On the podium, season two is available now.

Like many people in this world, I had never seen an Olympic medal before.

Bringing you more remarkable stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes and their incredible journeys to the podium.

This is my dream and it came true that day.

Find out more at the end of this podcast.

Over 300 years, the Atlantic slave trade forcibly shipped 12.5 million people from Africa to the Americans.

Conditions on board ship were so harsh,

just under 2 million people died during the crossings.

On arrival, life for the enslaved millions was often brutal and short.

African men were worked to death and didn't live to fatherhood.

It was cheaper to actually purchase new enslaved people than it was to worry about the health of the ones that you had already. Greater insight into the ruthlessness of slavery is emerging, thanks to the efforts of a DNA ancestry company

to increase its appeal across a wider range of ethnic groups.

Their aim is to correct the bias in DNA databases, so customers get a fuller story of who they are.

Roughly about 80% of what we call genome-wide association studies have been conducted using data from people of European descent.

DNA databases are four to one skewed in favour of European DNA.

But diversity drives an unearthing genetic treasure.

Slavery scrubbed the family histories of generations.

Genetics is helping African Americans, for one,

piece together their stolen stories.

I had no idea.

I was so lost and confused.

It was like two different worlds. It really is. It's like living in a cloud of I'm African American and that's all I know to, oh my gosh. There was like, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of years worth of ancestry. It was eye-opening and definitely a shocker.

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