2024-12-09
41 分钟This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
To hear the latest news from Syria and the global perspective after the fall of the Assad regime, listen to the Global News Podcast and for in depth insights helping you to make sense of the news.
Listen to the Global Story.
Just search for the Global News Podcast and the Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Planning your next holiday?
Go the dinner to travel way tailor made and hassle free.
Just go smarter.
That's the key to Nata.
Go smarter.
There was a great deal of anxiety leading up to that night, and I do recall that as the night wore on, I would rise from bed and just peek out the window and see if there's something happening in the sky.
My twin brother and I were grow quiet and listen to see if we could detect some sound of something, some indication that things had begun.
Gerald Walker was 8 years old, and on that night, on New year's Eve of 1971, as he peered anxiously out of his bedroom window into the dark, he was convinced that the world was about to end.
Spoiler alert.
The world didn't end.
But Gerald's upbringing and the belief system which had led him to wholeheartedly think it would, had a profound impact on the course of his life.
From the BBC World Service, I'm Assia Fuchs and this is Lives Less Ordinary.
Gerald was raised on the south side of Chicago in the us.
He was one of six children and his parents were both blind, something he didn't fully understand as a child.
In the beginning, it was completely normal because we assumed all parents were blind, that everyone else's parents couldn't see either.
I mean, when you're raised with something you don't know, it's unusual until you meet other people whose situations are different.