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PODCAST

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast

The Ceylon Press

From elephants to sapphires, tea to cricket, Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast explores a remote and secret Eden to discover the stories behind the things that make Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan.

society & culture places & travel

All Episodes

11:26

Guardians Against Greed: The Mongooses Of Sri Lanka

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/26

Looking at animals from a purely Kandyan perspective, in the beginning were not early life form sponges, or even aardvarks – but mongooses. For it was, according to the best of legends, mongooses who were responsible for Kandy being built where it was. The city’s earliest history is an impossible mosaic of hearsay, myth, the odd inscription, and later recollections. First founded as an offshoot of the Kurunegala kingdom sometime after 1357, it lapsed into impenetrable obscurity until

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11:07

Deer Friends: On Safari with Sri Lanka's Deer, Ponies...

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/26

Deer abound across Sri Lanka, some like the Ceylon Spotted Deer increasingly vulnerable, prey to poachers and habitat loss; others – like the Barking Deer – flourishing and presenting little concern to the scientists who maintain the Red List of Threatened Species. Two species are considered endemic to the island – the Ceylon Spotted Deer, the Sri Lankan Spotted Chevrotain, with Sri Lankan Sambar Deer the subject of mild debate among patriotic environmentalists trying to assess if it is so

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17:38

The Cat’s Pyjamas: In Pursuit of Sri Lanka’s Wild Cats

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/26

Counting Sri Lanka’s wild cats is no minor feat. None of them care to be counted, still less seen. Some have vanished; and at least one is the subject of such impassioned scientistic debate that its righteous credentials as distinct species or sub species still hang in the balance. Even so, of the many mighty mammals that once sat, enthroned, like Phidias’ Olympian Zeus gazing at the lesser world around him, so too did a dazzling assembly of cats lord it over the island, at the very apex of

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25:52

The Mermaid That Wasn’t: At Sea with Sri Lanka's Mammals

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/26

Europeans first encountered mermaids in Sri Lanka 500 years ago. Just a few decades after arriving, the Portuguese, under the command of Constantino of Braganza, a cousin of the King of Portugal, tiring of the rather successful raids upon his fleet by the Kings of Jaffna, decided war was the best way forward. His expedition, in November 1560, resulted in the capture of Mannar Island. Inevitably, many in his army were terribly injured and under the naval doctor, Dimas Bosque, a beach

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32:07

Inscrutable Angels: an Outing to Sri Lanka’s Skinkdom

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/13

Einstein – or perhaps it was Sun Tzu – argued that subtle is as subtle does. If they are correct then the very existence of this podcast threatens the salient virtue of Sri Lanka’s most elusive animals with a terrible undoing. But it’s a risk worth taking.Big, bold, and marvellous though so much of what is immediately encountered in Sri Lanka, more marvellous even that all you might ever encounter here, is everything that at first sight looks most ordinary. Running alongside its elephants

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21:23

In Search Of The Devil Bird: Encounters with Sri...

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/10/13

This podcasts is a search for Sri Lanka’s notorious Devil Bird, encountering on the way, all 12 of its distinguished owls. Once upon a time, uncountable centuries ago, a woman sat done to enjoy a curry supper with her husband. With hindsight, she ought to have been more alert: after all, her husband making dinner was no usual thing. But then, nor was the curry, for nestling amongst the spices and vegetables she discovered a tiny finger. All that was left of her infant son. Suspicion,

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16:44

Sri Lanka’s Secret Spices

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/09/30

Beneath the glamours quills of cinnamon or vines of pepper, Sri Lanka’s two most dazzling indigenous spices, hide a clutch of others – the secret spices whose clandestine contribution to food and medicine is the subject of this podcast. Many of Sri Lanka’s indigenous spices are barely known outside the island; indeed, so far as Tesco, Walmart or Carrefour go, they remain inscrutable, ingredients of electrifying mystery. But collectively, they may well have been what Virginia Woolf had in

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21:57

The Golden Trinity: Sri Lanka’s Three Great Spices

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/09/30

It took just three homespun goddess - Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia - to give their ancient Mediterranean world all the perfection it needed; its charm, beauty, and creativity. And so it is with the three great indigenous spcies of Sri Lanka: cinnamon, pepper, and turmeric. Native to the island, it is impossible to image how life would be here without them. The greatest of these is cinnamon. Its perfumed bushes mark out the outer edge of the spice garden at The Flame Tree Estate &

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32:50

Monsoon, Magic & Money: Sri Lanka, The Spice Trade &...

