The Night Mumbai Burned - Will Pike p3

Summary

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Podcast Summary: What I Survived

Episode: The Night Mumbai Burned – Will Pike, Part 3

Host: Jack Laurence
Date: May 26, 2026

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Overview

This episode continues Will Pike’s harrowing story of surviving the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. After barely escaping with his life, Will returns home to the UK where he must face the reality of catastrophic injuries — including a life-changing spinal injury that leaves him permanently paralyzed. The conversation moves through the immediate aftermath, the failures of institutional support, what it means to rebuild life after trauma, and Will's evolution as an advocate for accessibility and disability rights. The episode is direct, honest, often moving, and explores themes of grief, recovery, identity, and activism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Return to the UK and Immediate Aftermath

[01:55 – 05:54]

• Chaos and Bureaucratic Failures:
  After surviving the attack and being airlifted home, Will describes a frustrating and dehumanizing experience at a UK hospital:

  “There had been an administration mess up. They were even expecting me. And I'm sat in A and E for 10 hours waiting for a room.”
  (Will Pike, 04:15)

• Isolation and Lack of Institutional Support:
  Will comments on the sense of being overlooked as a victim of terrorism, with no official “debrief” or validation from authorities.

  “You feel as if you're part of something bigger, but then also feeling as if no one really cares, no one's really interested.”
  (Will Pike, 05:10)

• Legal and Financial Loopholes:
  Through his ordeal, Will learns that existing compensation schemes for crime victims in the UK exclude those injured abroad, which leaves survivors of overseas terror incidents without government support.

  “The border of the compensation scheme ended at the border of the country. Step outside it and you stepped outside the safety net.”
  (Narrator, 08:48)

2. Realizing the Extent of His Injury

[10:55 – 16:40]

• Delayed Truth and Medical Fragmentation:
  Will recounts how, despite extensive injuries, he was left unclear about the seriousness of his spinal injury due to a fractured, siloed approach in medical care:

  “My body had been siloed in a way... no one was talking to me about the implications of spinal injury.”
  (Will Pike, 11:26)

• The Moment of Realization:
  The reality sets in during a spinal unit consultation:

  “You’ve got incomplete... and you've got complete... your injury is complete. And... my world collapsed. It was just like hope just evaporating, like, because up until that point, I'd allowed myself to not really, really fully engage with it.”
  (Will Pike, 13:20)

• Processing Grief:
  Will likens his emotional response to bereavement:

  “It is grief. Grief for who you think you... you're no longer going... can be. It's overwhelming sadness and confusion because you have no idea what this means for your life.”
  (Will Pike, 14:36)

3. The Hospital Experience and New Camaraderie

[18:10 – 25:02]

• Peer Support:
  In the spinal unit, Will finds himself among three other young men with even higher-level injuries, providing a sense of perspective and camaraderie:

  “Already I'm getting this huge dose of perspective. Like, oh, my life is broken, my life's terrible. Oh, you think your life's bad? You've got just a flesh wound, brother.”
  (Will Pike, 18:46)

• The Story of David Holmes
  One of Will's roommates is David Holmes, Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double from Harry Potter, recently paralyzed in a stunt accident.

  “Seeing the way he dealt and managed and handled and took ownership of his spinal injury... maybe I should brave the day, you know, maybe I should not be wrapped up in self pity.”
  (Will Pike, 20:21)

• Reflection on 'Inspiration Porn':
  Will critiques how society often uses stories of disability for superficial inspiration, but notes the complex reality of motivating each other as peers:

  “I don't want to be that type of perspective, but when you're in a spinal unit... you are comparing yourself to them. You have to.”
  (Will Pike, 23:09)

4. Struggles with Reintegration and Independence

[28:10 – 31:15]

• Inaccessible Society:
  Will underscores how little of the world is truly accessible, causing profound challenges when attempting to resume "normal" life:

  “How many homes actually accessible? Very few. Very few people experience spinal injury and go home straight away to a suitable environment.”
  (Will Pike, 28:36)

• Identity and Self-Responsibility:
  Will makes an effort to avoid being pitied or treated differently, affirming the importance of truly coping:

