In this festive episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’re inviting you all to join us for a little festive celebration, after what’s been a very hard year for many of you out there. On the menu we have three Christmas stories, as well as a surprise or two, and a short sneak preview of what’s to come in season 5. We really want to take the time to thank our patrons, many of whom joined us in the past 12 months, so we’ll be sprinkling our thanks to them throughout this episode.
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about Tierra Del Fuego, an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. Tierra Del Fuego, which translates to Land of Fire, consists of a main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, often called simply Tierra del Fuego or Isla Grande, with an area of 48,100 km2 (18,572 sq mi), and a group of smaller islands. First settled by humans around 8,000 BCE, Ferdinand Magellan was among the first Europeans to explore the islands in 1520, giving them their name. In 1830, a British crew visited the region in HMS Beagle, naming the main channel that runs through the archipelago after the vessel. Widespread displacement and genocide of the native populations took place in the second half of the 19th century, particularly after the discovery of gold in the region in 1879.
Following a dispute in 1978, the main island is now split between Argentina and Chile. The eastern part of the main island, and a few small islands in the Beagle Channel (around 39% of the total area) belong to Argentina, while the western part of the main island, and almost all the other islands (61% of the total area) officially belong to Chile. The archipelago is divided by an east–west channel, the Beagle Channel, immediately south of the main island, and in total, the land area of Tierra Del Fuego is roughly equivalent in size to Slovakia or slightly smaller than the US state of West Virginia. The climate here is generally cold and wet, and has been compared to that of the Faroe Islands.
Although the region is split between two nations, total population as a whole is estimated to be around 135,000 (2010), of whom around 125,000 live on the Argentinean side. Tierra Del Fuego is also famous its biodiversity, but since the 1940s, a colony of invasive beavers have been perhaps the most notorious animal resident.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle is also available in full online. The segment which deals with his visit to Tierra Del Fuego can be found here.
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about Nepal, a small, landlocked country in South Asia. Nepal borders China in the north, India in the south, east and west, and Bhutan is separated from it by the Indian state of Sikkim. Home to eight of the world’s ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, this small nation has an expansive and complex history, and was only declared a republic in 2008.
Today Nepal is home to over 28 million people, and has a total land area of around 147,000 square kilometres or 56,000 miles, making it roughly the size of Greece, or the US state of New York. Aside from Everest, Nepal is famous for its strong military, exemplified by the Ghurkas, who played an important role in both world wars, as well as one of the world’s most recognisable flags.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about The Republic of Vanuatu, a Pacific island country located in the South Pacific Ocean, around 1,700 kilometres (or 1,000 miles) east of northern Australia and 540 kilometres (340 miles) northeast of New Caledonia.
First inhabited by Melanesian people around 3,000 years ago, parts of the archipelago were settled by British and French colonists in the 1800s, and in 1906 France and the United Kingdom agreed to administer the islands jointly in a unique form of government known as the British-French Condominium. Vanuatu gained its independence in July 1980, and is today home to around 270,000 people.
Only around 65 of the archipelago’s 82 islands are inhabited, and although the country is spread across 12,200 square kilometres (4,700 sq mi) its land surface is very limited to around 4,700 square kilometres or 1,800 sq miles, a similar size to the Falkland Islands or our old friend The Gambia. The indigenous population, called ni-Vanuatu, is overwhelmingly Melanesian, and the main language is a pidgin creole known as Bislama, though English and French are both widely spoken, as are up to 113 indigenous languages. According to The NYT Magazine, “A meaningful national identity has been constructed from a common appreciation of ceremonial pig-tusk bracelets and the taking of kava, a very mild narcotic root that looks like primordial pea soup and tastes like a fine astringent dirt.”
Straddling the seismic strip called the ‘Ring of Fire’, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis have all been relatively commonplace over recent decades, earning Vanuatu the unfortunate distinction of being the world’s most dangerous place when it comes to natural disasters.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
A panorama of Port Vila, capital and largest city of Vanuatu
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about Utah, the Beehive State. Named for the Ute people, a Native American tribe that has occupied for area for hundreds of years, Utah became the 45th state admitted to the U.S. on January 4, 1896, after the territory was won in the Mexican-American War in 1848.
