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
Morocco: The Argan Tree and the Women Who Saved It
Why has the argan tree — which grows nowhere else on Earth — survived for 65 million years in the mountains of Morocco, and why are the women who have tended it for centuries now earning two euros six...
9 Jun 28min
Senegal: How Peanuts Built and Broke a Nation
Why did a South American legume become the foundation of French imperial power in West Africa — and what did it cost the people who grew it? Who was Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the Sufi mystic the French exi...
4 Jun 29min
Ecuador: The Cinchona Tree and the Cure for Malaria
Why did the cloud forests of Ecuador produce the only cure for a disease that killed popes, hollowed out armies, and blocked European expansion into the tropics — and what did the people whose knowled...
4 Jun 26min
France: The Truffle Underground
Why did France's black truffle — once produced in the thousands of tonnes — collapse to near-extinction in a century, and what does its revival reveal about the country's relationship with luxury, lan...
4 Jun 32min
Mexico: The Aztec Origins of Chocolate
Why did the Aztecs drink their currency — and what does it mean that the most global food in the world began as a bitter, frothy, sacred drink consumed by warriors and kings in the rainforests of anci...
2 Jun 28min
Canada: The Great Maple Syrup Heist
From Indigenous sugar shacks to the Supreme Court of Canada… how did maple syrup become one of the world’s most tightly controlled commodities? Why does Quebec maintain a vast strategic maple syrup re...
2 Jun 31min
USA: The Tobacco Lords and the Founding of America
Why did tobacco, and not gold or glory, save the first permanent English colony in America? How did the Founding Fathers' tobacco debts to British merchants help light the fuse of the American Revolut...
2 Jun 27min
