We risked our lives to save my brother's heart

Hamed Amiri’s family fled from Afghanistan to get a heart operation for his brother

• 24 mins

Dynamo: turning illness into magic

Crohn's disease has hampered the world-famous magician all his life

• 26 mins

The deserted island and the lost graves

Carina Hoang and her siblings ended up stranded on an island in the South China Sea

• 39 mins

Fire and justice: my life after Grenfell

Antonio Roncolato was one of the last survivors to escape London’s Grenfell Tower fire

• 39 mins

Touched by magic

Magicians who used their craft to overcome social awkwardness, sexism and bullying

• 40 mins

Ups and downs in a vertical world

Ian Powell is a climbing hold designer who rebuilt his life after years of drug addiction

• 22 mins

I played violin during my brain surgery

Dagmar Turner played to prevent any damage to her violin skills

• 35 mins

The adventurer’s son who went missing in the jungle

When adventurer Roman Dial's son went missing, he set out to find him

• 24 mins

"Look after her" - the story of a hidden WW2 child

Lien de Jong was a Jewish child who hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands

• 32 mins

Caring for my dying father made me a better doctor

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor. When her dad got ill her work became personal

• 39 mins

The mystery of Ecuador's lost mastertapes

An eccentric grandfather and an old suitcase of songs and secret loves

• 30 mins

A girl on the run and a girl with no name

Two listeners share extraordinary personal stories

• 39 mins

The trailblazing nurse who began life in care

How Elizabeth Anionwu went from life in a children's home to becoming a medical pioneer

• 39 mins

Rufus Wainwright: My music and my mother

Born into folk music royalty Rufus took special inspiration from his mum Kate McGarrigle

• 36 mins

The literary heroes that helped me cope as a carer

When Sam Mills became a carer for her schizophrenic father, fiction became her lifeline

• 37 mins

Greg Louganis: the Death-Defying Diver

Blood, gold and secrets at the Olympic pool.

• 29 mins

The unmaking of a boy soldier

As a boy, Ishmael Beah was forced to kill. How do you turn a soldier back into a child?

• 39 mins

Chimps taught me how to be a mother

Dr Jane Goodall's work with chimps has revolutionalised our understanding of primates

• 22 mins

The day the music stopped

Violinist Min Kym was at the height of her career when her priceless violin was stolen

• 39 mins

Why I talk to warlords

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda negotiates with warlords for the release of child soldiers

• 40 mins

My Dad, Muhammad Ali

What is it like to be the daughter of a man who called himself The Greatest?

• 26 mins

The secret surrogate

I didn't tell my child I'm a surrogate mum

• 24 mins

Mean streets to sporting elite

Racism, gang life and the quest to build America's first black high school rowing team

• 48 mins

How did this diver cheat death?

Diver Chris Lemons was trapped on the North Sea bed for around 35 minutes without air

• 35 mins

Making movies helped me heal after my dad's murder

Rwandan director Joël Karekezi explores the trauma he experienced during the 1994 genocide

• 29 mins

Attila the Nun

Arlene Violet, the American nun who took on the mob

• 26 mins

The coral crusaders: finding beauty in a murky world

How two punk rocker best friends created the world's first urban reef webcam

• 20 mins

Name, shame and jail: Ghana's undercover journalist

Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas uses some impressive disguises to go undercover.

• 24 mins

23 years longing to find my mum

Omar and Hassan Mohamed are two Somali brothers who never stopped looking for their mum

• 39 mins

The stolen Picasso and the forest quest

Why writer Mira Feticu looked for a stolen Picasso in a Romanian forest

• 20 mins

Discovering my grandfather's secret Nazi past

Growing up Julie Lindahl had been forbidden from looking into her family history

• 26 mins

The 25 day sit-in that changed history

Judy Heumann on the longest ever occupation of a federal building in US history

• 40 mins

The tycoon who became 'Mr Toilet'

Jack Sim is a Singaporean multi-millionaire who grew up without a working toilet

• 22 mins

I found my son 32 years after he was kidnapped

Li Jingzhi's child was abducted in 1988. They’ve finally been reunited 32 years later

• 34 mins

Fosse and Verdon: the legacy of a dancing family

Two superstars of dance, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, remembered by their daughter Nicole

• 41 mins

When trash met thrash: Paraguay's landfill musicians

How a youth orchestra of tin-can violins and X-ray drums got the attention of Megadeth

• 26 mins

The supermodel who escaped a cult

Hoyt Richards was a jet-setting supermodel, but he became enthralled by a doomsday cult

• 40 mins

Conjoined twins can now look into each other’s eyes

It took almost two years to separate two sisters conjoined at the back of their heads.

