The US border guard who fought his own deportation

After refusing entry to thousands of people, Raul Rodriguez found himself in their shoes

• 40 mins

Secret studies, glass beads and a beautiful brain scan

The Afghan scientist who fought to go to university after seeing an MRI scan

• 40 mins

Batonga! How a made-up word guided Angélique Kidjo’s life

Benin’s multi Grammy-winning diva on her fight for musical freedom and justice for women

• 40 mins

The Nigerian farmer who sued an oil giant

Eric Barizaa Dooh took Shell to court over pollution in a case that stunned the world

• 26 mins

Who is that kneeling man in the photograph?

My search for the truth about my father and Martin Luther King’s assassination

• 40 mins

I ran away from slavery; now I help others escape

Analiza Guevara was exploited by her employer and then trafficked into Britain

• 40 mins

How’d you get so rich? A dream to change my family’s fortune

Reggie Nelson knocked on the poshest doors in London and asked a million-dollar question

• 40 mins

The pasta dish that saved a basketballer’s life

A chance meal gave Sebastien Bellin the fuel to fight when a bomb exploded next to him

• 40 mins

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

• 26 mins

I set up a radio station for aliens

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

• 40 mins

Peril in the Blue Hole: Why I almost stopped freediving

Kristof Coenen knew the risks but he was captivated by this extreme deep water sport

• 40 mins

The woman who fell from the sky, part 1

Tony Osornio would go to dangerous extremes to keep jumping from planes

• 40 mins

The woman who fell from the sky, part 2

How a jump changed daring parachutist Tony Osornio's life forever

• 40 mins

The murder case that started a cyber sleuth revolution

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

• 26 mins

Remembering Rodriguez, the musical legend who disappeared

One South African superfan's quest to unravel the truth about his favourite artist

• 40 mins

Word search: The playwright who lost her language skills

Rabiah Hussain had a dream commission at a major theatre but had to face her biggest fear

• 40 mins

Students by day and hostage negotiators by night

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

• 40 mins

Mum’s recipe secured my place in MasterChef history

With chef's whites and a white cane Christine Hà is the only blind winner of the TV show

• 40 mins

The daring prison escape of an Argentine footballer

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

• 26 mins

Lost and Found: The prime minister's gold tooth

A daughter's fight to reclaim the remains of her father, Patrice Lumumba

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: The ruby slippers

The hunt for the most famous shoes in film history

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: The lightning strike

Surviving 'the brightest light and the loudest noise'

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: The voice box

A young girl's life is sent into a spiral when she finds her voice has gone

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: Bubble money and other stories

What does it take to find something when it is lost?

• 26 mins

Lost and Found: The heartbeat from outer space

A gold disc hurtling through the cosmos is waiting to be found

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: Girl on a Spacehopper

'The portrait you'd love to have of yourself as a child': but who is she?

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: Trapped on the seabed

Harrison Okene spent three days in an air pocket on a sunken ship

• 40 mins

Lost and Found: The secret library

Literature hidden from destruction during Argentina’s Dirty War

• 40 mins

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

• 26 mins

How a stranger silenced my music

Roger Lucey’s anti-Apartheid songs won him a powerful enemy who set about shutting him up

• 40 mins

I made civil rights history at six years old

Leona Tate was one of four little girls selected to desegregate schools in ­­New Orleans

• 40 mins

Love, loss and selling everything to marry 22 times

Fleur Pierets and Julian Boom wanted to wed in every country that allowed gay marriage

• 40 mins

Learning to live with the bullet in my brain

Mutlu Kaya has forgiven the bullet that took her voice, but not the man who fired it

• 40 mins

How I brought my jailer to justice

Chance brought Syrian journalist Amer Matar face-to-face with his former captor

• 26 mins

Camo, catwalks, and the birth of a nation

South Sudanese filmmaker Akuol de Mabior on a daughter's duty to a country and to herself

