Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service about the Vietnam War and the invention of the hugely popular mobile phone game, Snake. Don Anderson, a former BBC TV reporter during the final days of Vietnam, discusses the atmosphere in Saigon as the North Vietnamese forces closed in. We also hear about the network of tunnels in the south of the country which Viet Cong guerrillas built during the fighting. Finally, the former president of the...
May 03, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is World War Two military historian and archivist Elisabeth Shipton. We start by concentrating on two events from the last year of the Second World War. Exercise Tiger took place in April 1944 in preparation for the D-Day landings of Allied forces in Normandy. But during that rehearsal a German fleet attacked and about 749 US servicemen died. We hear remarkable archive testimony from ...
Apr 26, 2025•52 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. It’s 50 years since soldiers of the communist Khmer Rouge party stormed into the capital, Phnom Penh. It was the start of a four year reign of terror which resulted in up to two million people being killed. We hear two stories from people affected by the regime. Our guest is journalist and author, Elizabeth Becker. She is one of the foremost authorities on the history of Cambodia, and one of th...
Apr 19, 2025•51 min
8th May 1945 was a day of rejoicing in Britain, the US and many other countries: Germany had surrendered, and World War II was over, at least in Europe. Yet it was not a day of celebration for everyone: for the vanquished Germans, it marked the end of bombings and of Nazi rule. But it was also a time of deprivation and chaos, fear and soul-searching. Millions of ethnic Germans had fled their homes to escape the approaching Red Army. In this documentary, Lore Wolfson Windemuth, whose own father g...
Apr 14, 2025•50 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Dr Katrin Paehler, Professor of modern European history at Illinois State University. First, a journalist describes how he accompanied Hitler through the embers of the Reichstag fire in 1933. Then, the harrowing recollections of a doctor who saved survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Next, a woman describes how she was caught between her job and her clan during the UN's dis...
Apr 12, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We hear from the first woman to lead DC Comics - the home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Jenette Kahn began turning the company around in the 1970s. Our expert is Dr Mel Gibson, associate professor at Northumbria University. She has carried out extensive research into comics and graphic novels. Next, Minda Dentler, the first female wheelchair athlete to complete the super-endurance Ironma...
Apr 04, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We hear about the historic moment in Nigerian politics when Goodluck Jonathan made a phone call to General Buhari marking the peaceful handover of power in 2015. Our expert is historian and creator of the Untold Stories podcast, Adesuwa Giwa-Osagie, who takes us through Nigeria's political history in the leadup to the phone call that changed Nigeria. We find out about Harold Riley who was the on...
Mar 29, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. This week we’re looking at the history of space travel, including the 60th anniversary of the first ever space-walk by Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Also, the speech that would have been given if the Apollo 11 astronauts didn’t make their way back from the moon; the founding of the European Space Agency and how Brazil came back from tragedy to launch their fist successful rocket. The Sky at N...
Mar 22, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We find out about the landmark protest in 1990 when wheelchair users crawled up the steps of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC, campaigning for disability rights. Our expert is Dr Maria Orchard, law lecturer at the University of Leeds, who has carried out research into disability and inclusion. We hear about the 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunisia's capital, in which 22 tourists we...
Mar 15, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We find out how Sylvan Goldman’s invention of the shopping trolley in 1930s America turned him into a multi-millionaire. Our expert is Rachel Bowlby, Professor of Comparative Literature at University College London, who is also the author of two books on the history of shopping. We hear about Toyota’s military pick-up trucks that transformed the 1987 north African conflict between Chad and Liby...
Mar 08, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We hear about the moment Dr Max Perutz discovered the haemoglobin structure. Our expert is Professor Sir Alan Fersht, who is a chemist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology and knew Dr Perutz personally. We also hear about 22 Inuit children from Greenland's indigenous population who were sent to Denmark as part of a social experiment in 1951. Also, when mixed-raced chi...
Mar 01, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We hear about the death of one of the oldest languages in the world, when an 85 year old woman died and took it with her in 2010. Our expert guest is Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, who is the Head of the Endangered Languages Archive which endeavours to preserve languages that are disappearing at “an alarming rate.” We also hear about the historian who helped bring a former Stasi officer to justice d...
Feb 22, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We discuss the 1992 speech given by Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in which he acknowledged the moral responsibility his government should bear for the horrors committed against Indigenous Australians, with our guest Dr Rebe Taylor from Tasmania University. We also look at two female orators from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Eva Peron, also known as Evita, from right-wing ...
Feb 15, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is film critic and journalist Helen O'Hara who dissects what makes a cult film classic, after we hear about the making of the 1989 American film Heathers. We also learn about the French philosopher behind the theory of deconstruction and how the world first became aware of coral bleaching in the 1980s. As the climax of the American Football season approaches we look back at one of the...
Feb 08, 2025•51 min
We hear from 'wolf child' Luise Quietsch who was separated from her family and forced to flee East Prussia. Whilst trying to survive during World War Two, these children were likened to hungry wolves roaming through forests. Journalist and documentary film-maker Sonya Winterberg who recorded the testimony of “wolf children” for her book, discusses the profound impact it had on their lives. We also hear about the first major series of English lessons which were broadcast on Chinese television in ...
Feb 01, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes, all about events which happened in 1995. First, we hear how Microsoft launched Windows 95 after a $300 million marketing campaign. Our expert guest is Dr Lisa McGerty – Chief Executive of the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge. Next, after 17 years terrorising America, we hear about the hunt for the Unabomber. Plus, the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo metro, carried out by members of a doomsday cult. Finally, how China ...
