Speed of Sound and prosecuting Nazis

26:07From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. To Rachel Naylor. Still to come from the 1970s, how the oil shock led to the birth of the G7. The Chancellor even invited us to his personal home. And over breakfast, we came up with the idea of the Rambouillet Conference in November 1975.

26:52And the President of the Maldives, who took his cabinet meeting underwater. You could see the whole of the cabinet in diving gear with their cylinders, their diving suits, masks. It's just like, you know, you're going to the moon. But before that, we're going to one of the most important moments in the establishment of a global system of justice designed to hold the worst international criminals to account. In November 1945, the first major war crimes trial in history opened in the German city of Nuremberg. Senior Nazis who had committed atrocities during the Second World War were prosecuted by the victorious Allied powers of Britain, the USA, France and the Soviet Union.

27:35In 2014, Luis Hidalgo spoke to Benjamin Ferenc, who was a prosecutor at those trials. Nuremberg, Germany is carefully guarded during the prosecution of the terrorists of the Nazi regime who ravaged Europe and committed unbelievable crimes against humanity. Brought before an international tribunal, the leaders of Hitler's Reich, including the still defiant Hermann Göring, the former number two Nazi Rudolf Hess, and ex-foreign minister von Ribbentrop face their accusers. We tried 22 defendants, and there were 3 ,000 murderers whose names I had, mass murderers. Why did we try only 22? Because we only had 22 seats in the courtroom.

28:15You can't talk about doing justice. All you can do is a sampling of justice. But at least it was some justice. I will now call upon the defendants to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. The British were very reluctant to have any trials. I think it was Anthony Eden who felt that it would be better to have a political solution rather than to give the Germans an opportunity to make big speeches. And the Americans didn't agree with that. So we had the first international military trial followed by 12 subsequent trials. I was sent to Berlin to gather the evidence for those trials.

28:53Rudolf Hess. Ninth. That will be entered as a plea of not guilty. Benjamin Ferencz was 25 years old when the first international military tribunal opened in Nuremberg on November 20, 1945. He'd fought his way across Europe with the American army and would become chief prosecutor at the ninth of those 12 trials, the trial of the mobile death squads, who'd followed the German army into Eastern Europe, killing every Jew, gypsy and communist that they found. Since I had at Harvard done the research for a book on war crimes, I was transferred out of the artillery into Patton's headquarters in order to set up a war crimes branch.

29:36That led me into the concentration camps with the liberating forces, and of course I saw all of the horrors of war, absolutely indescribable. The idea was to get in, get to the office, which was the Schreibstube, as they called it, where they had the record of the camp, who had been in there as inmates, how many had been killed, where they had come from, who was in charge, etc. Seize all of that, get whatever other documentary or personal evidence I could get from inmates who could still talk, then return to barracks and type up a report. And how did you cope with what you saw there? My best explanation for it is that my mind built up some system of pretending that it didn't see what it saw.

30:20I made the real artificial because the real was too horrible to endure. The reality of the Nazi concentration camps, like Bergen-Belsen, stayed with all who witnessed them. I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare. Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road and along the rutted tracks. On each side of the road were brown wooden huts. There were faces at the windows, the bony, emaciated faces of starving women too weak to come outside. In early 1946, with the first tribunal underway, Benjamin Ferenc was sent to Berlin by the American Chief Counsel, General Telford Taylor, to look for more evidence.

31:03What he and his team found in the rubble of Hitler's capital defied imagination. I had a big staff of about 50 people going through all the Berlin archives, and one of my researchers came upon these daily reports from these special extermination squads called in German Einsatzgruppen, which was a nondescript title, literally meaning action groups. Their instructions were to murder. They never used the term murder, of course. was to eliminate every single Jewish man, woman and child they could lay their hands on. The same with the gypsies. And they reported daily from the front with 99 copies sent back to Berlin, to the foreign ministry, to the German army command.

31:45And it was those records that we captured. And can you remember what you felt when you saw what this researcher had found? I remember it very vividly. The researcher walked in and I began going through and I had a little editing machine. and with time I added up to a million people murdered. I said, that's enough. I got into a plane. I flew down from Berlin to Nuremberg. I said to General Taylor, so we've got to put on another trial. He said, we can't do it. Staff has all been assigned. We've started the trial. We can't come along with new things. I said, I have in my hands here absolute proof of mass murder on a scale never conceived in human history.