• 40 mins

The deserted island and the lost graves

The deserted island and the lost graves of Vietnamese refugees

• 40 mins

Women shouldn't fight pro? I'll show you

Lady Tyger fought the boxing establishment for her right to fight – and won

• 40 mins

Mum, mamma and me: Writing the story of my two mothers

Author Sabrina Efionayi was raised by two women who barely knew each other

• 40 mins

The troubled life of an ice hockey hero

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

• 26 mins

Jail to gym: The prison workout that saved my life

Facing seven years in jail for drug dealing, Coss Marte is told he might die within five

• 40 mins

Songwriting, banjos and the bohemian city that cradled me

Canadian Allison Russell went from sleeping in cemeteries to being a Grammy nominee

• 40 mins

The only fan: A football fairy tale from Brazil

Tiago Rech alone in the away stands became a viral image - how far would his loyalty go?

• 40 mins

Chess saved me, now I use it to help others

Tunde Onakoya teaches chess to children in slum communities across Africa

• 40 mins

My life as a midwife on the frontline

Anna Kent’s work delivering babies in warzones shaped her own journey to motherhood

• 26 mins

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 1

A bond between brothers, a coming-out story, and an international song contest

• 40 mins

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 2

From the page to the stage: William turns childhood fantasies into reality

• 40 mins

The godmother of Beirut's nightlife

Under the boot of the Syrian army, Nicole Moudaber brought raves to Lebanon

• 40 mins

The black child raised by white supremacists

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

• 40 mins

How a girl from Mexico fought to dance in the clouds

Irene García Hernández defied gender norms to take part in a high risk aerial tradition

• 26 mins

The moment that made me love my face

Jono Lancaster was born with a rare condition which means he's always looked different

• 40 mins

Writing poems, and waiting to be arrested

Tahir Izgil is a Uyghur poet who lived under Chinese state surveillance

• 40 mins

Called to climb: Why I take photographs from skyscrapers

Isaac Wright was a depressed army veteran when he picked up a camera and started to climb

• 40 mins

The prison escape and the wooden keys

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

• 40 mins

Why this doctor hid his homeless past

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

• 26 mins

Love, loss and my unlikely romance with Oliver Sacks

After losing his partner, Bill Hayes found love again with neurologist Oliver Sacks

• 40 mins

Latifa and Mohamed: A reunion through dance

A mother, a son, and the discovery of a shared dream

• 40 mins

How almost dying on a migrant boat gave me a new purpose

After a perilous journey from Senegal, Baye Seyni Sène set up a school to stop migration

• 40 mins

The ‘King of Beer’ dismantling racism

Sir Geoff Palmer revolutionised brewing and became Scotland’s first black professor

• 40 mins

Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history

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

• 26 mins

Thirty-eight days: A family adrift in the Pacific

The Robertsons' boat was attacked by killer whales and started to sink fast

• 40 mins

Discovering my mother was a Vietnamese rock 'n' roll star

A chance email led Hannah Ha to uncover her mother Tam’s forgotten musical legacy

• 40 mins

A rebel with an oud: Inventing a future for Lebanon

Bassam Jalgha’s love of music and engineering made him a TV star and gave him hope

• 40 mins

Vet at the end of the Earth

Joe Hollins escaped childhood restriction to find freedom looking after animals

• 40 mins

Olympic gymnast and representative of life on Earth

An image of Cathy Rigby is on board a Voyager space probe to teach aliens about humans

• 26 mins

I was a surrogate mum to a parrot chick to save it from extinction

Argentinian Marianela Masat made history when red-and-green macaws were born in the wild

• 40 mins

Going undercover in a cartel’s wild prison-HQ

Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez found a playground, a nightclub and a zoo inside

• 40 mins

The forbidden lovers who plotted a daring escape

Karl-Heinz and Hedi were kept apart by the Iron Curtain and the East German secret police

• 40 mins

Finding a rare portrait, and the boy hidden in its paint

Art collector Jeremy Simien’s quest to find a lost portrait and a vanished, enslaved boy

• 40 mins

My life as rock's first female roadie

Tana Douglas was rock's first female roadie but hid a monumental secret to fit in

• 26 mins

Lessons of an Afghan girl disguised as a boy for ten years

Nilofar says the freedoms of her ‘boyhood’ still define her as an Afghan woman

• 40 mins

'Russia formed me' - The odyssey of a people-trafficked poet

Eric Ngalle Charles was just a teenager when he was taken from Cameroon to Moscow

• 40 mins

The 'five careers' of Bettye Lavette

The rocky road from her first hit at age 16 to global recognition at 63

• 40 mins

The ballet secret that got father and son grooving again

When artist Jamie Ross discovered his dad’s hidden dance career, their bond was revived

• 40 mins

Memory isn't black and white: Girl on a Spacehopper

'The portrait you'd love to have of yourself as a child' – but who is she?

