Ghana: Six Pods in a Toolbox
Why did a blacksmith hide six cocoa pods under his tools to smuggle them past Spanish customs — and how did those six pods become the foundation of an industry that today supplies sixty percent of the...
9 Jul 23min
Germany: The Purity Commandment
Why did 27 words buried in a Bavarian price regulation from 1516 become the most famous food law in history — and why did it take 402 years for anyone to give it the name that made it sound ancient an...
9 Jul 21min
Uzbekistan: The Emperor Who Wept Over a Melon
Why did the man who just conquered India weep over a melon — and what does that tell us about the fruit that travelers from Ibn Battuta to Victorian cavalry officers have been stopping their journeys ...
9 Jul 25min
Brazil: Rubber and Ruin
Why does the most extravagant opera house in the history of South America sit in the middle of the Amazon rainforest — and how did a wild tree, a Connecticut hardware merchant's accident, and a debt b...
7 Jul 22min
Haiti: The Black Jacobins
Why did the most productive colony in the entire world — generating 40 percent of Europe's sugar from an area the size of Maryland — become the site of the only successful slave revolution in human hi...
7 Jul 23min
Belgium: The Potato Famine in Flanders
Why did the potato blight begin in Belgium before it reached Ireland — and why has the Flemish famine of 1845, which killed tens of thousands and stunted a generation, been almost entirely forgotten w...
7 Jul 22min
Egypt: The Sacred Onion
Why did a Greek historian standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid in 450 BC record that its builders were fed on onions, garlic, and radishes — and what does the archaeology say about whether he was...
2 Jul 27min
Cape Verde: The Grogue Trail
Why did a Portuguese colonial sugar ban inadvertently create Cape Verde's national spirit — and what does it reveal about how cultures find ways through every door that's closed to them? How did ten u...
2 Jul 30min
