Painting for our lives

Three fascinating portraits of people who used a paintbrush to transform their lives

• 44 mins

The Biospherians: Why we were sealed in a giant dome

Biosphere 2 was one of the most controversial human experiments of the 20th Century

• 44 mins

'She came back to the clinic dancing'

The Sierra Leonean doctor whose life-changing work earned her screen time with the Queen

• 40 mins

Revelations from El Salvador that healed my family

Roberto Lovato didn't understand his father until he discovered the history of his home

• 44 mins

The twists and turns of the Rubik's Cube

Meet champion cuber Feliks Zemdegs, and the inventor behind the puzzle Erno Rubik

• 26 mins

CJ Daugherty’s world of literary escapism

Books were the best-selling author’s “magic carpet ride out” of an abusive childhood home

• 44 mins

The wild ride of a Tamil comic book pioneer

The Indian comic book enthusiast bringing his favourite characters to a Tamil audience

• 44 mins

James Rhodes: My love letter to music

The British pianist is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Music became his lifeline

• 40 mins

Unmasking a horror film icon

Kane Hodder is best known as on-screen killer Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th films

• 44 mins

In bed with an assassin

Photographer Jason P. Howe had a relationship with a Colombian woman with a dark secret

• 26 mins

A scandal at the Oscars: Marlon Brando and me

Sacheen Littlefeather stood in front of 85 million people to reject Marlon Brando's Oscar

• 44 mins

The accidental sleuth who solved a murder

Therese Tang has done lots of jobs - hunting for a killer wasn't meant to be one of them

• 44 mins

Skin: the scream that made me a rock star

How Skin, lead singer of the ground-breaking British band, Skunk Anansie, found her voice

• 40 mins

Fire, ice and thunder: A chase on the high seas

Taking down the Thunder, the world's most notorious poaching ship

• 44 mins

The IS orphans rescued by their grandpa

He couldn’t save his daughter after she joined IS but could he rescue her seven children?

• 26 mins

Separated from my kids at the US-Mexico border

Guatemalan Rosayra Pablo Cruz was helped by a surprise visitor while she was in detention

• 44 mins

A spy in the family

I was betrayed to the East German secret police

• 44 mins

The firefighting vets of Brazil

Carla Sassi and her team have been rescuing animals as wildfires burn around them

• 40 mins

Zero-gravity highs and history-making lows

Kathy Sullivan is a former US astronaut who has made history both at sea and in space

• 44 mins

The photo that exposed apartheid

The Soweto Uprisings and the story behind South Africa's most iconic photo.

• 26 mins

Fighting plastic pollution in paradise

How Kristal Ambrose rallied a group of kids to get a plastic ban in the Bahamas

• 44 mins

Speaking through music: Me and my non-verbal sister

Ian Brennan’s sister, who has Down's syndrome, taught him to communicate through music

• 44 mins

I learned my mum's identity via SMS

It would take My Huong decades to uncover the truth about her birth family in Vietnam

• 40 mins

My Falklands War: The woman with the white gloves

How a farmer ignored military threats and rallied her community to save injured soldiers

• 44 mins

Rufus Wainwright: My music and my mother

Born into folk music royalty, Rufus took special inspiration from his mum Kate McGarrigle

• 26 mins

The sailor and the pirate king

Indian sailor Sudeep Choudhury was kidnapped at gunpoint by pirates in the Niger Delta

• 44 mins

The man behind Mindhunter: Face to face with serial killers

John E. Douglas spent his FBI career speaking to some of America's most violent criminals

• 44 mins

The secretaries who inspired the hit movie 9 to 5

Karen Nussbaum is the co-founder of 9to5, a movement that gave rise to a box office smash

• 40 mins

Becoming 'brothers' with my guard in Guantanamo Bay

How a Mauritanian inmate and an American guard were brought together by a movie

• 44 mins

We found our baby on the subway

The couple who adopted a baby they found abandoned in a New York station

• 26 mins

The Supervet: from bullies to bionic limbs

Noel Fitzpatrick is an Irish vet who makes ground-breaking bionic limbs for injured pets

• 44 mins

Who do you think you are?

Stories of people whose identities were a mystery begging to be solved

• 44 mins

The epic Arabic poem that was born in a stable

Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh began writing Uruk's Anthem while imprisoned in a stable

• 40 mins

Discovering Stalin's million-dollar wine cellar

Wine merchant John Baker on trying to buy Josef Stalin's secret wine collection

• 44 mins

The Godfather of Hollywood sound

Walter Murch is a superstar sound designer. His ingenuity transformed cinema

• 26 mins

My music bus healing a gang divide

Justin Finlayson turned his London bus into a music studio to help at-risk young people

• 44 mins

Surviving civil war with a tracksuit and tennis racquet

Sam Jalloh, the barefoot player turned pro, coaches kids to achieve their tennis dreams

• 44 mins

The sisterhood vs the man who gave them HIV

Diane Reeve rallied together women who had contracted HIV from the same cheating lover

• 44 mins

After facing death row, the inmate who turned investigator

Sohail Yafat turned his miscarriage of justice into a fight for all prisoners in Pakistan

• 44 mins

The "five careers" of Bettye Lavette

Bettye Lavette was a teenage singing star. Five decades on, she's a star once more.

• 26 mins

My brother’s illness made me a “sickle cell warrior”

Tartania Brown is one of few sickle cell doctors in New York who also has the condition

• 44 mins

The family murder that launched our campaign

Brothers Luke and Ryan Hart are trying to change the conversation around domestic abuse

• 44 mins

BBC Inspirations Awards 2020: finale fandango

Jo Fidgen reveals the final two winners of the BBC Inspirations Awards 2020.

• 53 mins

The tale of the countess and the little cello

How a 180-year-old miniature cello shaped the musical dreams of two American girls

• 44 mins

Elza Soares: invincible queen of samba

Singer Elza Soares survived poverty and public scandal to become a music legend in Brazil

• 26 mins

Why I made a film in which I kill my dad

When Kirsten Johnson’s dad got dementia she found an unusual way to cope

• 44 mins

My husband came back from the dead

How an accident and a case of mistaken identity changed one couple's lives forever

• 44 mins

Seven songs to mourn seven black men

Joel Thompson is behind a composition about the killing of black men in the USA

• 44 mins

The rebel musicians fighting India’s caste system

The Casteless Collective is a protest band who challenge caste oppression through song

• 44 mins

A descendant of chiefs: my long journey home

How Jesse Thistle, a homeless Indigenous man, found his identity and his calling

• 26 mins

The video that turned our lives upside down

When a mum hit record on her son crying she couldn't have predicted the global reaction

• 44 mins

Defending my dream cost my mother her life

Two-times US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey turned to poetry after her mother's murder

• 44 mins

I ran with the men, and changed history

Kathrine Switzer was attacked for running in the men-only 1967 Boston Marathon

• 44 mins

Tasting the desert with Chile's leading forager

Patricia Pérez sells the rare herbs she finds in the Atacama desert to Chile's top chefs

• 44 mins

Moana: The Polynesian family behind the smash hit songs

Musician Opetaia Foa'i fought for the Disney movie to stay true to Pacific culture

• 26 mins

The match-making tree and other tales of unexpected romance

From the world's most romantic postbox to a persecuted couple’s perilous ocean voyage

• 44 mins

The Beninese singer hustling for success in New York

Shirazee endured homelessness and a threat of deportation as he pursued his music dreams

• 44 mins

‘I am sinking. This is not a joke. MAYDAY’

Disaster struck when Kevin Escoffier’s boat split during the perilous Vendée Globe race

• 44 mins