Lives Less Ordinary Podcast
Have you ever locked eyes with a stranger and wondered, "What’s their story?" Featuring a new season of five remarkable true love stories from around the world.
Introducing a new season of five remarkable true stories in which love rises above prejudice, waits decades, crosses oceans and survives war. From India to Italy, Syria to the Bahamas, and the UK to the US, these are unforgettable stories that reveal how love can survive against the odds, heal old wounds and transform lives forever.
Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice
Episodes to download
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My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 2
Sun 30 Jun 2024
How Salima Hashmi and Faiz defied a dictatorship through satire and poetry
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My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 1
Sun 23 Jun 2024
Salima Hashmi grew up with puppets and poetry, inspiring her own career in performance
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The man who finds water in the desert
Sun 16 Jun 2024
Why Alain Gachet quit a lucrative career in oil to search for water underground
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Kill or be killed: a climber’s dilemma, part 2
Sun 9 Jun 2024
Beth Rodden escaped her kidnappers, but the moment would haunt her in the years to follow
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Kill or be killed: A climber’s dilemma, part 1
Sun 2 Jun 2024
Beth Rodden was on the expedition of her dreams in Kyrgyzstan when she was kidnapped
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The Hiroshima survivor who's still shouting for peace
Sun 26 May 2024
Setsuko Thurlow knows what nuclear war looks like
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Lost in lion country and saved by Spam
Mon 20 May 2024
Two friends stranded in the desert, only a discarded tin held the key to their escape
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Painting, prison and two decades in Guantanamo
Sun 12 May 2024
Mistaken for a terrorist, Ahmed Rabbani was detained without trial. Art became his refuge
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How I convinced police my dad was a murderer
Sun 28 Apr 2024
On the day his mother disappeared, 11-year-old Collier started looking for evidence
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Balochistan’s mystery benjo man, part 2
Sun 21 Apr 2024
How Ustad Noor Bakhsh, a Pakistani shepherd in his 70s, became a folk music star
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Balochistan’s mystery benjo man, part 1
Sun 14 Apr 2024
The epic quest to find an elderly Pakistani musician and his unusual stringed instrument
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Exposing Silicon Valley's multimillion dollar fraud
Sun 7 Apr 2024
Erika Cheung went from a trailer park to a top tech company job, but something was off
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My grandmother walked the rabbit-proof fence
Sun 31 Mar 2024
Maria's grandmother was forcibly taken by Australian officials, but made a daring escape
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How to talk to guerillas
Mon 25 Mar 2024
Leyner Palacios grew up around volatile armed groups so he learned to negotiate with them
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I cycled across Africa for a place at my dream university
Mon 11 Mar 2024
A handwritten map is all Mamadou Barry had to guide him from Guinea to Egypt
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Going cold turkey in a Bangkok prison
Mon 4 Mar 2024
Holly’s life was shaped by heroin addiction. At rock bottom, she finally got clean
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The Pacific odyssey of a runaway rebel
Mon 26 Feb 2024
Ruth Shaw spent years on ships and islands, trying to outrun her past
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Fugees Family: the football team who became my life
Mon 19 Feb 2024
The extraordinary coach who started a football team but built something much bigger
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My dad was Britain's 'most wanted'
Mon 12 Feb 2024
Without realising it, Nick Reynolds had been living his childhood on the run
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Trapped in an icy hell: my 72 day mountain escape
Mon 5 Feb 2024
After crashing high in the Andes, Nando Parrado had to go to the extreme to get out
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A Libyan kidnapping and the words that brought us together
Mon 29 Jan 2024
Lucy Sexton was making a TV series about hostages when her father Joe was abducted
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Discovering my mother was a Vietnamese rock'n'roll star
Mon 22 Jan 2024
A chance email led Hannah Ha to uncover her mother Tam’s forgotten musical legacy
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Searching for the last man in the forest
Mon 15 Jan 2024
Jair Candor tracks down remote Amazonian tribes in order to protect them from outsiders
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Hunting for icons in the underworld, part 2
Mon 8 Jan 2024
Tasoula Hadjitofi tricked a notorious art smuggler to recover Cyprus' holiest relics
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Hunting for icons in the underworld, part 1
New Year's Day 2024
Tasoula Hadjitofi uncovered a shady network looting her country's most sacred relics
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Love in the time of revolution, part 2
Christmas Day 2023
Pepe and Lucía: the bonfire of young love, a long separation, and rise to presidency
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Love in the time of revolution, part 1
Mon 18 Dec 2023
Pepe and Lucía: the guerrilla lovers who became the leaders of Uruguay
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An author, his cellmate, and a new beginning
Mon 11 Dec 2023
How a book-loving prisoner showed a young Alex Wheatle the path to self-belief
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Scams and poetry in Moscow’s underbelly
Mon 4 Dec 2023
Eric Ngalle Charles was just a teenager when he was trafficked from Cameroon to Russia
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Videos from our extraordinary podcast Lives Less Ordinary.
