South Africa: The Rooibos Dispute
Why did the Khoisan people of South Africa spend nine years in legal negotiations to receive 1.5 percent of an industry built entirely on knowledge they had held for three centuries — and what does th...
18 Jun 22min
Qatar: The Locust and the Desert
Before the gas flares and the glass towers, before the air conditioning and the sovereign wealth fund, what did Qatar actually have? Why was a single tree the difference between survival and starvatio...
18 Jun 21min
Czechia: Gregor Mendel's Peas and the Birth of Genetics
Why did a monk in a Moravian monastery spend eight years counting 30,000 pea plants — and how did the number three to one unlock the secret of heredity that Charles Darwin couldn't solve? Why did Greg...
18 Jun 22min
Portugal: Spices, Empire, and the Pepper That Built Lisbon
Why did the Visigoths demand three thousand pounds of black pepper as the ransom for Rome — and what does that tell us about a climbing vine in Kerala that reshaped the entire history of the western w...
16 Jun 21min
Scotland: Dundee Marmalade and the Keiller Family
How did a storm-battered Spanish ship, a Dundee harbour, and a grocer's wife with a pan full of unsaleable bitter oranges accidentally create one of the first registered trademarks in British history ...
16 Jun 25min
Tunisia: Olive Oil and the Roman Breadbasket
Why does a town of 20,000 people in central Tunisia contain the third largest Roman amphitheatre ever built - and what does a structure that seated 35,000 people tell us about what olive oil money cou...
16 Jun 21min
Jordan: The Dead Sea, Balsam, and Cleopatra's Monopoly
Why did Cleopatra demand the balsam groves of Jericho as the price of financing Marc Antony's wars — and what does it mean that a plant worth twice its weight in gold was guarded day and night by Roma...
11 Jun 25min
Australia: The War on Rabbits
How did twenty-four rabbits released by one man for a "spot of hunting" in 1859 colonise an entire continent within thirty-five years — and why did a three-thousand-kilometre fence, a campaign of pois...
11 Jun 25min
