Episode summary: I’ll be honest, I thought I was pretty savvy about coffee taxonomy knowing that there were two kinds, arabica and robusta. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a research paper about “Coffea stenophylla and C. affinis, the Forgotten Coffee Crop Species of West Africa” caught my attention. And...

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Episode summary: Sayre Quevedo is a producer at VICE. “I’m not like a cinephile at all but in a movie nobody says, ‘And then he revealed to me a deep, dark secret.’ You discover the deep, dark secret as the main character is learning it. And I just feel like there’s something so much more engaging f...

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Episode summary: This week we look at the big changes in European politics during the crisis and ask who has managed to turn it around. Is Italy now a model for crisis management? Has there been a reorientation in German politics under Merkel? Can the EU rescue fund really rescue the European projec...

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Episode summary: Autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko claims to have won a landslide in the country’s presidential elections. But how can we know what really happened? Tim Harford delves into the numbers behind the widely-questioned election result, with Dr Brian Klaas and political analyst Artyom...

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Episode summary: From Punchin’ the Dough to Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Living Blues magazine, shares songs about food labor in folk, blues, and country music traditions.

Episode summary: Before the twentieth century, most Americans rarely came into contact with police officers. But with more and more drivers behind the wheel, police departments rapidly expanded their forces and increased officers’ authority to stop citizens who violated traffic laws. The Fourth Amen...

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Episode summary: A billionaire turned recluse befriends a minor novelist. Together they seize the public’s imagination. Kind of. The true story behind the greatest autobiography you’ve never read. Get Revisionist History updates first by signing up for our newsletter at pushkin.fm. Learn more about...

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Episode summary: This week two conversations with the feminist theorist and writer Judith Butler: one recorded the week Trump won the presidency in 2016 and one recorded a few days ago, as his presidency (just maybe) approaches its end. We reflect on what has changed over the last four years, what h...

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Episode summary: The delicate science of hiring nihilism, examined in five deeply-personal case studies. Get Revisionist History updates first by signing up for our newsletter at pushkin.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices