How do six men in three vans outside a Cotswolds air base end with America flying its bombers home?

What can 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel actually do for American drivers?

And, are a quiet corner of England, an airport in Riyadh and the war in Ukraine all part of the same story?

In this Legacy Inbox episode, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch try to work out how the week's biggest stories fit together.

A farmer who spotted men in balaclavas, a suspect who rang the police on himself, and Peter's three theories for what really happened at RAF Fairford. Then Houthi missiles hitting King Khalid Airport, the long war in Yemen the world stopped watching, and a diesel deal with Putin that covers roughly one American morning. Plus Trump's call for Ukraine to find a new leader, the Nobel Peace Prize he didn't win, and a rare moment when Afua changes Peter's mind about how Americans see Russia.

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[0:00] Iran, Saudi, Ukraine and the Cotswolds, all in one week

[1:05] Men in balaclavas outside RAF Fairford

[3:53] Three theories: diesel thieves, an Iranian plot, or a US exit plan

[9:20] Houthi missiles hit Riyadh, and the war in Yemen nobody watched

[12:06] Trump, Putin and a diesel deal worth one American morning

[14:36] The Nobel Peace Prize, and the court under threat

[16:38] Do Americans still see Russia as the bad guy?

[21:05] Is it all connected?

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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If almost every early migration out of Africa failed, how did any of us get here?

Why does an Akan word that once meant "person from beyond the cornfields" now mean a white person?

And, when British politicians talk about net migration, who are they leaving out?

Peter Frankopan takes Afua Hirsch through 50,000 years of people on the move, using the new illustrated edition of The Earth Transformed.

A green Sahara full of lakes. Romans who conquered half the world but didn't spread their genes. Huns and Mongols running empires like a business that had to grow every year. Then the long scars the slave trade left on trust in West Africa, and the Gold Coast students who came to Britain long before Windrush. Plus 150 million people on the move in a single century, and Afua's prediction for 2050. And a school where Wednesday homework was translating Sanskrit into Urdu, and why speaking five Ghanaian languages never earns the respect that French does.

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[0:00] 50,000 years of people on the move

[2:07] The surest way to lose an election, and Vikings who are fine in hindsight

[8:19] Almost every early migration out of Africa failed

[13:23] Skin colour, vitamin D and why race is a social construct

[16:47] Rome, the Huns and empire as a business model

[20:22] The Mongols in Hungary, and the Greek idea of the stranger

[24:23] "Beyond the cornfields": the scars you can still hear in a word

[28:11] The migration nobody counts: Britons leaving

[31:44] 2050: will Britain wish it had immigration?

[36:04] Languages, Sanskrit homework, and which ones count as "sophisticated"

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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What happens when an author gets rejected eight times, writes a ninth novel in hand-written letters, and ends up at number one on the New York Times bestseller list? Why are we so drawn to storytellers, tradwives, and 73-year-old law clerks who reject email in favor of pen and paper? And, what does a 73-year-old fictional letter-writer have in common with the rise of the AfD in Germany and the political power of nostalgia?

Afua Hirsch brings her summer read — Virginia Evans’s Women’s Prize-winning novel The Correspondent — to Peter Frankopan, and what starts as a book review turns into a deep dive into rejection, class, ageism, and the performance of identity.

A 73-year-old former lawyer firing off petty grievances to her gardening club while hiding her deepest heartbreaks; Marlon James demanding his friends destroy his rejected manuscript; and why late-stage capitalism makes everyone treat their personal identity like a brand. Plus: why both Peter and Afua write their best work between midnight and 4:00 AM.

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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Why does the ancient Greek word for bravery come from the word for man, and what did bronze spears have to do with it?

How does one of the coldest decades in 2,000 years end with around 100,000 women on trial for meddling with the weather?

And, what links a woman blamed for a hailstorm in the 1590s to ten young protesters superglued to an oil company's headquarters in London?

Afua Hirsch reads Peter Frankopan's The Earth Transformed for the women in it, from Bronze Age weapons to the police station where she once defended those ten protesters.

Part one of Her Story and the Natural World. Hunter-gatherer women with the bone strength of Olympic athletes, Akan market women who still run the trade, and the scapegoat logic that turns a bad harvest into a witch trial. Plus the women written out of the civil rights story, and why everyone who dreams of being a Spartan pictures themselves next to Leonidas, never as the cook at the back with no teeth.

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[0:00] Weapons, magic spells and superglue: what do they have in common?

[1:07] Why the word "herstory" still rattles people

[7:49] The Bronze Age losers, and how bravery became a man's word

[12:38] Tradwives, Spartans and the history nobody actually wants to live

[16:20] Curses, churches and witchcraft in West Africa

[21:53] A freezing decade, 100,000 trials and the women blamed for the storms

[27:41] Coretta Scott King, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the women written out

[31:32] Afua's first case: ten women glued to a building

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Why did the cod in your fish fingers go to China and back before it reached your freezer?

What does a medieval king blocking English wool from Flanders have to do with Xi Jinping's grip on rare earths?

And, if China can now build cars far more cheaply than Europe or America, could the West lose its car industry altogether?

