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
Norway: The Potato Priest Who Fed Norway
Why did Norwegian farmers believe that eating potatoes would give them leprosy — and who were the potato priests who spent fifty years smuggling tubers home from Copenhagen in their hats to prove them...
11 Jun 23min
Croatia: The Maraschino Cherry and the Republic of Ragusa
How did a city of 30,000 people survive for 450 years between Venice and the Ottoman Empire — and what does the Republic of Ragusa have to do with the cherry on top of your cocktail? Why does the Amer...
9 Jun 26min
Curaçao: The Orange That Named a Liqueur
Why did a Valencia orange, abandoned on a tiny arid Caribbean island, transform into a new species that nobody could eat — and how did that inedible fruit end up in cocktail bars on every continent? W...
9 Jun 25min
