The Humble Potato | The Root Of Empires | 1
Legacy
Original Legacy Productions
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Legacy is back! This time, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch dig into the story of the humble potato — before becoming the centrepiece of the Sunday roast, this unassuming root built empires, toppled economies, and quietly changed the world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Catherine Ryan, and my podcast Telling Everybody Everything is currently being sponsored by |
| 0:04.9 | Alternalee, the UK's leading online medical cannabis clinic. Did you know seven out of ten |
| 0:10.0 | doctors would consider prescribing medical cannabis for chronic pain and mental health conditions |
| 0:14.7 | if it were available on the NHS? This survey was conducted in May 2025 and asked 500 |
| 0:20.5 | doctors in the UK from a variety of disciplines. |
| 0:23.7 | Want to find out more? |
| 0:24.8 | Visit alternanleaf.com.uk. |
| 0:27.0 | That's alternaleaf, alternaleaf, like alternative with leaf at the end.com.ukh. |
| 0:36.4 | Hello and welcome to a new series of legacy. We've been doing some plotting and scheming. So after 21 |
| 0:43.8 | series of legacy, we thought we might have some fun and widen our lenses a little bit. So I love doing |
| 0:49.1 | this show, but just wonder if we might mix things out afwa. Well, we have been talking about people, Peter, and we've been doing four episodes on each person, |
| 1:00.4 | which has been great. |
| 1:01.9 | And we know you, our listeners, love it because you've given us gorgeous feedback. |
| 1:06.7 | But, you know, we're always pushing the boundaries. |
| 1:09.4 | I think that's one of the things you guys love about us. |
| 1:11.5 | And we thought there are some legacies that are not actually necessarily person related that would also be fascinating to explore. |
| 1:20.9 | So we thought it might be fun to look at events from the past or ideas or businesses or diseases and to think about their legacies as well |
| 1:30.8 | as about people. So we've got to try and do a bit of that. We also thought we might try and do |
| 1:35.4 | the same length episodes, but maybe just one or two about people or places or things rather |
| 1:40.9 | than a whole set of four, because that might also give a bit of zip and also gives us a chance to get through a bit more material. You mean you're giving us more work to do, Peter? No, we've agreed this halfway. It's not me. We're trying to tell our listeners that, you know, it's going to be even more enriching, even more exciting, and they'll get even more of you and me. We are going to work super hard for you. We've got new ideas, new |
| 2:01.4 | characters, new phenomena. And because you've sent us so many lovely messages saying how much |
| 2:07.8 | you love our downloads, we are going to try to do two episodes a week. Nothing if not ambitious, |
... |
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