Greetings fellow time travellers. As always, it's lovely to have you with me for the journey through space and time.

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Please strap in now to the

the time machine as we set off towards the next stop in my love letter to the world.

Recorder microphone. Action. action.

As the clock turned and a new century began, the worldwide search for liquid gold, black gold, the energy that would power the coming millennium was ramping up. Intrepid engineers prospecting in the Zagros Basin faced dangerous and difficult conditions. With investors' money drying up, they

were told to abandon the search. The determined team pressed on, discovering Mosjid Solomon, the world's largest oil field. Unimaginable wealth

started flowing as oil and its byproducts began reshaping and remaking the entire world.

Endeavoring to understand history in hopes of illuminating the future.

I'm Neil Oliver and this is my love letter to the world.

Morning Neil. In the last week's episode it was 1993 when you took us to meet two magnificent men and their flying machine.

Where are we this week?

Hi Paul, hi fellow time travellers.

Yes, last week we saw Orville and Wilbur Wright take to the skies for the world's first powered flight.

This week the year is 1908 and were touching down in Persia in what is now modern day Iran, where with a band of intrepid oil prospectors

working in the dangerous Zagros basin.

Under the leadership of the chief engineer George Reynolds, the team strike it rich and oil starts to transform the world.

We're in the early part of the 20th century and we are in well at the time it was

known as Persia. It's been Iran for a long time now Iran's another old name for the same place, one way or another.

Personally I always find Persia, a more, I don't know, magical name but it certainly was if you're going to ask the question

where are we this week we're in Persia. It's all to do with oil, the hydrocarbon fuel source, which obviously at the moment

...