Lives Less Ordinary

When he slid off a 40-metre cliff in the jungle, Morgan Segui thought he was sure to die.

Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food; that is the rule that every mountaineer knows by heart. For Morgan Segui, a French acrobat-turned-explorer, he knew it meant his chances of survival were vanishingly small. He lay at the bottom of a dry gorge in the Timorese jungle of South Asia, miles from help, after taking a dramatic fall which broke several bones and left a huge gash to his head. Dazed and without water, he spent three days and nights on the jungle floor trying to cling to life. Until, astonishingly, a herd of goats came to his rescue.

Presenter: Asya Fouks

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed – former owner of one of the most famous shops in the world – is accused of rape and attempted rape by women who worked for him. For the full investigation, search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is a story of power and control at the very top of British society. At the time of many of the alleged attacks, Mohamed Al Fayed was the owner of London’s luxury department store Harrods, and also the iconic Ritz Paris hotel and English football club Fulham FC.

The BBC heard testimony of over 20 women.

Harrods has condemned Al Fayed’s actions “in the strongest terms” and has told the BBC that “as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologise.” Harrods says the organisation is different today to the one owned by Al Fayed, and it “seeks to put the welfare of our employees at the heart of everything we do.”

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784