Botanical Echoes: Exploring History Through Plants and Places

How did a plant guarded for thousands of years in China's mountains end up fueling Britain's tea obsession? This is the story of industrial espionage, empire, and one man's dangerous mission into forbidden territory. In Part 2 of The Great Tea Heist , Robert Fortune makes his way deep into China to secure the future of the British tea industry. We explore the sights and realities of 19th-century b...

How did a plant guarded for thousands of years in China's mountains end up fueling Britain's tea obsession? This is the story of industrial espionage, empire, and one man's dangerous mission into forbidden territory. In Part 1 of The Great Tea Heist, we explore how tea became England's national addiction, the Opium Wars that shattered China's monopoly, and Robert Fortune—the Scottish botanist who...

Before the vampire became a creature of velvet and candlelight, it was a terror of the village graveyard. In this episode, we descend into the origins of the folkloric vampire and the rituals meant to contain it — exhumations, seeds scattered on the earth, garlic pressed into the mouth of the dead. We explore how these practices sought to protect the living, and how strange phenomena once feared a...

The story of Eridu begins in the deep—where rivers converge, temples rise, and the god Enki shapes the first city. In this episode, we explore his role as creator and trickster, the watery foundations of Eridu, and how these myths ripple forward into later stories of Eden. In this episode you’ll hear: The mythic role of Enki in Sumerian cosmology How Eridu became the first city and a template for...