Podcasts · History · Society & Culture

A History of Coffee

James Harper

22 episodes

A History of Coffee is the story of how a tiny psychoactive seed changed the world and shapes our lives today.

More about the show

Across six episodes, documentary maker James Harper and professional historian Jonathan Morris narrate how humans race coffee across oceans to keep up with demand for this addictive drink.

Coffee creates enormous fortunes for some, and misery for others. Sometimes the environment benefits, but more often it is plundered.

If we want to make coffee a more equitable industry that’s also kinder to the environment, a place to start is understanding the stories and systems that put the coffee into your cup this morning.

Press the Subscribe button so you don’t miss future episodes!

Follow Jonathan Morris @coffeehistoryjm and James Harper @filterstoriespodcast. Read full transcripts at www.historyofcoffee.org.

Episodes

  1. Guatemala’s Inconvenient Truth, Part 2: Who does specialty serve?

    · 29 min · S3 E5

    Specialty coffee changes the story for the indigenous people of Guatemala. Coffee as a tool of oppression finally offers hope....and then something a bit more complicated. This episode explores the tension between the…

  2. Guatemala’s Inconvenient Truth, Part 1: Whose land is it anyway?

    · 44 min · S3 E4

    When you buy a bag of coffee labelled fifth-generation family farm, it feels like a good choice. But in Guatemala, that label might actually be a signal for a more uncomfortable truth. This episode explores how land…

  3. Surrogates: Anything but the coffee

    · 46 min · S3 E3

    What happens when coffee disappears? This is not a thought experiment! It’s happened many times in history: War, blockades, tariffs, ideology, health panics, sanctions, supply shocks. When coffee is not around,…

  4. Mother Coffee: The history and heritage of Ethiopia’s wild coffee forests

    · 49 min · S3 E2

    Most coffee is grown on vast plantations using machines, pesticides and fertilisers. But in Ethiopia, coffee grows wild in humid forests surrounded by birds. And that wild coffee matters more than most of us realise.…

  5. We Built This City…On Coffee: Hamburg and the making of Europe’s coffee trade

    · 50 min · S3 E1

    On a long walk through Hamburg, somewhere between the fish markets and giant cranes, you might stumble a giant bronze coffee bean looks like its crash landed from space. But this giant coffee bean represents a…

  6. Introducing: Series Three of A History of Coffee

    · 3:00 · Trailer

    We’re back with more stories about the tiny psychoactive seed that changed the world and continues to shape our lives today. Is it possible to follow the story not just to Ethiopia, not just to a single town, but all…

  7. 4) Just Friends? America’s love affair with coffee

    · 44 min · S2 E4

    America is coffee-obsessed. From Central Perk’s red couch being the centre of major plot twists in Friends to the fact the average American drank more than two cups a day. And the conventional explanation is pretty…

  8. 3) Espresso Lungo: The slow road to Italy’s democratic espresso culture

    · 45 min · S2 E3

    One morning back in the ‘80s, Howard Schultz walks out of his Milan hotel, stumbles into an espresso bar, and fundamentally changes coffee history. He discovered (and then popularises) the iconic, timeless Italian…

  9. 2) A Lasting Stain: Haiti, Colonialism and Coffee

    · 48 min · S2 E2

    Haiti was once the biggest, most profitable coffee growing region in the world. But today Haiti is one of the world’s poorest nations where you can’t get a bag of Haitian beans delivered to Berlin in a week for love…

  10. 1) It’s Just Coffee? How coffee houses changed the world

    · 45 min · S2 E1

    A coffee shop is a lot more than just a place to drink coffee. The seats and sofas encourage you to invite a friend, and chat. And chatting is powerful: ideas that emerge from these caffeine-fuelled conversations give…

  11. Introducing: Series Two of A History of Coffee

    · 5:00 · Trailer

    We're back with more stories about the tiny psychoactive seed that changed the world and continues to shape our lives today. In Series Two, we reveal how the invention of the coffee shop revolutionised societies, why…

  12. BONUS: Coffee’s Ticking Time Bomb

    · 46 min · S2 E1 · Bonus

    We have an exciting announcement....AND, a story about Sri Lanka and coffee history we think you're really going to like. Sri Lankan coffee has delicious notes of chocolate and caramel. But it’s basically impossible to…

  13. BONUS: A History of Tea

    · 28 min · S2 E1 · Bonus

    Coffee has a fascinating history stretching back hundreds of years. But tea takes it to the next level, stretching back thousands. And it too was colonised by Europeans with huge repercussions that we are still feeling…

  14. BONUS: Decolonising Coffee History

    · 48 min · S1 E1 · Bonus

    Each sip of coffee we drink is steeped in dark colonial past. The reason we can enjoy it every morning is because it's relatively cheap, and many people suffered under European colonisers to create systems that…

  15. BONUS: Stimulating stories or fantastic flavours: what sells coffee?

    · 31 min · S1 E1 · Bonus

    We are hard at work on the bonus episode about decolonising coffee history. But...in the meantime, here's an episode from a sister podcast we think you'll enjoy. You can listen to more episodes from Adventures in…

  16. 6) The Future of Coffee?

    · 47 min · S1 E6

    Do you grind your beans fresh before brewing your coffee? If so, you are helping overturn a race-to–the-bottom with deep roots in colonial extraction that today is leaving millions of coffee farmers impoverished. Or,…

  17. 5) Desperately Seeking Sustainability

    · 37 min · S1 E5

    When was the last time you bought a coffee that was Fairtrade certified? Certifications make it easy for consumers to put their ethics into practice. But, hidden beneath the glossy sticker is a maze of complications…

  18. 4) A Dark Bitter Powder

    · 36 min · S1 E4

    How do you drink your instant coffee? If you’re like most of the world, you fill your mug with milk and sugar to sweeten the taste. By adding milk and sugar to your instant, you helped bring new growers - and consumers…

  19. 3) Coffee Catches Fire

    · 40 min · S1 E3

    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…

  20. 2) Slavery, Suffering and Affordable Luxury

    · 43 min · S1 E2

    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…

  21. 1) A Five Gun Salute to the Origins of Coffee

    · 39 min · S1 E1

    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…

  22. Introducing: A History of Coffee

    · 4:10 · S1 E1 · Trailer

    A History of Coffee is the story of how a tiny psychoactive seed changed the world and shapes our lives today. Across six episodes, documentary maker James Harper and professional historian Jonathan Morris narrate how…

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.