Doom and Danish brains

Doom and Danish brains

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear about two of the most influential computer games of the 1990s with their creators. John Romero was one of the developers of Doom and talks about the concept of a martian military base populated by zombie soldiers. Coder Jan Tian describes how his devotion to working on the football game FIFA 94 landed him in hospital. Our guest, The Guardian newspaper's video games editor Keza MacDonald, looks back on games which had a global impact.

Also how in 1945, 10,000 brains were collected from dead psychiatric patients in Denmark. It is now thought to be the world’s largest brain bank. We also find out how a group of right-wing army officers seized power in Greece in 1967 to stop the election of a social democratic government led by veteran politician George Papandreou.

And 30 years on since the cult French film La Haine was released, its director Mathieu Kassovitz describes how it caught the attention of high profile politicians with its criticism of policing in France.

Contributors: John Romero – Doom developer Jan Tian – FIFA 94 coder Keza MacDonald – video games editor, The Guardian Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen – pathologist George Papandreou Jnr – former Greek Prime Minister Mathieu Kassovitz – film director

(Photo: Brains stored in plastic buckets at the University of Southern Denmark. Credit: BBC)

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Kenya's ivory inferno

Kenya's ivory inferno

Twelve tonnes of ivory was set alight by President Daniel Arap Moi in Nairobi National Park in July 1989, to highlight the threat from poaching. The ivory burn was organised by conservationists who wanted to save the world's elephants. Plus, the closure of Britain's ground-breaking Common Cold Unit; Cuba executes top military officers, the Chinese allow sales of tampons and the first modern lesbian.(Photo: Ivory tusks arranged in a pile and set alight. Credit: Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis/Getty Images)

13 Juli 201949min

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

Life under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the Germans kidnapped by the Contras in Nicaragua in the 80s, plus how Aboriginal women took on the Australian government against nuclear waste, Anita Hill's stand against the promotion of Judge Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court and the birth of the Sony Walkman.(PHOTO: CHOEUNG EK, CAMBODIA - 1993/02/01: Skulls are piled up at a monument situated outside Phnom Penh to serve as a constant reminder of the genocide under the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot years.. (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)

6 Juli 201950min

The Stonewall riot

The Stonewall riot

The riot that inspired the modern gay rights movement; Saddam Hussein's 1980s genocidal campaign against Iraq's Kurds; notorious British serial killers, Fred and Rose West; 50 years of fighting for fat people in America; and Joseph Heller on his seminal work, Catch-22.Picture: the Stonewall Inn today (Getty Images)

29 Juni 201949min

The assassination of Medgar Evers

The assassination of Medgar Evers

An African-American civil rights hero, a Chinese online star, the tragic icon of Iran's reform movement and archive recordings of the psychoanalyst CG Jung. Plus the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin's love of yoga.Photo:Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers Being Arrested on 1st June 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit: Getty Images

22 Juni 201950min

The first anti-psychotic drug

The first anti-psychotic drug

How a 1950s drug helped revolutionise the treatment of mental illness. Also, how hundreds of thousands of Kosovans fled when NATO bombed former Yugoslavia. Plus, a monumental public artwork in post-Cold War Berlin, Chinese-American relations after WW2, and a trailblazing same sex wedding in the 1970s.Photo: Nurses prepare a patient for electric shock treatment in a psychiatric hospital. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Getty Images)

14 Juni 201949min

D-Day

D-Day

Eyewitness accounts of the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe on D-day, 6th June 1944. We also hear how the BBC reported events on that momentous day. Plus Vikings in England, the Gurkhas fight for justice and discovering the fate of 'The Little Prince'Photo: The photo titled 'The Jaws of Death' shows a landing craft disembarking US troops on Omaha beach, 6th June 1944 ( Robert Sargent / US COAST GUARD)

8 Juni 201950min

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square

A student protester's perspective on the Tiananmen Square massacre, the first social network on the internet, the surprisingly controversial early years of Sesame Street, the overthrow of Emperor Bokassa in the CAR, and the death of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.Picture: Dan Wang speaking in Tiananmen Square (credit: Peter Turnley/Corbis/Getty Images)

1 Juni 201950min

Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws

Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws

In 2009 Ugandan MPs tried to introduce new laws against homosexuality that would include life imprisonment and even the death penalty. We speak to Victor Mukasa about his story of fighting for LGBT rights in Uganda, first as a lesbian woman and then as a trans man. Also, the early days of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, walking the Great Wall of China and fighting acid attacks on women in Bangladesh.(Photo: Ugandan LGBT Activist Victor Mukasa May 2019. BBC)

25 Maj 201950min

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