Legacy

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:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

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:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.