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Austria: Styrian Identity in Pumpkin Seeds
Episode 163
Why does a single spontaneous genetic mutation in a Styrian pumpkin field — sometime in the nineteenth century — matter enough to trigger diplomatic …
3 weeks ago
Czechia: Gregor Mendel's Peas and the Birth of Genetics
Episode 160
Why did a monk in a Moravian monastery spend eight years counting 30,000 pea plants — and how did the number three to one unlock the secret of heredi…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
South Africa: The Rooibos Dispute
Episode 162
Why did the Khoisan people of South Africa spend nine years in legal negotiations to receive 1.5 percent of an industry built entirely on knowledge t…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Qatar: The Locust and the Desert
Episode 161
Before the gas flares and the glass towers, before the air conditioning and the sovereign wealth fund, what did Qatar actually have? Why was a single…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Tunisia: Olive Oil and the Roman Breadbasket
Episode 157
Why does a town of 20,000 people in central Tunisia contain the third largest Roman amphitheatre ever built - and what does a structure that seated 3…
4 weeks ago
Portugal: Spices, Empire, and the Pepper That Built Lisbon
Episode 159
Why did the Visigoths demand three thousand pounds of black pepper as the ransom for Rome — and what does that tell us about a climbing vine in Keral…
4 weeks ago
Scotland: Dundee Marmalade and the Keiller Family
Episode 158
How did a storm-battered Spanish ship, a Dundee harbour, and a grocer's wife with a pan full of unsaleable bitter oranges accidentally create one of …
4 weeks ago
Australia: The War on Rabbits
Episode 155
How did twenty-four rabbits released by one man for a "spot of hunting" in 1859 colonise an entire continent within thirty-five years — and why did a…
1 month ago
Norway: The Potato Priest Who Fed Norway
Episode 154
Why did Norwegian farmers believe that eating potatoes would give them leprosy — and who were the potato priests who spent fifty years smuggling tube…
1 month ago
Jordan: The Dead Sea, Balsam, and Cleopatra's Monopoly
Episode 156
Why did Cleopatra demand the balsam groves of Jericho as the price of financing Marc Antony's wars — and what does it mean that a plant worth twice i…
1 month ago