Dungeons & Dragons and dinosaur remains

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes. Our guest is Doctor Melissa Rogerson, who is a senior lecturer and board games researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

First, on its 50th anniversary, we hear from Luke Gygax, whose father created the fantasy role-play game, Dungeons & Dragons.

Then, the first dinosaur remains discovered in Antarctica in 1986, by Argentinian geologist Eduardo Olivero.

Next, Ethiopia’s internal relief efforts during the famine in 1984, led by Dawit Giorgis.

Plus, the fight to stop skin lightening in India with Kavitha Emmanuel who launched a campaign in 2013.

Finally, Angolan singer and former athlete Jose Adelino Barceló de Carvalho, known as Bonga Kwenda, speaks about his music being banned in 1972 and going into exile.

Contributors:

Luke Gygax - his father Gary Gygax created Dungeons & Dragons.

Doctor Melissa Rogerson - senior lecturer and board games researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Eduardo Oliver - Argentinian geologist.

Dawit Giorgis - in charge of Ethiopia's internal relief effort during the 1984 crisis.

Kavitha Emmanuel - campaigner.

Jose Adelino Barceló de Carvalho - known as Bonga Kwenda.

(Photo: Vintage game modules from the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons on display. Credit: E.Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:09.8	Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there. This week the
0:15.1	geologist who found the first dinosaur remains in Antarctica.
0:19.1	The weather is that part of Antarctica is terrible. Of the 60 days we spent in the field, we were able to work only during 12 days.
0:28.0	We have to hurry up during those days.
0:30.0	40 years on, a first-hand recollection of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia.
0:36.0	Every day there was funeral, every day there were hundreds of people dying.
0:40.0	I have never seen anything like this.
0:42.0	These are my own people. I could have been one of them.
0:45.0	Also the fight to stop skin lightning in India and from adversity to fame the Angolan singer and anti-colonial campaigner Bonga Quenda.
0:55.6	I was never allowed to sing in church with the croaky voice. They would say no no no
1:00.5	no in my choir. Everyone sing but you because of your voice. But first the
1:05.9	strange story behind one of the most successful tabletop games ever created as
1:10.6	with so many key moments in history, this starts with a smart person trying to turn
1:15.6	what looks like a disaster into a triumph, or what should have been a triumph.
1:21.3	For this, we're going back more than 50 years to an office in Chicago where the man who
1:25.4	went on to create the role play mega hit Dungeons and Dragons was about to be fired from his job.
1:31.5	Here's Matt Pintas.
1:33.0	It's October 1970 in America's windy city Chicago and 32 year old insurance underwriter
1:41.4	Gary Gygax has been called into an urgent meeting
1:44.7	with his new boss Bruno. A promotion opportunity came around. Both my father and
1:49.8	Bruno applied for that. Bruno got the promotion. His first act as the new boss was to fire Tad from his job
	...

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