Pickled tea
In Myanmar you can drink tea or you can eat it.
Hidden Christians
Christianity was banned in Japan in 1614. For the next 250 years, the Kakure Kirishitan (hidden Christians) worshipped in secret.
Mongolian Beatles
In 1971, Mongolia’s Minister of Culture decided that the country needed its own rock band, and so Soyol Erdene was born.
Vulture crisis
The use of the anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac on cattle led – very indirectly – to the rise of rabies and leopards in India. And it’s all because of vultures.
Left and right countries
Most of the world drives on the right side of the road, but some countries drive on the left. What happens at the borders between right and left countries?
Tiny sumo
Mainoumi Shūhei is a legend in the world of sumo for defeating opponents more than twice his weight.
Gibbon of the tomb
There’s an extinct species of gibbon, Junzi imperialis, we only know about because a Chinese noblewoman kept it as a pet more than two millennia ago.
Thousand shoulders
How do you build a highway flyover without closing the road directly below it? In Indonesia, you build the pylons sideways and then rotate them into position.
Penguins of war
Mike returns home from the Vietnam War with PTSD. He joins an underground fight club and wrestles with his own inner demons. Also: Mike is an adorable penguin, and this is one of the weirdest anime films to come out of 1980s Japan.
Blood rain
Oh great, it’s raining blood again! I hope it’s just rain dust from the desert and not intercontinental cloud algae.
Turtle demons and soul balls
In Japanese folklore, turtle monkey demons can steal your soul… by pulling it out of your anus. Fortunately, they have easily detachable arms and like cucumbers.
Black teeth
In southern and south-eastern Asia and the Pacific, teeth were blackened or lacquered to keep them intact and healthy.
Russian hobbits
Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books have a long history in the Soviet Union and Russia, from illegal translations in the 1960s to a film in the 1980s to an unauthorised retelling sympathetic to the orcs in the 1990s.
Involuntary park
When a location is abandoned by humans, nature returns. Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling calls these feral landscapes involuntary parks.
Rise of the bureaucrats
Shengguan Tu is a board game from a millennium ago that charts players’ rise through the many layers of Chinese bureaucracy.
