home in Dili, East Timor.

Outlook Weekend: Miracle Child

A girl born under gunfire, the only survivor of a plane crash and a very lost boy.

The real Caster Semenya

The unheard personal story of a great athlete and the controversial matter of her sex

The nurse who saved a starving town

Khaled Naanaa left his family behind to show the world that Syria was starving.

How we hunted Pablo Escobar

Why two American agents joined the hunt for one of the world's biggest drug lords.

How Outlook solved a WW2 mystery

Thanks to an Outlook interview, Theresa Kownacki discovered what happened to her brother.

Outlook Weekend: Talking Sense

Discover a whole new way of sensing the world with your nose, your eyes and your ears

Moroccan Actor Who Fled for Her Life

Loubna Abidar had to leave Morocco after she played a sex worker in a film.

The father taking on the Sandy Hook trolls

Lenny Pozner challenges conspiracies after his son was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.

A bank error made me a millionaire

After a bank error gave Australian Luke Moore a limitless overdraft, he spent millions.

My husband's kiss could kill me

A rare condition means Johanna Watkins is allergic to just about everyone and everything

Outlook Weekend: With a Gun to my Head

Two jaw-dropping stories from a Khmer Rouge labour camp and a kidnapper's den in Nigeria.

A Neighbour Killed My Parents

Kenza Isnasni's parents were killed in an Islamophobic attack

The reluctant death row executioner

Frank Thompson used to oversee executions in the USA - he now campaigns against them.

Creating tomorrow's African leaders

Fred Swaniker from Ghana raised millions to train the next generation of African leaders.

The fantasy life of a Turkish prisoner

Turkish writer Burhan Sönmez escaped into his imagination to cope with prison torture.

Outlook Weekend: Playing For My Life

A Pakistani squash star protected by snipers; a man in Uganda saving children with chess

The man performing mime for 65 years

Richmond Shepard claims to be the oldest mime artist in the US

I Beat My Bullies with Cricket

Vimal Kumar has defied his lower caste status by creating his own cricket team.

The Tourist Who Tackled a Gunman on a Train

Off duty US airman Spencer Stone risked his life to stop a French train attack.

I Introduced Chess to Kampala's Slums

Robert Katende has taught chess to children who cannot read or write

Outlook Weekend: In My Element

Water, fire, air and earth. Four stories of people in their element.

My Kidnappers Called Me Mother

Donu Kogbara was taken hostage in the Niger Delta in August 2015

Zambian MP: I posed as a sex worker

Princess Kasune went undercover to educate Zambia's truck drivers about HIV.

The secret fraudster in my family

Axton Betz-Hamilton vowed to find her identity thief - and made a shocking discovery.

The UN Commander Haunted by Rwanda

Peacekeeper Romeo Dallaire still struggles with what he witnessed in Rwanda's genocide.

Outlook Weekend: Fighting Back

Singer PJ Powers battles against a divided society and Melissa Dohme fights for her life

The Murder Victim Who Refused To Die

Melissa Dohme was viciously attacked and left for dead. Now she's found love.

The Singer Who Defied Apartheid

PJ Powers was the first white pop star to perform in Soweto at the height of apartheid

Bodyguard for Moscow's Gay Scene

Tapir is a bodyguard at LGBTQ events in Moscow which are regularly under threat

Held by Somali Pirates for 4.5 years

Shen Jui-chang was held hostage by pirates and ate scorpions and snakes to survive

Outlook Weekend: My Secret Family

Three powerful tales from women who discover the truth about their relatives.

My dad's Djibouti double life

Karen Guthrie thought she had an ordinary family until she uncovered her father's secret

The band behind Bosnia's protest songs

Dubioza Kolektiv, the band mixing elements of rock, reggae and traditional Balkan music.

Monsters, miracles and hope

The South African rape survivor who became an inspiration to women all over the world

'Miracle Girl': Aircrash Sole Survivor

Bahia Bakari was 13 when she survived an air crash which killed everyone else on board

Outlook Weekend: Is it Really You?

