Speaker 1: I guess what will? What's that mango? So when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, were you told that you couldn't drink
Speaker 1: coffee because it was bad for kids? I mean, not
Speaker 1: specifically about my parents, but I do remember people saying that.
Speaker 1: So there was a great piece in the Atlantic a
Speaker 1: few years ago about how this story spread, and it
Speaker 1: was all thanks to none other than that cereal tycoon C. W. Post.
Speaker 1: It turns out that even before his days of creating
Speaker 1: all those delicious breakfast foods like grape nuts and whatever like,
Speaker 1: Post was selling this caffeine free coffee substitute called Post Them,
Speaker 1: and apparently it was Cereal based Post Them. So this
Speaker 1: was a serial based coffee substitute that you did you
Speaker 1: actually drink it? Uh? That sounds gross, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it sounds disgusting, But it actually found a pretty big audience,
Speaker 1: largely because Post marketed the heck out of it. And
Speaker 1: you should see the ads. They are bonkers, like they
Speaker 1: only focus somewhat on how good Postum is and instead
Speaker 1: mainly they try to scare people by talking about how
Speaker 1: terrible that of coffee are on kids. So, in one
Speaker 1: ad for Posting serial from the nine thirties were told
Speaker 1: that coffee rob's children of their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes.
Speaker 1: It lowers their vitality, lessens their resistance to disease, and
Speaker 1: hampers proper development and growth. Well, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it's okay if it lessens their resistance to disease, but
Speaker 1: losing their rosy cheeks and their sparkling eyes like that
Speaker 1: is unacceptable, I know. And and even worse, Post sited
Speaker 1: some world famous research institute. Right, there's no mention of
Speaker 1: what this institute is, but it says that they found
Speaker 1: that coffee cause kids to get bad grades in school.
Speaker 1: But I think my favorite part of the marketing plan
Speaker 1: by Post was this creation of a comic strip character
Speaker 1: who was named Mr. Coffee Nerves. Okay, at this point, Maga,
Speaker 1: you're just you're making this up, be honest. I mean
Speaker 1: I wish I were. But Mr Coffee Nerves was always
Speaker 1: causing problems and making people all restless and sick, and
Speaker 1: even causing kids to run away from home. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: the stories would always end on a happy note, with
Speaker 1: the victims, you know, making the very wise decision to
Speaker 1: switch to post them. Oh thank goodness. But but really,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can see how even if all of
Speaker 1: this was a bunch of baloney, how that that idea
Speaker 1: that drinking that much coffee being that unhealthy and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, you can see how this might
Speaker 1: stick around. Actually, yeah, and we'll discuss all of that today.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's far from the only time in history
Speaker 1: that people went to great lens to keep people from
Speaker 1: drinking coffee. But of course, you know, we live in
Speaker 1: a coffee obsessed world, so you and I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how this all got started, what countries are the
Speaker 1: biggest drinkers, and what did the studies say about the
Speaker 1: connection between coffee and our health. So that's what we'll
Speaker 1: be looking at today. Let's dive in ye aither podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and
Speaker 1: on the other side of the soundproof glass preparing to
Speaker 1: take his very first sip of Palm Civit coffee, that's
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now this is a
Speaker 1: big day for Tristan because he's been waiting for weeks
Speaker 1: to try this stuff, and of course Palm Civic coffee
Speaker 1: can be tough to get your hands on, especially here
Speaker 1: in the States. And in fact, he actually ordered this special,
Speaker 1: ordered these beans all the way from Indonesia, so I'm
Speaker 1: glad they arrived just in time for this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I feel like you're kind of varying the lead here, like,
Speaker 1: don't you think I mean, the real story is that
Speaker 1: Tristan is about to drink what is essentially cat poop coffee,
Speaker 1: Like those beans have actually passed through the digestive tract
Speaker 1: of a wild animal. That might be true, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be that guy, but I do want
Speaker 1: to clarify here that these came from an Asian palm civit,
Speaker 1: which isn't technically a cat, but it doesn't make this
Speaker 1: a less gross and honestly, as strange as this all sounds,
Speaker 1: gathering coffee beans from animal droppings has become this whole
Speaker 1: little kind of the subsection of the coffee industry, and
Speaker 1: I guess most of this has really developed over the
Speaker 1: past decade or so. An assigned from civits you can buy,
Speaker 1: you know, those that have passed through the bodies of
Speaker 1: everything from monkeys to elephants, And it really isn't just
Speaker 1: for novelty's sake. There there's an idea behind this, and
Speaker 1: that's that these beans ferment naturally in an animal stomach,
Speaker 1: and so because of that, it results in this smoother
Speaker 1: and less acidic cup of coffee than any other bean
Speaker 1: that's out there. That's pretty funny because I actually read
Speaker 1: a review that described the taste as quote petrified dinosaur
Speaker 1: dropping steeped in back to water, which just sounds gross.
