From a very early age, Jesse Bering has been asking questions of himself. Growing up amid AIDS hysteria in Reagan's America, Bering knew that he was attracted to other boys but was terrified into a guilty silence. In high school he took up wrestling in a bid to fight back sexual desire but found only deeper consciousness of his homosexuality. As an adult he has continued asking questions with frankness and with humour, handling sensitive topics like sex, evolution, religion, and morality. His books Perv and Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? Have elevated him to cult hero status. "If I had to put a label on myself," hey says, "it would be a sexual libertarian."

There are people with interesting life stories, and then there are people whose lives read like a screenplay. From being conscripted as a child solider in Sudan to finding a new home in suburban Australia as a refugee where he taught himself to read and to write. Deng Thiak Adut is today a lawyer representing those who, just like him, struggle to find a voice. He's even been at the centre of one of those most modern phenomena, a viral video sensation. Like millions of children who grow up within the geography of conflict his childhood was taken away. "I didn't understand what freedoms I had lost", he says. "I didn't understand how fearful I should have been."