Book Podcast: ‘Borough Market – Edible Histories’ Author Mark Riddaway

Award-winning food writer Mark Riddaway travels back through the centuries to tell the fascinating, surprising and often downright bizarre stories of some of the everyday ingredients found at London’s Borough Market.

Discover how the strawberries we eat today had their roots in a clandestine trip to South America by a French spy whose surname happened to be Strawberry, why three-quarters of Britain’s late-18th-century intake of tea was sold on the black market, and what Sigmund Freud found so fascinating about eel genitalia.

From the humble apples and onions that we’ve grown on these shores for centuries, to more exotic ingredients like cinnamon and bananas that travel from across the world to finesse our food, Borough Market: Edible Histories offers a chance to digest the charming stories behind every last morsel.

Tilt-Shift Travel: Bulgaria In Eastern Europe (Video)

Filmed and Edited by: Joerg Daiber

Bulgaria is an amazing county in Eastern Europe. It is probably one of the most underrated travel destinations in Europe offering everything from amazing lanscapes, beautiful mountains, splendid beaches, vibrant cities, mediveal castles, otherworldly Soviet monuments and so much more. Find out in 4 amazing minutes minutes, why it shoud be definitely on your bucket list. Unfortunately I had only about two weeks to explore this gem, but when this pandemic thingy is over someday, I will make sure to return. A seperate episode from the capital Sofia will follow shortly.

Timeline Chapters: 00:00 Rila Lakes 01:15 Boyana Waterfall Sofia 01:30 Abandoned Lift “Ledenika” 01:40 Stone Forest near Varna 01:47 Belogradchik Fortess 01:56 Buzludzha Monument 02:17 Monument to Freedom, Stoletov peak 02:19 Tsarevets Fortress – Veliko Tarnovo 02:28 Assen’s Fortress – Asenovgrad 02:33 Blach Sea Beaches 02:48 Sozopol 02:55 Rawadinowo 02:58 Sozopol 03:05 Nessebar 03:20 Somewhere on the road 03:23 Plovdiv 03:35 Veliko Tarnovo

Food & Travel: A Michelin Guide To ‘Malta’ (Video)

The MICHELIN Guide makes you travel to Malta to discover the treasures of this island, their products and their producers. Following the launch of the first MICHELIN Guide Malta in February 2020, we take a closer look at this popular destination in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea.

At the crossroads of cultures, the Maltese gastronomic scene is a reflection of its rich past by marrying culinary influences from Italy, Mediterranean countries, North Africa, and also Great Britain – not to mention contemporary trends. “Malta is a very attractive cultural destination with a unique cuisine style which beautifully combines European influences and local traditions”, explained Gwendal POULLENNEC, International Director of the MICHELIN guides.

Let’s discover some quality products and producers which make the gastronomic reputation of the country! Know more about the destination: https://guide.michelin.com/mt/en/arti…

Malta is an archipelago in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and the North African coast. It’s a nation known for historic sites related to a succession of rulers including the Romans, Moors, Knights of Saint John, French and British. It has numerous fortresses, megalithic temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a subterranean complex of halls and burial chambers dating to circa 4000 B.C. 

Travel & Culture: ‘Winter In Champ Du Feu’, Vosges Mountains, France (Video)

Located in France’s eastern Vosges region, the Champ du Feu is a stunning patch of wildlife; a giant meadow that stretches out 1,099 metres above sea level. This vast area can be crossed on Icelandic horses during magical wintry treks. But during the harsh Vosges winters, some locals prefer more indoor activities such as fruit distillation, which produces different kinds of alcohol. The result is a pure concentrate of the Vosges: a wild region brimming with natural beauty all year round.

The Vosges are a range of low mountains in eastern France, near its border with Germany. Together with the Palatine Forest to the north on the German side of the border, they form a single geomorphological unit and low mountain range of around 8,000 km² in area.

Video Profiles: American Conceptual Painter Lee Lozano (1930-1999)

Jo Applin gives an insight into both Lee Lozano’s life and her work, contextualizing her practice and highlighting her response to the constraints of constitutional systems, gender dynamics, power, money, and politics.

Created in 1962–1963, the early paintings and drawings on view at Hauser & Wirth Somerset use airplanes as a central image and can be considered as examples of the artist’s passionate exploration of creative energy in its purist form. This focused body of early work exposes a complex and deeply intimate inner life grappling with one-sided gender and societal dichotomies, while other works display a form of ferocious humour and playfulness, exploiting the rhetoric of exaggeration to its most cogent effect.

Her raw expressionist brush strokes create powerful works imbued with a very personal iconography, including genitals, religious symbols, tools and body parts. Lozano’s short lived but influential career remains a source of fascination, lauded by Lucy Lippard as the foremost female conceptual artist of her era in New York. Jo Applin is author of ‘Lee Lozano: Not Working’ and ‘Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture.’ She teaches modern and contemporary art at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Morning News Podcast: Post-Thanksgiving Covid-19 Surge, Biden Transition

Health experts warn of another surge in COVID-19 cases. President-elect Biden’s team announces more picks for administration posts. And, the Supreme Court hears another case over the 2020 census.

Artist Profile: Chinese-French Abstract Painter Chu Teh-Chun (Video)

The 1960s were a turning point for Master Chinese Artist Chu Teh-Chun. In this latest Sotheby’s video, discover how he abandoned his traditional figurative style of painting in favour of abstraction. Learn how his painting ‘Composition’, created in 1961, perfectly executes the concept of Chinese painting whilst meeting the style of Western abstraction.

Chu Teh-Chun or Zhu Dequn was a Chinese-French abstract painter acclaimed for his pioneering style integrating traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western abstract art. Chu Teh-Chun enrolled in the National School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu.

Online: ‘Inside Amazon’s Smart Warehouse’ (Video)

Amazon is the world’s biggest retailer, and its CEO Jeff Bezos the world’s richest man, for one very good reason. His company is better than anyone else, ever, at giving people what they want, quickly. Amazon acquired its undisputed status as heavyweight champion of the retail universe thanks largely to its lightning-fast delivery times.

The astonishing feat of ferrying hundreds of millions of items, from guitar strings to saucepans to car parts, directly to your door, inside 24 hours, is nothing short of a modern logistical miracle. So how does Amazon do it? A super-smart army of slave robots, for one. Ingenious, if occasionally unscrupulous, management practices are part of the answer too.

And the modern-day voodoo of deep-learning AI – all of which are made flesh in the most advanced stockrooms the world has ever seen. So join us today, as we button up our hi-vis jacket and journey inside Amazon’s smart warehouses.

World News Podcast: The Resiliency Of Democracy, Nordic Politics & Diego Maradona (Economist)

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how resilient is democracy? Nordic politics (11:00) and remembering Diego Maradona (19:34)

News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious