Original version

BBC World Service Online

Migrated podcast image for: Outlook

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: A Life Without Pain, Dry Sea, Pigs

Marisa de Toledo; the Aral Sea; a pig

01/03/2015

A Life Without Pain, Dry Sea, Pigs

BBC World Service - Outlook, A Life Without Pain, Dry Sea, Pigs

The Brazilian woman who feels no pain, The disappearing Aral Sea, Italian pig sanctuary

The Brazilian woman who feels no pain, a father's pride in his son who was shot by a sniper in Maiden Square, the world's only sextuplet girls grow up, Italian pig sanctuary.

Marisa de Toledo from Sao Paolo state in Brazil is 27 years old, has a husband and three kids and leads a normal life. But she feels no pain at all and never has. Congenital insensitivity to pain is an extremely rare condition - it's estimated that perhaps only 50 people worldwide have it. Outlook's Gibby Zobel went to talk to Marisa to see how it affects her and her family. 

A year on from Kiev's Maidan massacre, Volodomir Golodniuk talks about his pride in his teenage son Ustym who was shot dead by an unidentified sniper.

Thirty-one years ago British couple Janet and Graham Walton had six baby girls in four minutes. It was a world first and the Waltons have lived in the media spotlight ever since.

It took just 40 years for the Aral Sea in Central Asia to disappear. Latest satellite pictures reveal that 90% of the water has dried up, forming a new desert between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Fishing ports were suddenly in the middle of a desert, and the local economy came to a standstill. Marjan Baybol-Kizi in Kazakhstan remembers watching the sea vanish.
 
Federica Trivelli and her team of volunteers run a pig sanctuary in Italy.

(Photo: Marisa de Toledo, Aral Sea, pig)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Outlook

A Life Without Pain, Dry Sea, Pigs

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service