In 1224, Genghis Khan smeared fat from a fresh kill on the finger of his nine-year-old grandson and told the crowd to heed the boy’s wisdom. That boy was Kublai Khan, who grew up between nomadic Mongol traditions and the settled, cosmopolitan world, and went on to found the Yuan dynasty and rule a unified China.

This episode follows Kublai from his mismanaged estate in Hebei and the brain trust of advisors he built, through the Dali campaign, the civil war with his brother Ariq Böke, and the Li Tan revolt. We explore the four-class system, his global court of foreign talent, the jiaochao paper currency, failed invasions of Japan, and his lonely final years.

• How a disastrous tax policy in Hebei taught Kublai to govern settled farmers
• Why he spared the Dali king and recruited him instead of ordering a massacre
• How cutting grain supplies to Karakorum won the Toluid Civil War
• The rise of the jiaochao and the slide into fiat money and inflation
• Why flat-bottomed riverboats doomed the invasions of Japan