Long-form economic history told from the inside. How did this place become this place? How did this idea come to shape the world?
Explore EpisodesLandlocked, mountainous, and caught between empires — Kyrgyzstan has been a crossroads of civilizations for millennia. How did geography, Soviet legacy, and the ghost of the Silk Road shape one of Central Asia's most overlooked economies?
SoonFrom cowrie shells to central banks to Bitcoin — how humanity's most consequential invention has shaped every civilization that touched it.
SoonMarco Polo FM is a long-form podcast about the economic history of countries, technologies, and forces that made the modern world. Each episode is recorded on location — in the places where history happened and is still happening.
Two kinds of episodes: country deep dives that ask how a nation became what it is today, and subject episodes that trace the history of ideas — semiconductors, AI, money, war — that have quietly shaped everything.
Hosted by Elim, recorded wherever the story begins.
New episodes, field notes from the road, and dispatches from wherever the story is being made.