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Bosnia & Herzegovina: The Soul of a Plum
Episode 172
Why do Bosnian Muslims make and celebrate a plum brandy that Islamic law technically forbids — and what does their answer to that question reveal abo…
1 week, 5 days ago
Cape Verde: The Grogue Trail
Episode 173
Why did a Portuguese colonial sugar ban inadvertently create Cape Verde's national spirit — and what does it reveal about how cultures find ways thro…
1 week, 5 days ago
Sweden: The Swede Who Named the Natural World
Episode 171
Why did a restless boy from a rural Swedish parsonage end up giving a name to every living thing on Earth — and how did he build a system so durable …
2 weeks ago
Iraq: How Irrigation Destroyed the Civilization That Invented It
Episode 169
Why did the civilisation that invented writing, cities, and law destroy the very soil that made it possible — and why are sixty to seventy percent of…
2 weeks ago
Japan: The Emperor's Sacred Paddy
Episode 170
Why does the Emperor of Japan — head of state of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth — wade into a rice paddy every year to pla…
2 weeks ago
DR Congo: The King Who Owned a Country
Episode 167
How did a shipping clerk in Antwerp discover one of the greatest crimes of the nineteenth century simply by paying attention to which ships were carr…
2 weeks, 5 days ago
Paraguay: The Yerba Mate Jesuit Empire
Episode 168
Why did a Jesuit republic of 140,000 people in the subtropical forests of South America — with its own armed militia, its own printing presses, its o…
2 weeks, 5 days ago
Spain: The Red Gold of La Mancha
Episode 166
Why does it take between 150,000 and 200,000 flowers — and up to 470 hours of human labour — to produce a single kilogram of saffron, and why has the…
2 weeks, 5 days ago
Colombia: The Coffee Farmer Who Never Existed
Episode 165
Why was the most famous coffee farmer in the world a Cuban-American opera singer from Havana who had never visited Colombia — and how did a fictional…
3 weeks ago
Iran: The Garden That Became Heaven
Episode 164
Why does the word "paradise" — as used in every European language, in Arabic, in Urdu — simply mean "walled garden" in Old Persian, and what does tha…
3 weeks ago