The Mau Mau uprising and man-eating lions

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26:12Still to come in our collection of eyewitnesses to past events in Kenya, the 2008 power-sharing deal designed to end a wave of political violence and the 130-year-old giant tortoise who befriended a baby hippo. These are Dublin tortoises somehow washed up on the East African coast and he had somehow gotten himself into a ditch and a vehicle reversed onto his back and cracked his shell. But first, in 1997, scientists travelled to Kenya in search of a cave believed to have been the den of the man-eating lions that terrorised railway workers in 1898. That was the era of pith helmets and a colonial desire to drive into the heart of Africa.

26:53The officer in charge of the railway project back in the late 19th century was the British Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson. Here's Stefania Godza. It's the 30th of April 1997. Under the blazing Kenyan sun, a team of scientists and wildlife rangers are searching the remote region of Sabal. They're looking for a cave believed to have been the den of the infamous Sabu man-eaters. One of those scientists was Tom Noski. To Kenyans, the story of the man-eaters, every little kid knows the story, every taxi cab driver knows the story, every elderly person. To them, it's a much more important story in their culture for their country.

27:41The story dates back to March 1898. The area that is now Kenya was under British rule, and Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson had been sent to Zavo to help build a railway that would link the East African coast with Uganda. Here's Alan Patterson, his grandson. My grandfather was assigned to construct a bridge over the River Zavo in what was then the East Africa Protectorate. And as soon as he arrived, he discovered that the Indian workmen that were the primary builders of the bridge and the railway connection were disappearing one by one. Alan later inherited his grandfather's diary which he's read many times along with his book The Man Eat Us of Savo where he tells the story of the lions that terrorized railway workers for nine months He found out that they were being taken by a lion and then he set out to try to kill them For nine months two lions preyed on Indian and African railway workers, dragging sleeping men from their tents at night.

29:00They stalked the comps with growing boldness, slipping through gaps in the thorn fences and ignoring the fires workers let to keep them away. At one point there was a rebellion on behalf of the workers against my grandfather because, not surprisingly, the workers didn't like being exposed to the threat of being taken by the man-eaters. My grandfather was able to put it down through a show of force. Six months passed before Patterson could kill the first lion. The second wouldn't go down until three months later. Nearly caused him his life. He had shot the lion but not killed it and turned to his gun bearer for his additional rifle and discovered that his gun bearer had gone up the nearby tree.

29:56My grandfather very quickly followed suit, got the rifle from his bearer and was ultimately able to kill the lion.

30:0828 workers were killed, according to railway records But Patterson estimated the real death toll at 135 Saying many local African victims had never been counted He then had them skinned and kept them in his home For 25 years until he was on a lecture tour in Chicago and talked with the director of the Field Museum and was able to sell them to the museum, which then mounted them and put them on display. Assistant collection manager Tom Noski grew up visiting the taxidermied lions at Chicago's Field Museum. Years later, he joined the museum as a scientist. Eventually, he set out to solve one of the Savo story's biggest mysteries.

31:03I remembered seeing them as a little kid and, you know, that it was curious that they didn't have manes. And so I didn't know when I was a little kid that there was an actual book written by John Henry Patterson. And so I got a copy of the book and I was reading through the book. And in the book, he talks about a cave that he found and he thought it was the den for those lions. It was nearby the railroad camp where the lions were attacking people. And so I proposed to another friend who was a mentor of mine here that one day if we were doing a project in Uganda or Kenya that we should try to see if we could find the cave described in the book.

31:41And here's that description. Around the entrance and inside the cavern I was thunderstruck to find a number of human bones with here and there a copper bangle such as the natives were. Beyond all doubt the man-eaters den. After Patterson left Savo, the cave remained lost for almost 100 years. So in 1997, we both had a project there. We were in southwestern Uganda, and we took some time off and we went to Kenya. The government was really interested and enthusiastic. They made a grid on the maps of where it should be based on the description in the book. But they had no luck, and time was running out.

