Dr Karen Nyberg has many talents. She's an engineer and astronaut, but she's also an avid quilter, so when she joined the International Space Station in 2013, she took her sewing kit with her. She created a nine-inch, star-themed quilt square i

The drag queen who ran for president of the United States

Apr 11th, 2022 29m 8s

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

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

Apr 7th, 2022 24m 58s

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

How my father’s stories shielded me from civil war

Apr 6th, 2022 38m 12s

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

Escaping a life on a dumpsite with classical music

Apr 5th, 2022 22m 57s

Like many young people in his community, Simon Karuiki Ndungu grew up scavenging for things he could sell. His home was Korogocho, a Nairobi slum situated next to the city's main dumpsite. The poisonous gases and toxic water weren't the only ha

Dressing Beyoncé: It started with a Barbie outfit

Mar 31st, 2022 34m 16s

Artist Osman Yousefzada grew up in Birmingham, England in the 1980s after his parents moved to the UK from Pakistan. They were both illiterate, and while his father worked as a carpenter, Osman spent much of his time watching his mother make cl

The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp

Mar 30th, 2022 22m 56s

Lynn Price and Andi Andree were separated as young children and raised with different foster families - they didn't even know of each other's existence until they were introduced at the ages of 8 and 9. Although they eventually formed a close s

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

Mar 29th, 2022 39m 51s

Prof Lucy Easthope is a leading authority on recovering from disaster. She has spent two decades working at the centre of numerous global catastrophes, including terrorist attacks, plane crashes, conflicts, earthquakes and tsunamis. It's her jo

My mum Poly Styrene, a punk icon

Mar 28th, 2022 37m 29s

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

I survived an avalanche, but the real challenge came after

Mar 21st, 2022 38m 10s

In his early twenties, Joe Yelverton and two friends climbed Eagle Peak in the Chugach mountain range in Alaska. His life changed in an instant when an avalanche hit them, killing his best friend Steve. For years afterwards, Joe's life was char

The child preacher who exposed a con

Mar 17th, 2022 37m 25s

In 1944, Marjoe Gortner was just four years old when his parents had him ordained as an evangelical minister. He was dubbed ‘the miracle child’ and conducted his first marriage ceremony before he could barely even write. During the 1950s, he be

Running an underground newspaper during the Syrian uprising

Mar 16th, 2022 40m 41s

After pro-democracy protests broke out in 2011, Kholoud Helmi was determined to cover the human rights violations carried out by the Syrian government, as a reporter on the ground. So with the help of her friends and brother, she founded Enab B

Mountains took my family - but I love them

Mar 15th, 2022 23m 36s

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

Driven by jealousy: the Chippendales murder plot

Mar 14th, 2022 37m 16s

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

Why I’m singing songs for my transgender dad

Mar 10th, 2022 40m 17s

Singer-songwriter Frank Turner never got on with his distant and disapproving father. Things got even worse between them when Frank discovered the anarchist punk scene in his teens, and they eventually stopped speaking altogether. But after yea

The priest leading the fight for LGBT rights in Poland

Mar 9th, 2022 32m 32s

Szymon Niemiec is a priest and an LGBTQ+ activist who founded Poland's first Gay Pride parade in 2001 - known locally as an 'equality parade'. Growing up in the Polish capital Warsaw, Szymon knew he was gay and at the same time knew he felt a c

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

Mar 8th, 2022 40m 2s

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

The giant window and the race against time

Mar 7th, 2022 14m 15s

Tim Carey was a talented but little-known artist working with stained glass, when a huge opportunity fell into his lap. A mega church was being built in Kansas, and Tim was asked to build a huge window for it. It would be the biggest stained gl

The false confessions of a serial killer

Mar 5th, 2022 26m 28s

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

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

Mar 3rd, 2022 31m 52s

Dianne O'Brien was born in the 1940s and grew up in an Irish-Australian family near Sydney. But when she was just 14, her world was torn apart: her beloved mother died, her father abandoned her and she discovered she was adopted. She was sent t

The violin that saved a Jewish family

Mar 1st, 2022 39m 31s

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

My stolen ‘magic’ guitar, found after 45 years

Feb 28th, 2022 40m 5s

Randy Bachman is behind some of the biggest rock hits of the 60s and 70s. He was lead guitarist for The Guess Who, frontman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and, all the while had his beloved Gretsch guitar beside him. He first laid eyes on the guit

Soweto Uprising: What happened to my dad?

Feb 26th, 2022 23m

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

The blind skateboarder going for gold

Feb 23rd, 2022 23m 56s

When Justin Bishop was eight years old, he was diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and was told that one day he would go blind. Two years later he fell in love with skateboarding, and from then on he and his board were insep

My symphony to a soccer ‘bad-boy’

Feb 21st, 2022 23m 52s

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