Hitler’s teeth and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

28:59When the king ran one party rule, very few people made the decisions and the law. It didn't go to the public. We heard about it once the decision had passed and matured.

29:18under the panchait system we weren't allowed a voice you couldn't make complaints the king had royal decree he could appoint anyone he wanted to civil service people like us didn't have a chance for that kind of favor

29:45By 1990, there was an appetite for change amongst the many democracy leaders. So much so that two opposing parties, the Nepali Congress, led by Ganesh Man Singh, and the United Left Front, led by Sahana Pradhan, joined forces. And on the 18th of February, the pro-democracy movement began.

30:09Duka and many other students like her mobilized under the Nepali Student Union of the Congress Party. They coordinated the marches, kept safe the political leaders and helped spread the message of the pro-democracy movement.

30:27Our job was difficult. We had to organize this track. We would hand out bomb plates. We would protect the leaders from the police. take them to an open forum and bring them back to their homes. At night, there was the blackout protest. Everyone had to turn off the lights and we would go around shouting. Turn off your lights. The public didn't always do it, but we would force them to do it. We struggled a lot for democracy. And the police were over the top. Short-end officer would get together. and then follow us when we were alone. They would beat us and put us in jail. Whenever I think about it, I still get upset.

31:16That's how badly they beat us. By spring, demonstrations erupted throughout Nepal. Others, including lawyers, doctors, teachers and the previously uncertain public had joined in. It all came to a head on the 6th of April. Dozens of people have been killed in Nepal as police opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators. British sources say as many as a hundred died in the capital, Kathmandu, and 40 in incidents elsewhere. Tens of thousands marched through the capital peacefully. The trouble began when splinter groups marched on the royal palace.

32:00We were in the rally from Banisho to Bagbazar and as we reached Darbar Mark a stone's throw from the palace some people climbed King Mahindra's statue and attempted to plant the Nepali flag on it they were just students then they opened fire so many people died There are no records. We took the injured people to the hospital. We tried to help the injured, but it was hard to get anyone treated. Then, around 4 or 5 pm, there was a curfew.

32:55In the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, a 30-year ban on political parties has been lifted. King Birendra has bowed to the demands of the opposition after seven weeks of demonstrations in which about 200 people have been killed.

33:13Around midnight on the 8th, King Birendra called in political leaders, including Sahana Pradhan, Manamohan Adhikari and Girija Prashat Koirala for a meeting. They agreed to make way for multi-party democracy.

33:32People power in the streets of Kathmandu. In two short days, the mood of this capital has switched from darkness to light.

33:44As soon as the announcement came out, people began celebrating in the streets. On the morning of the 9th, we were out on the streets with traditional red vermilion powder. People were out and about of their own free will.

34:05But though the king conceded multi-party politics last night, several people were killed or wounded afterwards, shot by the security forces for trying to celebrate in town before the curfew was lifted. This is the politician who spearheaded the democracy movement, Mr Ghanishman Singh. He's daubed with vermilion as a blessing. He's in hospital recovering from an illness. As the celebrations reached Kulamansh, there's a famous picture of Duga from that day. Taken by photojournalist Min Ratna Bajacharya, she's leaping in the air, surrounded by a sea of men, her hands and face covered in red vermilion.

34:44She seems jubilant and defiant.

34:50Ganeshman Singh was brought to Khula Mons at the time. We didn't know whether he would live or die. And when they brought him out, the right thing to do was be happy. And that was the moment the picture was taken. I started chanting, Long live Birganeshman, long live independence. That is the moment I jump and I don't remember doing it.

35:21There would be many twists and turns to come in the political and constitutional history of Nepal. There was a short take back of power by King Berinda's brother in 2005. The Gen Z protest in 2025 saw a government toppled, resulting in a landslide victory for the Rashtra Satandra Party in the March 2026 general election. But that day, on the 9th of April 1990, Durga Thapa was celebrating the beginning of democracy in Nepal. Rabika Moktan was speaking to Durga Thapa, an activist in Nepal's 1990 democracy movement. Next, we've got a pivotal moment in art history. These days we may be used to the idea of seeing immersive and chaotic art installations in museums, but it wasn't always that way.