With a total land area of 82,144 sq mi (212,761 km), Utah is a shade larger than Uganda, and just smaller than Romania. The state is bordered by Colorado to the east, Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast, where the famous ‘four corners’ monument can be found. The state is currently home to around 3.2 million people, 62% of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS, known to most people as Mormons. The LDS church migrated there in 1847, while it was still Mexican territory, to escape persecution, but it soon became part of the United States. Utah has the second highest birth rate of any US state, and it is the only state to have a majority of its population belonging to a single church.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about Trinidad & Tobago, a twin island nation, located just off the northern coast of the South American mainland, around 11 kilometres or 7 miles from Venezuela. It is the southernmost of the West Indies island group, and today is home to around 1.3 million people.
Trinidad, the southernmost and larger of the two islands, has a landmass of around 4,760 km2 (1,840 sq miles), comprising 93% of the country’s territory. Tobago, around 40km or 25 miles to the northeast, is around 300 km2 (120 sq mi) in total. The islands enjoy a warm, tropical climate, and only have two seasons – a dry season for the first five months of the year, and a wet season for the remaining seven. Occupied by Amerindian tribes up to 1498, the islands were then discovered by Christopher Columbus and later became a Spanish colony. Sovereignty over the islands was disputed throughout the 19th century, before the two were unified as one British colony in 1888. Independent since 1962, the country has benefited greatly from the discovery of oil in 1857, and is today one of the richest and most ethnically diverse countries in the region. Trinidad and Tobago is also famous for its extravagant carnival celebrations, and is known as the birthplace of limbo dancing.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
The Collared Peccary, which was obviously delicious to early peoples, can be researched on Wikipedia here.
As discussed in this episode, the native name for Trinidad was Caeri or Iere. You can find more on the native traditions here.
The Caribbean History Archives blog has a wealth of information on Trinidad and Tobago, and has a whole post on Jean-Baptise Philippe’s civil rights campaign on behalf of these islands.
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’ll be talking about Djibouti, a small nation located on the Northeast Coast of the Horn of Africa. Bordered by Eritrea to the North, Ethiopia to the West and Somalia to the south, Djibouti lies on the west side of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the narrowest point of Gulf of Aden.
Around 30km across the strait lies Yemen. This chokepoint into the Red Sea, which overlooks the approaches to the Suez Canal, has long made Djibouti a desirable location for naval bases. Dominated by two main groups – the Afar and Issa Somali people, Djibouti today is balanced between these two factions, having endured a protracted civil war in the wake of winning its independence from France in 1977. Occupying a total area of around 23,000 km2 (9,000 sq mi), Djibouti is the third smallest country in continental Africa, and today has a population of around 880,000, the vast majority of whom live in the captial city of Djibouti City. Nearly 94% of the population is Muslim while the remaining 6% are Christian, and official languages are French and Arabic. Djibouti today attracts plenty of foreign investment, and aims to become “Africa’s Dubai.”
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
You can find additional info on the Ifat Sultanate which succeeded it at openedition.org.
The New World Encyclopedia has a wonderful, long form post on the Scramble for Africa, which Djibouti was caught up in.
For more info on our old friend Ferdinand de Lesseps and his ill-fated other canal project, you can listen to our season one episode on Panama.
We also touch on old friend Vasco Da Gama in this episode. The Christmas special minisode referenced is here.
The disastrous Cossack invasion of Sagallo in what was then French Somaliland is profiled in an excellent blog by towardsthegreatocean.com, which Luke quotes from in this episode.
In this episode of 80 Days: an exploration podcast, we’ll be talking about Pitcairn Island, a tiny volcanic island in the South Pacific, most famous for its mutineer inhabitants, who fled there after the famous Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789.
Pitcairn forms part of a four-island group known as the Pitcairn Islands, but is the only island in the group to be inhabited. Its nearest inhabited neighbours are Easter Island to the East and French Polynesia to the West. Pitcairn is the least populous national jurisdiction in the world, and by far the smallest place we’ve ever talked about in terms of population, boasting only around 50 residents as of 2018, all descended from the 9 Bounty mutineers and the few Tahitians they brought with them to the island. The island itself is rocky, and experiences warm weather year-round thanks to its location just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Today, Pitcairn is the only remaining British Overseas Territory in the South Pacific. Its economy relies heavily on tourism, as well as the highly-prized honey produced by the bees on the island. While all islanders speak English, their first language is Pitkern, a creole language that has derived from 18-century English dialects and Tahitian.
This episode, just like all of our recent ones, is supported by our Patreon backers. If you want to help out the show, you can help out by joining us over on www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast to give us whatever you can in terms of financial support and avail of all the lovely awards and extras that entitles you to. If you’re unable to support us financially, you can always leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Byron’s The Island, inspired by the mutiny and discussed in this episode, can be found here.
