What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast

How did Sri Lanka’s kings ever spring back from the Chola devastation to reclaim the Sinhalese state?

What makes elephants so quintessentially Sri Lankan – and what have they to do with its last great ancient kingdom - Polonnaruwa?

Is there really a tree that can still the universe? And if so, where in Sri Lanka might you find it?

Rich, salty, earthy, savoury, sharp – gorgonzola is not a cheese common to Sri Lanka, and yet its mere anticipation calls to mind on the island the seven stages of living. And of them all, how can you ever manage to make the last, last?

What is it about planting modest herbs that can keep the busy world at bay in Sri Lanka?

What choices might Sri Lanka make to fortify its heart? And what choices were made long ago?

Does the future have a past in Colombo?

Rescuing the nation from civil war and chaos, how was it that the returning Lankbranaka dynasty would then preside over the kingdom’s utter devastation, the like of which the island had never before endured?

What might make you scream loudest in the lonesome depths of a long Sri Lankan night?

How can a mysterious Arthurian heroine, remembered by a Victorian stay-at-home, ever bring Sri Lanka to mind?

How can a simple shower in Sri Lanka lead to a hunt for animal truths, one leech at a time?

Despite all temptations, Sri Lanka has never been very good at merely waiting for the end of the world. But why is that, and what does it have to do with barbarians and a Hollywood monk?

Packing a punch quite out of proportion to its size, Sri Lanka is distinctive and magnificent in the most Byzantine of ways. But what is it that makes it so special – and how did it all begin?

Given Sri Lanka’s remarkable facility for naturalising anything it takes a fancy to, counting its spices is a sure way to stir debates about everything from guilt and history to life expectancy and truth. Hear some of this, as we lay out a jungle spice garden all of our own at The Flame Tree Estate in the mountains beyond Kandy.

The destruction of the 1500-year-old Anuradhapuran kingdom fell due – but was it destroyed by problems of its own making – or by a force so overwhelming that no power could ever hope to withstand?

The Lambakanna king, Sena II, pulled victory from disaster. Sri Lanka became one of the dominant powers in the Indian Ocean. So how did it get from there to the doors of desolation in barely 125 years?

How was it that, even as life seemed at its easiest, the plush and kind middle years of later Lambakanna rule almost came to an abrupt halt - courtesy of an Indian invasion?

King Manavanna was to restore the fortunes of the returning Lankbranaka dynasty, and his succeeding sons were to rule as if the kingdom merited nothing but the best. But was the Anuradhapuran kingdom really that safe?

As the Lambakanna kings retook their throne for a second innings, how was it that rice, that most ordinary of all crops, was to power the last glorious golden age of the one-island state?

How the obvious is almost never true – at least on the surface in Sri Lanka.