Speaker 1: But at least it's not acidic back to water. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like we have to pause for
Speaker 1: just a second and check out Tristan's facial expression, because
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, based on that alone, it's probably
Speaker 1: a pretty fair description. But anyway, you today's show isn't
Speaker 1: just about Tristan's quest for this pricey cup of nasty coffee.
Speaker 1: And I will say it's pretty telling that even such
Speaker 1: a niche variety of coffee can attract an audience. And
Speaker 1: that's because coffee in general has become such a ubiquitous drink,
Speaker 1: and today it's consumed in one form or another and
Speaker 1: just about every region on the planet. But it hasn't
Speaker 1: always been that way, and and in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: when you compare it to the two most popular hot
Speaker 1: beverages in the world. That's, of course, you know, tea
Speaker 1: and hot chocolate. Coffee is the youngest by far, and
Speaker 1: you know, the history is only about a third as
Speaker 1: long as you know these others that we were talking about.
Speaker 1: So anyway, with that in mind, we thought we'd take
Speaker 1: a look at just how far coffee has come, and
Speaker 1: of course why people all across the globe can't seem
Speaker 1: to get enough of it. You know, in college, I
Speaker 1: was in someone's car and they breaked really hard and
Speaker 1: I ended up spilling coffee on my nice white shirt.
Speaker 1: So I had this immediate idea for an invention, which
Speaker 1: is clear coffee, like if you can make purple catchup
Speaker 1: and crystal PEPSI like, I not a clear coffee that
Speaker 1: doesn't stain your teeth through your shirts. And I really
Speaker 1: thought it was in genius. I'm sure I talked to
Speaker 1: your ear off about it. I remember you talking about this,
Speaker 1: and honestly, every single person I I tried to tell
Speaker 1: about this was totally underwhelmed, Like especially chemistry majors. They
Speaker 1: just were unenthusiastic. It was a little like you're putting
Speaker 1: truck idea where a cement truck would come around like
Speaker 1: an ice cream truck and just dispense putting into kid's hands.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to admit the omago that idea
Speaker 1: is still pretty genius, I know, and so is clear coffee,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to get the series A on
Speaker 1: both of those. But back to regular old brown coffee.
Speaker 1: So one thing we should get out of the way
Speaker 1: right upfront is who likes coffee the most, or at
Speaker 1: least who drinks the most of it. And while the
Speaker 1: US might seem like a safe bet given the size
Speaker 1: of our coffee cups and you know the way, we're
Speaker 1: never more than thirty ft from a Starbucks at any moment.
Speaker 1: According to the latest stats from the International Coffee Organization,
Speaker 1: the US doesn't even crack the top twenty when it
Speaker 1: comes to per capita consumption. And that's actually saying something
Speaker 1: because the tooth in fifteen Gallop poll found that sixty
Speaker 1: percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee
Speaker 1: per day and two point seven cups on average. And
Speaker 1: not only that, we also consume a little over I
Speaker 1: believe it's nine pounds per capita every year. Wow, So
Speaker 1: nine pounds per person and we're still not even in
Speaker 1: the top twenty. I mean, I feel like these other
Speaker 1: countries must just be like mainlining coffee, so how much
Speaker 1: could they possibly be drinking? Well, Finland tops the list,
Speaker 1: with each person consuming about twenty six and a half
Speaker 1: pounds of it every year, and the other Nordic countries
Speaker 1: aren't too far behind it. In fact, Norway, Iceland, Denmark,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and Sweden all round out the top six.
Speaker 1: And that's what they're citizens, down in between eighteen and
Speaker 1: twenty two pounds per person per year. You know, I
Speaker 1: feel like this is the third or the fourth time
Speaker 1: that Scandinavian countries have dominated lists like this, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking back to some of our previous episodes, they have
Speaker 1: the happiest citizens, they eat the most chocolate. I think
Speaker 1: they have the best prisons, and and now they drink
Speaker 1: the most coffee. Like what's going on here? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean we are talking about some pretty chilly countries here,
Speaker 1: so they probably just need all the help they can
Speaker 1: getting through those long, dark winters. Wow. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like at least were number one in something,
Speaker 1: and that has to be the number of Starbucks, because
Speaker 1: I can't imagine any other country has this beat on that,
Speaker 1: at least on a per capita basis. So I hate
Speaker 1: to break your heart here because I actually thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. I thought we had Starbucks domination as well,
Speaker 1: but Monico edged us out a few years ago. Monaco
Speaker 1: they currently have a fifty two star Wucks branches for
Speaker 1: one million citizens compared to our forty one. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we're number two in Starbucks. But now that
Speaker 1: we've established how much everyone loves the stuff, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we talk about where coffee comes from and how
Speaker 1: we wound up drinking it in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a nice idea, but it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of easier said than done. You know, as we were
Speaker 1: starting to do our research on this, I just googled
Speaker 1: origins of coffee and of course got something like twenty
Speaker 1: million results, and even just clicking around through a handful
Speaker 1: of these, I do get this feeling that there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of consensus on the history of coffee. And
Speaker 1: we've run into this before, whether we were looking at
Speaker 1: the origins of chocolate or cheese. It it really is
Speaker 1: tough to pin down where and when a staple food
Speaker 1: like this got it's you know, got its start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's definitely true, and the specifics are pretty hazy,
Speaker 1: but thankfully there's some broad points that most historians agree about.
