The first reality game show and a joik performance on Eurovision

28:51But now, he and his colleague had that evidence in their hands. So how did they get it? When I was six years old, I opened a box of cereal and there was a free plastic dinosaur inside. And that got me hooked on dinosaurs. Philip grew up to become a scientist and got a job in Alberta, Canada, one of the world's great centers for paleontology. Some of the largest dinosaur fossils have been found there. But since the second half of the 20th century, scientists' attention has been drawn elsewhere, as this 2011 BBC documentary explains. One country now sits at the center of the new dinosaur revolution.

29:38China. In recent years, spectacular fossils have been uncovered here. Amazingly preserved, these fossils revealed exquisite new details. In the long period when I was growing up, I guess, the political situation between China and the West really was in very rough shape, we'll say. But Canada was one of the countries that seemed to get along well with China. Philip became director of the China-Canada Dinosaur Project, the largest dinosaur exploration program between East and West in the last century. It was through that connection that in September 1996, he learned of a discovery that had barely circulated beyond China.

30:30I went through Beijing, and there was a front-page article on a Chinese newspaper, and it had a photograph of a small meat-eating dinosaur surrounded by what looked like feathers. Ji Chiang, director of the Chinese Geological Museum, had broken the news of the discovery to the Chinese media. He invited Philip to see the specimen in Beijing. I was very surprised to be ushered not into a collections room to see the specimen. I was ushered into a conference room, and it was full of the press. Cameras and newspaper journalists and so on. I mean, the room was full. They sat me down at the front with Ji Chung and brought out specimens one at a time.

31:19Insects and fish. But I was starting to give up. I was starting to think, well, maybe they weren't going to actually show me the one I wanted to see. But then suddenly this one box comes out, and it's a Chinese silk-covered box, quite amazing, with red velvet inside. And there was a specimen lying on the red velvet. Within milliseconds, I realized that this was no fake. This was a specimen that was covered with something that, if it's not feathers, it's proto-feathers. It's something leading to feathers. And I became an instant believer. It was a Cinosauropteryx, a small dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago in what is now China.

32:05It is now believed to have had feathers, not for flight, but for insulation. Philip had been invited to study it with Yi Qiang. But then... Something went sour during the press conference. and I wasn't sure what it was, but at the end of the conference, then there was no question that Ji Chang was finding a way to say, no, you're not going to work on the specimen. As it turned out, it's because of things that were said and translated in a certain way. I was questioning the fact that Ji had called it a fossil bird rather than a dinosaur. Ji Chiang believed it was the world's oldest bird, but Philip was convinced it was a dinosaur.

32:52He was a geologist, and he was training himself to be a paleontologist, because he had access to all these beautiful specimens from northeastern China. But when he saw feathers on the outside of the Sinosoropteric specimen, then to him, this was not a dinosaur, this was a bird. Philip went back to Canada empty-handed. But all was not lost. Li Fang is one of the farmers involved in the discovery. He spoke to the BBC in 1998 for a different documentary. I was digging and uncovered a large slab of rock. I thought it must be valuable. Half of the specimen ended up in one slab of rock and the other half ended in the other slab of rock.

33:41And the amateur collector, who was a farmer, was a pretty good businessman. And so he had sold half of the specimen to the Geological Museum in Beijing, and the other half of the specimen he sold to the museum in Nanjing. Chen Peiji was the paleontologist studying that other half of the fossil kept in Nanjing. He agreed to meet Philip at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in New York, where this story began. Until then, news of the discovery had largely remained within China and Japan. It was at that meeting in New York that all of the world first learned of the feathered dinosaur, thanks to the photographs Chen Peiji had brought to Philip.