  “In order to make this as easy as possible for me... the only way that wasn't going to happen was if I put on a brave face... but the only way to do that authentically was to actually cope.”
  (Will Pike, 29:58)

5. Embracing Disability Identity and Advocacy

[31:15 – 35:53]

• Finding a New Community:
  Will discusses how belonging to the "disability club" was both eye-opening and ultimately empowering:

  “To be a part of that is incredible because disability affects... I think the stats globally are like 1.6 billion, UK it's like 16 million.”
  (Will Pike, 31:17)

• Formation of the Disability Task Force:
  As an outgrowth of his advocacy and realizing the limits of his own singular experience, Will cultivates a more collective approach:

  “I call it the Disability Task Force ... there's like 14 of us... one of the business scenarios is like, going in and doing, like a lived experience audit... it’s important.”
  (Will Pike, 34:10)

• Activism and Burnout:
  Will acknowledges the struggle of sustaining advocacy but stresses the importance of contributing while able and passing the baton:

  “I think it does weigh you down. All activists... suffer from fatigue and burnout. While you have the energy... run with it; the moment you feel yourself fade, you know, you pass the baton on.”
  (Will Pike, 36:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On feeling overlooked as a victim:
  “You're like, why not? Where's the debrief? Like, is... is my testimony not of value?”
  (Will Pike, 05:20)

• On systemic exclusion:
  “The border of the compensation scheme ended at the border of the country. Step outside it and you stepped outside the safety net.”
  (Narrator, 08:48)

• On learning about his ‘complete’ injury:
  “My world collapsed. It was just like hope just evaporating.”
  (Will Pike, 13:42)

• On disability identity:
  “As a white male, middle class man, you... have no minority culture because we are the culture... But now, as a disabled man, I belong to a different club. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting.”
  (Will Pike, 25:02)

• On activism:
  “I think the spinal injury, though desperately tragic, was an opportunity to represent myself... and also represent a group of people who are still marginalized, still second class citizens.”
  (Will Pike, 31:15)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment Description | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 01:55 | Return to UK, initial hospital chaos | | 05:03 | Realization he won’t walk again; legal injustice | | 10:55 | Recovery, denial, and diagnostic silos | | 13:20 | The consultation: learning about complete spinal injury| | 18:40 | Spinal unit dynamics; meeting David Holmes | | 20:46 | David Holmes’ backstory and perspective | | 25:02 | Early camaraderie, new “club” | | 28:35 | Challenges in rejoining society | | 31:15 | Embracing and representing the disability community | | 34:00 | The creation of the Disability Task Force |

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Tone and Language

Throughout the episode, Will is candid, reflective, and remarkably wry despite the gravity of his circumstances. His recounting is vivid, with moments of wit, depth, and raw honesty. The host supports the narrative with empathy and prompts that encourage open exploration of Will’s experience, never shying away from the hard truths but always allowing Will’s strength and insight to come forward.

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Closing Reflection

This episode is a profound testimony to the resilience required not only to survive a singular act of terror but to survive — and grow — through the years of aftermath. Will’s perspective on physical and psychological injury, systemic gaps, and what it takes to convert trauma into purpose is both specific to his ordeal and universally resonant for anyone facing abrupt, life-altering change.

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Transcript

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[Narrator]

We often talk about life changing moments. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're of our own making. Many times they're not. Will pike had just returned home from Mumbai, a city that had unwillingly played host to a violent and deadly terrorist attack lasting four days, leaving 175 people dead and more than 300 injured. Will and his partner had managed to survive. However, Will had only just barely done so. In an attempt to escape both the fire consuming one of the country's most famous and exclusive hotels and and the terrorists still occupying it, Will and his partner had fashioned a rope from bed sheets and attempted to climb down the outside of the building. He fell 50ft, roughly the equivalent of five stories. Surgeons in Mumbai had managed to piece him back together. When he hit the ground, he'd shattered his left wrist, smashed his right elbow, fractured his pelvis and punctured a lung. Those injuries were Serious. Undeniably so. Life altering. Well, on their own, perhaps not permanently. But it was the way that he landed that would create the injury that truly changed everything. An injury that would mean his entire way of life from that day forward would look nothing like the one he'd left behind in that hotel in Mumbai. And up until this point, he was unaware of exactly what it was that he was facing.

