Out-Pirating the Pirates

Max Hardberger

Pirates are demanding $20 million ransom for a ship they've seized off the coast of Somalia. They say they're prepared to fight to the death. Max Hardberger has direct experience of high seas piracy. His job is to take back ships that have been pirated, many of them worth millions of dollars, and return them to their rightful owners.

Max has worked all over the Caribbean and Latin America - sometimes employing voodoo priests to help him, and at other times using blow torches by moonlight to cut anchor chains. As he tells Dick Gordon, Max enjoys out-pirating the pirates - even when it means occasionally stepping over the legal line himself.

• Check out Max's website
• Visit the Vessel Extraction website
  
• Read more about Max's books: Deadweight and Freighter Captain

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Iraqi Health Now

Haider Alsaedy and Kathy Murphy - larger >>

Haider Alsaedy fled Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime. He lived in refugee camps in Saudi Arabia before making his way to the US. Haider went back to Iraq in 2006 and was appalled by what he saw: hospitals with no supplies, patients reusing needles, people dying needlessly.

Haider tells Dick Gordon how he and an American friend, Kathy Murphy, created an organization called Iraqi Health Now, which helps provide medical supplies to Iraqi hospitals.

• Read articles about Iraqi Health Now here and here
  
• See photos from the hospitals in Iraq
• Check out the Iraqi Health Now website

Music heard in this story: "Leila au pays du carrousel, var" performed by Anouar Brahem for the album "Le pas du chat noir"

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You're Not Nixon!

George Akers - larger >>

At a time when many people are sorting out which candidate they identify with, George Akers remembers being regularly identified as a candidate by other people: he bears an uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon. The resemblance was usually the stuff of harmless jokes. But in 1970, George was on a picnic with his university students in a park near Camp David. On a whim, the group drove to the gate at Camp David, and to their astonishment were let in. George tells Dick about his encounter there with Marines, Secret Service men, and black helicopters.

• See a photo of George in front of a poster of Nixon
  

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Meeting Charisma

Carolyn Maki

Carolyn Maki has been following our series on the personal side of politics - those moments when you realize that politics can (or can't) make a difference. Carolyn remembers the day she came face-to-face with charisma in the political scene. It happened when she was a high school student. And the politician? Let's just say it was someone her dad was not fond of. Carolyn talks to Dick about meeting Hubert Humphrey.

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Teach a Man to Fish

Dean Williams

Dean Williams served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala over 20 years ago, introducing fish farming to villagers in a small mountain village. Dean left the country thinking that the project had failed. But on a recent trip back to the area, he learned that the fish farming technology he taught had spread to neighboring areas and - to his surprise- helped changed hundreds lives.

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Fighting Dogs

John Clark

When John Clark saw a woman being attacked by two pit bulls, he did what many of us would probably be too scared to do - he took on the dogs himself. John tells Dick why he jumped in and what the incident taught him.

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Tough Job - How to Drive Defensively

Anthony Ricci

Anthony Ricci discovered early on that cars could be used defensively. He now teaches bodyguards, Navy SEALS, and contractors headed to war zones how to protect themselves through driving techniques. He talks with Dick about how hard it is teaching people who sometimes think they already know it all.

• See photos of Anthony teaching class and in the field
• Check out Anthony's website

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A Vote for Sale

Brian Ward

Around the time of the 2000 election, Brian Ward thought that it might be funny to sell his vote on eBay as an act of political satire. So he set up an auction, and he went home for the evening. The next morning, a coworker pointed out that his auction was the main story on CNN.com, and then he got a call from the Federal Election Commission ... and then another, this one from the Attorney General's office.

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Peace or Freedom

James Loney - see him just after he was freed

Five British men are currently being held hostage in Iraq. Thousands of others have been kidnapped and held since the beginning of the war. James Loney was one of them.

James was captured in 2005. Yet he went to Iraq to carry out his belief in peace - he went to Baghdad as a member of the Christian Peacekeepers Team, intending to document human rights abuses. He'd been there just a short while when he was kidnapped by a group of men calling themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. James talks to host Dick Gordon about what it was like to be held hostage and the moral conflicts he had over the use of violence to gain his freedom.

• Learn more about the Christian Peacemaker Teams

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