Dead Man Walking: The US nun who took on the death penalty
When Sister Helen Prejean agreed to write to a convicted murderer on Louisiana’s death row in 1982, she had no idea what was coming. She would end up becoming his spiritual advisor, eventually accompanying him to his execution two years later. The experience changed her profoundly. She wrote a book about what she'd witnessed on death row, Dead Man Walking, which was turned into a major Hollywood movie in 1995. Forty years later, she has witnessed six more state executions - and is still tirelessly fighting to end them.Presenter: Jo Fidgen Producer: Zoe GelberGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
7 Juli 202445min
My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 2
Salima Hashmi is a pioneer of political satire on Pakistani TV. But after the dictator General Zia took power in the 1977 military coup, she faced new and dangerous challenges when her show was banned. It was a troubling time for Salima’s family but from exile, her father Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote his most famous poem, Hum Dekhenge, a battle cry for liberation. Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Maryam Maruf Archive from the Faiz Foundation Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
30 Juni 202440min
My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 1
Salima Hashmi grew up in Lahore witnessing the radical poetry of her celebrated father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It inspired her own path into art and performance, creating Pakistani TV’s first ever political satire show, Such Gup. Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Maryam MarufGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
23 Juni 202440min
The man who finds water in the desert
Alain Gachet quit a lucrative career in oil to search for water underground. Colleagues told him he was a 'crazy donkey', but he eventually developed an algorithm that allowed him to 'peel the earth like an onion' and detect water beneath the surface. Soon, he was asked to train his talents to help pinpoint areas of life-saving reserves of water for desperate refugees escaping the conflict in Darfur. Presenter: Jo Fidgen Producer: Anna Lacey and Hetal Bapodra Editor: Munazza KhanGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
16 Juni 202436min
Kill or be killed: a climber’s dilemma, part 2
Beth Rodden escaped her kidnappers, and pushed her body to its limit, following the climber code of whatever hurts makes you stronger. She married her boyfriend Tommy Caldwell, who had saved them by pushing their captor off a cliff in the Kyrgyz mountains. They became the first couple to free climb the Nose in Yosemite National Park. To the world she was a record-breaking athlete, but inside she was crumbling, haunted by that moment in the mountains. It would take her 15 years to face it head on, and in doing so she redefined what it meant to be a climber.Beth's book A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber's Story is out now.Clips are from NPR and the Associated Press.Presenter: Emily Webb Producer: Louise MorrisGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
9 Juni 202431min
Kill or be killed: A climber’s dilemma, part 1
Beth Rodden was on a dream climbing expedition in Kyrgyzstan when she was kidnapped by Islamist militants. She and her friends spent days moving between hiding places in the mountains, fearing for their lives as food supplies dwindled. Then, six days in, the group found themselves at the edge of a cliff with a single young guard. They had a chance to escape, but it came with a huge ethical dilemma. Presenter: Emily Webb Producer: Louise MorrisGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784Audio for this episode was updated on 6 June 2024.
2 Juni 202433min
The Hiroshima survivor who's still shouting for peace
Setsuko Thurlow knows what nuclear war looks like.She was a 13-year-old schoolgirl when an atomic bomb was dropped on her home city of Hiroshima, Japan. Most of the places she knew were destroyed in an instant. Narrowly escaping death herself, Setsuko became a witness to the aftermath of atomic warfare, and the things she saw that day would compel her to spend her life fighting for nuclear disarmament. Archive was from British PathéPresenter: Jo Fidgen Producer: Jo Impey and Harry Graham Editor: Laura ThomasGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
26 Maj 202459min
Lost in lion country and saved by Spam
In 2016, when Jenny Söderqvist and Helene Åberg’s car exploded in the middle of the vast Kalahari desert, their supplies and only lifeline to the outside world went up in flames. No rescue would come. The two friends from Sweden would spend the next five harrowing days lost in the wilderness and stalked by lions, until their salvation appeared to them in the most unlikely of forms: a tin of Spam.Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Edgar MaddicottGet in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
20 Maj 202444min
