4.4 • 879 Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.
Emerante de Pradines's son, Richard Morse, tells us about his mother’s life and her commitment to de-demonising vodou culture through her music. Haiti expert Kate Hodgson, from University College Cork in Ireland, expands on the history of the country in the 20th Century.
The story of how an Argentinian doctor was inspired to create a new treatment for heart disease and when the death of a Catholic priest sent shockwaves through El Salvador in 1977.
Plus, the memories of a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, when thousands of Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb Soldiers thirty years ago.
The first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup and Orson Welles’s famous re-telling of the War of the Worlds, which sparked mass panic in America.
Contributors:
Richard Morse – son of Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines
Lucy Hodgson – lecturer in French at University College Cork in Ireland
Dr Julio Palmaz – the inventor of the balloon-expandable stent
Gabina Dubon – colleague of Father Rutilio Grande
Sister Ana Maria Pineda – theologian and author
Hasan Nuhanovic – survivor of the Srebrenica massacre
Michelle Payne – 2015 Melbourne Cup winner
Archive recordings of Orson Welles, his producer John Houseman and writer Howard Koch
(Photo: Orson Welles rehearsing a radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' classic, The War of the Worlds on October 10, 1938. Credit: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.3 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. |
| 0:10.5 | Evil genius. |
| 0:11.6 | He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. |
| 0:15.5 | That's like hiding at your own funeral. |
| 0:17.1 | Yeah, a big, great gig. |
| 0:18.6 | I'm Russell Kane. |
| 0:19.6 | Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. |
| 0:24.2 | Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. |
| 0:26.4 | It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:29.4 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:34.9 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.2 | Imagine being here. |
| 0:39.6 | Scientists have made the atomic bomb. |
| 0:41.9 | The first one was dropped on a Japanese city this morning. |
| 0:44.9 | Here. |
| 0:45.3 | During the meeting, Mr. Mandela was informed of the government's decision regarding his release. |
| 0:50.3 | And here. |
| 0:51.1 | Witnesses have spoken of a wall of water that swept coastlines in Sri Lanka, Indonesia. |
| 0:57.1 | Hear from the people who were there. |
| 0:59.2 | He heard me praying while. He was shooting and he just stopped. |
| 1:02.8 | I say, I'm not going to. I'm going to leave you here to tell the story. |
... |
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