36:08What is recognised as the first major surrealist exhibition took place in New York in the early 1940s, with the French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp as one of the creators. The exhibition featured a tangled web of twine and children playing in among the artworks. One of those children was Carol Janis, and he told Louis Hidalgo the story. It's October 1942, and in a large 19th-century mansion in central Manhattan, a group of some of the most celebrated avant-garde artists of the age are mounting an exhibition. But this is no ordinary exhibition of paintings hung on walls.

36:52At their last exhibition in Paris a few years earlier, the surrealist poet André Breton and the artist Marcel Duchamp had hung sacks of coal from the ceiling and given visitors flashlights so they could see in the darkened rooms. This new exhibition in New York, designed by the man who 25 years earlier had shocked the art world by signing a white porcelain urinal and calling it art, promised to be equally unusual.

37:23I was gaga over Duchamp as a youngster, you know. I thought he was fantastic. Carol Janis was the son of the art gallery owner Sidney Janis and knew Duchamp well. He was very witty and always a charming, most civilised and delightful person. And he has been lauded as the father of conceptual art, really. Yes, yes, there's no question about it. Duchamp and his contemporaries created not just surrealism, but Dadaism, Cubism, Futurism. They'd come of age during the turmoil of the First World War. By 1942, Europe was plunged into a second one. Duchamp was among the artists who'd taken sanctuary in America.

38:06The money from this exhibition in New York would be sent back to France to help the war effort. But surrealism was never serious for long. Marcel had done this fantastic string installation from floor to ceiling, and you could walk through it, but you had to see everything through his string installation. It was a mile of string. Oh, yes, he said it was a mile. He said he bought 16 miles, but he only used one. To add to this playful atmosphere, Duchamp wanted a group of children literally to play among the works of art. That was where the young Carol Janis, who was then aged 11, came in. Duchamp was a good friend of my parents, and he knew that my brother and I played ball a lot in our parents' living room, where they had a very nice collection of wonderful works.

39:06He said, would we be willing to come and play at his string exhibition opening? And we got these wonderful instructions through my mother. Marcel had said, I want you to play ball all evening, play to your heart's content, but don't talk to anybody. And if somebody tries to stop you, you can say, Marcel Duchamp said we should play here. This was a formal affair, wasn't it? I mean, this was the great and the good of the New York art world. Yes, it was a formal affair, all black tie and evening dresses. and in the beginning nobody said anything but as more and more people came in we had to adjust the trajectory of our balls instead of throwing it over people.

39:55Sooner or later somebody objected and then I got to say that line about Marcel saying we should play here and then toward the end of the evening people came up to us and said hey, how come you're having all the fun? We want to have a catch too. Then along came the artist Mata. Well, Mata was obviously an athlete and he kicked the football and it went all the way up and hit the third floor ceiling, missing the chandelier just by a hair's breadth. Marcel Duchamp was born in France in 1887. In his early 20s, he created his own brand of Cubism, and in 1912, his depiction of a body as a fluttering mechanism, nude descending a staircase, created a sensation when it was shown in New York.

40:48But although his name was associated with some of the great movements of the time, Duchamp preferred to stand alone, as he explained years later in an interview. You've in fact been associated with Dada and with Surrealism. Also. But nonetheless, you've very seldom been a key figure in the group activities. Never was it. Why? I don't know. It's a form of individualism, nothing else. For the young Carol Janis, Duchamp's greatest contribution was what he called his ready-mades. These were ordinary mass-produced objects, like the urinal or the bicycle wheel that Duchamp had attached onto a wooden stool.

41:29Essentially, Duchamp's idea was that by selecting an ordinary object and designating it art, the artist gave it new meaning. Marcel explained it very clearly. He said it's taking an object and introducing a new idea into the object. Many of his new ideas were also contributions to sculpture. So his bicycle wheel we know as the first kinetic piece. The typewriter cover is really the first piece that was all made of soft material.

42:08What would happen if in fact these manufactured ready-mays were mass-produced and we could all buy one for two shillings? No, no, no. You have to sign them. they are signed and numbered. Yes. An edition of eighties, like any sculpture. So that, in fact, you stayed very much within the accepted standards of the artwork. Yes, in fact, I had to, because otherwise, where would I be? I'd be in an insane asylum, probably.

42:38Carol's parents, Sydney and Harriet Janis' art gallery in New York, was a beacon for new avant-garde artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. But it was Marcel Duchamp, their friend, whom Carroll says his parents treasured most. In 1952, Sidney Janis agreed to host an exhibition of Dadaism that Duchamp wanted to curate. In return, Janis asked, would Duchamp show his famous urinal, the fountain? And Marcel said yes. So this was the original urinal? No, this was a replica. The original went back to 1917, which he had done for an independent show in New York. And he had submitted it under a pseudonym of R.

