Dancing in the Street and Ai Weiwei

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Professor Barbara Keys, a specialist in US history at Durham University.We start with a celebration of the American Freedom Train, as the US prepares to mark 250 ye ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We learn about how Play-Doh evolved from a cleaning product to a childhood favourite and the creation of one of the best-selling board games of all time, Catan. Our guest is the e ...  Show more

Billy Porter, famous for his Broadway roles in such shows as Kinky Boots and Grease, and onscreen in Pose and Cinderella is making his directorial debut in theatre with This Bitter Earth. Jesse is an introspective Black playwright and when Neil, Jesse’s boyfriend, who is a white ...  Show more

In 1977, Nigeria hosted the largest festival of African arts and culture there had ever been. About half a million visitors attended, as well as 16,000 delegates including Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.Dozens of African nationalities, and people from the African diaspora were r ...  Show more

In the late 1970s, disco died in America and a new wave of Italian producers took advantage of the advances in electronic instruments to craft their own dancefloor fillers.The result was Italo disco – a genre of music recognisable for its synthesiser beats, heavily accented Engli ...  Show more

Singer Clara Nunes is an icon of African Brazilian culture and known as the Queen of Samba.Her first samba song Ê Baiana was released in 1973.In 1974, the release of the song Conto de Areia secured her a place in history. Clara sold more records than any other Brazilian woman had ...  Show more