Stories Seldom Told

After a successful 20-year career as a journalist and corporate executive, Carole Hopson made a bold decision to step into the cockpit. Today, she is a Boeing 737 Captain with United Airlines, based in Newark, New Jersey, and she's one of the few Black women in the world to hold that position.

Carole’s journey wasn’t easy. Having faced an accident, financial sacrifice, the rigor of flight school, and motherhood, she pursued a dream that had waited decades to take flight. Alongside her aviation career, she remains deeply connected to her love of storytelling as the author of A Pair of Wings, a novel inspired by Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to earn a French pilot’s license.

Through her work, Carole celebrates courage, legacy, and representation. Her nonprofit project, The Jet Black Foundation, aims to send 100 Black women to flight school by 2035 to create a new generation of pioneers in aviation.

This episode is about more than flying; it’s about resilience, purpose, and daring to rewrite your story mid-flight.

Solange Ndip is the founder of Solange Rising Star (SRS), a survivor-led movement born from her own experience of SA trauma and resilience. What began as a deeply personal journey of healing has grown into an organization uniting survivors, witnesses, and allies to transform pain into collective power.

“Our voices, once silenced by fear, can become the sound of hope.”

Through initiatives like Kacherkatan, inspired by the metamorphosis of a butterfly, Solange and her team empower survivors across Cameroon’s rural and conflict-affected regions through education, advocacy, and creativity. Her story is one of courage, community, and refusing to let silence win.

"So what if it's hard? So what if it takes time? So what if I've stumbled before? I will keep going."

Lt. Col. (Dr) Dharamdatt Goel (Retd.) is a Motivational Speaker and Corporate Trainer, with a Doctorate in Psychology, and a Postgraduate Degree in Personnel Management. In 2002, he lost a leg below the knee while on an operation at the Line of Control. However, he was undeterred as he embraced many adventure sports, and made it to the Limca Book of Records as the first Indian to paraglide with an artificial leg. He's also the author of the bestsellers 'When People Doubted My Ability to Walk, I Decided to Fly,' and 'The Magic of So What'.

Megan Davis is a lawyer turned author of two novels, The Messenger and Bay of Thieves. The latter released in 2024 follows two women, Vanessa and Kate, who get dragged into a glamorous but dangerous world of financial crime and corruption spanning London all the way to the south of France.

Bay of Thieves was the Sunday Times thriller of the month for July 2024. It's been described as "A timely, gripping, and richly nuanced financial thriller that exposes the Riviera’s seedy underbelly".

"I had this idea that fraud and corruption were very complicated concepts, and they needed time to cook up. But at that point, I realized how simple it was and how it was actually the easiest thing to do. It's very easy to bribe someone, to falsify documents and to lie. I didn't do it more out of fear than anything else, because I'm quite cautious. But I could really imagine doing that kind of thing."

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Dr. Satyen Sharma is a consulting psychiatrist who has been working in Punjab and in and around Delhi for 16 years. He was trained at the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College, in Pune, India.

Satyen has held leadership positions as Secretary and then President of the Indian Association of Private Psychiatry. His areas of interest are addiction psychiatry and general adult psychiatry.

"It would be so common for a family from Punjab to bring in a young, strapping, healthy boy, 20 years of age, who's been using heroin for some time. And they would tell me, 'Doctor, this boy, we want you to remove his heroin habit. And we have given him no work at all.'

Now he's free to work out on his addiction, which is so counterintuitive. The first thing I would say is that if he doesn't have any responsibilities or anything to look forward to, what motivation does he have to go off drugs?"

To stay up to date, follow me on Instagram and X (Twitter) @smitatharoor. Stream and follow us on your favourite podcast platform.

Sindhu Wadhwa likes to call herself a glorious mess. On good days, she wears her ADHD diagnosis like a crown, on other days she is a reluctant adult. Sindhu is also a freshly minted cat lady.

For the last 19 years, Sindhu has been a clinical psychologist and a practicing psychotherapist. She currently heads the therapy team for MindSmith India which is a premium brain health platform. Sindhu is also on the advisory panel as a mental health expert for TRIOMPH (Transplant Recipients of India and Organ failure patients - a Movement to Provide Hope), a national support group in India for organ donation. Sindhu likes to write and speak on women's mental health.

"The gift was, I got a lot of time alone. I literally built a world inside me, I could imagine things. I suppose while it was undiagnosed ADHD back then, it was always somebody who had a thousand windows open in this house of life. So imagine you have all the windows of the house open. And there is a lot of wind coming in, sunlight coming in. This is my house is life in my head. So I grew my own beliefs, I started to have deeper self awareness and reflection. I was always that child who was far more aware and cognisant of internal chatter than perhaps other people. So while it can be a curse, it can lead to severe anxiety, but I see it as a gift."

Robert Newcome is an author and retired Army officer best known for his novel The Name Beneath the Stone. In addition, Robert has worked a retail manager and a management consultant specialising in leadership training. During lockdown he posted a 500-word story every Saturday and he now writes full time. War is often a setting for his novels. 

"I joined the Army, at the age of 19. At the age of 20 I was serving in Northern Ireland, leading a platoon of soldiers. When I joined the Army, my mindset would have been, we're the good guys. In Northern Ireland, it was the time of The Troubles. We were there essentially stopping Catholics from attacking Protestants and vice versa. And the sense of, I'm part of an organisation that is here primarily to benefit people. And my whole upbringing I guess up to that point had been, England, Britain, a good place. We've done good around the world."

Shubha Priya shares her opinion on death, dying and how to grow old. Shubha has previously served as a Creative Director in leading advertising agencies around the world. She is currently fulfilling her lost childhood dreams of being an author and musician. She wrote, illustrated and designed her book of satirical verses for adults, called Whimsical Brew.

When Shubha was in her teens, she heard Maurice Chevalier singing the lyrics of a song in the movie Gigi: ‘Oh I’m glad that I’m not young anymore!” Struck by the way he sang it with such conviction, she wondered how growing old could ever be joyful.

"One of the things that always struck me is it takes a village to raise a child. Right? And that's how we grew up. We had a whole neighborhood bringing us up. We could stroll into anybody's house and be fed, by some aunty or the other. And the parents didn't worry. Now to the elderly, it takes a community to transition the elder into death.You need, you know, you need all of the support of not just family in your old age. I think it needs a community. I think it needs the community of elderly who can empathise."

Rachel Thomas was the first Indian woman to compete for India in a skydiving competition in 1987. After 23 years, she ended her career in 2002, when she skydived from 7,000 ft over the North Pole also creating the record of being the first Indian female to skydive over the North Pole. During her career, Rachel has completed 650 jumps in 18 countries. She has won multiple awards including the winner of the National Adventure Sports Award and is a TedX speaker.

In 1979, this small-town mother of two kids, just 23 years old, decided one evening at an Army Party to join a Skydiving Course at Agra. Unknowingly history was created.

"At 28 years old, my marriage broke. And in those days, to say that you're divorced was very difficult. At this point. My son was about ten, My daughter was about nine. They were young and I thank God that my mother and my sister was there to give me support and help me and be there for me because I had to keep going for training. To lift my head high and walk in Agra, the place where I was, was difficult."

Maggie Steber is an internationally renowned documentary photographer, educator, and photo editor. Her work has appeared in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions. She has worked in 72 countries specializing in telling the stories of underrepresented people and her work has been seen in 70 exhibitions in 35 countries.