Curated playlist
Cultural regions
- Arab worldThe Arab world stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the southeast. As of 2021, the World Bank counted 456 million people living…
- Western worldThe Western world has no fixed borders. That simple fact, buried in dictionaries and debated by historians for centuries, turns out to be one of the most consequential ideas in human history. What we call "the West" is not a place you can…
- MesoamericaMesoamerica is one of only six places on Earth where civilization arose entirely on its own, with no outside blueprint to copy. It is one of just five regions where writing was invented independently, alongside ancient Egypt, India, Sumer,…
- TibetTibet sits higher than anywhere else on Earth, with an average elevation of 4,380 meters above sea level. Mount Everest, which marks its border with Nepal, rises to 8,848 meters, the tallest peak on the planet. This is a place where the…
- AbkhaziaAbkhazia covers 8,665 square kilometres on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, yet most of the world does not recognise it exists as a country. Five UN member states call it an independent republic. The rest of the international community…
- New WorldThe New World arrived in print in the spring of 1503, announced in a single letter written in Lisbon by a Florentine explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. He addressed it to his friend and former patron, Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici,…
- Islamic worldThe Islamic world is home to more than 1.8 billion people, a community spanning nearly every continent and speaking hundreds of languages. That single number, more than 25% of the entire human population, raises an immediate question: what…
- Northern EnglandNorthern England holds a paradox at its heart. With a combined population of 15.5 million people spread across 37,331 square kilometres, it is home to nearly a quarter of the entire United Kingdom's population. Yet the question of what…
- Nordic countriesThe Nordic countries occupy a stretch of the globe so vast it spans five time zones, from the Canadian-facing coast of Greenland in the west to the border with Russia in the east. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are the five…
- KoreaKorea is a peninsular region in East Asia, and for one boundary line it has paid an extraordinary price. Since the end of World War II in Asia in 1945, the land has been split at or near the 38th parallel. To the north sits the Democratic…
- ChristendomChristendom is a word coined in the 9th century by a single scribe, somewhere in southern England, possibly at the court of King Alfred the Great of Wessex. That scribe was translating a Roman historian's work from roughly the year 416 and…
- Bible BeltThe Bible Belt is a region of the American South, parts of the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic states of Virginia and West Virginia, where evangelical Protestantism shapes daily life, politics, and culture more than almost anywhere else in…