32:19And he said, can you do it in addition to your other work? And I said, sure. And he said, okay. so I was designated the chief prosecutor in what was the biggest murder trial in human history. I was 27 years old, it was my first case. The Einsatzgruppen, or death squad trial, opened at the military court in Nuremberg in September 1947. There were 22 defendants, charged with the murder of more than one million people. We are now ready to hear the presentation by the prosecution. This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance. Vengeance is not our goal. Can you remember how you felt that day as you stood up to make that opening speech for the prosecution?

33:04I remembered it vividly. I made it clear in my opening statement that the case we present is a plea of humanity to law. I didn't ask for death penalty, I asked for a rule of law which would protect humanity in future against that type of atrocious crimes. We shall establish, beyond the realm of doubt, facts which, before the dark decade of the Third Reich, would have seemed incredible. And of course you knew, didn't you, that you had the evidence to convict these men? Oh yes, there's no question in my mind about the guilt of the accused. had their top secret reports. One of the defendants, SS commanding officer Otto Rush, pleaded ill health, didn't he?

33:49But you insisted that he be indicted. Yes, because he was a man who had killed, the exact number was, I think, 32 ,771 Jews in a suburb of Kiev in what is now Ukraine. And he'd marched them out into a ditch, shot them in a place that became famous as Babi Yar. and his lawyer came and said he couldn't stand trial. I said, why not? He said, because he's got Parkinson's disease. I said, what's that? He said, well, he's shaking all the time. I said, if I kill so many people, I would shake all the time too. Is he breathing? He said, yes, he's breathing. I said, well, then I'm going to indict him. And I had him carried in on a stretcher, wrapped in a GI blanket, but then he was judged by a higher authority.

34:35Before we could open the trial, he died. The Einsatzgruppen trial lasted for six months. The defence took five of them. Is there a particular moment that stays with you from those months? Yes, the sentencing. The criminals were kept in the prison below the courthouse. They came up into the courthouse on a little lift, sort of a dumbwaiter, and the door would open into the courtroom. They would step forward. The judge would say, Mr. Ollendorf, for the crimes of which you have been convicted, this tribunal sentence you to death by hanging. The door would close, he would drop down as if into hell.

35:13The sentences were harsher than I would have afforded. It was a very tense, head-splitting experience for me. I had such a bad headache. The late Benjamin Ferenz, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He died in 2023 at the age of 103. He was speaking to Luis Hidalgo in 2014. Nuremberg was an example of international cooperation in the pursuit of justice. Our next witness from the past was involved in an attempt to forge international cooperation for the sake of the global economy. It was in 1975. Here's Ben Henderson. Today, we're going back half a century to the historic Chateau Rombouillet in northern France, when the leaders of six powerful industrialised nations and their finance ministers met at a time of crisis.

36:04It was the birth of an informal institution now known as the G7. Six leaders are sitting down together to seek an end to the world's slump, to pave the way for some economic miracle which will create more jobs without inflation. Because everyone now recognises that unless there's economic stability, there's a threat to order and a real threat to peace.

36:28Rambouillet is a town with a really beautiful castle. It's not far from Paris, it's in the Ile de France region. So it's a town that's always been pretty close to the levers of power. But even they had never seen anything like 1975. And from what I found out recently, I'm the only one still alive out of those people.

36:54This is Jean-Pierre Foucault, France's finance minister at the time. His boss was French President Valéry Giscard d 'Estaing. Monsieur le Président de la République. Giscard is six foot four, and behind his immense forehead, there are purrs, by general consent, a mind of the highest quality. Since the age of about two, his friends will say, he's grown used to being number one. He was clever, well-off and successful, and his abilities have made his life one of relatively effortless progress and accomplishment. Valéry Giscard d 'Estaing was a hugely intelligent president. He was extremely well-read and also very courteous.

37:35He wasn't a classic party leader who might criticize their colleagues, and he treated me well. As soon as Giscard d 'Estaing was elected president of the Republic, he wanted to open France up more, first to Europe and then to the rest of the world. That's why as finance minister, I worked a lot with my British, German and Italian counterparts on top of the French economy and responding to the oil crisis, which was our big problem at the time. In 1973, two years before Embouillé, Middle Eastern countries raised the price of oil, plunging the oil-dependent West into their most serious recession since the 1930s.