32:22So two days before leaving. We were walking up these dry streambeds and all those dry streambeds had other streambeds that emptied into them. So we split up as a group and the idea was that every little dry streambed anybody crossed, they also had to go up that dry streambed and anything connected to that one just to make sure that the cave wasn't there. And we were all day 12 hours walking and it was very hot. And we walked, and then I noticed some of the rangers that were with us. I could see those guys. I had binoculars. I'm working on birds in Uganda, so I always had my binoculars. I could see that they were just passing stuff up because I think they didn't think we were going to find the cave, right?

33:03So then I had to go across and go up all the ones that were missed by everybody else. I was so exhausted, and I was out of water for most of the day. And so when we got to the river itself, the Salva River, I was drinking out of the river, and they said, I shouldn't drink out of it because you could get sick. But I was so dehydrated, I didn't think we were going to find the cave. On the last day, the 30th of April, they tried a different strategy. So I was reading the book, and then I noticed that he was giving descriptions also of the habitat and the hills, where this was, where that was. And that's when I realized that the coordinates were off.

33:42And so if we just went by his description of the landscape, that maybe we'd be able to find it. The first stream bed we found, we walked up it and followed this labyrinth of dry stream bed pathways and some of the descriptions of the plants he gave with the palm trees. And we found the cave maybe within an hour, maybe like 45 minutes. Now we had a copy of the photograph of the cave that he published in the 1907 book. One of the guys was standing in front of the cave with the photo, and every single crack is the same, right? It's exactly the same. And so, yeah, we were pretty excited, because the truth was I really thought there was no chance we could find it.

34:22But what they found inside was less exciting. We hoped that maybe there'd be remains of stuff, and not necessarily the people that Patterson described, but that it was going to be an ancient hyena den that would have been sort of like the Holy Grail. And we found no chance of that. The cave was empty.

34:45It lay on the path of a seasonal waterfall, so any bones had long since been swept away. But rediscovering the cave helped revive interest in the Sabo story, inspiring new research and museum projects in Kenya. It evolved into something much bigger than that. The National Museums of Kenya now is planning an exhibit to tell the story of the Sabo Lions from the Kenyan perspective. That was an outgrowth of it. So for me, this is the best outcome that we could have ever expected. The scientists Thomas Noski and Alan Patterson, John Henry Patterson's grandson, were speaking to Stefania Gotsa. One aspect of Kenya's recent history has been the propensity towards political instability and violence.

35:33But in 2008, President Mwai Kibaki and his rival, Raila Odinga, signed a power-sharing deal designed to end unrest, which had left more than 1 ,200 people dead. And it's Stefania again who takes us through what happened. It's the 28th of February 2008, and Kenya's government and opposition leaders are about to announce an unprecedented deal. The agreement will see President Moaikibaki share power with his biggest rival, Rayla Odinga, he will be taking on the newly created role of prime minister. With this, they both hope to put an end to the violence that has engulfed the country after a disputed election two months earlier.

36:17The election crisis has plunged Kenya into its most dangerous period since independence more than 40 years ago. 600 ,000 people have been forced to leave their homes because of unrest. And in a savage wave of inter-ethnic violence, which has now largely abated, more than a thousand people have been killed. The election was tightly contested, but the result was immediately disputed. Incumbent President Moaikibaki was declared the winner with about 46 % of the vote. His main rival, Raila Odinga, won 44 % and alleged widespread fraud. International observers also raised serious concerns about the tallying process, and on the streets, violence was already claiming lives.

37:05Well, we had anticipated it. This is Maina Kiai. I was the chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, which was an independent state body. Maina says the crisis had been years in the making ever since the government put forward its own version of a new constitution in 2005. The regime changed it and made it very much a pro-regime, pro-executive constitution. It was a very violent campaign. It was very hot. The use of hate speech was profound and there was a lot of animosity. And I remember even that year in 2005 and 2006 saying publicly that if our politicians do not change course, the chances of us having real conflict in 2007 after the election was very high.

37:54And he was right. In the nine weeks after the 2007 elections, news of riots and attacks kept growing. Here's a BBC report of one of them. This is the site of the church where it once stood. You can still smell and taste the smoke in the air. Over here is the door, the entranceway, which was initially barred. The attackers coming in with huge mattresses that they dragged in. They put paraffin them on here and then they set them alight. This church at the time was packed with hundreds of people, many of them women and children, who'd flocked here for fear of being attacked in the aftermath of this election.