34:30And I was invited to go back to China almost immediately and go see the specimen in Nanjing. And so I was the only person for a long time who had seen both sides of the specimen even. Cinosauropteryx was only the first of many feathered dinosaur fossils unearthed in China. Its discovery sparked years of debate. Today, the scientific consensus is clear. Some dinosaurs evolved feathers and over millions of years gave rise to modern birds. Even major film franchises like Jurassic World have embraced this shift, with recent installments depicting dinosaurs covered in feathers. It's about time. That's the Canadian paleontologist Philip Curry.

35:15He was speaking to Stefania Golzer. Next, we're staying in the 1990s for a moment when the history of slavery in Brazil came under the spotlight. It started with a woman called Mese dos Anjos, who was just trying to fulfill a middle-class dream by renovating her house in Rio de Janeiro. But in the process, a very grim story from the past began to emerge. She's been speaking to Julia Janeiro.

35:47I got married, had three daughters, and each of them had a pet. So we really wanted a big house with space for them to play and run around. Mesej had lived in Rio's harbor area since she was a girl. She and her husband, Petrusio, bought an old house there built in 1866. After six years living there, they saved enough money to renovate it.

36:14On the first day of renovations, they were digging holes for pillars to build a second floor. And they found these bones. So José, the bricklayer, he sat next to me at lunch and said, Look, in the holes we were digging, we found a lot of bones. The old owners must have buried dogs in the backyard. I said, Well, that's odd. Can you show me?

36:43I started to go through the rubble and I found an adult's dental arch. I told him, So José, this isn't a dog's, it's a person's, look, it's just like ours. And he made the sign of the cross. Then I found another dental arch, tiny, and said, So José, this is a child's. He started to cry. Everyone stood there, staring. We were like, my God, what is this? We started to think, oh, the old owners of the house killed people and buried them. Oh no, it was a serial killer. A million things crossed our minds. That evening, Maesed called a neighbor familiar with the history of the harbor area. She didn't know that two centuries back, a wharf just down the road from her house was the entry point for around a million enslaved people from Africa, sold in slave markets in the vicinity.

37:43The neighbor showed her a map with a path to a graveyard. We had no idea of the story. He told me, you live over a cemetery. You've just discovered the cemetery of the enslaved people. And I said, oh my God, what do I do? Merced had uncovered the new black cemetery, where historians estimate tens of thousands of people were buried. Brazil received more enslaved people from Africa than any other place in the Americas, around 4.8 million people. And according to recent studies, Rio was once Brazil's largest slavery port. Today I say that there I found the Holocaust, the Black Holocaust. It's a part of history that we didn't read about at school.

38:40We would learn that Brazil was inhabited by indigenous people and that there were slaves in the past. That doesn't stink, does it? We knew nothing about the reality of how bad it was. The term pretos novos, or new blacks, referred to enslaved people recently trafficked to Brazil, who couldn't speak Portuguese yet. The makeshift burial ditch beneath Mercedes' home was used from the late 1700s until around 1830.

39:12It lies beneath four houses today. It's a place with around 40 ,000 people, among which there were bodies of babies, girls, boys, teenagers, women, including pregnant women. They came from Mozambique, Congo, Angola, some from Ivory Coast. And when they disembarked, they were almost dead. Conditions on board slave ships were so appalling, historians estimate that hundreds of thousands died even before landing in Rio. Many died soon after, weakened by malnutrition and diseases like smallpox and dysentery.

39:56Marced had a hard time sleeping that night. The next morning, she called the city hall. When officials saw the archaeological remains, they suspended any further construction work, and so the family had to move out temporarily.

40:13We faced quite an ordeal, because it was a heritage site, but with people living on top. We were banned from continuing the building works, but nothing was done to investigate the site. And so we feared that authorities would seize our home. After three years like this, the family decided to move back in and resume renovations covertly. But Merced was restless with all that history underground. She started inviting visitors in to share her discovery. And the word spread. On May 13, 2005, Abolition Day, the family, together with friends and activists, founded the New Blacks Research and Memory Institute.

40:57As of last year, the site has received around 300 ,000 visitors.

41:04Today, Merced is 69 years old and has long retired from the family business she used to run.

