On the night of April 12, 2011, a 24-year-old national volleyball player lay bleeding on a railway track between Lucknow and Delhi. She had been thrown from a moving train by robbers after refusing to hand over her gold chain. She had fallen onto the tracks. Seconds later, a train coming from the opposite direction…
In 1978, a 15-year-old boy at Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina, walked up to a notice board after basketball tryouts and scanned the list for his name. It wasn’t there. What stung even more: the name of his close friend — fellow sophomore Leroy Smith, 6’7″ — was on the varsity list. Smith…
What would you do if the thing you loved most was being taken away — not because of lack of talent, but because of something happening inside your own body that you couldn’t control? At 11 years old, Lionel Messi sat in a doctor’s office in Rosario, Argentina, and received a diagnosis that could have…
Picture this: it’s 1981. You’re in San Francisco. You have no money, no apartment, and a two-year-old son. Every night, you have to figure out where the two of you are going to sleep — a church shelter, a subway station, a park bench, or sometimes a locked public bathroom at the train station where…
At 16, Eric Thomas had a violent argument with his family and walked out the door. He didn’t go to a friend’s house. He didn’t have a plan. He ended up on the streets of Detroit — sleeping in abandoned buildings, scavenging for food, with no school, no income, and no clear future. He stayed…
What do you do when a publisher tells you — in writing — that no one will read your book because of where you’re from? Most people would stop. File it away as proof that the world wasn’t ready for them. Go back to something safer. Payal Nanjiani sent the manuscript to the next publisher…
In 1989, a 19-year-old woman stood at the edge of a 200-foot deep well in rural Telangana, India. She was a farm labourer. She hadn’t eaten in a day. She was earning ₹5 — less than ten cents — for a full day’s work bent over in the paddy fields, leeches on her feet, her…
Imagine being told your greatest strength is actually your biggest problem. That’s exactly what happened to Amitabh Bachchan. The deep, resonant baritone that would one day make entire cinema halls go silent — that would narrate films, anchor quiz shows watched by hundreds of millions, and become one of the most recognised voices on the…
What does it cost to become the greatest entertainer the world has ever seen? For Michael Jackson, the answer is this: no Christmas. No birthdays. No childhood. Rehearsals from the age of five, in a two-bedroom house in one of the poorest cities in America, with a father whose idea of encouragement was fear. And…
What would you do if you had $106 in your bank account, no home, no car, and someone offered you $350,000 to walk away from your dream? Most people would take the money. Stallone didn’t. And that single decision is the reason you know his name. Born Fighting Before he ever stepped in front of…