[Will Pike (singing or reflective moment)]

A surprise. But I can sleep.

[Narrator]

Chapter 7. Your injury is complete.

[Will Pike]

There was a weird lesson in this sort of opening. Few days or weeks because I got repatriated. I survived the plane journey, flew over London, shed a tear from my home city. Landing on the tarmac actually felt truly safe for the first time. See my brother get into an ambulance, taken to the hospital. Like lovely conversations with all the people around and kind of getting me back down safely. All the ambulance people, all the kind of police liaison officers, all that lot get to the hospital. There had been an administration mess up. They were even expecting me. And I'm sat in A and E for 10 hours waiting for a room.

[Narrator]

At this point, everyone around Will is getting frustrated and ultimately just utterly exhausted. Will, however, it seems, although the one in the bed and the one who almost died is doing his best to maintain a happy and witty exterior, trying to manage the situation, a situation that is quickly revealing itself as one not set up to help people like him, people who are victims of catastrophic events overseas. He sends his father home, who's at this point on the brink. And to top it all off, his brother overhears two doctors discussing Will's future.

[Will Pike]

My brother overheard doctors saying how I'm never going to walk again. I didn't even know that at this point, but he's overhearing shit in the hallway. It was an absolute shit show and kind of indicative of certain themes with regards to being a victor of terrorism. Feeling as if you're part of something bigger, but then also feeling as if no one really cares, no one's really interested. You're like, why not? Where's the debrief? Like, is. Is my testimony not of value? And you kind of go, no, I guess it isn't really, because what do I know? And what. What does my testimony add to their understanding of the global terrorist attack? Nothing, really. But from a victim standpoint, being able to tell your story to officials is cathartic.

[Interviewer or Host]

Yeah, absolutely. Getting it off your chest and someone actually is sitting there going, we care. Tell us what happened.

[Will Pike]

It's closure. That it kind of grounds it in something official. Do you know what I mean? Something Solid. But that never happened. I joked for days about how I was going to meet Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister. It never happened. And it became indicative of something which was the legal battle we, we then went on with regards to the fact that there was no compensation available, there was no financial. I, I joked about getting some money in hospital. Well, at least I. At least I'm part of. At least I'll get some cash. And it's like, no, no, you won't. Because this is the UK and we don't do things like that. There's an emergency relief fund by the British Red cross that's like 10 grand. Oh, and my. My workplace and advertising industry did a fundraiser and kind of raised 30 grand. That was like, wow, amazing. And you just realize how quickly money like that just goes when you're spending it on medical equipment, on just anything, really. But the real loophole was around this Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme that compensates victims of terrorism in the uk. So if you're a foreign national and you come to the UK and you caught up in a terror attack, and depending on the level of injury, you can receive certain compensation. But because I was in another country and India that didn't have a scheme, I was eligible for nothing.

[Narrator]

In the United Kingdom in 2008, the criminal injuries Compensation Scheme existed to support victims of violent crime. If you were attacked on a street in London or caught up in a bombing somewhere around the country, the state recognized your suffering and provided financial support to help you rebuild your life. The system was far from perfect, but it existed. It acknowledged that those caught up in these violent incidents that were not of their doing needed help. However, that was unless that violence had happened abroad. Until the law was changed, British citizens caught up in terrorism overseas received little or no financial support upon their return to the uk. The logic, well, if you could call it that, was simple and quite brutal. The scheme covered crimes that happened on British soil. What happened to you in Mumbai, maybe Bali, Istanbul, that was not the government's problem. You chose to travel. You're on your own. It didn't matter that you were a British citizen. It did not matter that the attack had been carried out by an internationally designated terrorist organization. It did not matter that you had come home in a wheelchair with a broken body, facing a lifetime of medical costs, care needs and lost earnings. The border of the compensation scheme ended at the border of the country. Step outside it and you stepped outside the safety net. Will pike had survived a terrorist attack. He had fallen five stories, he'd been pieced back together by surgeons in Mumbai, repatriated home just. And was now facing the rest of his life in a wheelchair at 28 years old, with no government assistance, no financial support, and no legal framework that recognized what had happened to him as something the state or country had any responsibility to administer address. He was, in the eyes of the law, simply unlucky.