Speaker 1: For instance, we know the coffee plant originated on the
Speaker 1: plateau of Ethiopia, and that's actually because it tends to
Speaker 1: spontaneously grow there like no place on Earth. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the region in question is even called Kafa. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not sure if coffee took its name from the
Speaker 1: region or the other way around, but it's definitely linked somehow.
Speaker 1: You know, it was fun and reading about some of
Speaker 1: these origins, and you know, you see these stories that
Speaker 1: go back to this old Ethiopian legend and I think
Speaker 1: we may have talked about this one before, but it's
Speaker 1: this story about this goat chew bird name called e
Speaker 1: or a k A that you know, the happiest hurd
Speaker 1: and happy Arabia, And the reason for his happiness was
Speaker 1: that one day Caldy noticed his goats had started dancing
Speaker 1: and jumping all over the place, and he noticed that
Speaker 1: they've been eating the fruits and leaves of this certain bush,
Speaker 1: so naturally called. He gets curious, and he goes over
Speaker 1: and decides to try some of the fruit for himself,
Speaker 1: and of course he feels this big burst of energy
Speaker 1: and immediately started sharing these magic beans with his friends
Speaker 1: and family. And this is something that supposedly happened around
Speaker 1: eight fifty, but again, nobody really can say for sure.
Speaker 1: So I honestly love how many discoveries are goat based.
Speaker 1: Like there's a legend about a blind goat walking through
Speaker 1: a thorn and carrying his cataracts, and that's how we
Speaker 1: started cataract operations. I want to say, there's like a
Speaker 1: goat hurd who went to look for his missing goat,
Speaker 1: and that's how we discovered the Dead Sea scrolls. Like
Speaker 1: we owe a lot to goats, and about all the
Speaker 1: productivity that comes from like coffee, from balls, act Beethoven,
Speaker 1: to the Velvet Revolution, to musicians, to politicians staying up late,
Speaker 1: to craft laws, academics meeting deadlines. Like I mean, we
Speaker 1: kind of owe a lot to goats. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that that may be true, and that is pretty funny,
Speaker 1: But I feel like we were talking about coffee, have
Speaker 1: we have we shifted to an episode on goats in
Speaker 1: a total goat direction here, but so so that so
Speaker 1: the man on the other side of the soundproof glass
Speaker 1: now ramming his cataracts into a bunch of bushes. That's
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan Mingo. Right, so we're going
Speaker 1: in a different direction. Maybe we should get back to coffee.
Speaker 1: So well, one thing we do know about coffee is
Speaker 1: that in its earliest days it was chewed rather than sipped,
Speaker 1: just like the goats did it. And you know, to
Speaker 1: make sense of that, it helps to know that coffee
Speaker 1: beans aren't actually beans at all. There are seeds which
Speaker 1: are found in the pits of the cherry like fruits
Speaker 1: that grow on coffee plants. And while we coffee drinkers
Speaker 1: are much more interested in the seeds than the fruit,
Speaker 1: it was just the opposite for early Ethiopian tribes. For example,
Speaker 1: the Gala tribe would soften these coffee fruits and liquid
Speaker 1: and then they blend them with this animal fat to
Speaker 1: make kind of like a chewable energy ball. It's amazing, huh. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever the true origin, it definitely seems like the earliest
Speaker 1: folks to imbibe coffee, we're really doing it for the
Speaker 1: same reason we do today, and that's of course, for
Speaker 1: that caffeine kick. I mean, there's always the chance that
Speaker 1: some desperate nomad was the first to eat a coffee
Speaker 1: cherry just to stay alive. But coffee's energizing effect is
Speaker 1: definitely why people kept coming back for more, and even
Speaker 1: the prophet Mohammed is said to have enjoyed the stimulation.
Speaker 1: There's this one account where um Mohammed was feeling under
Speaker 1: the weather until he was visited by the archangel Gabriel,
Speaker 1: who gifted him this hot drink that was quote dark
Speaker 1: as the holy black stone of Mecca. So does that
Speaker 1: mean that Mohammed is supposed to have been the first
Speaker 1: person to actually drink coffee rather than eat it. I
Speaker 1: mean possibly, but if not, there's this other contender, this
Speaker 1: Persian doctor and philosopher who lived around the same time
Speaker 1: that Collide danced with his goats. His name was Rozzie
Speaker 1: and he was the first person known to write about coffee.
