Witness History Podcast
History told by the people who were there. For nine minutes every weekday, Witness History takes you back to moments which have shaped our world.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
Episodes to download
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How Tinder changed the dating game
Thu 14 Apr 2022
How the dating app with the swipe revolutionised the world of online romance
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Greece's Great Famine
Wed 13 Apr 2022
How hundreds of thousands of Greeks starved to death under Nazi occupation.
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The largest war crimes trial in history
Tue 12 Apr 2022
The former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, went on trial at The Hague in 2002.
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Nato intervenes in Kosovo
Mon 11 Apr 2022
How the US and its allies backed air strikes against Serbian forces to stop atrocities.
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The Great American Grain Robbery
Fri 8 Apr 2022
How a catastrophic trade deal between the US and Moscow sparked a global food price shock
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The handshake in Space
Thu 7 Apr 2022
How Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts met up in space during the Cold War
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The Falklands War - an Argentine account
Tue 5 Apr 2022
An Argentine conscript remembers his country's doomed military campaign in 1982.
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Escaping a Maoist cult
Fri 1 Apr 2022
Aravindan Balakrishnan ran a cult in London for 30 years; then two of its members fled.
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Selling Van Gogh's Sunflowers
Thu 31 Mar 2022
How one of the Dutch artist's masterpieces was auctioned for a world record in 1987.
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Afghanistan's women's newspaper
Wed 30 Mar 2022
Aina-E-Zan, or Women's Mirror, was launched in 2002 at a time of hope for Afghan women.
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The 'Snow Revolution' against Vladimir Putin
Mon 28 Mar 2022
A decade ago protestors tried to stop the Russian leader tightening his grip on power
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Soviet holidays in Crimea
Fri 25 Mar 2022
Artek, on the Black Sea coast, was the Soviet Union's most popular children's camp.
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Ukraine's Babi Yar massacre
Thu 24 Mar 2022
The mass killing of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi Germany during World War Two.
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The Budapest Memorandum
Tue 22 Mar 2022
The security "assurances" offered to Ukraine after it gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994
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The Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Mon 21 Mar 2022
In 1986, a reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine causing the worst nuclear accident ever.
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The Shard
Fri 18 Mar 2022
The building of the controversial London skyscraper, designed by Italian Renzo Piano.
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Zaha Hadid's Cincinnati Arts Center
Thu 17 Mar 2022
The ground-breaking building was the first American museum to be designed by a woman
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Teheran's Freedom Tower
Wed 16 Mar 2022
The vast monument built for the Shah, but now a centrepiece for protests in Iran.
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Chandigarh: India's city of the future
Tue 15 Mar 2022
How the modernist architect Le Corbusier designed a city for newly-independent India
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The Frauenkirche - Dresden's symbol of war and reconstruction
Mon 14 Mar 2022
The story of the painstaking project to rebuild Dresden's historic baroque church.
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The Wages for Housework campaign
Fri 11 Mar 2022
How feminists in Italy began an international campaign for payment for housework in 1972.
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Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi
Thu 10 Mar 2022
The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003: Dr Shirin Ebadi
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The Australian women who protested against the Vietnam war
Wed 9 Mar 2022
The Fairlea Five were jailed in 1971 for campaigning against military conscription.
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Russia's war in Georgia in 2008
Fri 4 Mar 2022
First-hand accounts of Russia's battle with another former Soviet republic in 2008.
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The takeover of NTV in Russia
Thu 3 Mar 2022
How NTV journalists tried in vain to keep their station out of President Putin's control.
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Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation
Wed 2 Mar 2022
How the Russian president quit and apologised to the nation in a New Year's Eve address.
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Putin's war in Chechnya
Tue 1 Mar 2022
An eyewitness account of the Russian invasion of the breakaway republic in 1999
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Economic 'shock therapy' in Russia
Mon 28 Feb 2022
Chaos and hardship hit Russia when free-market reforms were introduced overnight in 1992
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The 2014 annexation of Crimea
Fri 25 Feb 2022
A personal account of how Russia took over the Crimean peninsula in 2014