41:14Merced shows me the exhibition hall with panels about the history of slavery and two windows on the floor so you can see down into the archaeological site. Underground, the earth is intermeshed with countless pieces of human bones. The family lives next door, in the same old house.

41:37Tonight, the opening of an art show starts with a roda de samba, live samba music. The Institute is a vibrant center for research, education and Afro-Brazilian culture.

41:52Surrounded by visitors, Masej looks back over the 30 years since her finding. This moment brings back memories from my encounter with people who came from Africa. And they somehow asked me not to allow them to be forgotten.

42:16Maria Augusta, or Dona Gu, plays the Atabaque, the tall wooden hand drum of Afro-Brazilian religions. The exhibition hall is filled with paintings of black women who uphold Afro-Brazilian traditions by artist Daumone Lidjussi.

42:38Merced's discovery turned out to be the tip of an iceberg. Fifteen years later, when the city was redeveloping the harbor area for the Rio Olympics, archaeologists dug up the nearby Valongo Wharf, the old slavery port. In 2017, UNESCO recognized the wharf as a World Heritage Site.

43:01The region is known as Little Africa, and guided tours lead people to learn about its history and celebrate Afro-Brazilian culture. But Merced believes that the lack of consistent public funding for the Institute reflects a wider reluctance to confront this history.

43:20The pain doesn't interest them. They are interested in the upbeat, the festive, the samba. Of course, the samba is important. But before samba, there is pain. It's a struggle. I'm a white person fighting against our society's perverse racism. They don't want to keep the story alive. Do you have a feeling of accomplishment that you've fulfilled your mission? Not yet. I'm far from that. This is very fragile. If we let a day go past without talking about this, the memory will fade.

44:02The constant work of contextualizing the past for the people of today. Merced dos Anjos was speaking to Julia Canero in that Overcoat media production. Next, we've got this week's Sporting Witness. We're going back 10 years to one of the most unlikely achievements in footballing history, when Leicester City became champions of the English Premier League. It was described as one of the biggest sporting upsets of the modern era. Helen Ledwick has the story. Leicester City defy the odds to win the Premier League.

44:36Delirious fan celebrate as the club, written off at the start of the season, wins the title for the first time in its history. It's a dream! It's a dream! A dream come true! Leicester City started the season as 5 ,000 to 1 outsiders. and they've just won England's top football league. And then the whistle blows and everyone just goes absolutely bananas, goes mad. Wes Morgan has just captained his team to an historic title. Only one club outside the Premier League's established elite has ever done that before. And football's changed a lot since Blackburn Rovers finished top 20 years earlier. This is the modern era, billionaire backers, mega TV deals and sold out stadiums.

45:22You're kind of half not thinking it's going to be possible. And then the closer you get to the end of the season, the more it becomes possible. And then when it was confirmed and the impossible was reality, best feeling ever. So how did the impossible become the reality? Leicester had only been promoted back to the Premier League in 2014 and spent months at the bottom of the table. Yeah, we wasn't picking up the results, but we felt performances were good, were OK, and we should be in a better position than we was. And then you stick to your guns, you try and keep the faith, and you try and find something that's going to change the flow of things.

46:03And we left it very late, very, very late. And I think we only won three games before that, the nine games before the end. And then we won seven of the last nine. So remarkable when you think about it. So remarkable, it'll become known as the Great Escape. And Leicester City have the summer of 2015 to figure out what comes next. In June, Wes is on international duties in Jamaica, when manager Nigel Pearson is sacked. His surprise replacement? The former Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri, who himself has just been sacked as coach of the Greek national team. When I saw that happen, I was like, oh, that's interesting because I knew what Claudio had done in the past.