Jan 25, 2025•51 min
Josephine McDermott sits in for Max Pearson presenting a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes. We hear from the author who stumbled across the story of Oskar Schindler while shopping for a briefcase in Beverly Hills. Our guest is Dr Anne-Marie Scholz, from the University of Bremen in Germany, who reflects on the impact of dramatizations of World War Two. We also hear about the start of Drum magazine, credited with giving black African writers a voice in the time of Apartheid. The de...
Jan 18, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes. We hear a first-hand account of the attack at the offices of French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Our expert guest is Dr Chris Millington, who leads the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University. We also hear about Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War Two. Plus, the Bosphorus boat spotter tracking Russian military trucks ...
Jan 11, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes. We hear two stories from the deadly 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed thousands of people in south-east Asia. Our expert guest is Ani Naqvi, a former journalist who was on holiday in Sri Lanka when the wave hit. We also hear from the two Polish students who created the voice of Alexa, the smart speaker. Plus, the story of Klaus Fuchs, the German-born physicist who passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union while workin...
Jan 04, 2025•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History interviews which all relate to food. First, Dinner for One, the British TV sketch that's become a German New Year’s Eve tradition. Our expert guest is Ingrid Sharp, professor of German cultural and gender history at the University of Leeds. She tells us about some other festive traditions in Northern Europe including Krampus – the horned figure said to punish children who misbehave at Christmas. We also hear about when South Korea a...
Dec 28, 2024•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Professor Chandrika Kaul, a specialist on modern British and Imperial history at the University of St Andrews in the UK. We start by hearing from both sides of Australia's 1999 referendum on becoming a republic. Then, a survivor recounts the horrific 1972 Andes plane crash and the extraordinary things he had to do to survive. We hear how the BBC put text on our television screens f...
Dec 21, 2024•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Joan Flores-Villalobos, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Southern California, and author of The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal. First, we hear from a man involved in the handover of the canal from the United States to Panama in 1999. Then, DJ and singer Leonardo Renato Aulder explains how the canal led to the creatio...
Dec 14, 2024•51 min
In partnership with the BBC 100 Women list, we have a selection of stories about inspiring and influential women from around the world. Scientist Katalin Karikó, who won the Nobel Prize and helped save millions of lives in the Covid 19 pandemic, Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister who took a stand against misogyny in politics, and Indian artist Nalini Malani whose instillation got people thinking about the consequences of nuclear conflict. We also hear from the founder of Ms Maga...
Dec 07, 2024•51 min
We hear from Magnus Carlsen, who in 2014, became the first player ever to win all three world chess titles in one year, achieving the highest official rating of any player in history. Woman grandmaster, three times British champion and chess historian, Yao Lan is our guest. She talks about the origin of chess. In the 1970s and 80s, scientists in Russia, managed to dig a hole more than 12,000 metres deep. It was called the Kola Superdeep Borehole. One of the geophysicists involved tells us about ...
Nov 30, 2024•51 min
During the early years of Syria’s brutal civil war, the neighbourhood of Yarmouk, close to the Syrian capital Damascus, bore the brunt of the government’s viciousness. Known as ‘the Pianist of Yarmouk,’ Aeham tells Mike Lanchin about their struggle to survive the siege, and how music helped him overcome some of those dark days. Dr Gillian Howell, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne explains how music has been used as a form of protest and honouring lives lost during conflict. A...
Nov 23, 2024•51 min
We hear about the half-clay, half-grass exhibition match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Argentinean creative entrepreneur and tennis fan Pablo del Campo tells Uma Doraiswamy how he made the iconic court possible in May 2000. Fiona Skille, professor of Sports History at Glasgow Caledonian University, explains the history of sport exhibition matches. In 1974, Greece held a referendum to decide the future of the country’s monarchy, and whether Constantine II would remain their king. In Dec...
Nov 16, 2024•51 min
We hear about Polish war hero Irena Sendler who saved thousands of Jewish children during the World War Two. Expert Kathryn Atwood explains why women’s stories of bravery from that time are not as prominent as men’s. Plus, the invention of ‘Baby’ – one of the first programmable computers. It was developed in England at the University of Manchester. Gill Kearsley has been looking through the archives to find out more about the 'Baby In the second half of the programme, we tell stories from Iran. ...
Nov 09, 2024•51 min
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes. For nearly 40 years, Siegfried and Roy wowed audiences in Las Vegas with death-defying tricks involving white lions and tigers. But in 2003, their magic show came to a dramatic end when a tiger attacked Roy live on stage. We find out what went wrong, and speak to magician and author Margaret Steele about the - sometimes dangerous - history of illusion and magic. Plus, we learn more about the so-called ‘Ken Burns effect’; t...
Nov 02, 2024•51 min
First, on its 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, we hear from Luke Gygax, whose father created the fantasy role-play game. We also hear from Dr Melissa Rogerson, senior lecturer and board games researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Then, the first dinosaur remains discovered in Antarctica in 1986, by Argentinian geologist Eduardo Olivero. Next, Ethiopia’s internal relief efforts during the famine in 1984, led by Dawit Giorgis. Plus, the fight to stop skin lightening in...
Oct 25, 2024•51 min
We hear about the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan in 2014. Brian Hioe, an activist who occupied Parliament in Taipei, recalls the events. We hear from Nino Zuriashvili, one of the protesters at the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003. And Prof Kasia Boddy, author of Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People explains how flowers have been used as symbols in political history. Plus, the Afghan refugee who fled as a 15 year old. Waheed Arian, a doctor and former Afghan refugee describes...
Oct 18, 2024•51 min