• 26 mins

Fighting for my brother, Egypt’s most famous political prisoner, part 1

Alaa and Sanaa became icons of Egypt’s revolution, but their biggest battle was to come

• 40 mins

Fighting for my brother, Egypt’s most famous political prisoner, part 2

A family bond unbroken by prison, Sanaa won’t give up until her brother Alaa is free

• 40 mins

Milli Vanilli: Story of a pop Scandal

Fab Morvan was part of Milli Vanilli when the pop band's secret came to light

• 40 mins

The lost hiker who said goodbye with his hat

Ed Rosenthal got lost in the desert in the middle of a heatwave

• 40 mins

Ghana's first photojournalist who found fame in his 90s

James Barnor's work had fallen into obscurity but then came a surprise revival.

• 26 mins

Plans and dreams: The adventures of a wandering guitarist

Growing up poor in Uganda, musician Jon Muq was short on plans, but always big on dreams

• 40 mins

Reconnecting with the boy in the picture - me

When Edel Rodriguez left Cuba he had no idea he was becoming part of history

• 40 mins

An author, his cellmate, and a new beginning

How a book-loving prisoner showed a young Alex Wheatle the path to self-belief

• 40 mins

The wipeout that nearly killed me

Surfer Owen Wright was on track to become World Champion when he was hit by a giant wave

• 40 mins

'A dream is a dream': the man who refused to give up

Solomon Lefakane longed to become a doctor, but apartheid South Africa tried to stop him

• 26 mins

Behind the lens: How two icons of film-making fell in love

When Martin Scorsese’s hero Michael Powell met his editor Thelma Schoonmaker, sparks flew

• 40 mins

Meat Boy and other stories: My life in video games

Edmund McMillen’s childhood pain inspired poignant video games that captivated millions

• 40 mins

Becoming Gamal, part 1: Magic and misadventure

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted in

• 40 mins

Becoming Gamal, part 2: Behind the badge

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted in

• 40 mins

Agent Orange: A Vietnamese grandmother's last battle

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

• 26 mins

The former boxer who helped avert a plane hijack

On a flight in 2018 Tarik Sahibeddine found himself at the centre of a drama in the sky

• 40 mins

The Holocaust survivor who became my ‘adopted grandfather’

When journalist Chitra Ramaswamy met 99-year-old Henry Wuga, they fell in platonic love

• 40 mins

Patricia Cornwell: Writing the hero I needed as a child

As a child she faced cruelty, as an adult her crime-busting creation transformed her life

• 40 mins

'We sweat together': Risking it all to help North Korean defectors

Pastor Kim Seongeun has crossed icy rivers and dense jungle to rescue over 1,000 people

• 40 mins

The man who finds water in the desert

Why Alain Gachet quit a lucrative career in oil to search for water underground

• 40 mins

'The goalkeeper's terror'

Uruguayan Claudina Vidal became the first woman ever to join a professional men's team

• 40 mins

A Chilean couple’s enduring love and a nation’s memory

A life spent exposing the truth of dictatorship and dementia

• 40 mins

How a Greek grandmother’s cooking helped us heal

When brothers Luke and Daniel moved in next to ‘yiayia’, her kindness changed their lives

• 40 mins

Hiding in plain sight: My family's secret

Rafael Agustin's 'all-American' life fell apart when he discovered he was undocumented

• 26 mins

Why cutting my dreadlocks set me free

Feeling trapped in a strict Rastafari household, poetry helps Safiya Sinclair escape

• 40 mins