[Will Pike]

I wasn't the first person to sort of feel this sting. It transpired that there were people who had been in terrorist attacks in Barley Shamil Shake who had lost family members and had been injured and they'd been campaigning for years to sort of plug this kind of loophole, this negative loophole. And I came along as a white male, middle class, fundamentally wheelchair using guy, with my dad as my lobbyist and we changed the law. This, by the way, this is not, I mean that's like, that's a few years on, but, but, but this, but this became apparent very early in, in hospital, in the first hospital I was with the general ward that we weren't going to be on the receiving end of a bunch of financial aid, which was kind of scary because I never, I, I'm, I'm very fortunate. Like, I come from a background where my dad's always provided for us. We've never been super rich, but he's always done all right. And so I knew that I wasn't going to be destitute and I wasn't going to be, you know, kind of completely out on the street and whatnot. People were going to be able to rally around, but the long term implications were just up in the air entirely.

[Narrator]

So again, at this stage, back in the uk, in hospital recovering, Will still really wasn't fully aware of the extent of his injury. He knew of course, that he was in bad shape, but he kind of always expected he would recover. Even if it took some time, he would be back to his old self at some point. That was until he was told in no uncertain terms that wasn't going to happen.

[Will Pike]

I sort of lived in a bubble of ignorance around that for two months from the point of injury, from the terrorist attack date to when I ended up at spinal injury unit at Stanmore. I basically was in a general hospital which was looking at repairing my elbow, my wrist, my pelvis, despite it being stabilized. They weren't worried about that, but no one was talking to me about the implications of spinal injury. My body had been siloed in a way. You know, you got the arm guy, the pelvis guy, the wrist guy, but there wasn't really a spine guy. Because that had been taken care of in India. So they're like, no one's really talking to me about this. I'm getting catheterized. I'm, you know, being turned at night to prevent pressure sores. But I don't know why. I know I'm in a lot of pain. I know I can't move stuff. I have a little bit of movement in my right leg, which is sort of, I think, giving me hope that this will be something that I'll move on from. But I just didn't know. And it was only when I got to the spinal unit after my arms have been stabilized and the operations had been good enough to get those repairs underway that they transferred me. And I eventually have a consultation with the spinal consultant there with my partner and my dad. And we're in a room and they've got the X rays out. We're looking at the spinal cord. She's showing me how it's compressed. It's not severed, it's compressed. And at that point, I'm still kind of quite upbeat. I'm like, okay, right. So information's getting through there and I've got the movement here. And so. Okay. She's like, there are two ways of classing, classifying spinal injury. You've got incomplete, where over time, neurological and motor function can return. And you've got complete, where essentially it's a closed circuit and that's it. There's going to be no healing, essentially no recovery, and your injury is complete. And was like, my world collapsed. It was just like tamism just drained from my body. It was like hope just evaporating, like, because up until that point, I'd allowed myself to not really, really fully engage with it. Like, I'm just going to kind of keep it here. I'm going to, you know, this will be fine. And then to be told that actually, yeah, you're not. You're not going to make a recovery from this. And it was. It was. It was emotional grounds. It was two months from point of injury, but it was ground zero in terms of my emotional journey. And I kind of cut the consultation short. And I just went outside and I just started crying. And I kind of measured my progress in kind of how often I wept. You know what I mean?

[Interviewer or Host]

Yeah.

[Will Pike]

Like, because it's just. It is grief. Grief for who you think you. You're no longer going. Can be. It's just overwhelming sadness and confusion because you have no idea what. What this means for your life. It's not. Not just. It's not just walking, you know, bladder function, bowel function, sexual function, image, just everything. Existential dismemberment. Like, I was, I was lost.