Speaker 1: In his writings, he talked about this medicinal bever it
Speaker 1: she'd made from the bun fruit, which is the Ethiopian
Speaker 1: word for the coffee cherry. And there are also early
Speaker 1: writings that point to Yemen is the first place where
Speaker 1: coffee was cultivated, roasted, ground and brewed as a liquid.
Speaker 1: And this would have been around the early fifteenth century. Alright,
Speaker 1: So I know coffee plants aren't native to Yemen, so
Speaker 1: it's safe to assume they were imported from Ethiopia. Once
Speaker 1: word of their discovery, it's spread. But but do we
Speaker 1: know the story from there? Like how did it get
Speaker 1: from Africa and this Arabian peninsula all the way to
Speaker 1: Europe and North America and I guess just about everywhere. Well,
Speaker 1: A big part of coffee spread is thanks to those
Speaker 1: early adopters in Yemen. Many of them were Sufis who
Speaker 1: used the plant's roasted seeds and leaves to prepare a
Speaker 1: beverage that helped them stay awake through long nights of prayer.
Speaker 1: And then these holy men took their beans and all
Speaker 1: this brewing, know how, all across the Islamic world through
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century. And then you get to the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: like coffee begins its global journey. The Ottoman Empire rises
Speaker 1: to power, and Muslims they've got this religious ban on
Speaker 1: alcohol that starts to take hold, and soon coffee replaces
Speaker 1: wine throughout the region. And by the fifteen fifties, the
Speaker 1: first known coffee house opens in Constantinople. But here's the thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the Ottomans knew they had stumbled into something special during
Speaker 1: their conquest, which is why they tried to keep coffee
Speaker 1: this exclusive product of Yemen. And to do this they
Speaker 1: really had to do something clever. They only allowed coffee
Speaker 1: beans to be exported if they'd been sterilized first. So
Speaker 1: while like Europeans started developing a taste for coffee during
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, they really couldn't use the seeds to
Speaker 1: grow their own. But of course the Ottoman Empire couldn't
Speaker 1: keep an eye on every single bean, so pretty soon
Speaker 1: Muslim pilgrims as well as like Dutch and Venetian merchants,
Speaker 1: they were all smuggling these precious beans off the Arabian peninsula.
Speaker 1: All right, So you know, we're looking at the early
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, and so obviously coffee had made its way
Speaker 1: into Europe, both legally and illegally, but you know, not
Speaker 1: everybody took to it from the start. It was interesting
Speaker 1: reading about this and seeing that, you know, like even
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church was strongly opposed the coffee because of
Speaker 1: those stimul lighting effects that we were talking about. Apparently
Speaker 1: Pope Clement the eighth was urged by his councilman to
Speaker 1: speak out against this drink, and they referred to it
Speaker 1: as the bitter invention of Satan, which might have been
Speaker 1: a slight overreaction on their part, But what happened, Like
Speaker 1: did the Pope actually take their advice? Well, he was
Speaker 1: never one to follow the crowd, so Pope Clement insisted
Speaker 1: on tasting the coffee for himself before he made a
Speaker 1: decision on what to do about it. And you know,
Speaker 1: thankfully he turned out to be a big fan. In fact,
Speaker 1: here's what he told his counsel. He said, the devil's
Speaker 1: drink is so delicious, we should cheat the devil by
Speaker 1: baptizing it. And so it was with that endorsement that
Speaker 1: Christian Europe decided to really indulge and it quickly became
Speaker 1: the world's favorite pick me up. So I love that,
Speaker 1: And also, like, can you just baptize anything you have
Speaker 1: reservations about? Like led Zeppelin might have sold their soul
Speaker 1: to the Devil's to make led Zeppelin one through four,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna baptize it, Like it's just such a
Speaker 1: convenient solution. But of course it wasn't just the Catholic clergy,
Speaker 1: who had all these qualms with coffees growing roan socide.
Speaker 1: Various rulers of the Ottoman Empire also tried outlining coffee
Speaker 1: and coffee houses over the years, but you know, the
Speaker 1: band's never really stuck for long. The worst of these
Speaker 1: crackdowns came during the rule of Murad the fourth between sixty.
Speaker 1: Murad had already outlawed tobacco, and he was so committed
Speaker 1: to this band, like sometimes he wore a disguise in
Speaker 1: public just so he could catch illegal smokers in the act.
Speaker 1: And whenever the emperor did catch someone like sparking a cigarette,
Speaker 1: he'd reveal himself and then he'd wail on the culprit
Speaker 1: with his royal mace floor. So was he doing the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing with coffee as well? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was horrible, and Murad was pretty angry when
Speaker 1: he realized that many of his subjects had been meeting
Speaker 1: at coffee houses to discuss I guess what a buzz
Speaker 1: kill of a ruler he was. So, of course, the
Speaker 1: response was to outrighte band coffee throughout the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: and while getting caught with a cup of coffee carried
Speaker 1: the same punishment as tobacco as a first offense. The
Speaker 1: repeat offenders got much worse than a beating. Anyone caught
Speaker 1: drinking be a second time was actually sewn into a
Speaker 1: sack and chucked into a local waterway. Man, it just
Speaker 1: sounds like such a fun guy, what a party, you know.