38:34Support for a party is ethnic-based. Therefore, if you don't like that party or you don't like that politician, then the entire ethnic group is at stake. When the elections happened, at some point the results stopped flowing in. We didn't know what was going on. The chairperson of the election commission started saying, I can't find my people, my returning officers. And then inevitably, when the live transmission started, we found that the opposition candidate, who had been leading by more than a million votes before power was taken out, now was behind. Live coverage of the count, together with delays in reporting results from some constituencies, fuelled tensions as Odinga's early lead disappeared.

39:15In the end, Kibaki was declared the winner by only about 230 ,000 votes. However, an independent inquiry later said there had been too many irregularities and manipulation by both sides to determine who had really won. I was monitoring the elections in Mombasa, and I was in constant touch, by the way, with the chairperson of the election commission, urging him to be fair. In fact, I was urging him, please postpone these results. You just, you can't win anywhere you go. If you announce one way or the other, it will be tense. ask Kenyans for time, ask us, you know, go to national television and tell us, look, this is very complicated.

39:52I beg for another three days so I can get this right. And sadly, he was not able to, and I kept saying, this is very tense. Protests broke out, and the police responded with force. Attacks and reprisals soon spread, so Maina went back to the capital, Nairobi. We heard about the church in Eldoret that was burnt down with people inside it. We heard of police shooting people in Kisumu, in Eldoret, in Nairobi, in Mombasa. I felt really sad. I felt very sad because I'm not a politician and I wasn't a politician. And I saw my role as a warning, as putting out there. I had no police powers. I couldn't arrest anybody for what they were doing.

40:32But what I could do is articulate a position and speak for the millions of Kenyans who were at risk or who were scared of what might happen. And he ended up being one of them. His high-profile position and his role as a human rights watchdog put him in danger. It was very dicey and I was warned by my contacts within the police and intelligence to be careful. I raised the alarm. I said that there was a plot to kill me. And so I spent quite a bit of time outside the country. I would travel out quite often and go and then come back. I used to go to the airport because of the threat to me. I used to go with ambassadors who'd take me in their cars with the flag flying.

41:09so then I've got diplomatic protection because of that. I changed vehicles every day. Every car that I was in had timp, so you couldn't tell it was me. I was never out late, too late at night. I went to places where I met people. It was always very well-lit public places. For me, it was a very traumatic time for me then. As former UN National Secretary-General Kofi Annan led international mediation efforts, Maina and other Kenyan civil society leaders urged both sides to negotiate. We were very clear that this is a political problem that needed to be resolved politically. And we were very clear as well that after we went through some analysis that it was going to be very, very difficult to convince everybody what was the correct election result.

42:00We were pretty early on some of the first people to call for a coalition government between the two of them, which they would share power, you know, 50-50. But sharing power was unprecedented in Kenya, and neither side liked the idea. The Kibaki side was very reluctant to talk. They were actually quite hard-line. Both Kibaki and his then Minister of Justice were very, very hard-line. They were very complicated. So it was hard to get through to them. So we would get in touch with them through intermediaries that they would talk to. But the Odinga side was quite open. They listened to us. We also limited how much we talked to them directly to be as balanced as possible.

42:39The talks went through highs and lows, but Maina believes international pressure, including the threat of sanctions and travel bans, ultimately persuaded both sides to compromise. So at first they were kind of arrogant about it. And then the pressure came on and a lot of them had their children, for example, in university in the West. So when the British High Commissioner says you're going to declare your children persona non grata, then people begin to listen a bit more, you know. A peace deal for Kenya, President Kibaki, and Ryla Odinga signed a power-sharing agreement designed to end the political crisis.

43:18They agreed Kibaki would remain president while Odinga would become prime minister.

43:26By this point, more than 1 ,200 people had died. A deal like this had never existed in Kenya. Could it last? Actually, it did. It kept us together. It kept the country together for five years after that violence. It led to a new constitution in 2010. The power sharing was also good because they were watching each other. If you look at the state, I think there was less corruption during those five years of the power sharing government than has ever been in the history of this country.