46:48I wasn't sure about his kind of capabilities from this point on. And I wasn't there in pre-season, so I wasn't even sure if I was going to return and be playing. So there was a lot of unknowns, to be fair. Credit to Claudio. He said, Wes, I'm going to put you straight in for the game on a Saturday. So I was like, fantastic. You know, at least he has that belief and faith in me. The season gets underway and Leicester are organised, efficient and disciplined. Winning, drawing, rarely a loss. By Christmas, the top of the league. Ranieri's trying to keep things calm. He keeps telling the media the only objective is to hit 40 points.

47:26Leicester City make it six points out of six. Claudia, two matches, two wins, top of the table. Leicester are on fire at the moment. No, for us it's important to think match after match and to keep the point to save the club. That is important for us. 40 points and then look where we are. You're just thinking of survival? Yes, of course. This is the main goal. And after, we are looking if there is something better, we are ready. But now our goal is to fight every match. How was the last match? I think Claudio did great there, you know, with kind of keeping that pressure off the boys. Everyone wanted, well, all the media, the news, wanted that kind of punchline headline, you know.

48:13What can you do this season? Can you win the league? The message was from Claudio, no, we're just trying to get to 40 points, you know. That's the big target. And, yeah, it wasn't that message exactly inside the dressing room. But at the same time, we knew the task. We knew that, you know, obviously things can change very quickly in football. But let's keep doing what we're doing. and I think Cladier did fantastic with kind of keeping that pressure off us. The Foxes hold their nerve into 2016 and the next big test, a three-game run. Liverpool at home, then Manchester City and Arsenal away. Leicester beat Liverpool 2-0 and then beat Manchester City 3-1 at the Etihad.

48:53The team starts to believe. The way we performed, the way we kind of went to Manchester City's backyard and come away with the points, but obviously the three goals really hit us. And I thought, wow. For me personally, I thought we could do something special here, you know, and produce the impossible. And that's the first time I felt like that. And then they go to Arsenal and lose 2-1. But it isn't all bad, because something that happens in the Arsenal dressing room afterwards lights a fire under them. Some of the Arsenal players are sharing videos of themselves celebrating, posting selfies. We could hear the cheers anyway, but some of the boys on the phone had seen pictures of the dressing room, the Arsenal dressing room and all the guys.

49:35And I remember thinking, this is Leicester. Why are they celebrating? This is the great Arsenal. This is Leicester. And I think that definitely we learned a lot from that day in particular. And we didn't look back after that. Interspring and Leicester keep on winning. 1-0, 1-0, 2-0. A steady beat at the top of the league. There are just three games left in the season when they meet Manchester United at Old Trafford. They go 1-0 down. But Wes brings them level. That point proved vital because the next game was the Chelsea Tottenham and that's when it was decided. So my mum didn't come to many games, but she was at that game, you know, and it's fantastic to score.

50:16And I knew exactly where she sat. So you'll see on my celebration, I do a knee slide and then I point to the crowd and it was pointing to my mum. You know, fantastic because she probably comes to a couple of games a season. Leicester are close they could even win the title the following night they just need Chelsea to stop Tottenham winning at Stamford Bridge so of course the squad heads over to Jamie Vardy's house to watch that's Jamie Vardy, Leicester's leading striker so yeah it's kind of like a bit of a word of mouth and was like yeah you know that sounds good let's try and let's gather around Vard it's obviously you know it made sense so they're there feeling good the match gets underway but it's not quite going to plan, at least not for Leicester.

50:59So much hope and expectation before the game. There was a real buzz going off in the house and everyone's like, surely it's going to happen. Then obviously 2-0 down at half-time, we're thinking, nah, we're going to have to do it ourselves. It might not be. Obviously in the second half was a different story. Chelsea come back and hold Tottenham to a draw. Leicester are champions of England. So that's how the fans were celebrating as they watched the match. Let's look at Jamie Vardy and co-watching. Obviously, the final whistle, everyone goes ballistic. Everyone's going crazy, everyone's jumping on each other.

