1: History of Everything: Potatoes

Meet Zhang Zongchang—the warlord so unhinged, so chaotic, that his own soldiers called him "72-Cannon Zhang" while everyone else just called him the Dog Meat General. Standing nearly 6'6" in an era when most Chinese men were a foot shorter, this mountain of a man ruled China's Sh ...  Show more

By 1775, the thirteen American colonies were a tinderbox — and it only took one spark to set the empire ablaze. But how did loyal British subjects transform into armed revolutionaries in just over a decade? In this video, we trace the explosive chain of events that turned colonia ...  Show more

In its time, the potato has been called the root of filth, misery and obesity - but is it fair to call it the 'food of the poor'? In the first episode of a two-part series, The Food Chain goes to the very roots of the world's most popular vegetable, digging up some new perspectiv ...  Show more

Today, the humble potato can be found in restaurants and dinner tables across the world -- but this wasn't always the case. In today's episode, Ben and Noel dive into the story of one spud-loving, potato-proselytizing man named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, and his ambitious li ...

In our second and final episode on the humble spud, we meet the people who see the global economic future as being potato powered. The potato is the world's most produced staple food after rice, wheat and corn - yet historically, it was seen as the root of filth, misery and obesi ...  Show more

Consider the potato. The typical potato is not all that pretty. They can be beige and lumpy, dusty and speckled, and on top of that, they even sprout alien-like tentacles. Further, no one really knows what to make of the potato. Is it a vegetable, or so starchy that we should rea ...  Show more