The Green Revolution 2.0: Bill Gates and the Remaking of Agriculture
Who is Bill Gates, the college dropout from Seattle who built the operating system of global capitalism - and then turned his restless, problem-solving mind to the oldest human activity of all: growin...
14 Apr 55min
Huitlacoche: Corn Smut or Sacred Gift?
What is huitlacoche, the fungus that Indigenous farmers in Mexico gave thanks for at harvest - and that American agronomists spent a century trying to burn, quarantine, and breed out of existence? Why...
7 Apr 38min
The Rise of Plastic in Fresh Produce
What is plastic, and how did a shortage of billiard balls accidentally give birth to the material that would feed the modern world? Why did a Belgian chemist rummaging through coal tar waste end up tr...
31 Mar 1h 5min
The Tree of Life: Empires, War, and the Modern Date (Part 2)
How did the humble date palm become entangled in the great age of empire? Why did steamships, railways, and the opening of the Suez Canal transform an ancient oasis crop into a global commodity? And h...
24 Mar 38min
The Tree of Life: How Dates Built the Ancient World (Part 1)
How did a humble desert fruit help build some of the world’s earliest civilizations? Why did ancient farmers in Mesopotamia become master matchmakers for palm trees? And how did the date palm come to ...
17 Mar 52min
From Hot Houses to High Tech: The Rise of the Greenhouse
What does a Roman emperor’s craving for cucumbers have to do with feeding eight billion people? How did a 15th-century Korean cookbook quietly invent heated agriculture centuries before Europe’s glass...
10 Mar 1h 9min
Wheels, Plates and Pyramids: Produce & U.S. Dietary Guidelines
What was the United States government’s first move, when it decided that what Americans ate was a matter of national concern? Why, from the depths of the Civil War to the height of the culture wars, h...
3 Mar 1h 3min
The History of Avocados
What kind of fruit was designed to be swallowed whole by giant sloths? How did a sacred Mesoamerican tree become the green badge of millennial brunch culture? And how did a humble postman’s backyard s...
24 Feb 1h 29min
