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Outlook

Factual: Life Stories

True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives

True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives.

Outlook: My Extremist Father, and Daredevils

My extremist father, and daredevils

14/09/2014

My Extremist Father, and Daredevils

BBC World Service - Outlook, My Extremist Father, and Daredevils

Coming to terms with my extremist father. Plus daredevils and Brazil's greatest art space

Zak Ebrahim tells Matthew Bannister about coming to terms with his extremist father.  Plus skiing, running and space aspirant daredevils. And creating Brazil's greatest art space.

Zak Ebrahim tells how he found out that his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, had helped to plan an earlier attack on the World Trade Centre - the bombing in 1993 which killed six people and injured more than a thousand. Nosair's actions had a devastating impact on his family. Zak spent many years struggling to come to terms with his father's violent legacy, and eventually turned his back on Nosair's fundamentalist ideology. His book is called The Terrorist's Son, A Story of Choice.

They call him the Robinson Crusoe of the Sahara. Mauro Prosperi is an Italian pentathlete who won a gold medal at the Olympic games in Los Angeles in 1984. Ten years later he ran the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert but became lost in a sandstorm. He survived nine days by eating raw bats. 

Sonia Van Meter could be leaving Planet Earth and not coming back.  She has been shortlisted for what would be a one-way mission to Mars.  If successful, Sonia will be flying to Mars in 2024 leaving behind her husband Jason Stanford and her two stepchildren. Sonia and Jason tell us about their extraordinary adventure. 

When the reclusive Brazilian mining millionaire Bernardo Paz had a heart attack in 1995, he decided to use the money he had made to create a vast botanical garden and fill it with art. Now his vision, called Inhotim, is the most important contemporary art space in Brazil. Gibby Zobel goes to meet him.

And Fred Syversen, a daredevil skier from Norway, accidentally broke a world record by skiing off a 107m cliff in the Swiss Alps.

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