The Outlook Podcast Archive
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The Outlook Podcast Archive
Extraordinary first-person stories from around the world. An archive of Outlook podcasts from 2016-2022. For new episodes from the team, subscribe to Lives Less Ordinary.
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The astronaut who made a quilt in Space
Dr Karen Nyberg has many talents. She's an engineer and astronaut, but she's also an avid quilter, so when she joined the International Space Station...
The drag queen who ran for president of the United States
In the 1990s Terence Smith launched his campaign to run for United States president in drag, shocking voters and the media. His mission was not to win...
Drawing is my language: the artist who recreates cities from memory
Stephen Wiltshire was born in London in 1974, and diagnosed with autism when he was three. Mute until he was five, he was sent to a specialist school...
How my father’s stories shielded me from civil war
Wayétu Moore was just five years old in 1990, when Liberia's first civil war broke out. The family were forced to leave their home near Monrovia, and...
Escaping a life on a dumpsite with classical music
Like many young people in his community, Simon Karuiki Ndungu grew up scavenging for things he could sell. His home was Korogocho, a Nairobi slum situ...
Dressing Beyoncé: It started with a Barbie outfit
Artist Osman Yousefzada grew up in Birmingham, England in the 1980s after his parents moved to the UK from Pakistan. They were both illiterate, and wh...
The sisters reuniting separated siblings at camp
Lynn Price and Andi Andree were separated as young children and raised with different foster families - they didn't even know of each other's existenc...
I’m a disaster expert – and it helped me get through my own
Prof Lucy Easthope is a leading authority on recovering from disaster. She has spent two decades working at the centre of numerous global catastrophes...
My mum Poly Styrene, a punk icon
Celeste Bell's mother Poly Styrene was a punk icon who'd made her mark on music history before Celeste was even born. Her distinctive voice, neon outf...
I survived an avalanche, but the real challenge came after
In his early twenties, Joe Yelverton and two friends climbed Eagle Peak in the Chugach mountain range in Alaska. His life changed in an instant when a...
The child preacher who exposed a con
In 1944, Marjoe Gortner was just four years old when his parents had him ordained as an evangelical minister. He was dubbed ‘the miracle child’ and co...
Running an underground newspaper during the Syrian uprising
After pro-democracy protests broke out in 2011, Kholoud Helmi was determined to cover the human rights violations carried out by the Syrian government...
Mountains took my family - but I love them
Scot Kate Ballard is the daughter of world-famous mountaineer Alison Hargreaves. In 1995, when Kate was just four, Alison was caught in a storm on K2...
Driven by jealousy: the Chippendales murder plot
Emily Webb explores the origins of The Chippendales with its co-founder and former lawyer Bruce Nahin. It started as a weekly club night in Los Angele...
Why I’m singing songs for my transgender dad
Singer-songwriter Frank Turner never got on with his distant and disapproving father. Things got even worse between them when Frank discovered the ana...
The priest leading the fight for LGBT rights in Poland
Szymon Niemiec is a priest and an LGBTQ+ activist who founded Poland's first Gay Pride parade in 2001 - known locally as an 'equality parade'. Growing...
My long-lost sister was a surrogate mother to my twins
Mark MacDonald had always known he was adopted and was comfortable with it - but when he and his wife Tina found they couldn't safely have children of...
The giant window and the race against time
Tim Carey was a talented but little-known artist working with stained glass, when a huge opportunity fell into his lap. A mega church was being built...
The false confessions of a serial killer
In the 1990s the name 'Thomas Quick' struck fear into the hearts of Swedes across the country. He had confessed to more than 30 murders, and was convi...
Becoming an elder in the community I was stolen from as a baby
Dianne O'Brien was born in the 1940s and grew up in an Irish-Australian family near Sydney. But when she was just 14, her world was torn apart: her be...
The violin that saved a Jewish family
Natalie Cumming's violin helped her family survive starvation, persecution, and torture. It accompanied them in their year long trek across Russia as...
My stolen ‘magic’ guitar, found after 45 years
Randy Bachman is behind some of the biggest rock hits of the 60s and 70s. He was lead guitarist for The Guess Who, frontman of Bachman-Turner Overdriv...
Soweto Uprising: What happened to my dad?
In 1976, the Johannesburg township of Soweto erupted into protest. Students were furious with the government decision to make Afrikaans a language of...
The blind skateboarder going for gold
When Justin Bishop was eight years old, he was diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and was told that one day he would go blind. Tw...
My symphony to a soccer ‘bad-boy’
Osmo Tapio Everton Räihälä is a Finnish composer who is crazy about Everton football club. Growing up almost two thousand miles away wouldn’t stop him...
Exposing Nigeria’s cough syrup crisis, for my brother
Nigerian Ruona Meyer was inspired by her famous journalist father - Godwin Agbroko - to become an investigative reporter like him. When he was killed,...
The forgotten story of a pioneering Olympic champion
American sprinter Wyomia Tyus grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia, in the racially segregated South. When she was 14, tragedy struck her family - their...
Attacked and accused of lying – my long fight for the truth
Donna Palomba's life changed in September 1993, when she was sexually assaulted in her family home in Connecticut. A month after the attack, Donna was...
The dramatic journey of Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsleigh
The comedy film classic Cool Runnings, about a Jamaican bobsleigh team's surprising efforts to get to the Winter Olympics, was inspired by a real stor...
The man who had a baby
A few years ago, Freddy McConnell decided to have a baby. A decision that is a big deal for most, but that is even more complicated for Freddy, becaus...
The artist who started out drawing war as a child refugee
Petrit Halilaj was born in Kosovo in 1986 and grew up in the small town of Runik. He always loved drawing and had a rare talent for it. When war broke...
Gaming with Tourette’s: Sweet Anita’s success story
This programme contains offensive language. Sweet Anita has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological condition which causes her to make involuntary sounds...
The refugee pilot who helped Afghans flee the Taliban
Afghan-American pilot Zak Khogyani was just nine years old when he fled his home in Afghanistan. Being forced to leave his family and belongings behin...
The first African in Greenland
As a 16-year-old boy in Togo, Tété-Michel Kpomassie knew he had to escape. It was the late 1950s, and his father had ordered him to train as a priest...
"No equality - even in death"
Many African American cemeteries in the US have fallen into disrepair over the years - one of them is Geer cemetery in the city of Durham, North Carol...
How books helped me bond with my captors
Growing up in rural Colombia, Professor María Antonia Garcés was obsessed by books and reading, and later on this passion would help her get through a...
Mafia, a murder cover-up and a sister’s battle for justice
Perween Rahman’s assassination in 2013 was one of the most high profile target killings in Pakistan that year. She ran an influential NGO, the Orangi...
The crumbling old house that hid a treasure trove of art
In 2006 Thomas Schultz and his business partner Lawrence Joseph made a business plan. They were looking for a property to buy, do up and sell. Thomas...
My love affair with the instrument that reminds me of home
Syrian musician Maya Youssef is in love with her qanun, a traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument. Like a family member, it’s got her through s...
Anne Frank’s stepsister: How I survived Auschwitz, part 2
Eva Schloss and Anne Frank had been childhood friends and neighbours in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Both their families had a horrific experience at Ausc...