[Interviewer or Host]

Yeah. I mean, I mean, it really resonates like when you talk about you. You measured how you were coping with how often you. You cried. And, and that, and now I, I can relate to that in terms of grief because I lost my father a couple years ago. And, you know, and, and it was exactly that. It was sort of like crying uncontrollably, really, like on and off for weeks. And then that just slowly reduces as you sort of get further away from it. And, and, you know, obviously you come

[Narrator]

to terms with what, what's happened.

[Interviewer or Host]

So obviously it generally is grief that you were, you were suffering.

[Narrator]

It was, it was a genuine grief.

[Will Pike]

Yeah. And it's exactly that. Like, those. Pang is that kind of like you're just doing what you're doing and then hitchhiker, like, and then it's heartbreak. And, you know, you, you just deal with it any way you.

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[Narrator]

Chapter 8. This is how you don't kill yourself. So Will was facing a future that he didn't recognise, a life he wasn't prepared for. And it was taking its toll. However, he says he was lucky because of the others who surrounded him on a daily basis. Not just, of course, the doctors and nurses, his family and friends, but in fact, those sharing the ward with him, those facing their own life changing injuries within that unit.

[Will Pike]

Like, I was so lucky as well. We're in a bay of four. The spinal unit only probably had about 26 patients on it, but we're in a bay of four and I'm with three other young guys, all younger than me, with higher up spinal injuries. So they're all tetraplegic, I'm lower level paraplegic. So already I'm getting this huge dose of perspective. Like, oh, my life is, my life is broken, my life's terrible. Oh, you think your life's bad? You've got just a flesh wound, brother. And you're like, okay, okay, so I'm taking pelters because I'm only paraplegic. Are you joking? Like, what? And it's humbling, like, because the guy opposite me, and I've spoken about him and I will continue to speak about him like he was, he was Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double in the Harry Potter films. His whole life was governed by his physical prowess. Like his whole future was cemented in the fact that he was a human rubber ball. He could have been a professional gymnast, but he liked the stunt life too much. And his, his career has only just started. I mean, like these stunt guys, man, they have probably one of the best lives in the movie industry. Like, these guys are the cool cats, they're the fun kids. If you want to go and have fun on a movie set, go and hang around with stunt crew. And to see a guy whose whole life and future had been around his physicality. Like, my future wasn't based around my physicality. Like, like it was part of who I am, but it wasn't entrenched like, in who I am. Seeing him, seeing the way he dealt and managed and handled and took ownership of his final injury, watching how he dealt with rehab and occupational therapy, how he transferred out of bed in the morning with limited use of his shoulders, and you're like, okay, maybe I can, maybe I should brave the day, you know, maybe I should not be wrapped up in self pity.

[Narrator]

The man Will is talking about is David Holmes. He'd grown up in Lyonsea in Essex, a Daredevil of a child, a competitive gymnast from the age of five. The kind of kid whose mother signed him up for the local gymnastics club after she caught him jumping out of his bedroom window onto the trampoline in the garden. That is the origin story of David Holmes. His gymnastics coach was also a professional stunt performer. And when a production company came looking for a body double for a film, his coach put his name forward. That first job on the 1998 science fiction film Lost in Space. It launched his career as a stuntman at just 14 years of age. A few years later, a new film was being made, the story of a wizard, a boy wizard. The production needed to know how they were going to film Quidditch. Holmes was asked to do a broomstick test for director Chris Columbus, rigged to the back of a truck, sitting on a broom towed down a Runway. Columbus liked what he saw. When Daniel Radcliffe was cast as Harry Potter, David Holmes was hired as his stunt double. He would go on to perform in the first six films of the most successful fantasy franchise in cinema history. One day flying Harry's Nimbus 2000 broomstick, the next saving Hermione from a troll or battling Voldemort. He described it simply as the best job in the world. Over 10 years, he and Daniel Radcliffe would form a close and lasting friendship. Two young men whose lives had become inextricably linked by one of the most beloved stories ever told. In January of 2009, while rehearsing a stunt sequence for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Holmes was hurled into a wall and broke his neck. It would leave him permanently paralyzed from the chest down. He was 28 years old.

[Will Pike]

And I think that there's an element like. Disability often gets referred to as something like inspiration porn, you know, where people are like, oh, my God, my neighbor across the street is so inspiring. He's got cerebral palsy, and he just inspires me to go to the gym every day. Oh, my God. If he can do it, oh, my God. What's stopping me?

