Why does the country that grows 45 percent of the world's cocoa receive between five and seven percent of the value of the chocolate bar it becomes? How did a single crop fund two civil wars simultaneously — with the government and the rebels taxing the same beans to buy weapons to fight each other? And what does the concept of Ivoirité — invented to exclude a presidential rival — have to do with the farms that feed the global chocolate industry?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Côte d'Ivoire and cocoa — the Ivorian Miracle, the blood chocolate report, and the smallholder farmers at the end of the longest supply chain in food...

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Why did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest red wine grape in the world? How does a pre-phylloxera cutting, preserved in Uruguayan soil while the original European stock was wiped out, become a living archive of a grape that no longer exists in its original form in France? And what does it mean that Uruguay didn't pick Tannat — Tannat picked Uruguay?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Uruguay and the Basque vine — the Carlist Wars, the old vines, the cardiology research, and the smallest nation ever to win the World Cup...

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Why did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of pannage, turbary, and estovers, and what does it mean that the hedged fields every English person loves as the quintessential English countryside are the direct product of the legislation that destroyed the English peasantry? And how do the Enclosure Acts, Kett's Rebellion, the Swing Riots, and the Premier League turn out to be the same story told two centuries apart?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of England and the commons — the open fields, the Parliamentary robbery, and the hedge that made the view beautiful by ending a way of life...

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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

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How does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in Central Switzerland? And why does a splash of cherry brandy hold a bowl of molten cheese together at every Swiss dinner table?

Join John and Patrick as they trace the story of kirsch — from wild cherries in the forests of Central Europe, through the Chriesimärt of Zug and the founding of Etter in 1870, to the almond note hidden in every glass and the layered indulgence of the Zuger Kirschtorte. Along the way: distillation, terroir, blossoming orchards on the slopes above Lake Zug, and the tale of a spirit that turns a single Alpine spring into something that can travel the world in a bottle.

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Why was Algeria, a predominantly Muslim country in North Africa, the largest exporter of wine in the world — and why has almost nobody heard of it? How did the phylloxera catastrophe that destroyed French vineyards quietly turn colonial Algeria into the hidden engine of French wine, with Algerian reds shipped in unmarked barrels to be blended into Bordeaux and Burgundy without anyone asking where they came from? And what does it mean that the appellation system which defines French wine as we know it today was partly invented to keep Algerian wine out?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Algeria and the vine — the stolen land, the abandoned cellars, Albert Camus's impossible dilemma, and the 400,000 hectares that disappeared overnight in 1962...

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Why did the President of the United States personally intervene to improve the yam supply of Caribbean labourers on a jungle construction site — and what does that detail reveal about the vast, brutal, and deeply unequal machine that built the Panama Canal? Who were the Silver Women selling plantains from market stalls in the Canal Zone, and why does the history of one of the greatest engineering projects in human history barely mention the West Indian workers who actually dug it?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Panama and the Canal — the Gold Roll and the Silver Roll, the yams Roosevelt couldn't source, and the 42,000 workers the history books forgot...

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Why did the Sumerian gods describe a land on the Persian Gulf coast as paradise — and why does the geological reality of that same land, 4,000 years later, still justify the comparison? Who were the Qarmatians, the radical sect who built a proto-communist oasis commune and then stole the Black Stone of Islam from Mecca and kept it hidden in an Eastern Arabian date palm grove for twenty-two years? And how did the water that made Al-Hasa the most fought-over oasis in the ancient world turn out to be sitting directly above the largest conventional oil field on Earth?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Saudi Arabia and Al-Hasa — the Dilmun paradise, the Khalas date, and six thousand years of civilisation built on artesian springs...

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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

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Why did two Syrian merchants opening a shop in Istanbul in 1554 inadvertently invent the public sphere — and how did a small copper pot of coffee produce Lloyd's of London, the French Revolution, and the Royal Society? Why did Sultan Murad IV personally execute coffeehouse owners in the streets, and why did it make absolutely no difference? And how does a drink from the Ethiopian highlands, brewed first by Sufi monks in Yemen, end up creating the conditions for the Enlightenment?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Türkiye and the kahvehane — the Ottoman coffeehouse, the meddah, and the most consequential cup in history...

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