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)
British black history special
The Mafia and Italian politics
Blackwater killed my son
Stories of resistance and protest from around the world
Prohibition in India
Inventing James Bond
Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer
The siege at Ruby Ridge
Beirut's hotel war
The Second World War in Japan
Adrift for 76 Days
The Million Man March
South Korea's 1980s prison camps
Quarantined in a TB sanatorium
Dealing with economic crisis
Sex trafficking and peacekeepers
Black American History Special
The Zanzibar revolution
The Gwangju massacre
Britain's World War Two crime wave
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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