Articles

A Dark Bitter Powder - Episode Transcript

In this fourth episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James explore how the popularity of instant coffee dramatically alters the balance of power amongst coffee growing countries. Coffee as a global commodity takes on a life of its own, sweeping millions of farmers into a race to the bottom.

Read more

Coffee Catches Fire - Episode Transcript

A hundred years ago one Brazilian man owned so many coffee trees he could fill every inch of a European country with them. But why does Brazil grow so much? And who is drinking these lakes of caffeine? In this third episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James explore how industrialisation dramatically and permanently strips away Brazil’s forests, and why coffee becomes a part of the American dream.

Read more

Slavery, Suffering and Affordable Luxury - Episode transcript

Why do we get upset when we’re charged €36 for an ordinary cappuccino? The answer flies us to the Caribbean where white Europeans make black Africans suffer. In this second episode of A History of Coffee, we uncover how colonialism squeezes the price of coffee, and how that changes European culture forever. A History of Coffee is a collaboration between James Harper of the Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries podcast and Jonathan Morris, Professor of History and author of ‘Coffee: A Global History’.

Read more

Episode 1 - A History of Coffee transcript

Here’s a surprising fact: coffee was only invented around the time Michelangelo was chiselling his statue of David. Why did it take so long for humans to invent the cup of coffee? In this first episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James unpack how humans figured out that delicious flavours were contained in the roasted seeds of a coffee tree’s cherries. The answer has nothing to do with dancing goats...but, in some ways, it has everything to do with a shepherd in the forests of Ethiopia.

Read more

How you can listen to this podcast

You can listen to episodes right here on the website, or if you prefer, in a podcast app. Listening in an app makes it easier to keep track of what you’ve already heard, listen without using your data plan and many other conveniences.

Recommended apps
Start listening to Stateless
31:35
Start listening to Stateless
31:35