38:19Too many foreign countries are trying to deal with the oil crisis by deflating demand. We must turn America in a new direction. We must continue an effective plan to curb inflation. Those were the voices of Britain's Chancellor, Dennis Healy, and the US President, Gerald Ford. So what were the Western powers to do? It took a sturdy breakfast with Germany's leader to spark them into action. We had a lot of meetings with Chancellor Schmidt, and I don't think the relationship between France and Germany has ever been as strong as it was then. The Chancellor even invited us to his personal home. And over breakfast, we came up with the idea of the Rambouillet Conference.

39:03in November 1975. Oh, so were you there when this idea was born? Yes, and at that time, the British Prime Minister was Mr Wilson and the Finance Minister, my counterpart, was Mr Healy. I had many, many meetings and discussions with Healy. He used to say that I spoke English like a Spanish cow. I'm told that means Foucault somewhat butchered the language. For CAD's boss, Giscard d 'Estaing, and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, were the driving forces behind the summit. They wanted a place where world leaders could talk frankly, away from the suffocating atmosphere of the media and government bureaucracy.

39:44So, the leaders of the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain descended on Chateau Rambouillet on the 15th of November 1975. The day began at the tiny local church when President Ford, a Protestant, joined the summit's host Monsieur Giscard d 'Estaing at mass. Afterwards, the two men and Madame Giscard chatted to the villagers, outnumbered by gum-chewing security men, by about three to one. Mr Ford seemed entirely relaxed. He described the meeting as hard work, but told me he thought it would produce results. After church, the leaders wearing boxy grey suits head to the chateau. Its imposing towers, manicured gardens and vast grounds make it the perfect setting for a superpower conference.

40:27As the participants take their seats in a grand dining hall, the camera pans to Forcade, who flashes a friendly smile. Those big international meetings, like the one in Rambouillet, were actually something new at the time. because you had the President of the United States, the British Prime Minister and the President of France all together. It was really something unprecedented. Back at the chateau, behind a security guard of some 3 ,000 gendarmes with important guests and officials being ferried to and fro by helicopter, talks went on through lunch. In such surroundings, with such a star-studied cast, perhaps it's inevitable that what was intended to be a quiet weekend retreat should have become a full-scale spectacle.

41:14We spent several days in Rambouillet and it was deliberately informal. The point was to create a relaxed atmosphere for in-depth discussions. Chancellor Schmitt said something to all of us that really stuck with me. He said we weren't facing a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of the global economic system, and that all countries were affected just to different degrees. So we needed to try to build systems that would bring us closer together. With day one complete, Foucault left to get some sleep. Only national leaders were invited to stay the night, but he was back the next day for negotiations.

41:56Of course, everyone defended their own interests. For example, in France, the prices were increasing by 1 % every month, which was intolerable for French citizens as well as French companies and it led to a rise in unemployment. The pressure to reach an agreement grew, but it wasn't all economic policy. As the three-day summit wore on, Foucault got acquainted with his foreign counterparts. There were shows, there were dinners, the food was delicious. The Rambouillet town hall and the mayor really pulled out all the stops. On the third and final day of the conference, the leaders assembled for the world's media.

42:36Giscard spoke in French before US President Gerald Ford. These meetings have been rewarding in a number of important ways. They have deepened our understanding and appreciation of our mutual economic interdependence. What really struck me was the relationship between President Giscard d 'Estaing and President Ford, because President Ford was absolutely determined to work in coordination with the European countries, which of course seems extraordinary today. How times change.

43:14Rombouillet produced no firm answers to the ongoing economic crisis, but it set a precedent for international cooperation that's lasted for decades. The group expanded over the following years and has met 51 times in total. The spirit of Rambouillet, as President Giscard called it, certainly infected his guests as they flew home. The superlatives read like a theatre placard, highly successful in every respect, President Ford, a high plateau of agreement, Chancellor Schmidt. But what did they actually achieve? Well, first, there seems to be an end to the feud between America and France over how to manage world currencies.

43:49And the fact there should be so little disagreement on many issues that have been divisive in the past is an achievement in itself. So did that feel like a big moment in political history? Yes, but our respective opposition parties in the different countries didn't see it as very important because there wasn't any formal decision. So for me, Rambouillet was more about opening up to the world and trying to coordinate the economic policies of the major countries. Personally, it was one of the most memorable moments of my career.

