Bosnia & Herzegovina: The Soul of a Plum
Why do Bosnian Muslims make and celebrate a plum brandy that Islamic law technically forbids — and what does their answer to that question reveal about four centuries of Ottoman rule, Balkan identity,...
2 Jul 26min
Sweden: The Swede Who Named the Natural World
Why did a restless boy from a rural Swedish parsonage end up giving a name to every living thing on Earth — and how did he build a system so durable that it still runs as the operating system of moder...
30 Jun 33min
Japan: The Emperor's Sacred Paddy
Why does the Emperor of Japan — head of state of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth — wade into a rice paddy every year to plant seedlings by hand, and harvest them in autumn by...
30 Jun 28min
Iraq: How Irrigation Destroyed the Civilization That Invented It
Why did the civilisation that invented writing, cities, and law destroy the very soil that made it possible — and why are sixty to seventy percent of those same fields still poisoned by salt today? Ho...
30 Jun 29min
Paraguay: The Yerba Mate Jesuit Empire
Why did a Jesuit republic of 140,000 people in the subtropical forests of South America — with its own armed militia, its own printing presses, its own Baroque composers, and the only successful mate ...
25 Jun 29min
DR Congo: The King Who Owned a Country
How did a shipping clerk in Antwerp discover one of the greatest crimes of the nineteenth century simply by paying attention to which ships were carrying what — and why did it take a decade of mission...
25 Jun 22min
Spain: The Red Gold of La Mancha
Why does it take between 150,000 and 200,000 flowers — and up to 470 hours of human labour — to produce a single kilogram of saffron, and why has the plateau of La Mancha been the place where that lab...
25 Jun 37min
Colombia: The Coffee Farmer Who Never Existed
Why was the most famous coffee farmer in the world a Cuban-American opera singer from Havana who had never visited Colombia — and how did a fictional man with a mule named Conchita become one of the m...
23 Jun 20min
