Lives Less Ordinary

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Looking for my son for 58 years, part 2 Nov 04, 2024

Show notes

Bestselling writer Lesley Pearse never stopped looking for her son.

An agent once told Lesley Pearse to "write what you know", but her own story is more extraordinary than any of her bestselling novels. In this, the second episode of two, Lesley makes a selfless decision on behalf of her baby son Warren, and spends the six decades that follow searching for him.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Laura Thomas & Edgar Maddicott

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Looking for my son for 58 years, part 1 Oct 28, 2024

Show notes

Bestselling writer Lesley Pearse's own story is wilder than any romance.

An agent once told Lesley Pearse to "write what you know", but her own story is more extraordinary than any of her bestselling novels. In this, the first episode of two, we follow her from playground storyteller to lost teenage girl in 1960s London, to brave single mum determined to go it alone.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Laura Thomas & Edgar Maddicott

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

The Wicker Man: Learning to love the film that broke us Oct 20, 2024

Show notes

Dominic and Justin Hardy were young boys when their father, the director Robin Hardy, began a gruelling and obsessive quest to make The Wicker Man. Now the film is regarded as a masterpiece and beloved by fans across the world, but when it was first released in 1973, it was a major flop. The fallout for the Hardy family was painful, tearing them apart. It would take many decades, a bundle of lost letters and another burning effigy for Dominic and Justin to finally come to terms with the past – and this iconic movie.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Maryam Maruf

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

"He counted 3, 2, 1 – then stabbed me in the heart" Oct 13, 2024

Show notes

Kieran Quinlan was on his way to a party when a man with a knife attacked him.

Kieran Quinlan was an aspiring boxer living in his hometown of Birmingham in the UK. When he was 17 he was on the bus heading to a party when a man confronted him. The man counted down: 3, 2, 1 – before stabbing Kieran through his lung and into his heart. Kieran should have died that night. But instead he survived, spending the next decade rebuilding his life, transforming his body and his mind in the process.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: May Cameron Editor: Munazza Khan

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

The US’s first black astronaut trainee reaches space at 90 Oct 06, 2024

Show notes

In May 2024, 90-year-old Ed Dwight Jr. from Kansas City, Missouri travelled to the edge of space – he was an honoured guest in the Blue Origin rocket. His trip was 60 years overdue. Ed had been chosen by President John F Kennedy to be the first African-American astronaut at a time when racism was rife and segregation a reality. But JFK’s plans for Ed were scuppered – and Ed had to pick himself up and build a whole new career.

Please be aware that this episode contains outdated racial language that may offend.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Love, grief, and an AI chatbot Sep 29, 2024

Show notes

Joshua created an AI simulation of his deceased fiancée to help him deal with his loss.

When gaming enthusiast Joshua Barbeau met Jessica, he knew he had found his soulmate. But his happiness didn't last. Jessica died from a rare health condition aged just 23, leaving Joshua struggling to cope with his grief, and his life. Eight years later, in 2020, while playing around with a website that used AI to create bespoke chatbots, Joshua had an audacious idea. He decided to create a chatbot based on his beloved Jessica. It's an experience that he says helped him finally to find closure.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Rebecca Vincent

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

A love story and a battle cry in the Ecuadorian rainforest Sep 22, 2024

Show notes

Nemonte Nenquimo’s passion for her rainforest home, and her love for an unlikely man, propelled her to achieve an historic victory for indigenous people in Ecuador. She took the national government to court to protect 500,000 acres of rainforest from destruction by the oil industry.

Nemonte and her husband Mitch Anderson have written a book together called We Will Not Be Saved: A Memoir of Hope and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: May Cameron Voiceover: Cecilia Cruz

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

The boy who hid from Nazis in the woods, part 2 Sep 15, 2024

Show notes

Maxwell Smart survived the Holocaust by living in a makeshift bunker on the forest floor.

Maxwell Smart was just 11 years old in 1941 when the Nazis took over his town in eastern Poland. One by one his Jewish family were disappeared or killed, but his mother implored him to run for his life just as she and his sister were being loaded onto a German truck. Using his extraordinary ingenuity he managed to survive in remote woodland for the rest of the war, mostly alone, sleeping in improvised shelters and foraging for food. He eventually met another orphaned Jewish boy in the woods, Janek, whose friendship would come to have a profound impact on Maxwell’s life.

In this second episode, Maxwell describes how his life changed again after the war was brought to an end and decades later is part of a shocking reunion.

A feature film based on Maxwell’s life has been released, it’s called The Boy in the Woods.

Presenter: Emily Webb Producers: Edgar Maddicott and Rebecca Vincent Editor: Munazza Khan

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

The boy who hid from Nazis in the woods, part 1 Sep 08, 2024

Show notes

Maxwell Smart survived the Holocaust by living in a makeshift bunker on the forest floor.

A feature film based on Maxwell’s life has been released, it’s called The Boy in the Woods.

Presenter: Emily Webb Producers: Edgar Maddicott and Rebecca Vincent Editor: Munazza Khan

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Never ever give up: how Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida Sep 01, 2024

Show notes

American endurance swimmer Diana Nyad faced down box jellyfish, cold and extreme fatigue to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage for protection, in 2013. She was 64 and had always been drawn by intense, seemingly unachievable feats of marathon swimming. It was after shooting to fame for swimming round the island of Manhattan in the 1970s that Diana first seized on an idea that had been planted in her head in childhood: she would swim the 112 miles from Cuba to Florida's Key West. Five attempts and more than thirty years later, she finally succeeded, wobbling unsteadily up the beach after nearly 53 hours in the water to tell a cheering crowd, "never, ever give up... you are never too old to chase your dreams."

Archive from Diana's swimming and broadcasting careers appears courtesy of: Florida Keys TV; The Wolfson Archives, Miami Dade College; PBS; FOX Sports; ABC; Courage to Succeed (1977).

This programme has been re-edited and corrected since first published.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Laura Thomas and Saskia Edwards

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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