Lives Less Ordinary

How Ustad Noor Bakhsh, a Pakistani shepherd in his 70s, became a folk music star

After hunting for four years, Pakistani ethnomusicologist Daniyal Ahmed finally finds Ustad Noor Bakhsh, an elderly shepherd and master of the electric benjo – an obscure stringed instrument with typewriter keys. With Daniyal’s help, Ustad Noor would go from serenading his goats in the jungles of Balochistan to performing for revellers on the European f...

The epic quest to find an elderly Pakistani musician and his unusual stringed instrument

Daniyal Ahmed is a flute player and anthropologist who spends his time searching out and documenting folk music across Pakistan. In 2018, he was mesmerised by a video clip of an elderly man – described as a “poor fisherman” – expertly playing a benjo, an obscure stringed instrument that looks like a cross between a guitar and a typewriter. So be...

Erika Cheung went from a trailer park to a top tech company job, but something was off.

She knew how to work hard, growing up in a one-bedroom trailer, she dreamed of pursuing her passion for science and helping others. So Erika was thrilled to land her first job out of university at a booming tech company promising a revolution in healthcare. Fronted by the glamorous and wealthy Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos claimed to have the techno...

A bonus episode from the Amazing Sport Stories podcast – The Black 14. Sport, racism and protests are about to change the lives of “the Black 14” American footballers. It’s 1969 in the United States. They’ve arrived on scholarships at the University of Wyoming to play for its Cowboys American football team. It was a predominantly white college. The team is treated like a second religion. Then, the players make a decision to take a ...

Maria's grandmother was forcibly taken by Australian officials, but made a daring escape.

As children Maria Pilkington's mother and grandmother were both among the Stolen Generation, removed from their homes to be trained as domestic servants for white families. It was part of an Australian policy dating back to the 1930s to remove mixed-race children from any Aboriginal influence. But Maria's 14-year-old grandmother escaped, with h...

Leyner Palacios grew up around volatile armed groups, so he learned to negotiate with them.

He comes from a remote forested area called Bojaya, where clusters of small villages are spread along isolated waterways. Leyner's community had to share the rivers and forests with outsiders, armed groups like the Farc and the paramilitaries, who were locked into a decades-old conflict. As a child, Leyner learned to constantly navigate check...

The Austrian house where a doctor experimented on children.

Evy Mages grew up in and out of foster care in 1970s and 80s Austria. But even when she started a new life in the US, she was haunted by traumatic memories of a strange yellow house high up in the Alps, where she had been placed as an eight-year-old. It took an idle internet search in her 50s to reveal that this was actually an institution called a 'Kinderbeobachtungsstatio...

A handwritten map is all Mamadou Barry had to guide him from Guinea to Egypt.

At the age of 24 he had reached a crossroads in his life. Having failed his final year secondary school exams five times in a row, he set his sights on a different type of education. Mamadou had heard about the prestigious Al Azhar University in Egypt, but could not afford a plane ticket. So he decided to set off on an epic adventure, travelling by bike, a...

A life shaped by addiction.

Australian Holly Deane-Johns had a complicated childhood. Her parents ran an escort agency from their home, and heroin addiction later took over the whole family. She was first given heroin by her mother, aged just 15. Holly ended up dealing to feed her habit, and in her early 30s was sentenced to 31 years in a notorious Thai prison, convicted of drug smuggling.

Presenter: India Rakusen Producer: Mary Go...

Ruth Shaw spent years on ships and islands, trying to outrun her past.

She left her home in New Zealand as a young woman, driven away by a traumatic attack that would shape her life for years to come. Ruth tried to find escape on sailing ships, in Tahitian gambling dens and in the bars and kitchens of Papua New Guinea. But ultimately she had to head home, to face up to deep adolescent scars, and to find the child she’d been forced t...

The extraordinary coach who started a football team but built something much bigger.

One day when Luma Mufleh was driving home to Atlanta, Georgia, she came across a group of barefoot boys playing football in the street, using a raggedy old ball and rocks for goalposts. They reminded her of how she played at home in Jordan and she asked to join their game. The Fugees Family football team was born. Luma Mufleh has written a book abou...

Without realising it, Nick Reynolds had been living his childhood on the run.

Early one morning in 1968 he answered his front door, completely oblivious to the whirlwind about to be unleashed on his family. Most of Nick's early years had been spent carefree and happy on the shores of Mexico with his British parents. But all the while he had been growing up in the shadow of one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century.

Presen...

After crashing high in the Andes, Nando Parrado had to go to the extreme to get out.

In 1972, when the plane carrying 22 year old Uruguayan Nando Parrado and his rugby team came down deep in the Andes mountain range in South America, they were left for dead. Rescue teams called off their search after 10 days. Nando and the other survivors would spend an incredible 72 days trapped, frozen and forsaken in this icy wilderness. And in o...

Lucy Sexton was making a TV series about hostages when her father Joe was abducted

Lucy and her father Joe Sexton are American journalists. In 2021 Lucy was working on the TV series ‘Hostages’ when her personal and professional life collided. Joe had been abducted while on a reporting trip in Libya. What followed was a surreal week of parallels as they both tried to make sense of what was happening – Joe from a cell in Libya and Luc...

A chance email led Hannah Ha to uncover her mother Tam’s forgotten musical legacy.

Hannah knew her mother could sing. When she took the stage at karaoke, she always stole the show. But when a chance email revealed she had once been a recording artist called Phuong Tam in 1960s Saigon, she was stunned. Hannah embarked on a two-year hunt to track down her mother’s long-lost recordings – and her rock 'n' roll legacy.

Presenter: Mobeen A...

Jair Candor tracks down remote Amazonian tribes in order to protect them from outsiders.

One tribe, the Piripkura has just one member left who’s living nomadically, deep in the rainforest. It’s Jair’s mission to find him, to establish he’s alive, and to protect his land rights from those who want the forest for themselves. Jair has monitored numerous indigenous groups in Brazil over the years, and he’s faced frequent malaria, armed ...

Tasoula Hadjitofi tricked a notorious art smuggler to recover Cyprus' holiest relics

When war split Tasoula's home country of Cyprus in two in 1974 she had to leave home, never to return. Years later, while living in the Netherlands she was approached by a shady art dealer with news that shook her to the core: artefacts sacred to her Greek Orthodox faith had been stolen, hammered out from church walls and were now being sold on the ...

Tasoula Hadjitofi uncovered a shady network looting her country's most sacred relics

In 1974 Tasoula's country, Cyprus, was torn in two by war. Distraught and unable to return home she ended up in the Netherlands where some years later a shadowy art dealer approached her with some astonishing news. Religious artefacts sacred to her faith that had adorned the churches she prayed in as a girl had been chiselled away, and were now bein...

Pepe and Lucía: the bonfire of young love, a long separation, and rise to presidency.

The guerrilla lovers finally meet and fall for each other, but their joy is shortlived, they’re soon arrested again – and this time there won’t be any escape. Uruguay’s military coup means that the couple are separated by 13 years of brutal detention. When they’re granted amnesty, they find their way back to each other, and enter the political fray...