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/09/30

Field guide; saga; pharmacy; pantry - this memoir of the Spice Garden at The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy confirms that most elemental of Sri Lankan horticultural truths – that plants – all 7,500 of them found here – divide into just three categories. They are medicinal. They are edible. Or they are useless. Had we known this before things kicked off, life would have been much simpler; and plans far more straightforward. For, as with most plans, ours went

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30:14

The Taste Trade: Sri Lanka’s Merchant Spices

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/09/30

This podcast is dedicated to uncovering the story of those most favoured of Sri Lankan spices that came to the island – just like tourists. And then stayed. On the distant streets of the Old Bailey in London stands F. W. Pomeroy's famous 1906 statue of Justice hanging above the entrance to Central Criminal Court. The vast and gilded Amazonian holds in one hand the sword of justice and in the other the finely balanced scales of justice. And is in in thinking how Sri Lanka’s spice history

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18:17

Spices of Empire: Sri Lanka’s Colonial Spices

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/09/30

Sri Lanka’s generous habit of annexing new ingredients is one of the more positive ways in which it has reacted to the very mixed impact made on it by the island’s spice-mad colonial occupiers; and its traders. To the nine core spices indigenous to the island since the earliest of times, - cinnamon, pepper, long pepper, brindleberries, moringa, curry leaves, gutu kula, the blue butterfly pea flower, and turmeric – up to thirteen others have been introduced through the centuries and have

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3:20

The Seven Wonders of Ancient Lanka: Part 3

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press._________________________________________________________________________________________Welcome to the third and final episode of a three part podcast dedicated to finding the 7 greatest wonders of Ancient Sri Lanka. Reservoir, tree, stupas. All came before this, ancient Sri Lanka’s fourth great wonder - a palace built to escape death and suffering. Bulit by the self-same great king,

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3:20

The Seven Wonders of Ancient Lanka: Part 2

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press._________________________________________________________________________________________Welcome to the second episode of a three part podcast dedicated to finding the 7 greatest wonders of Ancient Sri Lanka.250 years after the creation of the island’s first great wonder – the reservoir of Panda Wewa, the second took root - literally. Strictly speaking this wonder was not home grown – but

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3:20

The Wicked Monarchs of Sri Lanka: Part Two

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press._________________________________________________________________________________________Welcome to Part Two of a two part Podcast dedicated to Sri Lanka’s most wicked monarchs. After the excesses of Prince Vijaya and Queen Annua, it is time to encounter our third candidate king and winner of an abiding place in the island’s register of wicked monarchs. So little is actually known about

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3:20

In Serach of Sri Lanka's Tiny Mammals

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press._________________________________________________________________________________________Tiny mammals are the subject of this podcast – the search for Sri Lanka’s smallest and most overlooked mammals. But first a health warning – for fans of Hi, Hallo or Hola, this is not a story of Sri Lanka’s mammalian celebrities, its kings and queens, or its most photographed princelings. Rather, it is a

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3:20

Rambling in the Outer Gardens

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/06/01

Welcome to an episode of Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast, brought to you by The Ceylon Press._________________________________________________________________________________________This episode is dedicated to the sprawling plantation gardens that disappear off into the jungle around Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. This longer of two walks, which we call THE ESTATE WALK, starts at THE PODI PATH just outside the front porch that leads into the hotel. A traditional kitchen

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3:20

Secret Kandy: Five Forgotten Stories

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/05/25

Thirty miles north of Kandy marks the start of an extraordinary 5 temple circuit tour to places long lost to modern travellers. The circuit starts at the Vilbawa Rajamaha temple, which legend connects to Kuveni, the wife of the island’s first king, Vijaya. But Kuveni was not simply a wife – nor even a weaver of cloth, a mother, lover, or queen. Shew was also a demon, a metamorphoser, an outcast, an avenging fury, suicide, traitor, murderess, ghost, and mistress of deception. A descendant of

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3:20

Secret Kandy: The 200 Year Old War

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/05/25

This episode is dedicated to a 200 year old mountain war. Hills are of course what Kandy is celebrated for - and its most famous city-centre mountain, Bahirawa Kanda, or Gnome Mountain, is home to one of the tallest statues of Lord Buddha. It was once, more memorably, home to some atypical human sacrifice, involving a particularly beautiful girl, Dingiri Menika who lived right next to the Flame Tree Estate and Hotel, in Galagedera. Selected to stimulate the moribund fertility of a Kandyan

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3:20

Secret Kandy: God & Manon

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/05/25

Kipling believed that to understand a country and its history you had to smell it. Yet the past is documented in so many other ways - in books, or architecture; in music or even food. In Sri Lanka, it is the temples that best hold its story. Even so, their stories, like their secrets, are often hard to capture, and harder still to comprehend. It is thought that there are well over 1,000 temples scattered in and around Kandy and its hinterland. Few are properly documented and remain secrets

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3:20

Secret Kandy: Where The Grass Is Grreener

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast ·

2025/05/22

One of Kandy’s greatest and most wonderful secrets is its nature. The city sits in a valley surrounded by 5 main hills, up which, like an indulgent bubble bath, buildings of later regret have begun to creep. But one side of the city remains nicely protected - UdawaththaKele Forest. Once a forest hunting reserve for the kings, it is now a magical 104 hectare protected nature reserve. It is home to 460 plant species; butterflies, snakes, snails, lizards, toads, frogs, insects, monkeys, civet,

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