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)
A history of games
The right to drive in Saudi Arabia
The birth of Bangladesh
Four decades of HIV/Aids
The assassination of the Mirabal sisters
Sudan's October Revolution
The South African football star murdered for being a lesbian
When Eritrea silenced its critics
The child environmental activist of the 1990s
The Greenham Common women's peace camp
The Pakistani law that jailed rape survivors
Black history: Britain and race
Photographing Brazil's Yanomami
Kenya: Westgate mall attack
The earthquake that devastated Haiti
9/11 and the war on terror
Surviving the fall of Saigon
My father survived the sinking of the Titanic
US withdrawal: The Fall of Saigon
The Berlin Wall
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