Speaker 1: But what's weird is like this isn't even the most
Speaker 1: bizarre opposition coffee faced in its early years. And I
Speaker 1: feel like we need to talk about these extremes, and
Speaker 1: especially those that some of the European officials went to
Speaker 1: while trying to stamp out coffee altogether. But before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening
Speaker 1: to part time Genius and we're giving you the full
Speaker 1: scoop on the history of coffee. All right, mango, So
Speaker 1: banning coffee and coffee shops is pretty bad, but actually
Speaker 1: this was funny to read about. Did you know that
Speaker 1: in Sweden they actually went even further and at one
Speaker 1: point actually outlawed cups and saucers to what So this
Speaker 1: was the mid eighteenth century. It was during the rule
Speaker 1: of eight Frederick, and the king believed that coffee stimulated
Speaker 1: radical thinking and let his citizens to behave badly, so
Speaker 1: he imposes this heavy tax on coffee imports and even consumption,
Speaker 1: and he punished those who refused to pay the tax
Speaker 1: by confiscating their cups and saucers, and even that happened
Speaker 1: to fail, so they had to try to find another
Speaker 1: way to stop the coffee drinkers. So the king decided
Speaker 1: to ban coffee altogether. I mean, it's pretty great that
Speaker 1: he thought taking away cops with solve the problem. But
Speaker 1: obviously the Sweedes are some of the biggest coffee drinkers
Speaker 1: in the world today. So I'm guessing the band died
Speaker 1: with King Frederick. Well not quite. I mean, his son
Speaker 1: tried to keep this going. His son was goosed off
Speaker 1: the third It just sounds like somebody who would want
Speaker 1: to ban coffee, right, and so he that's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: he shared his father's distaste for coffee and became convinced
Speaker 1: that it was incredibly unhealthy. In fact, the guy was
Speaker 1: so convinced that coffee was harmful that he conducted this
Speaker 1: long running experiment to prove to his subjects that coffee
Speaker 1: was bad for him. So this is what he did.
Speaker 1: He found two convicted murders and they've been sentenced to death,
Speaker 1: and he offered them this chance to live. And so
Speaker 1: he said, here's this experiment, and if you participate in
Speaker 1: this will give you life sentences instead. And so the
Speaker 1: men agreed. And what happens next is they were given
Speaker 1: their marching orders. So one of them was required to
Speaker 1: drink three pots of coffee every day. The other one
Speaker 1: was asked to drink an equal amount of tea. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's it. Like all they had to do is drink
Speaker 1: a bunch of tea and coffee and they got to live. Yep.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is like the luckiest convicted murderers
Speaker 1: in history. Oh definitely. I mean, Gustaf was convinced that
Speaker 1: the coffee drinker would be dead in no time, and
Speaker 1: this is how dangerous he thought coffee was. But of
Speaker 1: course Gustav was wrong. In fact, not only did both
Speaker 1: prisoners outlive the king, they even outlived the doctors that
Speaker 1: have been charged with overseeing them. The tea drinker lived
Speaker 1: to be I think it was like eighty three years old,
Speaker 1: and the coffee drinker actually survived even longer than that.
Speaker 1: So that's amazing, and it actually reminds me of something
Speaker 1: similar that happened in Prussia around the same time. Apparently
Speaker 1: the Prussian King Frederick was also convinced that coffee was
Speaker 1: a dangerous influence on these people. So not only did
Speaker 1: he ban coffee drinking, he even made it illegal to
Speaker 1: roast it. I was just pretty ridiculous, and I can
Speaker 1: to enforce something like that. I mean, that's the funny part,
Speaker 1: Like he actually sent royal sniffers into the streets to
Speaker 1: track down criminals just by the smell of the illicit brew.
Speaker 1: But again, all of this was ultimately in vain, and
Speaker 1: coffee culture continued to thrive across Europe, you know, and
Speaker 1: we're lucky that it did, because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: prior to this spread of coffee, most people in Europe
Speaker 1: were drinking alcohol pretty much all day long, and you know,
Speaker 1: they'd have some beer with breakfast, some wine with lunch,
Speaker 1: a little bit of both in the evening. And I actually,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, this was the healthiest way to
Speaker 1: go because most of the water that people had access
Speaker 1: to wasn't safe to drink. So you've got the fermentation
Speaker 1: process working in their favor and that would kind of
Speaker 1: take care of the problem and the alcohol. But it
Speaker 1: also has a downside, and that's the fact that everybody
Speaker 1: was walking around drunk all the time. I guess that.
Speaker 1: You know, once that population switched from this more of
Speaker 1: a depressant to these stimulants like coffee and tea, suddenly
Speaker 1: there was this this real explosion of new ideas and innovations.