51:36I think there's some videos online of me getting dragged around the kitchen. I remember it so clearly, like, I'm being tired, thinking it's been 10, 15 minutes consecutive, like, shouting and screaming. And then everyone just took maybe 5, 10 minutes to respond to messages and just take a sit down and then, yeah, it definitely livened up again and it kind of rebuilt up and then started going crazy again. So, great memories, great time and I think it lasted for probably about six months. On Saturday 7th May 2016, Leicester City returned to the King Power Stadium, beating Everton 3-1 before lifting that Premier League trophy.

52:17To finally get a hand on the trophy, looking back and thinking where I was and where I come from. Just to play in the Premier League was an achievement, but to win the Premier League, never ever in a million years I thought it would be possible. To get that hand on that trophy, you'll see just before I lift it, I'll take a moment to myself, just close my eyes, just take a mental picture and then I'll lift the trophy. I needed to do that just to make sure it was real. Sporting Witness was produced by me, Helen Ledwick, using interviews from BBC Radio 5 Live and Cami and Ben's proper football podcast.

52:55Wes Morgan retired in 2021 after nearly a decade as captain, bowing out on the day Leicester City won the FA Cup for the first time. But the success has gradually faded and in 2023 Leicester City were renegaded from the Premier League and they're now in the third tier of English football. Finally this week, a story about the ever flamboyant and sometimes controversial world of the Eurovision Song Contest. The 25th running of the show took place in 1980, and it introduced the audience to Yoik, a unique vocal style from the indigenous Sami communities of northern Norway and Finland. Surya Elango tells us more.

53:33It's April 19th, and we're in The Hague in the Netherlands. 19 acts are performing in this international singing competition tonight, and we're already halfway through the show. So far, the audience has heard a whirlwind of styles. From Australia's upbeat opener with a lyrical tribute to the history of music, Turkey's glossy disco pop, Luxembourg's penguin costume novelty act, Morocco's first and only Eurovision entry with an Arabic ballad, Finland's flute-led piece, and plenty more. Next up, though, is Norway. By 1980, they'd finished last more times than any other country, including two null points.

54:14Their track record gave no hint of what was about to happen. Standing centre stage is Sverre Sjelsberg, a tall Norwegian musician known at home for his folk pop, which was popular at the time, and for fronting the 1960s rock band The Pussycats. Dressed in a light shirt and trousers, guitar strapped across his shoulder, he leans into the microphone and begins the opening verses of Norway's entry. It's simple and steady, the guitar looping beneath a chant-like vocal melody. Then, partway through the song, the energy shifts. An unknown singer, Matis Hatter, from the indigenous Sami people in the north of Norway, steps forward, wearing a gakti, traditional Sami clothing, a blue tunic with red, yellow and green trim.

55:08And then he begins to joik. It's a sound completely new to the Eurovision stage, a rhythmic, breath-driven vocal style from the north of Norway, rarely heard outside of the indigenous Sami communities at the time. So how did this community's private vocal tradition make it here, watched and heard by millions of people across the world? Well, that's a story that goes back to a community, a dam, and a protest movement that forced Norway to reckon with Sami rights. This is Inga, one of Matis Hata's younger sisters. She's speaking in Sami. A jojk is a person. It's a very close and personal description of that person through music, their personality, their traits, in a far more intimate way than words could ever express.

56:01Mathis, who the family nickname, Marta, grew up in a reindeer herding family in the north of Norway, with his mother, father and nine siblings. So Machte was the oldest and then there was me In 1968 the Norwegian government announced plans for a large 110 meter hydroelectric dam on the Alta Katakino River in Finnmark, northern Norway The project would have completely flooded their home village of Matze and threatened reindeer herding routes and salmon fishing which were central to Sami life, including the Hatter families It all began when they decided to make that dam near Alta. This was all very frightening.

