Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.
We hear about Cyberia - the first commercial internet café which opened in London in 1994. Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, Professor Vicki Nash, talks us through other notable landmarks in the internet’s history. Plus how the Covid N95 mask was invented by a scientist from Taiwan in 1992.
Also how Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was punished for his writing on liberation theology. Staying with Brazil, we hear how poor rural workers occupied land owned by the rich, resulting in violent clashes in 1980.
And the world's first global seed vault, buried deep inside a mountain on an Arctic island.
Contributors: Eva Pascoe – a founder of Cyberia internet café Prof Vicki Nash – Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford Peter Tsai – inventor of N95 mask Leonardo Boff – Brazilian theologian Maria Salete Campigotto – Landless Workers Movement protestor Dr Cary Fowler – founder of Doomsday seed vault
(Photo: People using Cyberia in 1994. Credit: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Arabian Peninsula
Racist raids, protests and a political assassination
The best Championship Manager player ever
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
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It is Free
The Modern West
Global News Podcast
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins