The Debrief is joined by Miché Solomon, born Zephany Nurse, whose story has gripped South Africa for decades. In 1997, she was taken from Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town when she was just a newborn, and she grew up knowing nothing about her real identity. Seventeen years later, a chance meeting at a new school, where friends noticed how much she looked like a girl called Cassidy, led to a DNA test and the truth: she was the daughter of a family that had spent 17 years searching for her. Miché takes us through how she found out, what it was like to discover two families and two names, and why she chose to forgive the woman who took her.

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The Debrief is joined by shipwreck survivor Matt Lewis, author of Last Man Off, to relive one of the most harrowing survival stories imaginable. In June 1998, Matt was a 23-year-old marine biologist on his first assignment, aboard the fishing trawler Sudur Havid in the brutal waters off Antarctica, when a winter storm overwhelmed the boat and the pumps failed. He told us how the officers on board froze into inaction, and how he jumped into action to coordinate the evacuation and get the crew into the life rafts. Matt describes the nightmare that followed, adrift in a raft flooded with sub-zero seawater, and how 17 of the 38 crew did not make it home. It is a gripping, sobering account of disaster, leadership and sheer will to live, from the man who was, quite literally, the last man off.

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The Debrief is joined by David Abel, director of the documentary In The Whale, to tell one of the most extraordinary survival stories you will ever hear. In June 2021, Cape Cod lobster diver Michael Packard plunged into the waters off Provincetown on a routine dive, only to be caught inside the mouth of a humpback whale, trapped in total darkness for around 30 seconds, certain he was about to die, before the whale surfaced and spat him back out. David takes the team inside how it happened, how Packard survived, and why he questioned the story himself before every detail checked out. He also reveals the part most people never hear: what the sudden, dizzying wave of global fame did to a fiercely private man who just wanted to keep diving.

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