43:23Mutt. For this replica, all those years later, Duchamp needed a new urinal. But he couldn't find the right one in New York. Then he told my dad, you're going to Paris over the summer. Go to the Marceau Pousse, the flea market, and you'll probably find one. And my dad found one, brought it back. And I happened to be at the gallery when Marcel came to the gallery to sign it. And I remember he had on a beautiful multicolor plaid jacket, a new one and a tie. And then he had nothing with him, no bag or anything. And I said, you need a pen. So he said, oh, I have this. And he took out of his pocket a new flathead paintbrush.

44:06And out of another pocket, he pulled a new bottle of India ink. So he carefully wrote on it, R. Mutt, which is what was on the original. And then on the back, he signed it, Marcel Duchamp and Rose C 'est la Vie, his alter ego. And then he wrote the word replica. And I asked why he hadn't done more of these over the years. and he replied, oh, no one asked me. Marcel Duchamp died in Paris in 1968. Carol Janis was recording his role in the birth of surrealist art with Luis Hidalgo. From art history, we turn next to a sports story from the past. And this relates to the Football World Cup, arguably the biggest sporting event that there is, with the possible exception of the Olympics.

44:59Anyway, every nation on the planet has the right to try to qualify for the finals, and that means that sometimes tiny countries come up against almost insurmountable odds. So it was in April 2001 when the small island nation of American Samoa took on Australia in the World Cup qualifiers, and it didn't help their cause when a passport stipulation resulted in American Samoa having to field a team of schoolboys. It didn't go well. As the goalkeeper, Niki Salapu, has been telling Uma Doriswamy. I did cry most of the half, but the boys didn't see me do that. I was trying to keep all that emotion in to wait until the game's over.

45:43Like, you know, oh man, I'm failing. I'm failing this sport that I love. This wasn't so much a David versus Goliath battle, but more like David's baby brother taking on Goliath without the happy ending of the underdog winning. Back in 2001, the population of Australia was just over 19 million, compared to American Samoa's 58 ,000. And to understand why the defeat was so big, you need to know a bit about the country. American Samoa is like a small island with a small amount of people that live in it. We always leave off land. The oceans have only one. Canary factories in the middle of the island that everyone wants to work at and try to survive.

46:31If you don't get there, you'll find your way to the military when you graduate from high school. It's a very respectful country. The people are friendly and we're very humble people. The island had become members of the International Football Federation, FIFA, in 1998. and the 2002 World Cup qualifiers were the first they were eligible to play in. In February 2001, when qualification started, fielding a team was hard enough before FIFA decided on some new rules. Only people who had an American passport were allowed to play. I'm an American Samoan citizen. I have an American passport, you know.

47:13So we try to figure out who have an American passport. and I'm the only person that left from that whole team. It was a really solid spot, but unfortunately they didn't have any passports. So we have to find anyone in two weeks. We ended up like selected kids from high school and we have like the eight graders from primary school. So yeah, it was three of them that I noticed that they were playing and the rest of them was all high school kids. So we trained for one week before we traveled to Australia. He may be laughing now, but back then, 20-year-old Nicky was one of the oldest members of the team.

47:52They were about to face the Australians, who had a point to prove after just missing out on qualifying for the 1998 World Cup. And they had only had a couple of weeks training together as a team. It was really hard. It was really hard, you know, to have a new squad. Players that never played before and then how young they are. I felt like I was like a father figure for most of the kids, you know, that was going with us, even that I was only 20. Unsurprisingly, things didn't start well in the qualifiers. American Samoa lost 13-0 to Fiji and followed that up with another defeat, this time 8-0 to Samoa.

48:34After we played against Fiji, I felt like I was like, OK, I can do this. because I was doing a lot of saving. I would save a lot of a goal against Fiji before we played against Samoa and Tonga. But Australia was our last game. They already beat Tonga 22-0. The only thing I can do in this situation, in this scenario, I have to maintain the goal a little bit lower in order for us to not pass the 22-0. That plan didn't work, and the goals were flying in past Nicky. one two but you know with the kids we don't don't have the experience and then they don't have the energy i was beat nine i was running out of energy i was like don't have anything left in the tank but i was like trying to stay on my feet as long as i can to be there for the boys 15 16 at halftime it was 16-0 to Australia.