[Narrator]

What's your excuse?

[Interviewer or Host]

That stuff?

[Will Pike]

Yeah, that's. That's the wrong perspective. That's. That's kind of. I don't want to be that type of perspective, but when you're in a spinal unit and you are surrounded by impairments for the first time, and you're looking at everyone else, you are comparing yourself to them. You're looking at their recovery or their. Their rehab journey, and it's in. It's impossible not to see what other people are doing. You have to. But you have to understand, every spinal injury is unique because we are all unique. Like, have the same level of injury, it might not affect you the same way. You might have a complete injury and incomplete, whatever. So. But there is perspective to be taken.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Will Pike]

When you were in there. And it can be humbling and, and it can be inspiring as, and it can be motivating. And we all helped each other, like, because Dave told me recently, actually, which was really interesting, he flipped the table. He was like, I knew the risks. You were on holiday. Like, you were involved in something that had nothing to do with you. And your life was shattered and your spine was smashed. And so I take a lot from your story and the way you've managed it and the humility and that whatever it is that you do, how you approach your injury, like, I've fed off you and I'm, oh, so we fed off each other. That's good. That's good.

[Narrator]

Will is now trying to learn essentially a new life, his new life, surrounded by those all doing the same, as he puts it, his new club.

[Will Pike]

This was early doors camaraderie. This was early doors solidarity, fraternity. That type of sense of belonging to something bigger than myself. That again, going back to these intersectionalities, as a white male, middle class man, you don't, you don't have. You don't have a subset, you don't have no minority culture because we are the culture, we are the de facto. But now, as a disabled man, I belong to a different club. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. And without realizing, we're there propping each other up. And that's just early doors. That's even before the term disability has been banded about. At this point, we're just medicalized, we're spinally injured. And you're coming to terms with those things and the mechanics involved to enable you to preserve your life. And, you know, so much of it is, this is how you don't kill yourself. You know, this is how you don't get a precious. Or this is how you don't get uti. This is how you stop your bowels from impacting. This is blah, blah, blah. And you're like, right, okay, I need to learn how to live again. And it breaks you down. It's infantilizing, it's humiliating. You, the bed, you piss yourself, you know, you can't get an erection. You can't feel. You can't get an erection. You can't. You're like, wait, what? I'm 28 years old, I'm Priming my life. I'm a child, I'm a baby. I'm worse than a baby. A baby's got a future. Like I'm visualizing the children I don't have and the children that I'm no longer going to be able to teach how to swim or ride a bike or play football with. And it's like breaking me down again. And your mind plays all these tricks on you and you're just coping, just coping. And unfortunately for me, my rehab has massively slowed down because the arm injuries. I couldn't do weight bearing. So I was in hospital for an exceptionally long amount of time. I was in the spinal unit for another six months.

[Interviewer or Host]

Wow.

[Will Pike]

And that's crazy again, because I'd never spent a night in a hospital. I think my wrist once as a teenager never really done anything like this. And you do become institutionalized in the sense that the hospital is a safety net. When you're coming to terms with spinal injury and being in a wheelchair for the first time and catheterizing and managing a bowels and using a shower, chair and transfers and this stuff, it's in the context of an environment that. Designed to support you.

[Interviewer or Host]

Yeah. There's always someone there to help you if you need it.

[Will Pike]

Nurses, HCAs, all these people. There becomes a point where you're like, I've got to get out of here. I need to go, I need to go, I need to do, I need to get back to life. And eventually they, they, they deemed my, you know, my rehab was a point where I could go home.

[Narrator]

The next lesson Will would learn is just how hard it is for people with spinal injuries returning into society after hospital into a world that really is just not equipped or prepared for those now facing big enough challenges as it is. And on top of that, what once were things that never had to be considered become massive obstacles for day to day life.