Two incredible personal stories of chance encounters and their life changing consequences

Child Soldier's Fight for Her Daughter

Yordanos Haile-Michael returned to Eritrea after 17 years to find her daughter

My Mum Died Saving Nigeria from Ebola

Bankole Cardoso's mother, Dr Ameyo Adadevoh, stopped the spread of ebola in Nigeria

The Fashion Boss Who Built 700 Schools

Pakistani businesswoman Seema Aziz uses her fashion empire to educate children

Getting to Know My Father's Kidnapper

The chance meeting in Beirut that helped journalist Sulome Anderson get closer to her dad

Outlook Weekend: Behind Closed Doors

Shocking secrets are revealed by a Malawian teenager and a Texan inmate...

Taking on Nepal's Sex Traffickers

Anuradha Koirala has rescued 30,000 women and girls from sex trafficking in Nepal

I built a food empire from my backyard

Jocelyn Chng who has overcome prejudice and grief to create a global sauce brand.

My fight against "hyena" sex ritual

Natasha Annie Tonthola is fighting against an initiation ritual she underwent in Malawi.

The Prisoner who Took Control

American Tom Huntley was put in charge of policing other inmates when he was in jail

Outlook Weekend: Family photographs

Rescuing forgotten images and an incredible journey inspired by a treasured photo

Troubled Life of Champion Diver

Diver Blake Aldridge was at the top of his game when his diving partner was killed.

Gold and cannabis washed up on my beach

The Brazilian fisherman who says gold fell from the sky and cannabis landed on his beach

Olympic Swimmer Fighting Sexual Abuse

Katherine Starr's life was wrecked by sexual abuse but she is now helping other athletes

Saving Lives Via Video Link

Syrian doctor Maher Saqqur treats patients in Aleppo via video link from Canada.

Outlook Weekend: Troubled Water

The Paralympian who survived a shark attack and an astronaut who nearly drowned in space

I led a street gang in North Korea

Sungju Lee fought other children and stole food to survive the streets of North Korea

Aleppo's underground orphanage

Asmar Halabi looks after fifty children, most orphaned by the bombing.

Saving lives with canoeing

Bill Yoachim is helping Canada's First Nations people.

Going back to school with my children

A Ugandan mother of eight returns to school with her children after twenty years.

Outlook Weekend: Skin

Stories about skin: what people see when they look at us, and sometimes cannot see past

The Fire Chief of Kabul

Fire fighter Abdul Aziz Oryakhil is often a first responder to suicide bombings in Kabul.

The Magpie that Saved a Family

Adopting an injured magpie helped an Australian family following a near-fatal accident

The Biker Doctor Erasing Tattoos

Dr David Ores removes tattoos for former gangsters, ex-cons and human trafficking victims

Fleeing Syria in a Wheelchair

Nujeen Mustafa escaped war in Syria in a wheelchair pushed by her sister.

Outlook Weekend: Who's the Daddy?

Extraordinary stories that ask, 'Who's the daddy?'

The Philippines' first transgender politician

Geraldine Roman always felt she was female even though she was born a boy

Saving a 2 year-old boy branded a witch

Anja Ringgren Lovén rescues Nigerian children who have been accused of witchcraft.

Father and Daughter beatboxers

The American father and daughter beatboxing act who've become an internet sensation.

Jailhouse lawyer who cleared his name

American Derrick Hamilton studied law in prison so he could prove his innocence.

Outlook Weekend: Thinking Big

Three people who were undaunted by the scale of a problem

The Couple who Cared for a Nation

How Bilquis Edhi and her husband Abdul Sattar built a healthcare system for Pakistan.

Syria's Moonlight Mural Artist

The Free Syrian Army fighter who paints murals on bombed out buildings.