49:36And then the second half kicked off. 17, 18, 19... I keep telling the boys to go forward instead of, like, bundling in front of me because if we're going to be bundling in front of me, it's hard for me to see the ball and every shot. So, you know, for me, I just listen to the coaches and prepare for the worst. 30, 31.

50:0631-0 to Australia, the world record for the worst defeat in international football. If I was a coach, I was never ever going to run to score that high. I would never ever have done anything like that. You know, let them chase the ball, pass the ball, like, you know, possession the whole time before the game is over. Once you pass 20 goals, I think you don't need any more than that because it's like you just beat Tonga 22-0. how many goals that you need to have the differential. You know, I don't think that was very sportman to do that. I just love soccer, so it doesn't matter what the outcome or what the score is.

50:45I just wait to fight another day. That score was to haunt Nicky for years. People would stop him and ask if he was that 31-0 guy. But his revenge would come in the 2010 World Cup, at least virtually. I was in that EA Sport video game. So there was an American Samoan team in there. So me and my son, we were playing, and it's like, Dad, Dad, you've got to play American Samoa, and then I'll play Australian. We can't stop all the players. We always win, like American Samoa always wins 50-0 Australia. And the following year, he came out of retirement to playing goal again for the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.

51:34This time, the manager was Thomas Rongan, a former Dutch player, and he knew what he was doing and what the team could achieve. We finally have a coach that, a professional player, maybe we'll win the game because we have, you know, this guy. I never met this guy before, so I will come down there in one condition. If you provide us a win, so Thomas says, we will win again. and that's why I went back and played for the country. And I felt like I have a lot of confidence. I didn't have any nerve. Our whole team was like all positive that we're going to win that game. We've got to do something for our country, you know, for a change.

52:14They were playing Tonga. 1-0. Oh, that first goal, I can't wait to like just to go up there and celebrate with him. I was very emotional, like, but not yet. I was like, OK, maybe I'll just wait until the game is over. It was a great feeling that scoring a first goal, it was amazing. It was the most amazing thing ever. Then? 2-0. Oh, my God. I was so excited. I was so happy. And I was like, I have to keep that emotion in because I have to focus in the game. Nicky, be honest. Was there a part of you that thought, we're going to beat them 31-0? I wish that was the thought.

53:04The only thing that came into my mind is we just want to win a game. Despite Tonga scoring towards the end of the match, it finished. 2-1! We didn't even know we won the game. We have no idea. We're just more focusing on the game instead of winning. winning. Is it the whistleblower? Is it the whistleblower? Once we find out that the game is over and we were celebrating and so excited, I cried. That was the first time I ever cried in soccer since 2001 against Australia. Niki Salipu, goalkeeper for American Samoa, was speaking to Uma Doroswamy. At least he has a world record, letting in the most goals in a World Cup qualifier.

53:52Finally this week, the story of a famous and much-loved creature in Argentina. He's a loggerhead turtle who went by the name of Jorge. He'd been accidentally caught in fishermen's nets in the early 1980s, but he lived for decades in an aquarium until a campaign to release him back into the wild ocean. Here's Megan Jones. It's 1984 and we're in Bahía Blanca, a port city in Argentina's Buenos Aires province. It's where Jorge's journey begins. But to tell you more, we need to climb on board a fishing boat with marine biologist Alejandro Salbadet from the aquarium Mar del Plata. Step carefully, the deck is a bit wet.

54:30Where we are is a biodiversity hotspot, which means there's loads of wildlife migrating here. One of the animals is Jorge. Jorge es una tortuga marina macho. Jorge is a male loggerhead sea turtle of the species Careta careta. This species of turtle is omnivorous. That is, it is both marine invertebrates like crabs and jellyfish, as well as algae. They're named after their oversized heads, which look a bit like a log. Jorge's species and all his relatives come from the far south of Brazil. And then they return to the area of Uruguay and Argentina in what are called tropic migrations, which are food migrations.

55:15In other words, these animals are constantly on the move. He's around 20 years old and an experienced hunter. He wasn't an animal born in captivity. He was an animal that already had that instinct. Back on the boat, and the fishermen have brought up their nets when they realise there's something tangled in it. Something heavy? Something injured? It's Jorge. He's not meant to be in the net. So what do they do? The animal, for reasons unknown at the time, was taken to the Mendoza Aquarium, far from the sea. It's possible that there was little information available in Argentina at that time about the migration of sea turtles off the coast.