44:05Stephanie Agotza was speaking to Maina Kiai, chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights at the time of that attempted power-sharing deal in 2008. Our final story from Kenya's past is a heartwarming one about an unlikely friendship. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck the coast of Kenya, a baby hippo was swept out to sea and separated from his family. After being rescued, the little hippo bonded with a 130-year-old giant tortoise called Mosei. Their relationship captured the world's imagination and became an international sensation. In 2023, Jill Kersley spoke to a scientist who knew the pair well.

44:50So you had these two animals behaving like each other. The hippo behaving like a tortoise and the tortoise behaving like a hippo. That's wildlife conservationist Dr Paula Kahumbu. Paula was based at Hala Park in Mombasa, a city on the southeastern coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. The park was an abandoned limestone quarry that had been transformed into a wildlife sanctuary. It was the home of a 130-year-old giant tortoise called Mazay. So Mazay was one of the 13 giant Aldabaran tortoises that lived in the rehabilitated quarries. He was brought into Kenya about 30 years earlier and was adopted by a family who looked after him for a while.

45:37These Alduban tortoises somehow washed up on the East African coast. And he had somehow gotten himself into a ditch and a vehicle reversed onto his back and cracked his shell. So he was this marked tortoise. Because to be honest, when you look at them, they all look kind of the same. And because of that crack, he also wasn't commercially very valuable. Mazay was this big old guy who nobody wanted because of his big crack on his back. Mazay means old man in Swahili. He was different from the others at the sanctuary. He was quite a character. He was notorious for going on long walks. He would walk out of the compound, disappear sometimes for days, and be found somewhere else in another part of the neighbourhood of Mombasa.

46:22and then he'd have to be brought back, which was difficult because he was so big. Big? He was huge, weighing around 300 kilograms. That's about the same weight as three average 20-year-old American men. And he was over one and a half metres tall. Because of his escapades, Mize was put into an enclosure with a low stone wall. He could wander around in there, but he couldn't get out. A devastating tsunami struck in December 2004. Sunday morning on the rim of the Indian Ocean, huge waves of destruction triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra crash onto the coastlines of 11 countries.

47:07I was out in the ocean when the waves first started coming in and it wasn't terrible, it was just surprising how fast they came in and it took us a few hours to realise this was part of the big phenomenon that was happening. in Asia. I think it was late in the evening. I was called and I was told that there was a baby hippo orphaned as a result of the Indian Ocean tsunami. And would I rescue him? And we drove off. And what we found was about 300 people had been involved in capturing this baby hippo. He was all slippery and slimy and tiny. He was about the size of a small dog. And he had been jumping into the sea and then they couldn't get him when he was swimming around in the water.

47:47And eventually a French volunteer rugby tackled him and caught him and they threw a big shark net over his head. And so when I arrived, I found him all trussed up in ropes and tied down and terrified thing, you know, and all these people were so proud they'd captured this baby hippo, which in that area, hippos are very dangerous. So they were happy he'd been caught and they were happy he hadn't been killed. we undid all those ropes and put him in the back of my car and before we left I asked all the 300 people who were there to see him off I asked him what what name are you going to give this hippo I'm not leaving until you give it a name all the Italians were like call him Nico they all had their Italian names but the community people said no his name is Owen I was so disappointed at first I was like, why would you call him Owen?

48:38It's an English name. And they said, because it was Owen who had rugby tackled him at the last minute and caught him. Owen was standing there and he was shaking his hand saying, no, no, no, please don't call him Owen. But, you know, he got named Owen and so we drove away. Owen was thought to be less than a year old and probably only a couple of months old. And there was no guarantee he would live. Paula drove him from the beach in Malindi, where he was rescued, to the sanctuary in Mombasa. We opened up this vehicle to let him out. He was tiny, exhausted, very, very cute looking hippo, but he was terrified and he seemed really wild.

49:16Mosei must have thought we were coming to see him because that's what people did and he was very popular. You know, he was the kind of tortoise that would come to greet people and would stretch out his neck and let people scratch him. When the vehicle arrived and all these people came out, Mosei started walking towards the gate to greet us. and we opened the gate and let Owen run in and Owen just ran straight in and found Mosey right there. And he just stood there with Mosey. Mosey just tried to get away, standing high on his legs and he can't move very fast. For the hippo, it was really easy to keep up with him.

