Episode 2: Albania - The Eagle's Country

It is one of the smallest countries in Europe. For 46 years, it was the most isolated nation on Earth. And it is one of the most beautiful, strangest, and least-known destinations on the continent.Albania sits on the western edge of the Balkans, facing Italy across a narrow strip of Adriatic Sea, with beaches that rival Greece, mountains that rival Switzerland, and a history layered with ancient Illyrian roots, Byzantine cities, Ottoman centuries, and a communist dictatorship so paranoid that it built over 170,000 concrete bunkers — one for every four citizens — to defend against an invasion that never came.Ray takes you through it all. The dramatic geography, from the turquoise Albanian Riviera to the Accursed Mountains of the north. The full sweep of history — from the ancient colony of Apollonia to the 15th-century warrior hero Skanderbeg, who held the Ottoman Empire at bay for 25 years, to Enver Hoxha's sealed, bunker-riddled police state, to the chaotic, remarkable rebirth of the 1990s.We meet Mother Teresa, whose Albanian parents gave the world one of its greatest humanitarians. We meet Ismail Kadare, who wrote masterworks of world literature under a dictatorship. We meet Dua Lipa and Mira Murati — a global pop icon and a former CTO of OpenAI — both proudly Albanian.We eat Tavë Kosi — the baked lamb and yogurt dish once ranked the best traditional dish on the planet. We drink raki before noon without apology. We listen to iso-polyphonic singing, an ancient choral tradition so extraordinary UNESCO protects it. And we walk the cobbled streets of Berat and Gjirokastër, two UNESCO cities of stone and Ottoman windows that most of the world has never heard of.The eagle's country. Come and meet it.New episodes every Monday at 7pm. Next week — Algeria.