Capturing the Sounds of the Wild

Bernie Krause overcame a fear of animals to record natural sounds from all over the world

How I Escaped from a Polygamist Sect

Ruth Wariner's difficult childhood in a Mormon colony and dramatic escape.

Outlook Weekend: A Way Out

Three stories about people looking for a way out of a desperate situation.

Taking on my stabbed son's work

Pastor Lorraine Jones runs a boxing gym in memory of her son who was killed in 2014

I'm the Parkour Pioneer of Kashmir

Zahid Shah gives young people a sense of freedom through street gymnastics.

From Drug Dealer to Falconer

Rodney Stotts says his life of crime and drug abuse was turned around by birds of prey.

Nurse who adopted an Ebola orphan

Donnell Tholley took in the child of a woman who died in his Sierra Leone Ebola clinic

Outlook Weekend: Afterlives

Nigerian ghosts, living on as a vinyl record and surviving a near-death experience

Outlook Weekend: Shelter

Stories of desperately seeking, painfully losing and courageously providing shelter

I survived a river exorcism

Nuzo Onoh's mother arranged an exorcism for her when she was just thirteen

Mother to 20,000 Children

Marguerite Barankitse, "the Angel of Burundi", on adopting children displaced by war.

Friends with man who tried to kill me

The Colombian man who became friends with the Farc commander who almost killed him.

The man behind Japan's music scandal

Takashi Niigaki secretly composed some of Japan's most popular symphonies

Reuniting families with lost war medals

Major Zachariah Fike is on a mission to reunite lost war medals with their owners.

'They haunt me, day and night'

Dr Nagham Hasan has been helping Yazidi women and girls who've escaped from so-called IS.

The bullfighter who switched sides

Alvaro Munera was a bullfighter in Colombia until a dramatic development in his own life.

Outlook Weekend: Criminal Minds

Inside the mind of a criminal: a repentant bomber and a reformed armed robber

'If I cried the River Nile, let it be'

Kujiek Kuajien was reunited with his mother in South Sudan after 16 years

I Dressed as a Boy to go to School

To overcome the Taliban's ban on girls' education, Zahra disguised herself for six years

Undercover in a Colombian Drug Cartel

Robert Mazur infiltrated drug lord Pablo Escobar's criminal organisation.

'I'm Sorry for Racist Bomb Attack'

Stefaans Coetzee was a racist killer in South Africa, he's now searching for forgiveness.

Outlook Weekend: Fateful Attractions

Fateful Attractions: Mum who died climbing K2, and a love story that shook Russian sport

Back to the mountain that killed mum

Julie Tullis died after climbing K2. Her son travelled to the mountain in her memory.

Child refugee to Liberian police chief

Gregory Coleman on the challenges of keeping Monrovia safe during the chaos of Ebola.

The love story that exposed doping

Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov blew the whistle on Russian doping

Fighting slavery for my father

Biram dah Abeid's struggle to abolish slavery in Mauritania

Outlook Weekend: beyond the call of duty

Going beyond the call of duty: saving hostages in Iraq and the surgeon in a war zone

Surgeon who tried to save Dallas cops

Dr Brian Williams spoke out after treating officers shot in Black Lives Matter protest

I hid my mum in my Harvard dorm

Thai martial arts millionaire Chatri Sityodtong saved his family from poverty.

My battle for bravery recognition

Rabia Siddique was working as a British army lawyer in Iraq when she was taken hostage.

The identical twins who speak together

Twins Paula and Bridgette Powers are so identical they even speak at the same time.

Outlook Weekend: Fight or Flight

The penguin, cage fighter and an airman with a secret

The Olympic Fall That Changed Our Lives

Zola Budd and Mary Decker ran a race for glory that ended in disaster.

My Big Fat Greek Life

Nia Vardalos wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, based on her own story.

Rio: Stories from the Olympic City

Outlook is in Rio to meet some of the city's most extraordinary characters

My Double Life as a Trans Airman

'Jane' is a United States Air Force airman living a secret life as a transgender woman.