Speaker 1: Is more and more people began to think clearly again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've heard before how the spread and development
Speaker 1: of alignment owed a lot to coffee and also more
Speaker 1: specifically to coffee houses, because you know, just like today,
Speaker 1: coffee houses became these community gathering places where people could
Speaker 1: get together to share ideas or conduct business. Um. The
Speaker 1: first ones in Europe open in the seventeenth century, with
Speaker 1: England getting its first in sixteen fifty two, and about
Speaker 1: a decade later London was up to about eighty different
Speaker 1: coffee houses, and forty years after that the city contained
Speaker 1: more than five hundred. Wow. I mean, the idea really
Speaker 1: did take off from the start. But you know, just
Speaker 1: like in the Ottoman Empire, coffee houses also had their
Speaker 1: share of detractors in Europe, and some of them are
Speaker 1: pretty funny to read about. You know. For instance, in
Speaker 1: England that was a group of women who banded together
Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy four and they wrote something called the
Speaker 1: Women's Petition against Coffee, which was this manifesto that claimed
Speaker 1: that coffee robbed men of their masculinity. So the women
Speaker 1: refer to their husband's new pastime as quote the excessive
Speaker 1: use of that new fangled, abominable heathenish liquor called coffee.
Speaker 1: But it's been baptized. But right right? What they think
Speaker 1: was so bad about drinking coffee? Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess the idea was that these once vera hard working
Speaker 1: men were now just sitting around in coffee shops all days,
Speaker 1: sipping coffee, talking like a bunch of frenchmen, I guess.
Speaker 1: But you know, the men of England actually didn't take
Speaker 1: this affront of their manhood lying down, and instead they
Speaker 1: pinned their response to this, and it was called Men's
Speaker 1: Answer to the Women's Petition against Coffee. I love the
Speaker 1: titles of these stages in that here's what they claimed that,
Speaker 1: far from making men impotent, coffee actually made quote the
Speaker 1: erection more vigorous, adding a spiritual ascendency to the sperm.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. I'm sure I
Speaker 1: don't want to either. Is really wild to hear how
Speaker 1: dead certain people were that like, coffee must be bad
Speaker 1: for you somehow. I mean, it's kind of ironic considering
Speaker 1: how often we hear about the potential health benefits of
Speaker 1: drinking coffee today. Well, you know, and I actually did
Speaker 1: a little bit of digging on some of those health
Speaker 1: claims because there's something I've heard pretty often too, and
Speaker 1: you know, the most prevalent one is that drinking a
Speaker 1: certain number of cups of coffee will help you live longer.
Speaker 1: And surprisingly, the science actually seems to bear this out.
Speaker 1: Like I was looking at this study that was released
Speaker 1: last year by the European Society of Cardiology. So about
Speaker 1: a decade ago, these researchers got together about twenty volunteers
Speaker 1: in Spain, and they asked them about their food and
Speaker 1: coffee drinking habits, as well as their overall health history
Speaker 1: and lifestyles and all kinds of stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: so they look at them ten years later, and the researchers,
Speaker 1: you know, we're reconnecting with them and wanted to see
Speaker 1: how they were holding up. And what they found was
Speaker 1: that those participants who drank at least four cups of
Speaker 1: coffee a day were astounding sixty more likely to avoid
Speaker 1: premature death than those who hardly drank coffee at all.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of not the weirdest part. The researchers
Speaker 1: also found that for each additional two cups of coffee
Speaker 1: that I participant drink each day, their risk of any
Speaker 1: causes immortality was actually reduced by an extra twenty two
Speaker 1: per cent. So I think what you're saying here is
Speaker 1: if I drink like a dozen cops of coffee a day,
Speaker 1: I'll basically live forever. Yeah, I'm not sure that that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, but you know, you take away from
Speaker 1: it what you want. But you know, the real explanation
Speaker 1: for why coffee can boost your longevity is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at the study out of Stanford,
Speaker 1: and what they found was that the caffeine and coffee
Speaker 1: actually combats the inflammatory processes that go along with aging
Speaker 1: and these age related conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: So basically, the antioxidants in the coffee function like anybody's
Speaker 1: fighting off an illness, you know, they attack the harmful
Speaker 1: byproducts of our bodies metabolic reactions or like these are
Speaker 1: the ones that would otherwise trigger that inflammation. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I've actually got good news for any of our non
Speaker 1: human listeners out there, because apparently coffees health benefits extend
Speaker 1: to the animal kingdom as well. And we know this
Speaker 1: because the oldest cat ever on record was actually an
Speaker 1: avid coffee drinker. Her name was cream Puff, and she
Speaker 1: lived to be a whopping thirty eight years old and
Speaker 1: three days as well. Um, and this was actually thanks
Speaker 1: to her daily morning coffee, not to mention the bacon,
Speaker 1: eggs and broccoli she also ate. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a bad diet, and obviously that's super impressive, But how
Speaker 1: do you know it was the coffee that kept around
Speaker 1: so long? Like, couldn't have this just been a coincidence? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, anything's possible. But it is worth keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that the previous record holder before cream Puff was
Speaker 1: a thirty four year old cat named Grandpa Rex Allen.
