Episode summary: A visit to West Africa and Western Europe to look at the cocoa trade. Did the colonial side of early capitalism – Western countries getting rich at the expense of poorer nations – ever change, or does it continue today? Reported by Ugochi Anyaka-Oluigbo and written by Ugochi and Lor...

Episode summary: A Twist in the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine (Hurst, 2024) by Christopher Beckman takes readers on a tantalising voyage through European and American gastronomic history, following the trail of a small but mighty fish: the anchovy. Whether in ubiquitous Roma...

Episode summary: Today’s episode is another big early twentieth-century counterfactual: David talks to the historian of Russia Edward Acton about how the Russian Revolution might have unfolded if the Left SRs and not the Bolsheviks had come out on top. Could Lenin have been sidelined? Might the Terr...

Episode summary: In 1972, a team of young scientists at MIT published a study exploring what would happen to human civilization if people kept pursuing endless economic growth on a finite planet. They weren’t just disbelieved, they were ridiculed. The story of Donella Meadows and The Limits to Growt...

Episode summary: Poker and politics? Not that different.

Episode summary: S7 E8: The People’s Pushback Over several decades, a growing number of people in the United States and elsewhere – especially younger people – have turned against capitalism. The reasons are not mysterious. Reported by Lewis Raven Wallace and produced by John Biewen, with co-host El...

Episode summary: What does it mean for punishment to be cruel and unusual?

Episode summary: When you’re watching the opening credits to a movie, it’s not just a list of names. What you’re actually seeing is intense negotiations by Hollywood stars and their agents playing out in text form.

Episode summary: It’s 2024. Do you know where your children are at? Psychologically?

Episode summary: The History of Pigeons - The Blindboy Podcast | Acast