The catalogue
Episodes
One plant at a time. Each episode comes with show notes, a timeline, and the sources we actually used — so you can go argue with them yourself.
Season One
-
01
Prepare to Dye
Woad, indigo, the Bengal Indigo Revolt of 1859, and the color that a German lab made worthless in 1878.
Show notes → -
02
Poppy
Opium, two wars fought to protect a drug trade, and a flower that ended up meaning remembrance.
In production -
03
Cinchona
Quinine made the tropics survivable for colonizers. Getting the seeds out of the Andes took theft.
Planned -
04
Breadfruit
A cheap calorie for enslaved people, a famous mutiny, and a crop that was refused on arrival.
Planned -
05
Potato
How a single imported tuber became the sole thing standing between a population and starvation.
Planned
Also on the list
The long docket
Roughly twenty plants in the running order, give or take what the research turns up: coca, cannabis, wormwood and absinthe, khat, tea, rubber, tobacco, sugar, cotton, shamrocks, liberty trees, sunflowers, and the dandelion — a weed only because somebody decided lawns should be uniform.
Got one we're missing? Pitch it.