In 1992, adjusted for prices, the average Ukrainian produced more than the average Pole. Today Poles are more than 2.5 times richer, and the gap opened long before the war. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories...

Two neighbours left communism at the same time. Poland chose shock therapy and anchored itself to NATO and the EU; Ukraine's transition was captured by insiders and oligarchs, then hit by Russian gas pressure and war. A data-driven...

Lab-grown diamonds are chemically identical to mined ones, and their wholesale price has fallen about ninety percent since 2019. For Botswana, that is a serious problem. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories on how countries became...

When De Beers found diamonds under the Kalahari in 1967, the richest fields lay under Seretse Khama's own people's land. Botswana's laws handed the rights to the whole nation instead. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories...

Seretse Khama married an Englishwoman, Ruth Williams, in 1948. Under pressure from apartheid South Africa, Britain banished him. He came back to become Botswana's first president. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories on how countries became...

In 1966, Botswana had about twelve kilometres of paved road and an income of around ninety dollars a person. Sixty years later it is richer per person than South Africa. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories...

How Botswana went from one of the poorest countries on Earth to richer per person than South Africa: Seretse Khama, the diamond deal with De Beers, saving instead of spending, and the cracks (HIV, inequality, unemployment). Then the...

Norway was poorer than Sweden until 1969. Then it found oil, and wrote the rules before the money arrived. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories on how countries became rich, and why some never did. #norway #oil...

Fired engineers, an empty rainy-day fund, and an oil crash. How Venezuela's economy shrank by about three quarters. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories on how countries became rich, and why some never did. #venezuela #hyperinflation #oil...

Norway turned its oil into shares, bonds and property all over the world, and set one simple spending rule. 🔔 Subscribe to Terrain & Treasure for more stories on how countries became rich, and why some never did. #norway #oilfund...

In the 1970s, Venezuela was one of the richest countries in Latin America. Norway had just found oil. Fifty years later, Norway has a $2 trillion fund and Venezuela's economy has collapsed. Same resource, opposite results. Here's why. We...

Switzerland has no ocean, no oil and no gold mines. Two-thirds of the country is mountains, and for centuries it was one of the poorest places in Europe, so poor that it exported its young men as soldiers....