44:31The former French finance minister, Jean-Pierre Foucault, was speaking to Ben Henderson. This week's sporting witness takes us to a very heated moment in the 2004 NBA basketball season in America. A high-octane game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons descended into one of the most infamous brawls in sports history. Hunter Charlton has been hearing from Mark Boyle, a veteran radio broadcaster who was there that night, and he described how the fight started after an incident involving the Pistons' Ben Wallace. A really physical player not to be trifled with. Was fouled from behind by the Pacers' Ron Artest.

45:10All of our people knew that Ronnie was a time bomb. When Wallace reacted to the foul by shoving Artest several feet backwards, players on both sides rushed in to support their fellow teammate. There was some pushing, there was some shoving. It was clearly a situation where there was anger. As the referee struggled to contain the frenzied players and their coaching staff, Ron Artest attempted to de-escalate matters himself by laying horizontally down on the commentary table beside Mark. Ronnie was laying on that table, not doing anything. I could have reached out if I wanted to. I could have reached out and touched him.

45:47When at that moment, Mark felt an object pass over him. It went right over my head. You know, I felt it. But I thought, what? It can't be raining in here. What is it? It was a plastic cup containing soda, launched by a spectator from the stands. It narrowly missed Mark and struck Ron Artest directly in the chest. Well, as soon as it hit Ronnie, he was up. The next five minutes would go down as the most infamous brawl in NBA history. It was a night that became known as the malice at the palace, a night that would leave Mark with five cracked vertebrae and put the whole sport of basketball into disrepute.

46:24No one had ever seen anything like this. Once he went up into those stands, then all bets were off.

46:34It was the beginning of a new NBA season in 2004, and the seeds of this grudge match had been sown the previous year. The Pacers had won 61 games the year before, had the best record in the NBA, and had been taken out in the finals by the Pistons. And that's still rankled. So this was the first meeting since then, and it was so early in the season. but it was already clear that these were the two best teams, certainly in the East, if not the entire league. And the Pacers wanted to show that they were the better team and they were determined to do so. From a mental aspect, from a we're going to show you who's boss kind of a perspective, it was really important to the Pacers.

47:18From the opening toss of the ball, the Pacers took an early command of the game. It was fairly typical for games in that era in that it was marked by physical play. And these were two physical teams. By half-time, the Pacers were ahead, largely due to the efforts of Ron Artest and Jermaine O 'Neal, two of their best players. I would say that that team that we had was the most talented team we've ever had here. And we've been in the NBA Finals twice and the Conference Finals ten times. And despite a valiant effort from their opponents in the third quarter, the Pacers had a hefty 15-point lead going into the last minute of play.

47:58With just 45 seconds left on the clock, Artest fouls Ben Wallace. The crowd roars in anger, and there's a dust-up between players. Artest lays down next to Mark when the Soda Cup strikes him. I instinctively got to my feet. I was hoping, foolishly in retrospect, but I was hoping to prevent him from going into the stands. So I tried to reach out and embrace him. He ran right over the top of me, flattened me like I was a paper mache. Without even realising, Mark had suffered a major impact to his spine. It was, you know, being trampled by a 6 '8 guy with about 2 % body fat and landing hard on my back on an unforgiving cement floor that caused the injury.

48:41An MRI scan would later confirm he'd fractured five vertebrae, But with the adrenaline still pumping, incredibly, Mark got up and began commenting on the extraordinary scene as it unfolded. So I get up, I get back in the chair, you know, I'm a gamer. Let's go, let's get back on the air. With millions of people watching ESPN's TV coverage at home, the arena erupts in mayhem. He did put us back on the air. And by then I had turned around and seen what was going on behind me. Plus, there were fans running out onto the court. A guy came up and confronted Jermaine O 'Neal, and Jermaine took a swing at it.

49:17There was chaos all around. Several of our guys going through the tunnel to get back to our locker room were pelted with beer and debris. It was just totally out of control. Where was the crowd control? A lot of the ushers in the stands were older, retired people. They're not capable of stopping 6 '8", 250-pound people from duking it out any more than I was capable of stopping Ronnie from getting into the stands. Now, we had security in those days. It was one, maybe two. And so they had the knowledge and the ability to handle conflict, but they didn't have the numbers. But eventually the players and their support staff made it back to the shelter of their locker room, along with Mark II.

