Lives Less Ordinary

Eleven days lost at sea, presumed drowned. How Mick Doleman made it home to his sweetheart.
When 18-year-old Australian sailor Mick Doleman leaves for what should be a routine three-day voyage, he's torn between his two great loves: life at sea and his new girlfriend, Joanie McGrath. They've only been together for three months when disaster strikes.
In October 1973, the cargo ship MV Blythe Star sinks off Tasmania, leaving Mick and nine crewmates stranded in a life raft in one of the world's wildest and most remote stretches of ocean. No distress signal has been sent, they have no radio, and nobody knows where they are.
Back in Doveton, Victoria, Joanie learns the ship is missing. As the days pass, hope begins to fade. Search aircraft scour the sea, families gather around to watch television reports. Then the search is called off, and the crew are presumed dead. But Mick is still alive. Over 11 days, he battles freezing seas, exhaustion, hunger and despair. Some of the men won't make it home. But through it all, Mick clings to one thought: seeing Joanie again.
Mick’s co-written a book called Back from the Dead.
Presenter: Jo Fidgen
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
 
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Dan Everett travelled to the Amazon to convert the Piraha people. It didn’t go to plan.

Dan was a young Christian missionary, and his talent for linguistics put him on a mission to convert a small indigenous group called the Piraha in the Brazilian Amazon. He had to communicate with them first, and after arriving in their remote village, he got to work cracking their famously difficult language. Over the years he began to understand them, but the things they told him caused his worldview to fall apart.

Presenter: India Rakusen
Producer: 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

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
Producers: Rebecca Vincent and Tommy Dixon
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

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
Producers: Rebecca Vincent and Tommy Dixon
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

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
Producer: Andrea Rangecroft
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