Ed Conway, Sky News economics and data editor and Times columnist, takes Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch down the hidden supply chains behind everyday life with his new book, Trade World.

The sliced white loaf that can't be made without wheat from the far side of the world. The cotton fields of Gujarat, where farmers have no idea where their crop ends up. The Corn Laws as the original Brexit, the West African cocoa farmers who've never tasted chocolate, and what David Ricardo really thought about free trade. Then comes the warning about cars that Afua hopes is wrong, and suspects isn't.

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[0:00] North Sea, Shandong, back again: the fish finger's secret round trip

[2:48] The invisible network beneath everything you own

[8:29] Edward III, Flemish wool and Xi Jinping's rare earths

[13:10] Why your toast depends on wheat from the other side of the world

[17:21] The Corn Laws, free trade and the Brexit echo

[21:03] Gujarat's cotton fields, and a farmer who never asks where it goes

[26:51] Was Ricardo right, and what did he actually say?

[32:09] The car industry Europe and America could lose

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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What were the taxi drivers of 1990s Accra playing on repeat?

How does a woman who swore she was "not a bit political" write a hit about being used up and spat out by the system?

And, what does it take for the most unmistakably white icon in American country music to become the unproblematic queen of a Nigerian girl growing up in Peckham?

Afua Hirsch hands the Dolly Parton question to her friend Kelechi Okafor — author, podcaster, voice artist and pole studio owner — and Peter Frankopan discovers he is the last to know that West Africa loves country music.

Part two of two. Missionaries, a banjo with West African roots and a grandfather in cowboy boots in Lagos; the royalties, the military and the art of choosing your hypocrisies; and the day Dolly Parton's Imagination Library asked for Kelechi's own picture book, then came back for it a second year. Underneath it all, the question part one left hanging: did everyone give Dolly a pass that Beyoncé never gets?

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[0:00] The tribute that travelled furthest didn't come from Nashville

[2:40] Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and a cassette player in the headboard

[4:20] Accra taxis, the banjo, and a secret hundreds of millions already knew

[8:41] Unpicking "unproblematic white queen", and choosing what you're a hypocrite for

[11:37] The Imagination Library comes calling for Kelechi's picture book

[14:35] Dumb Blonde as a business plan, all the way to the bank

[18:09] Church ladies, queer fans, and the pass Beyoncé never gets

[23:24] Peckham, Yoruba, and why a songwriter chose books

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Why are a million people about to queue at the British Museum for a strip of embroidered linen?

What if the most famous picture of 1066 isn't a tapestry, was probably stitched in England, and treats the losing king as a hero?

And, if the arrow in Harold's eye was stitched back in by 19th-century restorers, how sure are we of the one thing everyone knows about 1066?

With the Bayeux Tapestry in Britain for the first time in nearly a thousand years, Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch sit down with Sue Brunning, the British Museum curator who helped bring it here and waved Sutton Hoo off to France in exchange.

Sue takes them through the bishop who probably paid for it and gave himself a starring role, the English women who likely stitched it, and a Harold who looks nothing like a villain. Then come six women in 68 metres, three of them naked; a cleric, a woman called Ælfgyva and a slap nobody can explain; and a battle sequence brutal enough to send visitors out shaken. And then there's the arrow.

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[0:00] 68 metres of linen, home after nearly a thousand years

[3:33] From a Sandhurst summit to Bloomsbury, with Sutton Hoo sent the other way

[7:53] Why it isn't a tapestry, and why 1066 changed everything

[11:55] Harold the hero, hauling Normans out of the quicksand

[13:14] Bishop Odo, Canterbury and the women with the needles

[17:39] Six women, three naked, and a slap nobody can explain

[21:43] The battle that leaves visitors shaken

[26:44] Restorers, fading dyes and the arrow in Harold's eye

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Who says no to Elvis Presley — and is proved right eighteen years later?

How does a girl from a one-room cabin with no electricity work out the economics of music publishing before most of Nashville has?

And, in an age that agrees on almost nothing, how did Dolly Parton end up claimed by drag queens, evangelicals and everyone in between?

Peter Frankopan opens on the phone call that cost Dolly Parton an Elvis record, and Afua Hirsch traces what that refusal was really protecting.

Part one of two. Locust Ridge to Nashville, the Porter Wagoner years, and the moment a songwriter worked out that the leverage was never in the performance. Along the way: a theme park propping up one of Tennessee's poorest counties, a book scheme built for a father who never learned to read, and a working women's anthem that half the people singing it have never thought about. Underneath it all, a harder question — whether being loved by everybody is a strategy, and what it costs to hold on to.

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[0:00] Elvis wants the song. Then the phone rings.

[2:08] One room, twelve children, and a childhood with its own acronym

[5:33] Nashville the day after school finishes, and no plan B

[8:05] The double act that made her, and the goodbye song that ended it

[12:55] Half the publishing, one sleepless night, and a fortune left on the table

[15:11] 9 to 5: the most political song she never called political

[18:35] A theme park, 4,000 jobs and billions into East Tennessee

[26:07] Dixie, Black Lives Matter, and the edges of staying out of it

Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

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Stay connected with Legacy:

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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