50:01Guys were talking about, yeah, you think maybe we'll get suspended for five games? You know, they had no idea the severity. To ease the ever-growing pain in his bag, Mark was given an ice pack and told to keep mobile by the team's coach. On the flight home to Indiana, he spoke briefly with Artest. He said, hey, what happened? I said, well, Ronnie, you ran right over the top. Oh, oh, oh, he said, was that you? I'm so sorry. I said, yeah, okay, my fault for standing in front of you. The commissioner of the NBA at the time, David Stern, who'd watched the whole thing unfold on television was less forgiving.

50:35Two weeks after the brawl, he handed out major suspensions to the offending players on both sides. They were unprecedented in their severity. So they were not well received from the Pacer perspective. I think the Pistons got some discipline too, but it was, Ron Arches were suspended for the rest of the season. And that was like, we'd only played, I think, seven or eight games. So that means, and he was arguably your best player, but if not, certainly one of your top two or three. Charged with assault and battery, Artest was sentenced to one year of probation and 60 hours of community service. He was forced to pay a fine and attend anger management counselling.

51:13And this team had championship aspirations, even with him being suspended, other guys being suspended for a handful of games. Jermaine O 'Neal was suspended for 20 games and later got it reduced on appeal. In total, nine players were suspended, five of which played for the Indiana Pacers. It disrupted the whole process. They thought they were good enough to win a championship. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but it wasn't an unreasonable goal. The response at Indiana was shock because they expected discipline, but not to that level. In addition to the suspensions, the NBA introduced new rules around security and enforced smart dress codes on players to supposedly clean up the appearance of the game.

51:54They also introduced tighter rules on how many alcoholic beverages fans could purchase at one given time. Alcohol had clearly played a significant part in the behaviour of the crowd that night. In retrospect, it seems fair to me. This is something that you can never allow to happen again. And thus, you must make a major statement, which the league did. The players were angry. They thought they were treated unfairly. The attitude was, hey, their fan threw the beer. Why are we getting the bulk of the punishment? Well, because your guy went in the stands. Do you see that or not? When the dust eventually settled, Artest returned to the world of professional basketball.

52:36And after winning an NBA championship several years later, he publicly thanked his psychiatrist live on air. Most players wouldn't do that, but he did. And I thought that was so cool. So despite being a non-participant and sustaining perhaps the worst injury in the brawl, Mark, how do you feel about being part of the game's history and folklore now? I look back on it now and I'm not glad it happened. But on some level, I got a pretty good story to tell now, you know. And I hope you got an apology in the mail from Ron Attest for breaking your back in five places. The first few times that we would see him when he was with another team, I would always make it a point to go up to him and ask him, hey, Ronnie, have my attorneys contacted you?

53:16The first couple of times he was taken aback. Well, then he knew I was kidding after that. Mark Boyle, the voice of the Pacers, was speaking to Hunter Charlton in that EMBA production for the BBC World Service. Finally this week, we're going underwater. The COP30 climate change conference in Brazil aimed to further agreements on reducing CO2 emissions and mitigating the effects of global warming. These regular meetings often coincide with attention-grabbing stunts designed to highlight the problems. For example, back in October 2009, in the run-up to COP15 in Copenhagen, the Maldives' top government officials donned their scuba gear for the world's first underwater cabinet meeting.

54:01The president at the time, Mohamed Nasheed, has been speaking to Greer Jackson.

54:11You could see the whole of the cabinet in diving gear with their cylinders, their diving suits, masks. It's just like, you know, you're going to the moon. And funnily enough, it's the same kind of dress as you go to the moon and as you go underwater.

54:34So everyone sat down, everyone had their paper, and I said, Bismillah, here begins the cabinet. it.

54:48One of the things that kept working in my mind was always, what is it that we are trying to do? What would come out of this? Would we look silly? I felt anxious. Meanwhile, on the surface, journalists jostled to see what was happening beneath the waves. The world was watching Mohammed. Charles Havilland, BBC News. In Mali, in the Maldives. Sky News. So why do it? Well, you know, we grew up going to the sea every day. Every day, you know, even when we were in school, during interval time, we would jump into the ocean. And we would get detention for that, but we still kept on doing it. It is so, so beautiful.

