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The History Hour: Doom and Danish brains

Discussion & Talk

09/12/2023 GMT

BBC World Service - The History Hour, Doom and Danish brains

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

We hear about two of the most influential computer games of the 1990s with their creators; John Romero, developer of Doom and Jan Tian who was a coder on FIFA 94.

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear about two of the most influential computer games of the 1990s with their creators. John Romero was one of the developers of Doom and talks about the concept of a martian military base populated by zombie soldiers. Coder Jan Tian describes how his devotion to working on the football game FIFA 94 landed him in hospital. Our guest, The Guardian newspaper's video games editor Keza MacDonald, looks back on games which had a global impact.

Also how in 1945, 10,000 brains were collected from dead psychiatric patients in Denmark. It is now thought to be the world’s largest brain bank. We also find out how a group of right-wing army officers seized power in Greece in 1967 to stop the election of a social democratic government led by veteran politician George Papandreou.

And 30 years on since the cult French film La Haine was released, its director Mathieu Kassovitz describes how it caught the attention of high profile politicians with its criticism of policing in France.

Contributors:
John Romero – Doom developer
Jan Tian – FIFA 94 coder
Keza MacDonald – video games editor, The Guardian
Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen – pathologist
George Papandreou Jnr – former Greek Prime Minister
Mathieu Kassovitz – film director

(Photo: Brains stored in plastic buckets at the University of Southern Denmark. Credit: BBC)

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