The Boxing Day tsunami, and Alexa’s creation

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.

We hear two stories from the deadly 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed thousands of people in south-east Asia.

Our expert guest is Ani Naqvi, a former journalist who was on holiday in Sri Lanka when the wave hit.

We also hear from the two Polish students who created the voice of Alexa, the smart speaker.

Plus, the story of Klaus Fuchs, the German-born physicist who passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union while working on the first atomic bomb.

Finally, we find out about Robert Ripley, the American cartoonist who made millions from sharing bizarre facts.

Contributors:

Choodamani and Karibeeran Paramesvaran – couple whose three children died in the Boxing Day tsunami.

Dendy Montgomery – photographer who captured the tsunami devastation.

Ani Naqvi – former journalist who was caught up in the tsunami.

Lukasz Osowski and Michal Kaszczuk – creators of Alexa.

Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski – nephew of atomic spy Klaus Fuchs.

John Corcoran – director of exhibits at Ripley’s.

(Photo: Tsunami devastation in Indonesia. Credit: 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, Max Pearson,
0:09.7	the past brought to life by those who were there. Coming up, Klaus Fuchs, the atomic scientist,
0:15.5	who gave nuclear secrets to the Soviets. He went openly to the Russian embassy in London, rang the bell, said
0:23.6	that he wanted to see someone because he had some information which he thought ought to be
0:28.0	handed to an appropriate official. Plus how the computer-generated smart speaker voice Alexa was
0:34.3	created. And believe it or not, the story of Robert Ripley, the American cartoonist
0:39.8	who made millions from peddling bizarre facts. He actually bought a small island off the coast of New York,
0:45.6	and he called it Bayon Island, B-I-O-N, which is an acronym for Believe It or Not.
0:51.5	That's coming up later in the podcast. But first, one of the most serious natural disasters of this century.
0:57.9	On Boxing Day 2004, an earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia,
1:03.3	sparking a tsunami which swept away entire communities around the Indian Ocean.
1:07.9	There are literally thousands of personal stories
1:10.8	of death and destruction,
1:12.7	of survival and recovery
1:14.0	to have emerged from that truly tragic event.
1:17.0	But from South India,
1:18.4	Rina Stanton-Shama
1:19.3	has been hearing about a husband and wife
1:21.1	who experienced all of the above,
1:23.4	death, destruction, survival,
1:25.7	and through extraordinary conviction, recovery.
1:29.0	It's coming again! Coming again! Oh my God!
	...

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