West African food and computer viruses

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Ozoz Sokoh, Nigerian food writer and author of the Kitchen Butterfly food blog, who tells us about the history of West African food.

The programme begins with the story of Mr Bigg's, Nigeria's answer to McDonald's. Then, we hear about the 1960 coup against the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, from his grandnephew.

In the second half of the programme, a Jewish survivor tells us about the Nazi occupation of Greece from 1941-1944. Two witnesses tell us about Pope John Paul II's ill-fated visit to Nicaragua in 1983. And a Pakistani man recounts how he accidentally created the first personal computer virus in 1986.

Contributors: Ozoz Sokoh - Nigerian food writer and author of the Kitchen Butterfly food blog. Emmanuel Osugo - Mr Bigg's employee. Dr Asfa-Wossen Asserate - grandnephew of Haile Selassie. Yeti Mitrani - Jewish survivor of Nazi occupation of Greece. Nancy Frazier O’Brien - Catholic News Service reporter. Carlos Pensque - Nicaraguan protestor. Amjad Farooq Alvi - software developer.

(Photo: West African food. Credit: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	World Football at the Women's World Cup is the podcast bringing you all the action from the tournament in Australia and New Zealand.
0:07.0	Listen now by searching for World Football from the BBC World Service, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.
0:15.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast a collection of this week's witness history
0:25.8	episodes from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those
0:30.6	who were there.
0:32.1	This week a moment of escape for a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Greece during the Second World War.
0:38.0	And my mother is a force to be reckoned with. And I don't know what she said to the German, but he let her go.
0:44.5	Consequently, every time he passed the house and he saw my mother he clicked his heels.
0:49.4	He actually clicked his heels.
0:51.6	Also from 1960, the attempted coup against Hile Selassie in Ethiopia.
0:57.0	You cannot kill people without due process of law.
1:01.0	That taboo was broken. And for the first time the authority of the
1:06.0	Ethiopian Emperor had been questioned. What's thought to have been the first
1:10.0	ever personal computer virus to spread around the world and a tense moment for Pope John
1:15.0	Paul II during his 1983 visit to Nicaragua.
1:19.0	I had covered a lot of papal trips at that point and I had never seen the Pope angry before.
1:26.5	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but first a serving of foodie history from West Africa.
1:33.0	While the American fast food brand McDonald's has achieved a sort of global domination,
1:38.0	it does have local rivals, and 50 years ago one such emerged in Nigeria.
1:43.6	Justice Baidu has been unwrapping the story of Mr. Biggs.
1:47.2	Oh, Mr. Biggs was Nigeria.
1:50.7	It was a big pride.
	...

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