Card games spread along the same routes as trade and armies, mutating at every border. Here are seventeen, and what is known about where each came from.
1. Whist -…
There is a case to be made that the most consequential object of the twentieth century is a corrugated steel box.
It is not an impressive thing to look at.…
A stepwell solves a practical problem beautifully: the water table falls in the dry season, so the structure must reach down to whatever level the water has retreated to, and…
Subtractive architecture has one unforgiving property: there is no correcting a mistake. Everything below was carved from the top down, in solid rock, by people who could not revise. Here…
There is a paradox at the centre of the Amazon that took a long time for outsiders to notice.
The rainforest is the most productive terrestrial ecosystem on Earth, and…
Almost everyone has done it: left a note in a pocket, washed the trousers, and found the money at the bottom of the drum, damp and crumpled but entirely usable.…