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Türkiye: Social Intercourse and Free Discussion
Episode 182
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 pro…
7 hours ago
Saudi Arabia: The Quay of the World
Episode 183
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 …
7 hours ago
New Zealand: Without Harakeke
Episode 181
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 civ…
7 hours ago
Germany: The Purity Commandment
Episode 179
Why did 27 words buried in a Bavarian price regulation from 1516 become the most famous food law in history — and why did it take 402 years for anyon…
5 days, 7 hours ago
Ghana: Six Pods in a Toolbox
Episode 180
Why did a blacksmith hide six cocoa pods under his tools to smuggle them past Spanish customs — and how did those six pods become the foundation of a…
5 days, 7 hours ago
Uzbekistan: The Emperor Who Wept Over a Melon
Episode 178
Why did the man who just conquered India weep over a melon — and what does that tell us about the fruit that travelers from Ibn Battuta to Victorian …
5 days, 7 hours ago
Haiti: The Black Jacobins
Episode 176
Why did the most productive colony in the entire world — generating 40 percent of Europe's sugar from an area the size of Maryland — become the site …
1 week ago
Brazil: Rubber and Ruin
Episode 177
Why does the most extravagant opera house in the history of South America sit in the middle of the Amazon rainforest — and how did a wild tree, a Con…
1 week ago
Belgium: The Potato Famine in Flanders
Episode 175
Why did the potato blight begin in Belgium before it reached Ireland — and why has the Flemish famine of 1845, which killed tens of thousands and stu…
1 week ago
Egypt: The Sacred Onion
Episode 174
Why did a Greek historian standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid in 450 BC record that its builders were fed on onions, garlic, and radishes — and…
1 week, 5 days ago