Ivory Coast: Blood Chocolate
Why does the country that grows 45 percent of the world's cocoa receive between five and seven percent of the value of the chocolate bar it becomes? How did a single crop fund two civil wars simultane...
21 Jul 23min
Uruguay: The Basque Vine
Why did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest r...
21 Jul 22min
England: 5,245 Acts of Parliament
Why did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of pa...
21 Jul 24min
Switzerland: The Cherry and the Still
How does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in Cen...
16 Jul 16min
Algeria: The Wine That Made France French
Why was Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country in North Africa, the largest exporter of wine in the world — and why has almost nobody heard of it? How did the phylloxera catastrophe that destroyed Fr...
16 Jul 20min
Panama: Los Canaleros
Why did the President of the United States personally intervene to improve the yam supply of Caribbean labourers on a jungle construction site — and what does that detail reveal about the vast, brutal...
16 Jul 23min
Saudi Arabia: The Quay of the World
Why did the Sumerian gods describe a land on the Persian Gulf coast as paradise — and why does the geological reality of that same land, 4,000 years later, still justify the comparison? Who were the Q...
14 Jul 25min
Türkiye: Social Intercourse and Free Discussion
Why did two Syrian merchants opening a shop in Istanbul in 1554 inadvertently invent the public sphere — and how did a small copper pot of coffee produce Lloyd's of London, the French Revolution, and ...
14 Jul 22min
