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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

BBC World Service

Introducing a new season of five remarkable true stories in which love rises above prejudice, waits decades, crosses oceans and survives war. From India to Italy, Syria to the Bahamas, and the UK to the US, these are unforgettable stories that reveal how love can survive against the odds, heal old wounds and transform lives forever.

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Lives Less Ordinary

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 1989, the same year 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
Producer: Elena Angelides, Edgar Maddicott and Vibeke Venema 

Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

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.

Love Stories: Told by you

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
Producer: Edgar Maddicott

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Love Stories: The matchmaker

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
Producer: Helen Fitzhenry

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Love Stories: Our own romcom

Kris Armstrong and Brandon Smith took their marriage vows seriously. But after Brandon suffered a major brain injury, Kris made a decision that led to their unique blended family. 

Texans Kris and Brandon were high school sweethearts, but just a few years into their marriage, in 2008, Kris received a call to say that Brandon had been in a serious car crash and was in a coma. When he finally woke up, months later, it was clear he’d changed irrevocably. After experiencing a severe traumatic brain injury Brandon now needed 24-hour care, and Kris felt their relationship became one of patient and caregiver more than husband and wife. Kris wanted to look after Brandon but realised that the family they’d planned was now impossible, so she divorced him and applied to be his legal guardian instead. In 2014 she met James, then a single father, and the first thing she told him about was Brandon. Now, more than a decade later, they are a blended family, and Kris and James' young children love spending time with their "Uncle Brandon".

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Emily Naylor

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Love Stories: My two husbands

A secret tore apart their teenage love. Four decades later, they got a second chance.

In 1970s Nottingham, two teenagers fell head-over-heels in love when Mark Bethel arrived from the Bahamas to study. For Penny Umbers, it felt like the beginning of everything: young, certain, full of promise - until, without warning, Mark broke things off and disappeared from her life. 

Devastated and searching for answers, Penny spent decades believing she was to blame, carrying that loss into the rest of her life and never quite finding the happiness she once imagined. Nearly 40 years later, a message out of the blue from Mark brought them back into contact, and with it, revealed the sad truth about what drove them apart: a quiet intervention shaped by prejudice. What followed was both a reckoning and a reunion, as they confronted the years they lost and returned to a love that, despite everything, never truly left them.

This programme contains references to suicide. If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this episode, you can find support at befrienders.org

Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: Edgar Maddicott

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Love Stories: Do you remember me?

In 2016 Janay was a journalist in London and needed footage of the conflict in Syria, so contacted camera operator Habak in Aleppo. What followed was a love story neither saw coming. 

When Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos first started messaging Abd Al-Kader Habak in the besieged city of Aleppo, one of her first questions was “are you okay?”. Janay needed images and footage for her reporting and Habak would film what he could, often in extremely dangerous situations. Janay, from the comfort of her news desk, began to worry about Habak’s safety. Their messages and voice notes became more personal, too. They began learning more about one another; what their families were like, and how they shared experiences of war and displacement. Quietly, they began falling for each other, but with no way of getting in and out of Syria they couldn't meet. Until Habak’s security situation took a sudden turn and he decided to flee Syria and was smuggled into Turkey. What followed was a romantic and professional partnership neither thought possible when they first began messaging while thousands of miles apart. They’re now married, living in London, and recently released a documentary called Birds of War. 

Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: May Cameron

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Love Stories: Finding you in a warzone

Introducing: Love Stories

Chris Duddy survived 28 hours in Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano after his helicopter crashed.

Cinematographer Chris Duddy has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest movies like Titanic and Terminator 2. Filming in extreme conditions is part of his job, and he loves it, but nothing could prepare him for the day the helicopter he was in crashed inside the crater of an active volcano. It was November 1992 and he was flying over the Big Island of Hawaii shooting footage for the end of the Hollywood thriller Sliver. The shot involved flying over the active Kīlauea volcano, but during filming the helicopter suffered total engine failure and crash-landed inside the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent of the volcano. Chris, along with his director of photography Mike Benson and the pilot Craig Hosking, were trapped there – 300 feet down and perilously close to a lava pool. Choking on toxic fumes and enduring bizarrely freezing temperatures when the weather closed in, Chris had to spend an entire night in the volcano, and the next day decided his only option was to climb out of the crater to escape. 

Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: June Christie 

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

I crash-landed inside an active volcano

In July 2011 Bjorn Ihler was a 20-year-old performing arts student and a member of the youth division of the Norwegian Labour Party. He participated in the Party's summer camp on Utøya island, about 35km from Norway's capital Oslo, when Norway suffered its worst terror attacks in recent history. Anders Breivik was a far-right extremist who launched a bomb attack on government offices in Oslo. Two hours later he attacked the summer camp that Bjorn was attending. 77 people were killed that day – the majority on the island. Bjorn survived and helped save two young boys who were also on Utøya. Just days after the incident Bjorn threw himself into trying to understand how someone could behave this way; he read Breivik's far-right manifesto, attended the trial and as many court sessions as he could, and spoke to countless former extremists. Today, Bjorn is an expert in preventing radicalisation and extremism and alongside his wife co-founded the Khalifa Ihler Institute which promotes peace, human rights, and community.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: May Cameron

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

Why I don't hate the person who tried to kill me

Miriam Lewin was never much interested in football. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she cared far more about politics than the team her family supported. But in 1978, when Argentina won the World Cup, she found herself among the celebrating fans, hidden in plain sight as a political prisoner.

A year earlier, aged 19, Miriam had been abducted by Argentina's military dictatorship and became one of the country's desaparecidos – the "disappeared." Detained in secret and tortured because of her political activism, she was later forced to work for the regime, translating foreign news reports and helping produce propaganda aimed at improving its image abroad. From inside the prison system, she also learned of the dictatorship's notorious "death flights." 

When Argentina hosted – and won – the World Cup, the military government used the tournament to project an image of national pride and unity. Miriam and other prisoners were taken onto the streets to join the jubilant crowds. Decades later, after becoming a journalist, she helped uncover the regime's crimes and bring former members of the military junta to justice.

This interview contains references to suicide and descriptions of torture.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producers: Marcia Veiga and Harry Graham 

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.
 
Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
 
You can read our privacy notice here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice

The prisoner who was forced to celebrate a World Cup victory

In 1998 Finnish journalist Johanna Aatsalo uncovered a huge news story: a member of the much-revered Finnish cross-country ski team had taken banned substances. After six months' intense investigation Johanna published her findings, and within just a few hours the backlash began. Johanna even received death threats. Because she wouldn't reveal her sources she was also taken to court and found guilty of defamation, but Johanna didn’t give up. Instead, she started a fight that would continue for the next 14 years. 

Presenter: Helena Merriman
Producers: Emilia Jansson and Andrea Kennedy

Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

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