Episode details

World Service,16 May 2026,60 mins
The first reality game show and a joik performance on Eurovision
The History HourAvailable for over a year
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We start with the launch of Expedition Robinson in Sweden in 1997 and discuss how reality TV began around the world with our guest Misha Kavka, Professor of Cross-Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Plus, a Norwegian Sami protest song that made history in 1980, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which investigated residential schools and the uncovering a lost burial ground in Brazil in 1996. Also, the 'sporting miracle' of 5,000-to-one outsiders Leicester City FC winning the English Premier League and the discovery of the fossil that revealed the first feathered dinosaur. Contributors: Martin Melin - the first winner of Expedition Robinson. Misha Kavka - Professor of Cross-Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Chief Wilton "Willie" Littlechild - former Commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Philip Currie - palaeontologist who helped identify the first fossil of a feathered dinosaur. Wes Morgan - former captain of Leicester City FC. Inga Haetta - sister of Mattis Haetta, who performed the first joik at Eurovision. (Photo: Group of adults lying by a pool with a film crew giving instructions - stock photo. Credit: Yellow Dog Productions)
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