Lives Less Ordinary

Dan Everett travelled to the Amazon to convert the Piraha people. It didn’t go to plan.

It took years for Lacey Tezino to discover the truth about her parents – what she found out would upturn everything she thought she knew about her own identity.

When Lacey left her rural Texan hometown and went to university in metropolitan Houston, her African American roommates informed her in no uncertain terms that she was black. This raised some fundamental questions for Lacey – she had been raised by a white family, who led her to believe that her father was white, and her mother was Hawaiian, and had died when she was a baby. But it was clear that Lacey looked much more like her new black friends. What followed was a deep dive into everything she'd been told about her parents, and her origins, with truly shocking results.

This is part two of Lacey's story. Part one is available on the Lives Less Ordinary website.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

Lacey Tezino grew up in rural Texas in a white family, and was told her Hawaiian mother died when she was a baby. But none of this was true.

Lacey was born in the US city of Houston, raised by her single dad who ran a bar there, and whom she adored. When he developed cancer they moved back to live with his parents in Vidor, Texas, a so-called 'sundown town' notorious for its racist past. Nearly everyone there was white, and Lacey says she regularly heard the strongest racial slurs being used both by her white family and the wider community. She knew she looked a bit different from her relatives, but was told this was because her mother was from Hawaii. Lacey never knew her – they said her mother was a drug addict who had died from an Aids-related illness shortly after she was born. Lacey's dad died when she was six and she was brought up by his parents, greatly loved by them and her aunts, uncles and cousins. Lacey would occasionally hear things about her dad, and about her mum, but it was only when she left Vidor to go to university that everything she thought she knew about her family, her heritage and her racial identity came tumbling down. It would take a series of head-spinning revelations to discover who she really was.

This is part one of Lacey's two-part story.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

Ex army officer Devon Harris was part of the historic Olympic bobsleigh team that inspired the film Cool Runnings, but Hollywood only got half the story.

Devon grew up in a tough area of Kingston, Jamaica, called Olympic Gardens. He dreamed of taking part in the Olympics, but living on a tropical island meant winter sports were never on his radar. For him, school was his haven away from the violence he witnessed in his neighbourhood and he worked hard in the classroom and on the sports field so that he could one day fulfil his dream of becoming an army officer. It was during his time in the Jamaica Defence Force that his sporting talent was spotted and he ended up getting a place on Jamaica’s first-ever bobsleigh team. The Jamaicans made history at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, but this wasn’t anything like Cool Runnings – the 1993 Hollywood film inspired by the team’s story – the reality was much tougher and much more rewarding.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

Nina Blom's early years were plagued by mysterious, serious illnesses. Growing up in the Netherlands in the 1970s and 80s, Nina seemed at first to be a typical child, playing with dolls and enjoying singing and dancing. But soon, her mother became convinced that Nina was gravely ill. She kept sending Nina to hospitals for tests and treatments again and again - 16 times in just a few years. And she seemed to enjoy Nina's sickness and pain. Eventually, Nina was made to use a wheelchair and was told by her mother that she had an unstoppable muscle disease.

Please be aware that there are descriptions of medical child abuse in this programme.

Many medical professionals saw Nina but they could not work out what was wrong with her. It took one keen-eyed doctor to put the puzzling pieces of Nina’s life together and figure out the true, dark reason for her illness.

Paediatric Condition Falsification is also known by other names, such as 'Fabricated or Induced Illness' or 'Munchausen-by-Proxy'. It is a form of child abuse in which the carer - usually a parent - exaggerates or deliberately causes an illness of a child. The reasons why Paediatric Condition Falsification happens are not fully understood.

Nina published her experiences in a book called You are a Horrible Child. They also inspired a graphic novel for young people, You’re Going to Die, by Margreet de Heer and Nina.

Presenter: India Rakusen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

When Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born his parents were fugitives. They were the leaders of the Weather Underground – a violent revolutionary group opposed to the Vietnam war. Most members were white, but they worked closely with radical black organisations opposing racism in the US, drawing attention to their cause through bombing campaigns, bank robberies, and jailbreaks.

