Founding a Welsh Heaven in South America, ft. Sunil Patel

About this episode

Comedian Sunil Patel explores the challenges faced by Welsh settlers in Patagonia in 1865.

Patagonia, 1865. A boat called the Mimosa has dumped 153 Welsh settlers onto a treeless, waterless stretch of Argentine scrubland, sold to them as a lush green paradise where the Welsh language might finally escape the English. Comedian Sunil Patel, back in the time-travel studio, has been dropped into the colony as a pioneer with one job: keep Y Wladfa alive long enough to become a country. Sunil's strategy for surviving a marketing-lie of a colony is half eager settler, half man slowly realising he's been mis-sold a property. He's also been handed a chaos wildcard he can play exactly once, and neither he nor the Game Master has any idea what it actually does. The promised lush valleys are a desert. The Atlantic crossing has taken a year. The locals haven't shown up yet. And the chaos card is sitting there, untested, waiting. The real Y Wladfa is one of the strangest footnotes in modern history. In 1865 a Welsh preacher named Michael D. Jones convinced 153 of his countrymen to sail the Mimosa from Liverpool to Argentine Patagonia, ruling out the United States and Australia because there were already too many English there. The early years brought failed crops, washed-away…

People in this episode

Guest: Sunil Patel

Topics covered

• Welsh settlers
• Patagonia
• colonial history
• comedy
• time travel
• survival
• cultural heritage

Keywords

• Welsh settlers
• Patagonia
• Sunil Patel
• Y Wladfa
• colonial history
• Mimosa
• Michael D. Jones
• survival
• comedy
• time travel

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Mimosa

Places: Patagonia, Argentina, Liverpool, Buenos Aires, Chubut

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