Speaker 1: And not only the Gramps have the same owner as
Speaker 1: cream Puff, he was fed the exact same diet too,
Speaker 1: including that all important daily dose of java. And that
Speaker 1: is pretty convincing, to be honest with you. But there's
Speaker 1: still one health aspect of coffee. I'm not so sure
Speaker 1: about it, and that's whether or not it should be
Speaker 1: considered cancerous. And scientist seemed to go back and forth
Speaker 1: from this from time to time. But if we're going
Speaker 1: to commit four or more cups of coffee a day,
Speaker 1: I feel like it'd be pretty nice to have a
Speaker 1: definitive answer on this. Yeah. Well, you're in luck because
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization actually made a statement about this
Speaker 1: not too long ago, and their conclusion was sort of surprising.
Speaker 1: Oh really, so what did they say? Well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about that in a minute, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay. Well, so I know you were
Speaker 1: curious about whether or not coffee causes cancer, and honestly,
Speaker 1: the answer is kind of a mixed bag. So first
Speaker 1: the good news, there's no conclusive evidence that drinking coffee
Speaker 1: leads to cancer. In the past, that in antional Agency
Speaker 1: for Research on Cancer had actually labeled the coffee as
Speaker 1: quote possible carcinogen, which landed in the same category as
Speaker 1: chloroform and lots of other harmful substances. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a little weird to think of coffee in the same
Speaker 1: class as chloroform. I feel like that's kind of extreme.
Speaker 1: But but you're saying that warning has been reversed at
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, so the i r C changed its
Speaker 1: mind after reviewing over a thousands scientific studies and humans
Speaker 1: and animals, none of which provide enough evidence to support
Speaker 1: the quote possibly carcinogenic label. Okay, so that feels like
Speaker 1: a win for all of us. So why did you
Speaker 1: say it was a mixed bag? Yeah? I mean that's
Speaker 1: because of the bad news, which is that the agency
Speaker 1: also conclude that basically all very hot drinks are most
Speaker 1: likely carcinogenic. Apparently there's now enough evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: drinking anything a hundred forty nine degrees fahrenheit or hotter
Speaker 1: probably causes cancer of the esophagus. And since the average
Speaker 1: cup of Joe is typically served between one sixty and
Speaker 1: one degrees fahrenheit, that's not so great news for coffee drinkers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, t or hot
Speaker 1: water drinkers for that matter. But um, alright, So the
Speaker 1: good news is is that coffee itself probably isn't cancerous,
Speaker 1: but very hot coffee might be. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like if that's not a ringing endorsement for
Speaker 1: cold brew, I'm really not sure. What would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, and I'm a huge cold brew drinker. But
Speaker 1: on a lighter note, when I was looking into the
Speaker 1: cancer angle, I also came across this bizarre thought experiment
Speaker 1: in Scientific American and it's actually just too weird not
Speaker 1: to share. So you know how on the show Friends,
Speaker 1: the cast is always drinking those enormous mugs of coffee
Speaker 1: at the central perk. Oh, yeah, definitely were huge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this writer named Kyle Hill remembers too, and he
Speaker 1: actually crunched the numbers to see just how many people
Speaker 1: you could kill with all the caffeine and the cast
Speaker 1: of Friends consumed over the course of the show's ten seasons,
Speaker 1: And it turns out that, assuming each episode represents a
Speaker 1: week of time, on average, the six Friends down an
Speaker 1: incredible gallons of coffee, which is enough to send over
Speaker 1: people to the hospital. I like how this is the
Speaker 1: lighter note that you wanted to talk about. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it at least raises the interesting question of
Speaker 1: how much caffeine is actually safe to consume. So did
Speaker 1: did you get a sense of that apart from this
Speaker 1: ridiculous hypothetical. Yeah, so, some scientists say it's about ten
Speaker 1: grams of caffeine. That's enough to do most people in
Speaker 1: but there are also reports of people dying from as
Speaker 1: little as four milligrams. Honestly that there isn't like a
Speaker 1: universal overdose amount for caffeine because the number varies from
Speaker 1: person to person, and that's because of all sorts of factors,
Speaker 1: from you know, your heart help to your body weight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I was gonna say, with like heart health,
Speaker 1: especially because everybody's is so different, it seems like issues
Speaker 1: could be triggered with even a little bit of caffeine
Speaker 1: for some people. But but what about that ten grams
Speaker 1: you mentioned? How easy is it to ingest that much?
