Curated playlist

Republics

AlgeriaIn 1827, Algiers's ruler struck the French consul with a fly whisk, and France later invaded.
Marshall IslandsThe Marshall Islands is 98.62 percent water. No other sovereign state has so much ocean against so little land.
GaṇasaṅghaGautama Buddha was born in a small state ruled by an assembly, not a king. His Shakya people used Gana-Sangha rule.
DjiboutiDjibouti, a tiny African country, has the United States, France, Japan and China all paying to keep soldiers there.
UzbekistanUzbekistan touches no coast, and every country bordering it is landlocked too.
PalauPalau is an island country made up of roughly 340 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, with a total land area of only 466 square kilometres. That makes it the sixteenth smallest nation in the world. Its own name for the islands is Belau,…
Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
NigerNiger is a landlocked country in West Africa, and more than 80 percent of its land lies in the Sahara. Yet it takes its name from a river, and nobody can say for certain where the river's name came from. The geographer Ptolemy described a…
North KoreaNorth Korea once had nearly 45,000 family practitioners. Life expectancy reached 72 before the famine.
SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
KyrgyzstanKyrgyzstan lies farther from the sea than any other individual country on Earth. Even its rivers cannot reach an ocean, because every one of them empties into a closed drainage system. Yet this landlocked nation in the mountains of Central…
LatviaLatvia was occupied three times in a single war. The Baltic country later sang its way back to freedom.
El SalvadorEl Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in 2021, the first country to do so.
GuatemalaGuatemala's name once meant a single city, not a country.
HaitiHaiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt.
Dominican RepublicThe Dominican Republic holds both the tallest mountain peak in the Caribbean and its lowest point. Pico Duarte rises 3098 metres above sea level, and snow has been seen on its summit on rare occasions. Lake Enriquillo, a salt lake, lies 45…
PeruPeru's Inca began as one small, minor ethnic group from Cusco.
Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
ItalyItaly contains two other countries inside its borders. Vatican City and San Marino are surrounded by Italian land.
MoldovaMoldova is barely larger than Belgium but has the world's largest wine cellar. Mileștii Mici holds the record.
KazakhstanKazakhstan was the last Soviet republic to declare independence. It did so on the 16th of December 1991.
LaosBetween 1964 and 1973, American planes dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos.
Georgia (country)In 2005, Georgia fired its entire traffic police force of around 30,000 officers.
MadagascarMadagascar appears on a map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154 under the name Gesira Malai, Arabic for Malay island. That is a strange label for a place off the southeastern coast of Africa. Today the Republic of Madagascar is the world's…
FinlandIn Finland's far north, the sun does not set for 73 days in summer. In winter it does not rise for 51 days.
PortugalPortugal's borders with Spain have barely moved since 1297. They are among the oldest frontiers in the world.
ArgentinaArgentina's name was never Spanish, and it means made of silver in Italian. It first appeared on a Venetian map in 1536.
FranceFrance may be named after a tax privilege. One suggestion says only Franks were exempt from taxes.
LithuaniaLithuania was once the largest country in Europe. Its grand duchy reached roughly 650,000 square kilometres.
TaiwanPortuguese sailors passing Taiwan in 1542 wrote just two words on their maps: Ilha Formosa. It means beautiful island.
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan's name once belonged only to a region of northwestern Iran. Before 1918, no country used it.
The GambiaThe Gambia is the smallest country on the African mainland, and in 1964 its prime minister wrote a letter to protect a single word. Dawda Jawara asked a British committee on geographical names to let the country keep the definite article…
IndonesiaMore than half of Indonesia's people live on one island, Java. It is the most heavily populated island in the world.
ChileThe Inca Empire's conquest stopped at a river in what is now central Chile. The Mapuche held the line at the Maule.
EstoniaEstonia became the first country to allow nationwide binding Internet voting, in 2005.
MongoliaMongolia is the most sparsely populated sovereign state on Earth.
NepalIn September 2025, protests over a social media ban in Nepal forced the prime minister to resign.
Ivory CoastIvory Coast supplies more cocoa beans than any other country. It has also endured two civil wars and a coup.
ColombiaColombia is named after Christopher Columbus. The name was first meant for the entire New World.
ChadChad is a landlocked country in Central Africa, and its capital, N'Djamena, lies 1060 km from the nearest seaport, Douala in Cameroon. That distance, together with a largely desert climate, gave the country a bleak nickname: the "Dead…
LebanonLebanon takes its name from a Phoenician root, lbn, which means white. The word apparently describes the snow on its mountain peaks. The name is far older than the modern country. It turns up in Middle Bronze Age texts from the library of…
ArmeniaArmenia is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia, and its best-loved mountain stands outside its borders. Mount Ararat rises 5,137 meters, or 16,854 feet, making it the highest mountain in the region. It now lies in…
North MacedoniaNorth Macedonia, a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, received that name on the 12th of February 2019. On that day its government announced that constitutional amendments had taken effect, and it informed the United Nations and its…
Cape VerdeCape Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is a nation of volcanic islands scattered across the central Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. Its 2021 census counted 491,233 people. Nearly one million Cape Verdeans live abroad,…
Timor-LesteOn the 20th of May 2002, Timor-Leste became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. Its official name is the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, and many people still call it East Timor. The country is oddly assembled. It holds…
ChinaChina gave the world papermaking, printing, the compass and gunpowder.
IsraelIsrael sits at one of the strangest addresses on the planet. Its eastern side drops to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. Its western coast meets the Mediterranean, and its southern tip touches the Red Sea. On land…
GreeceIn 508 BC, Cleisthenes set up the world's first democratic government in Athens.
PhilippinesThe Philippines records about five earthquakes a day, though most are too weak to be felt.
PolandPoland vanished from the map for 123 years. Its neighbors partitioned it out of existence, yet it rebuilt.