Better Vice Club
The Commodity Map
Designed for high school students
A curriculum you enter through a map. Every course in Better Vice Club begins with a real thing from a real place, pick a pin, and the history, geography, science, and economics behind it unfold from there.
A cited, audio-first history of the world's vices — coffee to khat.
- 22
- episodes on the map
- 22
- origins worldwide
- 335
- lessons to work through
- 2
- cited sources
Start anywhere
Every episode sits at its origin, tap a pin to read what it is about, right here. Switch to Growing Belts to see where each commodity is actually grown.
Tap a pin to read what that episode is about.
How it works
Tap a pin
Each pin is one commodity, placed where it actually comes from. The map is the table of contents.
Read the episode
The pin opens that commodity's story, where it began, who grows it, why it mattered, with its sources listed underneath.
Take the course
From the episode, enrol in the full course: lessons, quizzes, and recall practice, with progress saved as you go.
4 of the 22 pins currently open into a full course; the rest are episode pages while their courses are written.
What's on the map
One thing you can hold, traced back to where it came from. Each one pulls in history, geography, economics, and science, because that is what it takes to explain it honestly. Pick any name to read what it covers.
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
The Growing Belts view maps production regions for 18 commodities across 31 countries.
Who it's for
Parents
A map is an invitation, not a worksheet. A kid who asks “why is chocolate from there?” has already started, and you can watch it land, because you get a read-only view of what they are actually doing.
- · Progress, quiz and recall scores, certificates earned
- · Kids can sign in with an avatar and a PIN, no email needed
- · Or no login at all: run a profile you manage for them
Teachers
Run it as a class without rebuilding it. Create a cohort, invite your students by email, and work the map together, attendance is taken for you, from who actually turns up to the live session.
- · Cohorts with a roster and email invitations
- · Attendance from live-session presence
- · Per-student progress and grades
Homeschoolers
You can teach this yourself. Every lesson names its sources, so you can check a claim, follow the citation, and answer the hard question when your student asks it, instead of taking a curriculum's word for it.
- · A full bibliography on every course
- · Go in any order, the map prescribes no starting point
- · Works for one learner or a whole co-op
Standards alignment
Designed for high school. We mapped this curriculum against the published Indiana Academic Standards and the standards Washington, D.C.has adopted, Common Core for literacy, NGSS for science, and D.C.'s own 2023 social studies standards. Each standard we claim shows its exact code, the standard's own words, and the lesson that covers it, and says so plainly when we only cover part of it.
See which standards are met, and by which lesson →Why you can trust it
The honest answer to “how do I know this is true?” is: don't take our word for it. Go and look. Every course carries its bibliography in public.
2
cited sources
2 of them checked against the original and marked verified.
See it for yourself: the 2 sources behind “BVC: Coffee — The Daily Global Connection” →
Why teach it this way
Anchoring lessons in real places, and in the communities and economies attached to them, is a long-established approach in education, usually called place-based education (Smith, 2002; Sobel, 2004). The map is that idea made literal: the table of contents is a set of real locations.
The citation habit is deliberate too. Researchers assessing students' ability to judge online information have found that students frequently struggle to evaluate the credibility of the sources they encounter (McGrew et al., 2018). A course that shows its sources, and invites you to follow them, is a course a student can practise that judgement on.
We make no claims about test scores or learning gains for this curriculum. We have not measured them, so we will not assert them.
Sources
- McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165–193. ERIC EJ1179994
- Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(8), 584–594. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208300806
- Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Orion Society.
Questions
Who is this designed for?
Designed for high school students. If you are teaching a different age group and want to know whether it fits, ask us below, we would rather tell you honestly than have you find out after you have planned around it.
What does it cost?
Every one of the 21 courses here is currently free. Each course page shows its own price. For a class, a co-op, or a school, pricing is a conversation, ask us below and we will answer with a number for the number of students you actually have.
How much time does it take each week?
We have not published an hours-per-week figure yet, so we are not going to invent one, you would plan a school year around it. Go in any order and at your own pace in the meantime; when we have a number we can stand behind, it will be on this page. If you need to know now, ask us below and we will talk through what your week looks like.
What do we need to get started?
A web browser, phone, tablet, or computer. Signing in is a magic link sent to your email, so there is no password to remember.
Can my child sign in without an email address?
Yes. A child can sign in themselves with a class code, their animal avatar, and a PIN, no email account required. If you would rather they had no login at all, you can create a profile you manage for them and study as them from your own account.
Can I use this with a class or a co-op?
Yes. Create a cohort, invite students by email, and you get a roster, per-student progress and grades, and attendance taken automatically from who is present in the live session.
Can I see how my student is doing?
Yes. Link your child's account and your parent view shows their course progress, quiz and recall scores, certificates earned, and live-class attendance, read-only, and only for the children linked to you.
How do I know the content is accurate?
Every course publishes its bibliography, and individual claims are tracked against the source that backs them, 2 sources across the catalogue so far. Open any course, scroll to Sources, and check them. They are there to be used, not admired.
Something we haven't answered? Read the help centre, or ask us directly.
Ask us about pricing
One family, a co-op, a classroom, and a district are four different conversations, so we would rather have the conversation than post a number that is wrong for three of them. Tell us who you are teaching and we will come back to you with a straight answer.
Pick something you ate today
Then find out where it actually came from. That is the whole first lesson.