• 17 mins

The barber saving lives one haircut at a time

British hairdresser Tom Chapman gets men to share their problems in his barber's chair.

• 22 mins

The narcotics cop and a daughter hooked on heroin

Kevin Simmers' heart-breaking dilemma when he discovered his daughter was a heroin addict

• 22 mins

The boy, the wish and the nuclear weapons

Why a terminally-ill teenager went to the Soviet Union to broker a nuclear peace deal

• 26 mins

The first date that led to a dramatic mountain rescue

Rachel Colenso and her partner were stranded on a Swiss mountain in a fierce blizzard

• 30 mins

The detective and the diamond heist

Belgian detective Patrick Peys had to solve the biggest diamond robbery in history

• 39 mins

The war story that led to our love story

Eva and Sami’s love for each other grew as he shared his experiences of the war in Syria

• 22 mins

My life in the eye of the storm

Russel Honoré was the black army General who led the Hurricane Katrina relief effort

• 22 mins

A Nightmare in Joshua Tree

Claire Nelson was hiking in the US wilderness when she slipped and fell into a canyon

• 25 mins

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part one

Selling crack and writing poetry – BL Shirelle’s turbulent childhood in Philadelphia

• 22 mins

The life and crimes of a bearded lady: part two

From prisoner to recording artist – how BL Shirelle found love, happiness and success

• 23 mins

The man giving former extremists a second chance

Why do people become radicalised? Noor Huda Ismail was on a mission to find out

• 22 mins

Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica

How one of Jamaica’s top surfers Imani Wilmot empowers women to ride the tide

• 19 mins

The Great Escape of Bonga

Bonga Kuenda, the man who sang – and sprinted – for Angolan independence

• 25 mins

The woman who woke up in the future

Naomi Jacobs went to bed aged 32 but woke up thinking she was 15, her adult memories gone

• 43 mins

The rebel past of a Tibetan Lama

Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche reflects on a life of conflict, hedonism and disco dancing.

• 22 mins

The chess game that changed a homeless boy’s life

Tani Adewumi fled Nigeria and became a chess champion in New York at just eight years old

• 20 mins

The 'bride and groom of the Syrian revolution’

Noura and Bassel's secret prison wedding and their struggle for freedom in Syria

• 23 mins

Sewing to protest in a Chilean prison camp

Student Cristina Zamora found courage in creativity when she was taken from her baby

• 26 mins

Disco and drama: The story of Ride on Time

Worldwide fame came at a moral price for an Italian DJ who made a huge 1980s dance hit

• 38 mins

The girl who cycled her father 1,200km to safety

When Covid hit, Jyoti Kumari and her injured dad had to return to their home village

• 23 mins

A descendant of chiefs: my long journey home

How Jesse Thistle, a homeless Indigenous man, found his identity and his calling

• 38 mins

The trans boxer learning the many ways to be a man

Thomas Page McBee wanted to understand the relationship between masculinity and violence

• 40 mins

My soldier dad's goodbye tape

How Tricia Davies Nearn got to know a father lost in war

• 30 mins

Becoming South Africa's first black rugby captain

Siya Kolisi's journey from a poor South African township to Rugby World Cup victory

• 24 mins

I bought a ghost town - then got trapped there

Brent Underwood was snowed in at an abandoned California mining town with a haunting past

• 24 mins

My father and our time machine

Creating a play for my theatre obsessed father, before he lost his memory

• 24 mins

The boldest human experiment of the last century?

