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)
Chipko: India’s tree-hugging women
Darfur's ethnic war
When the Taliban ruled Kabul
North Korea's 1990s famine
Supernatural sightings
The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race
When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor
The war on drugs
Amilcar Cabral: an African liberation legend
When Egypt said Enough
Why a British MP was filmed taking mescaline
The IRA hunger strikes
The killing of Osama Bin Laden
How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant
The first woman in the US Supreme Court
The women who reclaimed the night
Black Jesus
The History Hour
The History Hour
The women of Egypt's Arab Spring
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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