Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.
We’re going wild for animals this week. We find out how the Ibadan Zoo became one of Nigeria’s biggest tourist attractions during the 1970s. Our guest Harriet Ritvo, professor of history at MIT, looks back across the centuries to reveal the fascination that humans have always had for animals. And more on the environmental campaigner who became known as Lady Tarzan for her fight against illegal logging in the forests of India.
Plus, we hear from a journalist tortured in Iran's notorious Evin Prison in the wake of the 2009 protests against the Islamic regime. Also, why hundreds of thousands of Moroccans were ordered into the Spanish Sahara by their king. And finally, more on the Bolivian president who went on hunger strike to try to save his country.
Contributors: Peaches Golding - wife of zoologist Bob Golding Professor Harriet Ritvo – professor of history at MIT Marcela Siles - daughter of former Bolivian president Hernán Siles Zuazo Seddik Maaninou - TV cameraman Francis Gillies – North Africa expert Maziar Bahari - journalist Jamuna Tudu – environmentalist nicknamed ‘Lady Tarzan’
(Photo: Imade the gorilla at Ibadan Zoo. Credit: bobgolding.co.uk)
The return of the wolf
The division of Kashmir
The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'
The anti-nuclear protesters who won
When Tunisia led on women's rights
Exploring space
Kenya's ivory inferno
Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'
The Stonewall riot
The assassination of Medgar Evers
The first anti-psychotic drug
D-Day
Tiananmen Square
Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws
The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war
The war on drugs
The Malayan Emergency
The al Yamamah arms deals
The Columbine school shooting
The rise of Hindu nationalism
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