49:48So the poor tortoise trying to run away, but he can't really run at all. So the two of them seemed to just walk off together. But you could tell that Mosey was really trying to get away. Mosey, as I said, is this like tank of a tortoise. Owen was about half the size. Just very, very puppy-like, you know, just cute babyish creature against this dinosaur of a tortoise. The next morning, Paula went to check on Owen. We found Mosey asleep with his huge, big fat legs out in front of his body. And Owen lying down beside him with his head on one of Mosey's legs. They just looked so cosy. And I have to say the tortoise looked more resigned, like there's no way I'm getting away from this creature.

50:39Journalist Peter Grester was there with his camera. So that morning when we took that photograph, it was so cute. And I said to Peter Grester, why don't we send this to the newspapers, put it out there? Because at the time, I don't know if you remember, there were so many awful, awful photographs and videos of what was happening. So we sent the photograph to the Daily Nation, which is one of our biggest newspapers in Kenya. It didn't take long. Within hours, that picture was all over the world. People started calling us. It was really amazing. He would only go in the water if the tortoise was in the water.

51:15And what we also discovered was that the tortoise, after several weeks maybe, had really adopted this hippo. They were always, always together. They were incredibly friendly with each other. Owen would open his mouth and Mazzei would put his head in Owen's mouth. And we started noticing Owen would make these really weird sounds, which sounded a little bit like the tortoise sounds. Or maybe the tortoise was trying to make a hippo sound. It was really, really unusual.

51:45Paula posted some photos and a diary of Owen and Mazzei's antics on the web, and the story went global. The Owen and Mazzei story became so popular that Paula wrote a book with Craig Hatkoff. This story of resilience, of an orphan finding a friend, is a story that anyone can relate to. Their book was even made into a musical. I feel very proud that we were able to bring this to global audiences and that millions of children around the world, actually not only children, so many adults have read it and have contacted us and told us how much this story has meant to them. Dr Paula Kohumbu spoke to Jill Kersley in 2023.

52:28Perhaps inevitably, Owen the hippo eventually grew too big to be able to stay with Mize the tortoise safely. They were separated in 2007. We're going to end this week with our sporting witness, and for this we step away from Matters Kenyon. In 1983, Maini Schilt took part in the first Ultimate Frisbee World Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden. She tells Maddy Savage how it felt to compete at the tournament. In a stadium in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, seven Finnish women and girls line up ready to start the match. 15-year-old Miley Schilt is there in a dark blue Finnish kit. She's tall with curly hair.

53:10On the other side of the pitch, seven Americans in turquoise get ready for the match too.

53:20The beginning of the game is always very exciting because both teams go to their ends of the field and stand on the goal line that they are actually defending. One of the strongest throwers starts with a long throw towards the other team and then we start running towards the goal area. The disc hurtles across the 100-metre pitch and all the players begin sprinting to get into position. This is the first ever World Championships of Ultimate Frisbee. It was very exciting. It was a chance to do something that hadn't been done before. The Finnish team have made it through to the women's finals where they're facing off against the USA for gold.

54:05Our team was really young so we had players who were from 14 to 22 years old And the US team, there were several people who were over 30, I think. And their frisbee handling skills were at a level that maybe none of us had. So you knew they were a tough competition? Yes, definitely. But they had just nine players and we had 13. So we thought we might have a little bit of an advantage there of being able to bring some fresh strength in the field. I remember that there was a lot of excitement and a strong belief that we could do well.

54:51Ultimate Frisbee is a fast-paced team sport played with a plastic disc or frisbee. You can't run with the disc, so the Finnish players are trying to pass it between them to reach the other end of the field. If they catch it in their end zone, they will score a point. But for Mayane and her team, the game isn't quite going to plan. I think we were a little bit panicking in the beginning when we were not able to score and all our passes were really poor quality and we just dropped the disc all the time. The Finns lose the first few points, with the Americans defending well and winning possession.

55:32But there was time for a possible comeback. We'll hear more from the match later. First, though, how did minor end up competing at this historic tournament?

