Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
Morocco: The Argan Tree and the Women Who Saved It
Episode 151
Why has the argan tree — which grows nowhere else on Earth — survived for 65 million years in the mountains of Morocco, and why are the women who hav…
1 month ago
Croatia: The Maraschino Cherry and the Republic of Ragusa
Episode 153
How did a city of 30,000 people survive for 450 years between Venice and the Ottoman Empire — and what does the Republic of Ragusa have to do with th…
1 month ago
Curaçao: The Orange That Named a Liqueur
Episode 152
Why did a Valencia orange, abandoned on a tiny arid Caribbean island, transform into a new species that nobody could eat — and how did that inedible …
1 month ago
Senegal: How Peanuts Built and Broke a Nation
Episode 150
Why did a South American legume become the foundation of French imperial power in West Africa — and what did it cost the people who grew it? Who was …
1 month, 1 week ago
Ecuador: The Cinchona Tree and the Cure for Malaria
Episode 149
Why did the cloud forests of Ecuador produce the only cure for a disease that killed popes, hollowed out armies, and blocked European expansion into …
1 month, 1 week ago
France: The Truffle Underground
Episode 148
Why did France's black truffle — once produced in the thousands of tonnes — collapse to near-extinction in a century, and what does its revival revea…
1 month, 1 week ago
Canada: The Great Maple Syrup Heist
Episode 146
From Indigenous sugar shacks to the Supreme Court of Canada… how did maple syrup become one of the world’s most tightly controlled commodities? Why d…
1 month, 1 week ago
Mexico: The Aztec Origins of Chocolate
Episode 147
Why did the Aztecs drink their currency — and what does it mean that the most global food in the world began as a bitter, frothy, sacred drink consum…
1 month, 1 week ago
USA: The Tobacco Lords and the Founding of America
Episode 145
Why did tobacco, and not gold or glory, save the first permanent English colony in America? How did the Founding Fathers' tobacco debts to British me…
1 month, 1 week ago
Monsanto: The Peach Farmer's Revenge (Part 6)
Episode 144
Who was Dewayne Lee Johnson, the school groundskeeper soaked in Roundup who took on the most legally powerful agricultural company in the world — and…
1 month, 2 weeks ago