Unwritten Asia

The US Army accidentally created one of Korea's most successful food exports. And Korea made it better than anything America ever fried. There are more Korean fried chicken restaurants in South Korea right now than McDonald's in the entire United States. This episode covers the 1950s oil surplus that changed Korean food forever, the street-stall improvisation that made Korean fried chicken...

Japan is one of the most coffee-obsessed countries in Asia. It is also the country that gave the world the matcha ceremony. So why does one country have two completely different drink cultures — and how did both of them end up conquering the world? The answer involves foreign warships arriving in 1853, a government that decided the only way to survive was to become Western, and a tea ceremony that...

Vietnam is the world's second largest coffee producer — and it only started because France needed cheap labour. Here's what that has to do with egg. In 1858, France sailed into Vietnam and planted coffee across its highlands — not for culture, but for colonial profit. That single agricultural decision set off a chain that nobody saw coming: it turned Vietnam into a Robusta superpower, made...

There's a man you've almost certainly never heard of. And right now — at this exact moment — his idea is carrying your voice, your messages, your video calls, and your entire digital life across the ocean floor. His name is Charles Kao. In 1966, this quiet Chinese-British engineer at a modest lab in Harlow, England published a calculation that the entire telecommunications industry dismiss...