55:45Ultimate Frisbee was first developed in the late 1960s in the United States. It combines elements of American football and netball or basketball. But it's a zero-contact sport, so you can't push players or take the disc out of their hands. You have to intercept it in the air, or if it falls on the ground or goes out of bounds, then the other team wins possession. The sport spread across North America and beyond in the 1970s and 80s. Mayne was a young teenager when she was first invited to join a game. I was in a sports park in one of the suburbs of Helsinki, and we were playing volleyball with a couple of my friends.

56:28So we were just practicing passes over the net and there was a field and there were some people there. We didn't even pay attention to what they were doing. But then they came over and said, have you ever thrown a frisbee? And would you like to come and join us for a game of ultimate? And we were like, what is that? We didn't know how to throw a frisbee or anything, but they were teaching us at the same time. And then we thought it was a lot of fun and went back then the following week. And that's how it started. What did you like about it compared to other sports? It was a little bit more laid back.

57:07All the people were sort of trying to help each other. The following summer, we ended up in a Finnish championship. And even there, all the players, even though we were competing, were really encouraging towards each other. and that was really something we really appreciated. What's quite unique about Ultimate Frisbee is that there's no external referee or umpire. Even at important tournaments, players must themselves call any fouls and resolve conflicts with the other team. The fouls were discussed in the field when they happened, but there were never really any real arguments. It was always very understanding of each other's point of views.

57:51Ultimate Frisbee is competitive, but with a big focus on sportsmanship or the spirit of the game. I think the essence is building the game together and then it goes beyond the borders of your own team. You're not trying to just win, you're trying to have a good time on the field and have a good game. Soon after, Maynard became a key player for the Finnish team and one of their strongest throwers. Her role on the pitch was as a playmaker or handler. I think what helped us as a team was that we had a proper coach that was committed to help us do our best. And we trained three times per week. We really put a lot of effort in developing our skills for the tournament.

58:39So back to that first ever world championship final, Finland versus the USA. We were a little bit panicking and as we started really badly then it just escalated. It started going even worse but we were able to pull ourselves together. The Finns make a few good defences, winning possession and catching the disc in their end zone to score a point. They start to build momentum and look increasingly confident. They have nine points to the USA's ten, when, in the stadium, the announcement rings out.

59:22Of course it was very disappointing because it was also so close, it was just one goal, and if we hadn't been really poor in the first part of the game, then it would have been even more even, and we would have been able to really compete. But, well, it's just so many things that play in a big game like that. The Finnish and American players hug and congratulate each other. Later, there's a short ceremony where the teams get onto a podium. Sweden takes third place, Finland second, and the Americans lift the trophy. Even though it was a very, very small sport in Finland, we ended up in newspapers as a small article that now the Finnish team came second and only the US was better than them.

1:00:18Maene and her teammates didn't have to feel disappointed for long because the next year, in 1984, they won the world championships in Switzerland. But after a few years, Maene's studies and work took priority. What would you say to your teenage self if you met her today? I would say don't stop. Even though you think that other things are starting to take more time, it would have been probably a good idea to keep on playing even longer. That's one thing that I have regretted a couple of times. Ultimate Frisbee has grown globally since those early beginnings. It now has teams in over 120 countries.

1:00:59It can be played in mixed men's or women's teams and on grass, sand or indoors. The USA, Japan, Colombia, Canada and the UK are regular champions, while Spain and the Philippines do best in beach tournaments. Are you still in touch with any of your teammates? Yes, a couple of them are still some of my best friends. We talk on the phone and meet several times per year, so they are like really good family friends still. Maini Schild, Swedish ultimate frisbee player, was talking to Maddy Savage in that bespoken media production for the BBC World Service produced by Karis Wall. Imagine a competitive sport with world championships and everything, yet no referee.

1:01:48That's inspiring. And that's also it for this edition of the History Hour. We'll be back with more first-hand stories from the past next week. 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 were just going to do it. And the celebrations. You feel you win. I feel it. I 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 sport that I love.

1:02:30Sporting 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. 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.

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1:03:40but was their credited author Homer even real? Hi, I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy show that takes history seriously and we are travelling back to 8th century BCE to trace the origins of the Iliad and Odyssey, epic poems that became backbones of Western literature. Join me and my fantastic guests as we unpack the stories of ancient Greek culture, war and triumph and have a laugh while we do it. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye. you