[Will Pike]

Then you, then you start encountering on a whole new world of issues because there's a huge bottleneck with spinal injury discharge, which is where do people go? How many homes actually accessible? Very few. Very few people experience spinal injury and go home straight away to a suitable environment. The flat that we were living in at the time was rented in a basement flat in Camden. Completely inaccessible. My job in a production company in a terraced house two floors up in a Soho building, completely inaccessible. I lost my job in a hospital bed. We had to move while I'm in a hospital bed. And I, when I say I lost my job, I lost it the best way possible. Like we was. These were open conversations about supporting me in the best way. But fundamentally I did. I lost my job because it wasn't accessible. We moved flat. We were, we were lucky. My partner had enough in the bank to be able to get a private rental that was manageable. It wasn't perfect, the bath wasn't accessible but we made it work. And you know, that first year was just oh good. Good to re socialize, good to get back with friends, drinking, playing video games, chilling out.

[Narrator]

Did you ever feel like people were treating you differently?

[Interviewer or Host]

Like you know, did you come across people would worrying about saying the wrong thing or.

[Will Pike]

No. It's funny because at that point like everyone's just. There was a lot of positive vibe and I realized I had a responsibility within all this to myself, which was that in order to make this as easy as possible for me, I didn't want people pandering over me. Yeah, I didn't want worry, I didn't want pity, I didn't want overbearing attention. The only way that wasn't going to happen was if, if I put on type of brave face that I'm, I'm managing this, I'm coping but the only way to do that authentically was to actually cope.

[Interviewer or Host]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

Actually manage, not pretend to be.

[Will Pike]

You can't.

[Narrator]

Chapter nine these are my brothers. The change in life that Will has experienced happens to literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. People who wake up one day and their life is altered completely. Imagine yourself in that situation. It's hard to think how you would respond, how you'd cope. Will has chosen to see it as an opportunity, an opportunity to help create change.

[Will Pike]

I think the spinal injury, though desperately tragic, was an opportunity to represent myself in a way that enables me to feel proud and also represent a group of people who are still marginalized, still second class citizens. Like I live in North London, I live in an affluent area and every week, every month a new shop opens up with the same stepped entry and I'm still barred from entering into that premises because of shoddy, outdated design. You know what I mean? So to be a part of that is incredible because disability affects. It's like 20, 24 of the population. I think the stats globally are like 1.6 billion, UK it's like 16 million. Of course that is not all spinal injury, like that's visual impairment, being deaf, being born with cerebral palsy, being having down syndrome. But these are all conditions that meet disability framework. My lived experience is not the same as theirs, but I remember Going to the Arsenal after I'd been injured. And I remember getting into the disability section, I sat there and looking around and being like, oh, oh, okay. This is who I am with now. Because my framework for disability had been spinal injury. You sit in a disability section and it's like, it's everyone. Yeah, it's like complex disabilities, real complex disabilities, cognitive impairments. But it was a real eye opener for me to be there and go, wow, I'm part of this now. When the people in the sort of the non disability section look back with their curious eyes at the crip section, it took me time to kind of feel like I belong there. And it took me time to kind of not feel a bit like not. I don't know what the word is, shy or just. Yeah, it just didn't belong. And. But now I'm like, these are my brothers. Yeah, like all of them.

[Narrator]

Will goes around doing a lot of talks about his situation and about what he is now extremely passionate about in the disability space. And as part of that, he has created what has been affectionately called the Disability Avengers, or as he calls it officially, the Disability Task Force.

[Will Pike]

Quite organically, through making a film myself, to doing some more media around disability access. I then was asked by one client, you know, whether or not because I talk about lived experience and how my lived experience means that I can't talk authentically about what it's like to be blind. I can encourage and I can open people's eyes to the conversation, but I don't know. I'm disabled. But it's a singular strip of disability. It's not the whole picture. And he was like, well, what about if you had like a Disability Avengers team that could provide insights across the breadth of disability? And I was like, huh, quite a cool idea. And that was a few years ago now. And just off the basis of that, I've grown organically. This. This task, I call it the Disability Task Force, and there's like 14 of us, and it's still fairly early doors. But, you know, one of the business scenarios is like, going in and doing, like a lived experience audit. Because people put systems in place for disability, they don't actually know how they work. Unless you actually speak disabled person, you don't know whether the. The toilet you've got is accessible, whether the, you know, the wayfinding kind of signs or the visual kind of cues you've got are kind of going to be working for blind people or whatever it is to get disabled people to actually come along and test your scenarios. And systems is kind of is, I think, quite important. So I've grown the task force and we are, we're open for work, man, we're open for business. Like, we want to go in there, we want to do stuff, we want to change the world.