An extended version of Mel Gibson’s “I am in hell” scene, a clip of which is used in this episode, can be found here on YouTube.
More on Pandora’s Box and the escape from the HMS Pandora can be found here.
The New Zealand Herald has a feature on the child abuse scandal on Pitcairn, and the island’s struggle to attract residents is detailed here in The Telegraph.
The European Commission has plenty of detail on the economy of the island here.
You can watch Errol Flynn’s 1933 film In the Wake of the Bountyhere on YouTube.
In this minisode, Joe explores, literally, the idea of an exclave after wandering into one a couple of years ago. Although we’ve covered a couple of enclaves in the past (including San Marino and The Gambia), this episode is the first time we’ve examined the opposite concept – a tiny piece of a country marooned inside another’s borders.
This is also something of a personal episode for Joe (@anbeirneach), as it marks an end to his time living in Switzerland. Luke (@thelukejkelly) and Mark (@markboyle86) also feature, and we discuss briefly our upcoming fourth season, which is due in a couple of weeks.
For the curious, you can find more on the German enclave of Büsingen am Hochrhein here on Atlas Obscura, or read this article on BigThink. The New York Times article quoted in the episode can be found here, and further reading on Campione d’Italia can be found here and here. Photo’s from Joe’s trips to the exclaves can be found here.
Here is a summary of some data and statistics:
Name:
Büsingen am Hochrhein
Campione d’Italia
Population:
1,350 pop
2,190
Currency:
€, official (CHF, de facto; DM, formerly)
CHF, official (€, accepted)
Area:
7.62 square kilometres
1.6 square kilometres
Border 17.141 km
Country:
Germany
Italy
Meaning:
Settlement of the People of Boso
Campilonum – a Roman fort
Separation from country:
Cut off by 500m
Cut off by 1 km
In addition to our theme music by the talented Thomas O’Boyle, this episode featured a lot of music and sound effects, graciously made available for free by contributors at FreeSound.org, Free Music Archive and Incompatech, for use under a Creative Commons license, by attribution.
Alphorn music and yodelling clips (from the Eidgenössisches Jodlerfest in Brig), as well as the Uileann pipes from the Uileann Pipers Club Schaffhausen Festival were recorded on location by Joe.
The side-by-side Swiss and German phone boxes in Buesingen
A beautifully Germanic house in Buesingen
The shorefront at Campione d’Italia, complete with Italian flag
Italian police car passing in front of the now-shuttered casino in Campione d’Italia
In this episode of 80 Days: an exploration podcast, we’ll be talking about Turkmenistan, formerly known as Turkmenia, an independent nation in Central Asia. Bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north and east, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest, and the Caspian Sea to the west, Turkmenistan forms part of the historic Silk Road between East and West.
Today, it has a population of around 5.5 million, the lowest of the Central Asian republics. With around 490,000 square km or 190,000 square miles of territory, Turkmenistan is the world’s 52nd-largest country, making it slightly smaller than Spain and somewhat larger than the US state of California.
Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, it later became a part of the USSR, gaining independence again in 1991. Dominated by plains and deserts, temperatures here are extreme to say the least. The height of summer can see highs of 50 degrees celsius (120 fahrenheit) which is the highest temperature ever recorded in the whole former Soviet Union, while in winter, temperatures plunge below freezing in many places. Although it’s a very dry country, Turkmenistan is rich in natural resources- beneath the Kara Kum desert, which dominates the middle of the country, lie massive deposits of oil, natural gss and coal. This is the only place we’ve talked about that has a flag with a carpet on it.
The Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander the Great completed his conquest of Darius III’s Persian Empire is extensively explained on Brittanica here.
More information on the earthquake that destroyed Nisa can be found here.
Joe’s excellent quote from Abu Muslim on the unrighteosness of making war on fellow Muslims was sourced from here.
The ruined city of Merv is profiled in this Guardian article, which we quoted in this episode.
The ‘blood of the mighty’ quote on the sack of Merv comes from this book.
The Russian conquest of this region, the key engagement of which was the Battle of Geok Tepe, is explained in detail by RadioFreeEurope here.
Below is a short video of the Darvaza gas crater or ‘Gates to Hell’, that has become a strange Turkmenistan tourist attraction.
The many varied flags of Turkmenistan throughout history can be seen here and here.
Some further reading on the choice of script in modern Turkmenistan is available here.
The music from this episode was sourced from here.
Thank you once again to all of our patrons on Patreon who are supporting season 3. If you’d like to join them and see what rewards are available for supporters, and get a peek behind the curtain check out our Patreon page. We really appreciate the support and input!