Why eight people were sealed inside a glass dome in the Arizona desert in the 1990s

• 45 mins

Documenting my cellmates' names in blood and rust

Mansour Omari risked his life to record the names of his cellmates in a Syrian prison

• 23 mins

How the tigress of basketball fought back

Malebogo Molefhe rediscovered her love of basketball after being shot and paralysed

• 33 mins

Life without parole: Our fight for freedom

A mother’s life sentence for a drug offence and the young lawyer who promised to free her

• 58 mins

Vietnam's first family of rock ‘n’ roll

How a bunch of pre-teen kids became the biggest rock 'n' roll band in wartime Saigon

• 26 mins

My ancestors were both slaves and slave owners

How a black Victorian footballer led Malik Al Nasir to discover his own complex history

• 21 mins

Surviving a chemical attack by a doomsday cult

How a bag leaking sarin in Tokyo led Atsushi Sakahara to seek answers from a cult member

• 21 mins

"This is what a barrister looks like"

Alexandra Wilson is the young black woman changing the face of Britain’s legal system

• 35 mins

I discovered my dad was a best-selling sex writer

Dying of Alzheimer's, Ira Alterman asked his daughter to help him write his final books

• 26 mins

Ice Prince: The making of a Nigerian hip hop star

How personal loss and violent conflict shaped the career of Panshak Zamani aka Ice Prince

• 29 mins

My ancestors changed the lives of slaves in the US

Nettie Washington Douglass unites the bloodlines of two ex-slaves who became iconic names

• 22 mins

We found our baby on the subway

The couple who adopted a baby they found abandoned in a New York station

• 39 mins

Sarajevo Siege - the band that drowned out the bombs

How do you get Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson to play in a warzone?

• 39 mins

Why I didn’t make a sound for 12 years

Marie McCreadie on her agony becoming mute at 13 and her shock and joy learning the cause

• 26 mins

Abducted in war, saving lives in peace

Aminata Conteh-Biger was one of thousands of women abducted in Sierra Leone’s civil war

• 39 mins

The black reverend who bought a Ku Klux Klan shop

How Reverend David Kennedy fought to shut down a shop selling racist paraphernalia

• 22 mins

Farming and Phil Collins taught me about love

Learning lessons about love and life from a ewe and a lamb

• 22 mins

The actor who’s been saying the same lines for 32 years

Catherine Russell has played the same part more than 13,000 times – without a sick day

• 21 mins

The downfall of "The Screamers"

Atlantis was a fringe psychotherapy commune who moved to guerrilla controlled Colombia

• 26 mins

The space genius who needed a guide to life on earth

How a bereaved astrophysicist was helped by notes from her late husband

• 32 mins

A dangerous obsession

Why women’s rights advocate Julie Lalonde stayed silent about being stalked for a decade

• 39 mins

Half a rotten apple: growing up in 70s China

Writer Xiaolu Guo on a childhood in the aftermath of China’s Cultural Revolution

• 39 mins

The Guatemalan grandparents storming the disco

Love, grief and fame: how disco has shaped the lives of Favio Vasquez and Maria Moreno

• 18 mins

Adventures of the of the bootleg-busting brothers

Rob and Jason Holmes were first recruited as undercover agents when they were children

• 26 mins

The black child raised by white supremacists

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

• 41 mins

On the frontline against chemical warfare

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon braves bombs and bullets investigating chemical weapon attacks

• 24 mins

I set up a radio station for aliens

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

• 24 mins

The stay-at-home mum who became a bodybuilding star

Kiran Dembla is an Indian celebrity trainer – but it's a long way from where she started

• 21 mins

The celestial treasure hunters

An unlikely duo’s insatiable and dangerous hunt for space rocks

• 26 mins

Painting for our lives

Three fascinating portraits of people who used a paintbrush to transform their lives

• 40 mins

'She came back to the clinic dancing'

The Sierra Leonean doctor whose life-changing work earned her screen time with the Queen

• 24 mins

Revelations from El Salvador that healed my family

Discovering the history of his homeland helped Roberto Lovato understand his father

• 36 mins

The twists and turns of the Rubik's Cube

Meet champion cuber Feliks Zemdegs, and the inventor behind the puzzle Erno Rubik

• 26 mins

CJ Daugherty’s world of literary escapism

Books were the best-selling author’s “magic carpet ride out” of an abusive childhood home

• 41 mins

The wild ride of a Tamil comic book pioneer

The Indian comic book enthusiast bringing his favourite characters to a Tamil audience.

• 22 mins