Oct 4

India's nine day tea strike and the birth of the Excel spreadsheet

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.Tea expert Sabita Banerji talks about the history of tea in India. We look back at how women teapickers in 2015 fought for justice - and improved the lives of thousands of tea plantation workers.We hear the ... Show More

59m 20s

Sep 27

The origins of Indian cinema and the start of Scouting

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes taking us from India to Texas. Professor Sunny Singh, author of A Bollywood State of Mind, discusses the origins of Indian cinema in 1912. And we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Bollywood ro ... Show More

1 h

Sep 20

The fight against sexual harassment in Egypt and Omar Sharif enters the world stage

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes, all with an Egyptian theme.We find out more about the 2014 fight against sexual harassment. And we hear from Professor Nicola Pratt, an expert on Middle East feminism about the significance of that moment i ... Show More

59m 58s

Feb 2022

The Berlin Patient

In the 1990s, doctors in Berlin began a cutting-edge treatment programme that led to a patient being cured of HIV/AIDS. The so-called "Berlin patient" was Timothy Ray Brown: he was suffering from leukemia as well as HIV/AIDS, and was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor wi ... Show More

8m 59s

Dec 2021

40 years later, stigma still overshadows HIV prevention

In 1981, the first case of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was diagnosed. The virus that causes AIDS, became a thing to be feared for people in the LGBTQ+ community, who also became a scapegoat for its existence. On World AIDS Day, we remember that even when things have ch ... Show More

23m 18s

Feb 2022

Bollywood's pioneering lesbian drama

The Bollywood film "Fire" was the first in Indian history to depict a lesbian relationship. Released in 1998, the movie sparked a row over censorship and then a wider debate about LGBT rights in a country where homosexuality was then illegal. In 2015, Lucy Burns met Bollywood sup ... Show More

9m 1s

Dec 2023

AIDS Epidemic: Life & Death On The Frontline

How do we understand something as huge as a global epidemic? Similarly to Covid, the AIDS epidemic, which was most destructive in the 1980s and 90s, had such universal reach. Yet within that, there were millions of personal experiences. What was it like to work on the frontline w ... Show More

59m 33s

Sep 2019

A conversation with the 'Berlin patient,' the first person cured of HIV

In 2007, a man known as the "Berlin patient" was cured of HIV through a stem cell transplant. It was an incredible accomplishment that researchers all over the world scrutinized for years to come. He was the first and only documented case of a person who has been cured of HIV unt ... Show More

18m 16s

Jun 2022

HIV/AIDS Advocacy | 72

In 1992 HIV/AIDS hit a grim milestone in the United States when it became the number one cause of death among men ages 25 to 44. Since there was still so much stigma attached to the illness, people were often dying without even telling their closest friends and family that they w ... Show More

42m 47s

May 2023

AIDS

In the 1980s, the world was gripped by a virus that was killing people in their thousands; savaging communities and creating a climate of fear, blame and ignorance. That virus was HIV, and here to sift the facts from the fiction and explain how the AIDS crisis transformed everyth ... Show More

40m 4s

Nov 2021

The Aids 'patient zero' myth

In the early days of Aids, a misunderstanding made one man the face of the epidemic. Canadian air steward Gaetan Dugas developed the symptoms of HIV/Aids in the early 1980s, but a misreading of scientific data led to him being identified as 'patient zero', giving the mistaken imp ... Show More

10m 3s

Nov 2023

Section 28: The Anti-Gay Law That Sparked A Movement

The 1980s have a lot to answer for - spandex, for one. It also saw the first new anti-gay law in Britain for over a century. Against the backdrop of the HIV epidemic, and increasing homophobia across the media and politics, the law Section 28 was passed in 1988, which stopped the ... Show More

38m 44s

Feb 2024

There Was Love Here

In this final episode, we turn to people living with HIV today — longtime survivors of a plague who, despite their pain, frustrations and desires to just be done with it, realize they can’t be done with it. These are people like Kia LaBeija, an artist born HIV-positive, who turne ... Show More

38 m

LGBT history special