56:45We were scared this new dam would flood my home village. For more than a century, the Sami had lived under Norwegianization, a forced assimilation policy that ran from the mid-1800s and started to phase out in the 1960s. The policy included state-run boarding schools that banned minority languages and forced relocation of whole villages. The Sami traditional way of life was pushed to the margins. Mahde had never really joiked much at home. And back in 1980, joiking in public was definitely still frowned upon by many, many more. But the joik never disappeared. In this time, people kept it alive in the places Norwegianisation couldn't reach.

57:30Out on the tundra while herding reindeer, in the mountains, or quietly with entrusted family gatherings. Joiking in secret or where no one could hear. But then in 1978, everything changed. The Sami's Joiking wouldn't be so secret anymore, which all began when the Norwegian government approved the Alter Dam. Our people demanded they stop, but the Norwegian parliament just ignored them. By the following year, Sami communities and environmental activists launched the largest wave of civil disobedience Norway had ever seen. Hunger strikes, blockades and mass gatherings at the construction site in Stilla.

58:15Thousands of people had gathered there. People came from everywhere, even other countries. There was a sense of fighting spirit that had been lit, but there was also a feeling of sadness. Mahde practically moved there, but would come home and tell us stories. Mahde told us he also taught others to Joik. It became something they bonded over, even people who had never joiked before in their life. But now they did as a way to show their support. One of the protesters he bonded with at Stilla was a young Norwegian musician called Sverre Kjelsberg, who had come north to Samiland as part of the wave of supporters.

58:59Mahte and Sverre soon became very close friends. And at some point, they started writing music together. and the song slash Joik, Sami Etenen, was created. In English, Land of the Sami was sung in Stilla, but also when the demonstrations spread to Oslo outside the Norwegian parliament. He told us they were going to enter Eurovision with it, and he explained that it was a protest song. One of the lines in the singing part of Sami Etenen directly translates to Joik has greater power than gunpowder. a Norwegian Jøjkastere kraften. And after submitting the song to Norway's broadcaster NRK who were preparing for the Melody Grand Prix Norway's Eurovision selection by March 1980 they received the good news.

59:51Sami Ednan was going to be Norway's official Eurovision entry.

1:00:00Before long it was April the 19th the day of the Eurovision Song Contest. Our whole family had come home to watch the Eurovision finals together. And we all gathered in front of the TV. I couldn't believe the size of the audience. All those people seeing and hearing him on that stage. It went straight to my heart. Our mother, she didn't say much, but she had a big smile on her face. She just said, he did good. But I think she was proud, since she was the one who had taught us all to Joik. It became the first time Sami language and Joik is broadcast to millions across Europe. The song finished 16th.

1:00:45But for Inga and her family, and for the Sami people, the cultural impact was far more important than the ranking. Mahde's performance at Eurovision gave higher status to Joik, to our music.

1:01:02Back home, construction in Stiller continued, and the altar dam was completed. Early plans would have flooded Inga and Matis' entire village, but the protest forced a redesign. The final dam was smaller and the community was spared. In the end, we weren't able to stop the building of the dam. The government did what they wanted, but at least we got our voices heard out in the world.

1:01:36I should have had a little cognac first. It would have helped my voice. Inga Hata, sister of Matis, he of the Yoich performance at the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest. She was speaking to Surya Elango. And that's it for this edition of the History Hour. We'll have more revealing and moving first-hand stories from the past for you next week. So until then, this is Max Pearson. from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask permission. We were just going to do it.

1:02:08It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. He started to write a story about how he came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit. We laughed a bit. It was wonderful. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness. Subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:02:56sweeten your next food moment. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash Explore-Gold. Terms and points cap apply. 102 miles ago, the oil light came on. 100 miles ago, you noticed. Now it's time to head to take five. This oil change, fall in love with your car all over again. In just 10 minutes, your dream technician will check your tire pressure, top off fluids, change your oil, and verify with Carfax exactly what your car really needs. All while keeping you in the driver's seat. Take five to stay in your car 10 minute oil change. Save up to 30 % on your next oil change to take five. $15 value.

1:03:32Valid to participating locations. Terms and conditions apply.