When Zayd’s younger brother came along his mother, Bernardine, decided it was time to hand herself in. They managed to do a deal and most of the charges she faced were dropped. However when Zayd was 5 Bernadine went to jail. Despite having been on the run from the FBI for more than a decade she wasn’t charged with any crime. She went to prison because of her refusal to give evidence against her former revolutionary comrades. For Zayd, as a child it was really difficult to understand his mother's choice. To him at the time, it seemed there was an easy path for her to return to the family which she had decided not to take. This is the second of two episodes featuring Zayd.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

In some ways Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s childhood was normal; his parents went to work and played with him in the park. Though in other ways it was anything but: moving between safe houses, fleeing in the night as the FBI moved in. His parents were the leaders of a violent revolutionary group called the Weathermen and then the Weather Underground, which the US government classed as a domestic terror group. They opposed the Vietnam war and racism in American society. They drew attention to their cause though bombing campaigns targeting government institutions from police stations to the Pentagon. The group were largely white college graduates, they worked with militant black organisations such as the Black Liberation Army to organise bank robberies and jailbreaks.

By the time Zayd was born his parents had been fugitives for several years. They taught him how to identify the FBI agents who were looking for them and how to lose a tail if he was being followed. For Zayd, as a small child, it was a game – but one with potentially serious consequences as his parents' activities could see them sent to prison for years. However, they wanted him to go to school and for him to do this they decided to hand themselves in.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

Now it’s your turn to share. A bonus episode to end our Love Stories series where you tell the world how your true love grew.

Fiona Smiley Wright got in touch about an extraordinary romance that was hiding right under her nose for most of her life, growing up in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t until her parents passed away that Fiona and her three brothers discovered years of love letters between them, while separated by war. Fiona tells Asya the tale of a silver cigarette box that her mother Elizabeth gifted to her father Tom, a surgeon, before he departed for Singapore during World War Two, and how it was crucial in ensuring their love survived.

In the summer of 1983, Hana Keplova, a talented singer studying at Prague University, stayed in a family home in England en route to taking part in a choral festival. Over breakfast she meets Andrew Johnston, the twinkly-eyed son of her host family. The two became pen pals and Andrew made a surprise visit to the then-communist state of Czechoslovakia, and kept on coming back. After encounters with secret police and heated debates on long walks in the countryside, the pair slowly fell in love. They married in 1990, the year after the Iron Curtain fell. Hana and Andrew now reflect on their love story together.

Dutch maths teachers Bart Zevenhek and Nieky Liesker were both single and disillusioned with love. But on Valentine’s Day in 2000, a practical joke set up by their students planted a seed that blossomed into romance. They join us from their forest house in Amsterdam to recount the tale.

Soulmates Karo Caran and Victor Tsaran grew up in neighbouring countries, Poland and Ukraine. It wasn’t their shared border that brought them together, but their individual hopes of learning how to use a computer. They tell Asya how, in the mid-90s, they met and fell in love on a year-long computer course for blind and visually-impaired students in the US. After returning to their respective homes and posting audio letters on floppy disks to each other, they moved to America together. They've worked at NGOs supporting computer education for blind people and today live and work in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Presenter: Asya Fouks

Got a story to tell? Send an email to [email protected] or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

At 83, Gina Ceccarelli thought the romantic chapter of her life was over. Then she met Dwight Moberg, a 91-year-old widower from California. There was just one complication, Gina speaks Italian and Dwight speaks English, so most of their conversations happen through hand gestures and a translation app.

The person who brought them together is Menbere "Menbe" Akiklu. Forty years earlier, Menbe was a young Ethiopian mother living in a shelter in Rome, trying to rebuild her life after escaping an abusive relationship. One of the few people who showed her kindness was Gina, who brought food, knitted clothes for her baby son and helped her find her feet in a foreign country. Over the years the two women lost touch, but decades later, after building a successful life in America, Menbe found herself thinking about the woman who had helped her. Determined to thank her, she went back to Italy to track Gina down.

When she finally did, Menbe saw that Gina, now widowed, was living alone and so decided that repaying an old kindness would require something more than a simple thank you. She brought her to the US, setting in motion an unexpected matchmaking mission and a little nudge towards love.

Presenter: Asya Fouks

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.

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 dating app, things began to change. They ended up making a Hollywood/Bollywood-inspired romcom that closely resembled their own story – about a gay Indian-American doctor finding love. Karan is in the lead role, alongside musical theatre star Jonathan Groff, and Roshan is directing. Making this film, and sharing it with their families, has helped to address some of the issues both Karan and Roshan experienced as gay men from South Asian communities.

This story was first on BBC World Service radio last year - when the Lives Less Ordinary team decided to create the Love Stories season, we knew we had to include it!

Presenter: Sophia Smith Galer

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 inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.