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)
Women taking a stand
Cuban boxing and the brink of nuclear war
Global strikes and industrial action
Caribbean carnivals and a racially inclusive nightclub
Dassler brothers' rift
Queen Elizabeth II and broadcasting
Queen Elizabeth II
Brazil
Gorbachev's legacy
Inflation and the cost of living
Seventy-five years since India's Partition
The nightclub that changed Ibiza
Fifty years since Asians were kicked out of Uganda
The Revolution on Granite
Stories from iconic TV shows from around the world
Stories from the abortion fight frontline
America’s first gay election candidate
Hong Kong: 25 years since the handover from British to Chinese rule
Egypt's first democratic Presidential election
Cambodian genocide trials
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Global News Podcast
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
The Infinite Monkey Cage
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins