Uruguay: The Basque Vine
Why did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest r...
21 Juli 22min
England: 5,245 Acts of Parliament
Why did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of pa...
21 Juli 24min
Switzerland: The Cherry and the Still
How does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in Cen...
16 Juli 16min
Algeria: The Wine That Made France French
Why was Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country in North Africa, the largest exporter of wine in the world — and why has almost nobody heard of it? How did the phylloxera catastrophe that destroyed Fr...
16 Juli 20min
Panama: Los Canaleros
Why did the President of the United States personally intervene to improve the yam supply of Caribbean labourers on a jungle construction site — and what does that detail reveal about the vast, brutal...
16 Juli 23min
Saudi Arabia: The Quay of the World
Why did the Sumerian gods describe a land on the Persian Gulf coast as paradise — and why does the geological reality of that same land, 4,000 years later, still justify the comparison? Who were the Q...
14 Juli 25min
Türkiye: Social Intercourse and Free Discussion
Why did two Syrian merchants opening a shop in Istanbul in 1554 inadvertently invent the public sphere — and how did a small copper pot of coffee produce Lloyd's of London, the French Revolution, and ...
14 Juli 22min
New Zealand: Without Harakeke
Why did a Māori chief ask a visiting English botanist how it was possible to live without a plant — and what does his bewilderment reveal about a civilisation built entirely around a single organism? ...
14 Juli 23min
