Hello and welcome this is the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson

the past brought to life by those who were there. This week life and death on the eastern front

in the First World War.

In the country like Russia or rather Poland

were these large fields.

You march for weeks, large distances on horseback, towards East, East, East.

Plus the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palmer in 1986, and MASHH, the American TV series that took war into the nation's living rooms.

Private Wendell Peterson, Marine Corps.

No, I swear this kid is really a kid.

I guess if they're tall enough to reach the trigger, they're old enough to enlist.

That's all coming up later, but before that, we're going to China in 1968,

when the one-party communist state was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution.

This was a time of huge upheaval as the party sought to purge the entire country of any

remnants of capitalism.

Chairman Mao's Red Guards were encouraged to root out anyone

deemed to be revisionist. Millions were denounced, humiliated, tortured and imprisoned.

But alongside this there were positives for the wider population during that time.

For example, Chairman Mao launched a scheme to provide health care to rural areas

by giving thousands of people basic medical training and sending them out to work in

the villages. Lucy Burns has been hearing from one of those medics who became known

as the barefoot doctors.

Chairman Mao says the sick must be healed. He's caused a real shakeup in China's health

...