Episode notes
Chris Duddy survived 28 hours in Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano after his helicopter crashed. Cinematographer Chris Duddy has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest movies like Titanic and Terminator 2. Filming in extreme conditions is part of his job, and he loves it, but nothing could prepare him for the day the helicopter he was in crashed inside the crater of an active volcano. It was November 1992 and he was flying over the Big Island of Hawaii shooting footage for the end of the Hollywood thriller Sliver. The shot involved flying over the active Kīlauea volcano, but during filming the…
Podcast
Lives Less Ordinary
BBC World Service · Society & Culture · English
Introducing a new season of five remarkable true stories in which love rises above prejudice, waits decades, crosses oceans and survives war. From India to Italy, Syria to the Bahamas, and the UK to the US, these are unforgettable stories that reveal how love can survive against the odds, heal old w
More from Lives Less Ordinary All episodes →
-
24 Aug 2026 · 40 min
Love Stories: Our own romcom
Karan and Roshan’s real-life romance inspired their film A Nice Indian Boy, and the success of the Hollywood/Bollywood romcom has healed many family rifts on the way. Karan Soni is an Indian actor famous for playing supporting roles in films like Deadpool & Wolverine. He had moved to the US for college before becoming an actor, but, despite coming out in his teens, felt he had to keep his sexuality a secret to make it in Hollywood. Roshan Sethi is a Canadian oncologist and scriptwriter from an Indian family, who didn't come out till the age of 30. But when the pair met through an online…
-
17 Aug 2026 · 46 min
Love Stories: My two husbands
Kris Armstrong and Brandon Smith took their marriage vows seriously. But after Brandon suffered a major brain injury, Kris made a decision that led to their unique blended family. Texans Kris and Brandon were high school sweethearts, but just a few years into their marriage, in 2008, Kris received a call to say that Brandon had been in a serious car crash and was in a coma. When he finally woke up, months later, it was clear he’d changed irrevocably. After experiencing a severe traumatic brain injury Brandon now needed 24-hour care, and Kris felt their relationship became one of patient and…
-
10 Aug 2026 · 42 min
Love Stories: Do you remember me?
A secret tore apart their teenage love. Four decades later, they got a second chance. In 1970s Nottingham, two teenagers fell head-over-heels in love when Mark Bethel arrived from the Bahamas to study. For Penny Umbers, it felt like the beginning of everything: young, certain, full of promise - until, without warning, Mark broke things off and disappeared from her life. Devastated and searching for answers, Penny spent decades believing she was to blame, carrying that loss into the rest of her life and never quite finding the happiness she once imagined. Nearly 40 years later, a message out…
-
3 Aug 2026 · 45 min
Love Stories: Finding you in a warzone
In 2016 Janay was a journalist in London and needed footage of the conflict in Syria, so contacted camera operator Habak in Aleppo. What followed was a love story neither saw coming. When Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos first started messaging Abd Al-Kader Habak in the besieged city of Aleppo, one of her first questions was “are you okay?”. Janay needed images and footage for her reporting and Habak would film what he could, often in extremely dangerous situations. Janay, from the comfort of her news desk, began to worry about Habak’s safety. Their messages and voice notes became more…
-
30 Jul 2026 · 2 min
Introducing: Love Stories
Introducing a new season of five remarkable true stories in which love rises above prejudice, waits decades, crosses oceans and survives war. From India to Italy, Syria to the Bahamas, and the UK to the US, these are unforgettable stories that reveal how love can survive against the odds, heal old wounds and transform lives forever. Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and…
-
20 Jul 2026 · 42 min
Why I don't hate the person who tried to kill me
In July 2011 Bjorn Ihler was a 20-year-old performing arts student and a member of the youth division of the Norwegian Labour Party. He participated in the Party's summer camp on Utøya island, about 35km from Norway's capital Oslo, when Norway suffered its worst terror attacks in recent history. Anders Breivik was a far-right extremist who launched a bomb attack on government offices in Oslo. Two hours later he attacked the summer camp that Bjorn was attending. 77 people were killed that day – the majority on the island. Bjorn survived and helped save two young boys who were also on Utøya.…
-
13 Jul 2026 · 39 min
The prisoner who was forced to celebrate a World Cup victory
Miriam Lewin was never much interested in football. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she cared far more about politics than the team her family supported. But in 1978, when Argentina won the World Cup, she found herself among the celebrating fans, hidden in plain sight as a political prisoner. A year earlier, aged 19, Miriam had been abducted by Argentina's military dictatorship and became one of the country's desaparecidos – the "disappeared." Detained in secret and tortured because of her political activism, she was later forced to work for the regime, translating foreign news reports and…
-
6 Jul 2026 · 40 min
My father and the curse of the golden egg
Serena Kutchinsky was 10 years old when her jeweller father Paul unveiled his masterpiece to the world: a giant, golden, diamond-encrusted egg. Paul had recently taken over the family business, the celebrated London jewellers House of Kutchinsky, and wanted to make his mark, commissioning the production of a spectacular jewelled object like no other. The egg was crafted from 15kg of solid gold, decorated with over 20,000 rare pink diamonds, and put on sale for £7m – today’s equivalent of around $30m. After it was completed, the egg was finally unveiled to the public at Basel Art Fair in…
-
29 Jun 2026 · 39 min
I had a baby – then lost my memory, part 2
After an undiagnosed case of pre-eclampsia caused catastrophic brain damage and amnesia, Samina Ali returned home from hospital to begin a long recovery. At 29, she found herself relearning the basics of daily life – how to walk, speak and make sense of the world around her. She could still communicate in Urdu, the language of her childhood partly spent in India, but much of her recent life in California felt unreachable. Her husband was a stranger, and her newborn son Ishmael someone she struggled to recognise. The part of her that had once been a writer also seemed out of reach. In those…
-
22 Jun 2026 · 41 min
I had a baby – then lost my memory, part 1
When Samina Ali gave birth to her first child in California in 1999, what should have been a joyful moment quickly turned into a medical emergency. An undiagnosed case of the pregnancy disorder pre-eclampsia led to multiple organ failure, strokes, a brain haemorrhage and grand mal seizure. Within hours of delivering her son, Samina fell into a coma. When she woke five days later, she had no memory of what had happened – or of large parts of her life. She didn’t recognise her husband, and she had no idea she had just become a mother. Samina, who grew up between India and the United States,…
Take it with you
The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.
