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Witness History

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it through the voice of someone who was there. Scientists, artists, campaigners, soldiers, leaders and everyday people tell their true stories.

When you subscribe to Witness History, you’ll be taken inside turning points in world affairs, from West Africa’s fight back against Boko Haram in 2015, to the behind-closed-doors talks that led to the US-Cuba “thaw” and the surprise announcement of restored relations.

You’ll discover what it was like to experience disasters and how people recovered from them, including the Tabasco floods in Mexico, Portugal’s worst train disaster, and the huge clean-up after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

You’ll explore culture and ideas too: Sweden’s Expedition Robinson, often credited as the first modern reality TV game show; the friendship between The Beatles’ George Harrison and Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar; and the night a tiger attack brought Las Vegas superstars Siegfried and Roy’s show to a sudden end.

And if you’re curious about inventions, we’ll tell you how air fryers, BlackBerry, YouTube, Alexa, GPS, superglue, the shopping cart (shopping trolley) and bubble tea were created.

If you’re new to Witness History, the appeal is simple: real voices, one strong true story, and a fresh way to understand today through events from history – all in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of tea or a walk around the block. Join millions of BBC World Service podcast listeners around the globe and enjoy the insight, context and detail Witness History will bring you.

Copyright: © (C) BBC 2024

Latest Episodes:

When JFK won the US presidency Oct 26, 2020

Show notes

Ted Sorensen was a close aide and speechwriter for John F Kennedy. In an interview with Lucy Williamson he remembered the night that Kennedy won the US presidential election in 1960. It was a close race against the Republican contender Richard Nixon.

Photo: US President John F. Kennedy giving his first State of the Union address to Congress in January 1961. (Credit: NASA/SSPL/Getty Images)

Nasa's pioneering black women Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

Usually it is the names of astronauts that people remember about the space race. But less celebrated are the teams of people working on how to put a rocket into orbit. Only in recent years have stories come to light of the contributions of the black women involved.

Many were recruited as 'computers', meaning that they carried out complex mathematical calculations by hand, before machines were invented that could do the job. Christine Darden started her career in the computer pool, helping the engineers work out the trajectories needed to bring the Apollo Capsule back to Earth. Finally, she broke through the hidden barriers facing women at the time, gaining a promotion to engineer.

(Photo: Dr Christine Darden at a desk in Nasa's Langley Research Center, 1973. Credit: Bob Nye/Nasa/Getty Images)

The missing victims of apartheid Oct 22, 2020

Show notes

In 2005, South Africa set up the Missing Persons Task Team to trace and locate the remains of the hundreds, possibly thousands, who disappeared in "political circumstances" during the brutal years of white minority rule. Many were victims of the state security services. Some were victims of secret death squads which abducted and murdered opponents of the regime. Alex Last talks to the leader of the team, Madeleine Fullard, about her work and how the cases reveal the dark and complicated history of apartheid rule.

Photo: Madeleine Fullard, head of the National Prosecuting Authority's Missing Persons Task Team, at a gravesite in Red Hill on November 15, 2012 in Durban, South Africa. (Getty Images)

The Cutter Incident Oct 21, 2020

Show notes

In April 1955, more than 100,000 children in America were inoculated with a defective batch of the brand-new polio vaccine. Because of a manufacturing mistake at a small company called Cutter Laboratories, the children were given live polio virus; around 160 were permanently paralysed and 10 died in the worst disaster in US pharmaceutical history. Simon Watts talks to Anne Gottsdanker, one of the victims of what became known as the Cutter Incident.

PHOTO: Anne Gottsdanker with her father Bob Gottsdanker in 1956 (personal archive)

Joan Littlewood, 'mother of modern British theatre' Oct 20, 2020

Show notes

The working class woman who shook up the British theatre establishment in the 1950s and 60s. Joan Littlewood introduced improvisation and helped break down class barriers. She set up a theatre in a working class area in the east end of London which put on plays written by amateur writers and actors, many without classical training. She delighted in the fact that the laziest person in the company might be working class and the poshest the one scrubbing the stage. She went on to create successes such as 'Oh! What a Lovely War' and 'A Taste of Honey'. Claire Bowes has been talking to her friend and biographer, Peter Rankin.

Photo: Joan Littlewood outside the Theatre Royal Stratford in 1974 (Press Association)

Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs Oct 19, 2020

Show notes

In the grip of a drugs crisis, the country took a radical approach in 2001 and became the first country in the world to decriminalise all drugs for personal use. Drug abuse and addiction began to be seen as a public health issue, not a criminal offence. Initial resistance to the policy faded after statistics proved that treatment, rather than punishment, was reducing the number of deaths caused by drugs in Portugal. Dr João Castel-Branco Goulão was one of the chief architects of the shift in policy. He's been explaining to Rebecca Kesby why Portugal had such a pronounced drug problem to begin with and how the shift in strategy helped to reduce it.

Image: Staffers interview a new patient in Lisbon, Portugal (Credit: Horacio Villalobos - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

Saddam Hussein's big movie project Oct 16, 2020

Show notes

In 1980 the Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, tried to launch his country's entry into the world of movie making. He spent millions of dollars on an epic movie called Clash of Loyalties, filmed almost entirely on location in Iraq, and staring some of Britain's leading actors , including Oliver Reed, Helen Ryan and James Bolam. But soon after shooting of the film began, war erupted between Iraq and neighbouring Iran. Mike Lanchin speaks to the film's Iraqi-born British producer Lateif Jorephani and the Iraqi actor, Fatima al Rubai, about the ambitious project.

Photo Credit: Jorephani Productions

The US Voting Rights Act of 1965 Oct 15, 2020

Show notes

Although African Americans were guaranteed the right to vote by the constitution, many in the south were being denied that right. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s black voting rights activists had been beaten and killed but it was events in Selma Alabama in 1965 that outraged many Americans. In March 1965 hundreds of peaceful protesters were brutally beaten by Alabama state troops as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bloodshed in Selma prompted President Lyndon B Johnson to push for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. The landmark Act was brought in to tackle racial discrimination during elections and to guarantee the rights of African Americans to vote. Farhana Haider has been listening to the archive.

Photo President Lyndon Johnson hands a souvenir pen to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr after signing the Voting Rights Bill at the US Capital, Washington DC, August 1965. Credit Getty Images.

The last of the Kazakh herders Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

Many of the nomadic herders in Kazakhstan left the USSR and moved to China in the 1920s. They feared being forced into collective farms by the Soviet state. Then in the 1950s many of them moved back again. Monica Whitlock has been listening to the story of Nazylkhan, a Kazakh herder and matriarch of a huge extended family, who lived through those epic journeys and who died in 2018.

Photo: members of Nazylkhan's extended family, and friends. Credit: BBC.

The end of the Lebanese Civil War Oct 13, 2020

Show notes

On October 13th 1990, the Syrian airforce pushed their most outspoken opponent in Lebanon, General Michel Aoun, to take refuge in the French embassy in Beirut, ending the last chapter of Lebanon's bitter 15-year civil war. Veteran Lebanese journalist Hanna Anbar told Louise Hidalgo about that day for Witness History.

This programme is a rebroadcast.

Photo: Syrian soldiers celebrate in front of the presidential palace in east Beirut after capturing it from troops loyal to General Michel Aoun, October 13th 1990 (Credit: Nabil Ismail/AFP/Getty Images)

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