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The History Hour

Music producer Sonny Roberts and treating diabetes

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4879 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

Sonny Roberts’ daughter tells us about how her father created the UK’s first black-owned music studio - this programme contains outdated and offensive language. Music producer and professor emerita at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Lucy Durán takes us through the history of music studios around the world.

How a Macedonian scientist’s discovery led to treatments for diabetes and obesity, and the story of the Kenyan ecologist who became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Plus, the mysterious sinking of a British oil tanker in Indonesia in the the 1950s and how the first lottery scratchcard was invented by an American mathematician.

As well as the story of the first South American to win the International Surfing Association world title back in 2004.

Contributors:

Cleon Roberts – daughter of Sonny Roberts.

Lucy Duran – music producer and professor at the School of Oriental and African studies at the University of London.

Svetlana Mojsov – Macedonian scientist who discovered the hormone called GLP-Joseph McCorry – who was on the San Flaviano oil tanker.

Wanjira Mathai – daughter of Wangari Maathai.

Sofia Mulanovich – three-time world surfing champion.

John Koza – the inventor of the scratchcard.

(Photo: Jamaican record producer Sonny Roberts Record Shop in Willesden Junction, London, UK in December 1982. Credit: David Corio/Redferns via Getty)

Transcript

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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. Becoming that rich, I'll say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

0:40.6

A moment in time captured by what they heard.

0:42.3

I heard some people making phone calls.

0:44.0

Okay, which one way would you like at Teterborough?

0:46.0

What they saw.

0:47.0

I put my head down.

0:48.4

I saw the movie of my life.

0:49.4

Start going through my head.

0:50.8

What they smelt.

0:53.2

I still remember the smell of the fresh fish.

0:57.2

And I completely lost my appetite. Moments captured which last for a lifetime.

1:00.7

Scientists have made the atomic bomb.

1:03.0

That sort of flash set on fire, the birds, and they all fell down without their feathers

1:07.3

on.

1:08.3

The way was clear for Hitler to realize all his demonic plans.

...

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