The first reality game show and a joik performance on Eurovision
The History Hour
BBC
4.4 • 913 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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)
Transcript
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| 0:19.7 | If it matters to you, it matters to us. Feel good inside of it. With WhatsApp Docs. And Complex with Kimberly Wilson. Listen on BBC Sounds. A moment in time captured by what they heard. I heard some people making phone calls. Okay, which one way would you like at Teterborough? What they saw. |
| 0:38.9 | I put my head down, I saw the movie of my life, start going through my head. |
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| 0:46.2 | And I completely lost my appetite. |
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| 0:53.1 | Scientists have made the atomic bomb. |
| 0:55.8 | That sort of flash set on fire the birds, |
| 0:58.6 | and they all fell down without their feathers on. |
| 1:00.7 | The way was clear for Hitler to realize all his demonic plans. |
| 1:07.5 | Stories from people with first-hand accounts of events that have shaped our world. |
| 1:13.3 | At the end, Kissinger called me in his office, and he said, he did a good job. |
| 1:18.9 | I left the office with tears in my eyes. |
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| 1:41.4 | Hello and welcome to The History Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson, |
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