55:58His new home was the Aquario Municipal de Mendoza, in a city at the base of the Andes Mountains. It's around 1 ,000 kilometres from where Jorge was found and run by the local government in that area, who said returning him to the sea was not considered and the aquarium was the only one capable of receiving him. At first, he's kept in temporary enclosures. Then he's moved into a 10 ,000 litre tank, where he remains for more than 20 years. At the beginning of 2006, He was transferred to a circular aquarium of approximately 4.5 metres in diameter, which had a volume of 20 ,000 litres and a metre and a half in depth.

56:41His enclosure was built of concrete with a water circulation and filtration system. It's reported his diet at this time was boiled eggs and beef. The aquariums say he was given a balanced diet, supplemented with vitamins, and every effort was made to ensure the animal had adequate living conditions. Jorge quickly became a well-known attraction, described as one of the most beloved characters in the city. Jorge had windows all around, so he was very easily visible everywhere, and quickly became the star of the place. In fact, today it is difficult to find a person of advanced age who did not know Jorge from the city of Mendoza.

57:22The Mendozans, almost all, I would say 85 % of the citizens of Mendoza, when they were children, knew Jorge. For years, people went to the aquarium to visit him. But not everyone was happy about seeing Jorge in the tank. Activists launched a petition calling for his release and for the aquarium's closure. There are many animals in controlled conditions or in captivity in the world. The role of aquariums and zoos are fundamental. It is estimated that there are 700 million people who visit zoos and aquariums in the world every year. And this is very useful for the education part and for the conservation part.

58:06The campaign was called Liberen a Jorge, or Free Jorge. Lawyers also started legal action on behalf of Jorge, arguing he was being deprived of a dignified life. The aquarium said it was looking for alternatives to improve the animal's current conditions. If you release a marine mammal that's been in captivity for a long time, it won't find its group and won't survive. More than 60 ,000 people signed the petition and along with the legal action, led to the mayor of the city of Mendoza announcing the aquarium would close and they'd look at relocating animals, including Jorge, who was considered a senior citizen.

58:41When we were called to Aquarium Mar del Plata to rehabilitate this animal for its possible release, we had to think about it a lot. It was supposed to be a very difficult task, probably with a high percentage of failure, due to the time that the animal had been in controlled conditions. Once Alejandro was called in, he started the evaluations. The state was not bad, but it was not the best. That is to say, the animal had gotten used to a lot of things that had to be reverted. They changed his diet and slowly added more salt to the water in his tank. Then, after a year of testing, he was flown by plane to the Aquarium Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires.

59:21His new home was a circular pool with 150 ,000 litres of salt water and with a depth of three metres. By 2025, they felt he was ready to be released back into open water. A black square satellite tracker or range finder was glued to the middle of his shell, with a wire sticking out the top. He was transported onto a ship in a white plastic box. Initially, the gadget on his shell didn't work. So 48 hours later, they tried again, despite the weather not being ideal. At that moment, we felt all the concern for the operation because the operation was being carried out under conditions that were not suitable, where not only Jorge's life could be at risk, but also the lives of the divers who were in the sea and the people who were on board.

1:00:06On the 11th of April 2025, after more than four decades, and with help of divers and a crane, he was lowered into the water and swam out into the Atlantic Ocean. He was tracked for a few months where he travelled nearly 4 ,000 kilometres. We didn't have any further information after July 18th, when the connection was lost because that was roughly the amount of time we estimated his transmitter's battery would last. He entered Guanabara Bay, across from Rio de Janeiro, a place with a lot of radio interference, because it's a fairly populated area with many turtles. So where is he now? There's a network of people working with turtles in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, monitoring turtles caught by fishing boats, and none of them caught him.

1:00:59We think Jorge is of reproductive age, and he'll probably mate. And well, that doesn't mean Jorge is going to alter the population dynamics of that turtle species, right? But hey, he has a chance. Soon after, Alejandro retired. It was the last re-education and rehabilitation process for a marine animal after so many years. And it was an interesting case because of the length of time it had been away from the wild, right? For Jorge, he might still be out there, but no one knows exactly where.

1:01:58Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

1:02:28wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:02:58.