Jan 29, 2017
Thanks to Carole in Virginia for giving me enough of a push to get this episode finally produced. This might have been one of the first ten topics I came up with when I began writing the original list back in 2010.
The history of silk is really an amazing testament to humankind's ingenuity and the randomness of life...
Jan 10, 2017
In part two of this series examining the forgotten life of William Mesny, we hear the second half of his story in China. We're mostly using author David Leffman's 2016 book "The Mercenary Mandarin"
TERMS FROM THIS EPISODE
Chéngdū 成都 Capital city of Sichuan
Khampa 康巴 Area in eastern Tibet bordering...
Jan 10, 2017
In this first part of a two-part series, we examine the forgotten life of William Mesny. Drawing from author David Leffman's 2016 book "The Mercenary Mandarin," Laszlo discusses an unknown character from the bad old days of late Qing Dynasty China.
Though he never made it to the history books, he nonetheless witnessed...