[Interviewer or Host]

You said it before that you're, you're very proud of yourself. And I think you should be proud of yourself because, yeah, I mean, I think not, not just the whole overcoming what had happened to you, but I think the work that you're doing now is just so incredibly important.

[Narrator]

You didn't have to do that.

[Interviewer or Host]

You've obviously seen a major issue and you've seen that because you've been forced to see it. But nonetheless, you, you're seeing it and, and, and you're wanting to do something about it. Is there a difference between someone who sees an issue and someone who actually says, no, I think we need, this needs to change. So.

[Will Pike]

Absolutely. And I, and I think it's attritional. I think there is like, I think it does weigh you down. I think that all activists, people who will fight for a cause, suffer from fatigue and burnout. And it's important that while you have the energy and the faculties and the gumption to run with it, but the moment you feel yourself fade, you know, you pass the baton on, but you do what you can.

[Interviewer or Host]

Well, I very much appreciate you going through your story with me and some good has to come out of these awful situations and you're certainly making the most of it. So I, I applaud you for that, sir.

[Will Pike]

Thank you. Thank you very much. No, I take that. I think you're right. I think there is the dichotomy of, of, of, of evil, which is that some good does come from things that are bad. It's, it's like, it's like war art. You know, beauty can come from absolute tragedy. So, no, thank you. I really appreciate that. And yeah, it's been, it's been a privilege to be part of this.

[Narrator]

Will pike grew up in a stable home, good school, good prospects, a future that was open. Everything that happened to him, every life altering world collapsing thing, came from outside. It came without warning, without invitation, without any action on his part that could been, have prevented it. And yet his life has changed beyond recognition. But what happens when the adversity does not come from the outside? What happens when it does not arrive in the form of a terrorist attack or a burning building you're trying to escape, when instead it's already there, woven into the fabric of the home? You live in.

[Holly Dean Johns]

It definitely felt very normal to me until I was probably maybe 10, 11 years old. That's when I realised sort of what was going on.

[Narrator]

Australian born Holly Dean Johns has lived a life unlike many you'll ever hear. Taking bookings for her parents, escort business at the age of just 11, I

[Holly Dean Johns]

just said to Mum, look, I'll take bookings. The girls want to work, just pay me $10 a booking.

[Narrator]

And trying heroin for the very first time at the age of just 15.

[Holly Dean Johns]

That night was the beginning of the end for me. I didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what it was.

[Narrator]

One moment that would send her life on a trajectory toward an existence she could never have imagined. A life altering sentence behind bars in a foreign country, wondering if she would ever make it home.

[Holly Dean Johns]

As we were walking to the car, I made out I was going to run to see what they'd do. They pulled their guns and they said

[Narrator]

we will shoot you next time on what I Survived.

[Will Pike (singing or reflective moment)]

Moon in the sky I'm looking at the moon in the sky this shouldn't come as a surprise but I can't sleep War in my mind I'm trying to fight a war in my mind I don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't me where are you now? When my fears are worse than ever? When the night goes on forever When I'm losing track of time? Where are you now When I need you more than ever? When I ain't got together Let me know just where you have where are you?

[Jack Myers]

What makes a leader worth following?

[Tim Spengler]

What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is

[Jack Myers]

it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own, what would that take?

[Tim Spengler]

What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together?

[Jack Myers]

These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler.

[Tim Spengler]

Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube.

[Jack Myers]

We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best and we'll try to figure this out together.

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[Acast Host]

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[Jack Myers]

What makes a leader worth following?

[Tim Spengler]

What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is

[Jack Myers]

it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own, what would that take?

[Tim Spengler]

What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together?

[Jack Myers]

These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler.

[Tim Spengler]

Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube.

[Jack Myers]

We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together.

[Acast Host]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.