What happened when Joseph Banks finally put to sea - and discovery left the comfort of gardens behind? How would a voyage meant to advance science collide with storms, suspicion, imperial rivalries, and human tragedy? And what would it cost to catalogue the natural world at the far edges of the globe?

Join John and Patrick as they follow Banks aboard HMS Endeavour, from vineyards in Madeira and standoffs in Rio de Janeiro to catastrophe in Tierra del Fuego and the intoxicating promise of Tahiti. This is science under sail: plants collected at gunpoint, lives lost to ice and overconfidence, and the birth of a vision that would bind botany, empire, and exploration together - whether the world was ready for it or not.

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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

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Who was Joseph Banks before he became the most powerful botanist in the British Empire? How did a wealthy, restless young man turn a childhood fascination with weeds into a scientific obsession that would reshape global agriculture? And why did one cold, miserable voyage to Newfoundland prove to be the spark that launched a world-changing career?

Join John and Patrick as they begin a brand-new multi-part series on Joseph Banks, tracing his early life from privileged English estates to the edge of the North Atlantic - and setting the stage for the voyages that would transform science, empire, and the history of fresh produce.

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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

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Once, Switzerland was a land of pears.

When we picture the Swiss countryside today, we imagine tidy fields, precision farming, and alpine order. But not so long ago, vast stretches of eastern Switzerland were covered in towering pear trees - ancient giants that fed communities, sustained wildlife, and produced perry renowned across Europe.

So how did a nation famed for care, balance, and cultivation come to destroy eleven million fruit trees in the space of a generation?

Join John and Patrick as they unravel one of the strangest and most unsettling episodes in modern agricultural history: the deliberate, state-sponsored destruction of Switzerland’s perry orchards. From temperance panics and alcohol laws to bureaucrats with axes, propaganda films, and the cult of “modern” efficiency, this is a story of progress turned destructive - and of a drink, a landscape, and a culture quietly erased.

Was this modernization… or cultural vandalism? And what was lost when the last great pear trees fell?

READ MORE about Perry Pears here.

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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

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