Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for 1440 Explores
1440 Explores · Thursday · 24 min

How Coffee Changed the World

Coffee was once put on trial. In 1511, the governor of Mecca brought it before the city's religious scholars to settle a single question: Is this drink dangerous? They let it go, and coffee spent the next five centuries changing where people gathered, what they talked about, and how they traded. This episode of 1440 Explores follows it from a wild Ethiopian shrub to the 2 billion cups the world drinks every day, by way of Sufi prayer halls in Yemen, the coffeehouses of the Ottoman Empire, the London coffee shop that became the London Stock Exchange, and the Brazilian plantations that ran on enslaved labor. Host Sony Kassam is joined by Professor Jonathan Morris of the University of Hertfordshire, who explains what roasting actually does to a bean and why caffeine is a suppressant rather than the stimulant everyone assumes. Join the knowledge collective: https://www.join1440.com Additional resources: https://join1440.com/t/coffee Guest: Professor Jonathan Morris, University of Hertfordshire, author of "Coffee: A Global History." About 1440: 1440 is a community for the knowledge-obsessed that helps curious people stay informed and inspired on a daily basis. We live in an age of limitless information but limited understanding. Algorithms decide what we see. Misinformation spreads faster than truth. And the tools meant to expand knowledge now distort it. Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/1440daily https://www.facebook.com/1440Daily/ https://www.tiktok.com/@1440daily CHAPTERS 0:00 Coffee goes on trial 1:12 Kaldi, the goats and the origin myth 2:47 Inside the coffee cherry 3:38 Roasting and the Maillard reaction 4:15 How coffee actually moves around the world 5:35 What caffeine really does to your brain 7:06 Sufi mystics, Yemen and all-night prayer 8:33 Mecca, 1511: is coffee permissible? 9:13 The first coffeehouses 10:56 Empire, Istanbul and the road to Europe 12:14 London, Lloyd's and the Stock Exchange 13:52 Coffee and the Enlightenment 14:26 Plantations, colonies and enslaved labor 15:54 Brazil, American demand and abolition 17:19 Italy invents espresso 18:33 Starbucks and the global coffee chain 19:15 Why coffee still matters

0:00-24:33
Play in

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

Coffee was once put on trial. In 1511, the governor of Mecca brought it before the city's religious scholars to settle a single question: Is this drink dangerous? They let it go, and coffee spent the next five centuries changing where people gathered, what they talked about, and how they traded. This episode of 1440 Explores follows it from a wild Ethiopian shrub to the 2 billion cups the world drinks every day, by way of Sufi prayer halls in Yemen, the coffeehouses of the Ottoman Empire, the London coffee shop that became the London Stock Exchange, and the Brazilian plantations that ran on enslaved labor. Host Sony Kassam is joined by Professor Jonathan Morris of the University of Hertfordshire, who explains what roasting actually does to a bean and why caffeine is a suppressant rather than the stimulant everyone assumes.
Join the knowledge collective: https://www.join1440.com

Additional resources: https://join1440.com/t/coffee Guest: Professor Jonathan Morris, University of Hertfordshire, author of "Coffee: A Global History."


About 1440: 1440 is a community for the knowledge-obsessed that helps curious people stay informed and inspired on a daily basis. We live in an age of limitless information but limited understanding. Algorithms decide what we see. Misinformation spreads faster than truth. And the tools meant to expand knowledge now distort it. Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/1440daily https://www.facebook.com/1440Daily/ https://www.tiktok.com/@1440daily CHAPTERS 0:00 Coffee goes on trial 1:12 Kaldi, the goats and the origin myth 2:47 Inside the coffee cherry 3:38 Roasting and the Maillard reaction 4:15 How coffee actually moves around the world 5:35 What caffeine really does to your brain 7:06 Sufi mystics, Yemen and all-night prayer 8:33 Mecca, 1511: is coffee permissible? 9:13 The first coffeehouses 10:56 Empire, Istanbul and the road to Europe 12:14 London, Lloyd's and the Stock Exchange 13:52 Coffee and the Enlightenment 14:26 Plantations, colonies and enslaved labor 15:54 Brazil, American demand and abolition 17:19 Italy invents espresso 18:33 Starbucks and the global coffee chain 19:15 Why coffee still matters

more episodes

All episodes