2024-06-10
31 分钟Beth Rodden escaped her kidnappers, and pushed her body to its limit, following the climber code of whatever hurts makes you stronger. She married her boyfriend Tommy Caldwell, who had saved them by pushing their captor off a cliff in the Kyrgyz mountains. They became the first couple to free climb the Nose in Yosemite National Park. To the world she was a record-breaking athlete, but inside she was crumbling, haunted by that moment in the mountains. It would take her 15 years to face it head on, and in doing so she redefined what it meant to be a climber. Beth's book A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber's Story is out now. Clips are from NPR and the Associated Press. Presenter: Emily Webb Producer: Louise Morris Get in touch: liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784
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Three years after the Taliban swept to power, as many as 8 out of 10 female journalists in Afghanistan are no longer in their jobs.
But some have resisted.
What is the life of female journalists?
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What would happen if something went wrong?
What would happen if Tommy didn't pull hard enough?
How would Tommy know how hard to pull?
What would happen if sue saw him coming and shot him?
Beth Rodden was stranded in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.
Her boyfriend Tommy, had just asked whether he should push one of their captors off a cliff so they could escape.
It was meant to have been the climbing expedition of a lifetime, but it had gone horribly wrong.
Beth, Tommy and two other professional climbers had been taken hostage by Islamist militants and forced to walk for miles on end, not knowing if they'd live or die.
But after a few days, they were left with just one of the kidnappers, a man they knew as Sue.
This is Lives Less Ordinary with me, Emily Webb, a podcast from the BBC World Service, where people open up about their extreme, extraordinary experiences.
Kill or be killed.
That question would have repercussions that would take Beth years to come to terms with.
But in that moment, survival was all they could think about.