Outlook Weekend: Lifelines

The book, the raft and the crying boys that changed lives forever.

My Childhood Escape From Cuba

Jessi Calzado-Esponda was 6 when she was accidentally sent to America without her parents

Greek-Syrian Mayor Welcomes Refugees

Dr. Nabil-Iosif Morad is housing refugees in an abandoned tourist resort.

Crossing a minefield to escape IS

Lamiya, the Yazidi girl smuggled out of captivity.

From Jail to Yale

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a convicted felon who has just graduated from Yale Law School.

Outlook Weekend: Extraordinary Journeys

Stories from people who have undertaken life-changing journeys.

Giving Afghan children their songs back

American teacher Louise Pascale took Afghan children's songs back to their home

Aleppo doctor: it could have been me

In the midst of the Syrian war, Dr Hatem is a doctor working in rebel-held Aleppo.

Travels with my donkey

Hannah Engelkamp walked 1,000 miles around Wales - with a donkey.

Why I'm defending an LRA commander

The Ugandan human rights lawyer ensuring a fair trial for a former rebel leader.

Outlook Weekend: The Telephone

The Telephone: people whose lives have been changed forever by a phone call

'War Made Him More Violent with Me'

'Maha' says her Syrian husband poured petrol on her and set her alight

Counselling priests who fall in love

Paul Midden counselled priests who had broken their vow of celibacy

Twenty years searching for justice

Emily Winslow was a student in Pennsylvania when she was attacked by a stranger.

The Outlook Inspiration Awards 2016

Matthew Bannister and Jo Fidgen finally reveal "the world's most inspiring stories".

Childhood memories: A Syrian swimmer remembers life before war

Syrian swimmer remembers life before war; Chilean artist uncovers his father's secret.

My Father Saved 30,000 People in Chile

Memories of Roberto Kozak, who saved 30,000 political prisoners from persecution in Chile

Delivering Babies on the Run

When Nigerian midwife Dada Nguru fled Boko Haram, she delivered the babies on the road.

Afghanistan's Top War Photographer

Massoud Hossaini on the near death experience that won him the Pulitzer Prize

Syrian Swimmer's Paralympic Dream

Ibrahim Al-Hussein lost part of his leg to a bomb but still hopes to compete in Rio

Outlook Weekend: Hidden Talents

Hidden talents: ex diplomat with talent for singing, housekeeper who scaled Everest

The Israeli pop sensation in Kenya

Gilad Millo is an Israeli ex-diplomat who's become an unlikely pop sensation in Kenya

Housekeeper Makes History on Everest

The Nepali housekeeper in the US who has climbed Everest more times than any other woman.

Why I met my rapist

As a teenager Carmen Aguirre was raped. 33 years on she decided to face her attacker.

30 Years Looking For Mum

Regina Louise's long battle to be adopted by the woman who cared for her as a teenager.

Outlook Weekend: Dads

Dads: the Indian man who adopted sex workers' children and son of film star Jack Lemmon

Child Bride to Bollywood Stunt Woman

Geeta Tandon escaped child marriage to become one of Bollywood's top stunt performers

My Father Injected Me with HIV

Brryan Jackson was deliberately injected with HIV as a baby

Syria's Heavy Metal War Photographer

Artino became an accidental photo-journalist after witnessing the Ghouta chemical attacks

Taking on India's Sex Traffickers

Ajeet Singh's decision to adopt a sex worker's children changed his life and his city

Outlook Weekend: Untold Stories

Untold Stories: uncovering a dark secret in Australia and getting stories to Afghan kids

Colombia's City of Women

How displaced women have built a haven from violence

My Dubai holiday that ended in prison

Karl Williams was on holiday with friends when they were accused of drug offences.

Rebuilding my life after acid attack

Pragya Singh on her project to create a skin bank for India's acid attack survivors.