55:44You could spend ages underwater. Masks and fins came to the Maldives in the 70s. And we were the first generation, therefore, to actually see the reef. And we are also the first generation to see it die. Now, if you are a Maldivian, you cannot stop thinking about it. Climate change is our biggest challenge. Global temperatures are rising, ocean temperatures are rising. When ocean temperatures rise, the coral bleaches and the reef dies. When the reef dies, that has a big impact on the shoreline, first on coastal erosion. It also has a very big impact on our livelihood fishing. It's a richly diverse, welcoming nation with more than a half million people.

56:45But those people are under siege. Global warming could increase sea levels and submerge the chain of islands. Its iconic blue waters are recognizable the world over. But the Maldives archipelago is living on borrowed time. At the current rate of global warming, 80 % of these islands could be uninhabitable by 2050. So I said, you know, shall we have a cabinet meeting underwater? The idea is to impress upon the international community, impress upon everyone the gravity of the issue. It's a lighthearted way of telling everyone the predicament that we were in. Take me back to that moment, because I know some of your ministers did not know how to dive.

57:30What was their reaction when you were like, hey, we're just going to do a cabinet meeting underwater? So, yes, there were a few cabinet ministers who did not know how to dive, but within three days they learned. And most of us, you know, most of us grew up in the sea and land is there just for you to come and sleep on. And in fact, I kind of thought, you know, it would be odd to be in a Maldives cabinet if you can't dive. A lot could go wrong, though. The waters needed to be crystal clear to take the photographs. But that could easily be undone by inexperienced divers kicking up the sand and obscuring the visibility.

58:14Yes, how to control your fins, how to use your hands underwater. These are things you really have to learn. You can't panic underwater. Yes, it was a challenge. The day of the underwater ministers' meeting arrived, 17th October 2009. I remember waking up that morning and I told Laila, my wife, that we were going to have a cabinet meeting. and she looked at me and said, I mean, funnily dressed you are for a cabinet meeting because I was in my swimming gear. Then we put on our diving gear after that and then we left Mali to a nearby island. You know, international media had now descended on this little island.

59:09That day I was anxious, you know, I was president to start with and then I'm going to have a cabinet meeting and then underwater and then for the rest of the world to see it. And we are relaying a message, a very, very serious message through this.

59:31Anxious is the word, I think. No cabinet minister actually did panic and we all sat down together. And then we spoke to each other with underwater signals. There was a lot of fishes, angelfish, parrotfish, surgeonfish. I do remember a parrotfish just wouldn't leave us. And I suppose they were also excited, thinking, what's going on now? You know, we don't see this every day. It went on for about more than half an hour. We signed a declaration underwater. So there you are. If you are not mindful about what you're doing to our beautiful Mother Earth, the planet, this is what is going to happen to some of us.

1:00:27When we came up to the surface, then I gave an interview, still while in the sea. This is a challenging situation and we want to see that everyone else is also occupied as much as we are and would like to see that people actually do something about it. If Maldives cannot be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world. And then I think I went for another dive. You went for another dive? You know, it's like eating chocolate. One chunk leads to another.

1:01:13You know, when we woke up the next day, the picture was everywhere, everywhere. Politicians rarely admit to sinking to new depths, but the Maldives knows it's the best way to try and influence leaders in Copenhagen to sign a climate change deal. A bit of fun, says the Maldives government, but with a very serious message. And today, at least, this tiny nation has sent that message resoundingly around the world. Why do you think it was so impactful? Because it was, on the one hand, comical, light-hearted. And it was also serious. You know, climate change, you can't touch it. But here was a picture that you can actually see, visualise and say, this is what we are talking about.

1:02:09We probably were the first people to bring humanity to the challenges of climate change. I'm glad that we did that because we brought the story home.

1:02:29Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, was speaking to Greer Jackson. If you'd like to find out more about that underwater cabinet meeting and see photos from the day, head to bbc.com where you can see a feature article about it all. That's it, though, for this episode of the History Hour. We'll be back next week with more amazing first-hand stories from the past. So until then, this is Max Pearson. From all of us here, thanks for listening. Goodbye. From the pioneers. We weren't going to ask mission. We're just going to do it. And the celebrations. You feel you have, you win. I feel it.

1:03:03I was first. I was first. We were so proud of ourselves. And Cameron was proud of us too. I still cannot believe it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. To the humiliations. I did cry most of the half. Oh man, I'm failing. I'm failing this morning. And I love. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. It's not just about the sport. It's about all the other things that people with disabilities learn from each other. For nine minutes, you become a fan in the stands as we take you back in time to examine memorable moments from all over the world.

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