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 fall of Kwame Nkrumah
Black History: The Black Panthers
US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter
The Burma protests of 1988
The Arab Spring of 2011
Hitler's beer hall putsch
Attack at the US Capitol
Buddhist on Death Row
75 years of Unesco
Film special
The birth of Bangladesh
The first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize
The fall of Addis Ababa
Disability History special
The world's first woman premier
The Guerrilla Girls
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
US presidential history special
Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs
CNN and the 24-hour news revolution
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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