The Fever Tree Hunt

How one wealthy, amateur astronomer convinced the world Martians were real. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simp ...  Show more

For centuries, the world's greatest minds were stumped by the deadly mystery of longitude, until an obsessive underdog entered the fray and changed navigation forever. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start ...  Show more

Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds.As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary — malaria. There was a cure — the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. The only prob ...  Show more

Trees have the remarkable ability to pass knowledge down to succeeding generations and to survive the ravages of climate change, if only we’d let them alone, according to the German forester Peter Wohlleben. In The Power of Trees (translated by Jane Billinghurst) he explains t ...

This week, Gastropod tells the story of two countries and their shared obsession with a plant: Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as the tea bush. The Chinese domesticated tea over thousands of years, but they lost their near monopoly on international trade when a Scottish botani ...  Show more

Deep in the Cambodian Jungle, a ruined city crumbles among the roots of banyan trees. In this episode, we look at the history of the Khmer Empire of medieval Cambodia, and the ancient mega-city of Angkor. I want to explore how this great civilization rose to a size and wealth vir ...  Show more