Speaker 1: So not very thankfully, Like that would be the equivalent
Speaker 1: about fifty shots of five hour energy. And since there's
Speaker 1: only about a hundred fifty milligrams of caffeine and an
Speaker 1: eight ounds cup of coffee, you'd actually need to drink
Speaker 1: a full seventy cups to get to ten grams. And
Speaker 1: if that wasn't unlikely enough, like you'd actually have to
Speaker 1: drink all those cups at the same time. Because caffeine's
Speaker 1: effects less in over time. So there's some good news.
Speaker 1: It's effectively impossible to odeon caffeine from coffee. There's just
Speaker 1: no way you could fit that much liquid in your stomach.
Speaker 1: Not and not to mention that most people's coffee breaks
Speaker 1: aren't long enough to bruise seventy cups of coffee, much
Speaker 1: less drink them. That's true. But you know, speaking of
Speaker 1: coffee breaks, and this is a total detour from what
Speaker 1: we were talking about, did you ever wonder how that
Speaker 1: practice got it start? Yeah, like I used to know
Speaker 1: the answer at one point. I feel like it has
Speaker 1: to do with some sort of ad campaign or something. Well,
Speaker 1: yes and no, and they're there are actually some conflicting
Speaker 1: reports about this, much like the origins of coffee itself.
Speaker 1: But according to City Lab, coffee breaks are a product
Speaker 1: of early twentieth century unions. So factories finally standardized the
Speaker 1: work day. They came to be eight hours a day,
Speaker 1: but they also added these rest breaks into the schedule,
Speaker 1: and it was during these breaks that workers would drink
Speaker 1: coffee to get that quick jolt of energy so they
Speaker 1: could finish the work day. And of course, entrepreneurs took
Speaker 1: notice of this practice, and pretty soon you started seeing
Speaker 1: these street carts and coffee counters and vending machines just
Speaker 1: popping up all over the place. So I mean, it
Speaker 1: makes complete sense to me that coffee breaks would be
Speaker 1: this American invention, you know, American workers coming up with it.
Speaker 1: But you said some folks don't actually bind it that theory. Well,
Speaker 1: in particular, these would be the citizens of Stoughton, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: They don't buy into it at all. So on the contrary,
Speaker 1: this tiny town insists that it was actually the area's
Speaker 1: population of Norwegian female immigrants who invented coffee breaks. And
Speaker 1: this would have been back in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So apparently there was a tobacco warehouse in the town
Speaker 1: that hired these Norwegian women to help strip the plants,
Speaker 1: and since the warehouse wasn't too far from their homes,
Speaker 1: the women would routinely pop in to check on their
Speaker 1: kids or get dinner started, and of course grab a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee before heading back to work. And even
Speaker 1: though outsiders continue to challenge Stoughton's claim to fame, the
Speaker 1: town itself has no doubt about this local lore being true.
Speaker 1: In fact, the residents still under the town's history each
Speaker 1: year by holding this official coffee break festival, and they
Speaker 1: build it. As quote the weekend when everyone is Norwegian.
Speaker 1: Well that's pretty sweet. But wait, so I was thinking
Speaker 1: coffee breaks had something to do with marketing and ad
Speaker 1: Caffei's did Did I just make that up? Now? So
Speaker 1: that's another legit option. See, if you look back to
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, you had multiple companies beginning to
Speaker 1: offer coffee breaks as these official job perks for their employees, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, the company that makes bark A Loungers agreed
Speaker 1: to give workers short breaks during the morning in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and then they could heat up a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee on like a kerosene fueled hot plate. While all
Speaker 1: kinds of companies like claim to having offered the first
Speaker 1: official coffee break, the first group to actually coin the
Speaker 1: phrase coffee break didn't come along until nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: And that's the year that Pan American Coffee Bureau launched
Speaker 1: an ad campaign encouraging the public to quote, give yourself
Speaker 1: a coffee break and get what coffee gives you. That's
Speaker 1: just great ad coffee right there. But I always think
Speaker 1: it's so fun to find out where the lingo surrounding
Speaker 1: words and phrases comes from. And did you know the
Speaker 1: phrase cup of Joe might have come from a US
Speaker 1: naval secretary named Josephus Daniels. No. He apparently banned all
Speaker 1: drinks stronger than coffee from being served in the mess halls,
Speaker 1: so the officers started applying his name to the only
Speaker 1: stiff drink he approved of. And of course there's also
Speaker 1: a good chance the phrase goes back even further, like
Speaker 1: some people say, Joe is a shortening of the word jamoke,
Speaker 1: which I guess is a hybrid of java and mocho,
Speaker 1: you know, two regions known for coffee cultivation. I'd actually
Speaker 1: never heard that. Well, since we're on that subject, the
Speaker 1: bureau that gave us coffee breaks was also behind another
Speaker 1: famous coffee phrase, and that's the phrase one for the road.
Speaker 1: You know that phrases typically used now to mean like
Speaker 1: one more drink before I go, It was originally more
Speaker 1: literally taken. So remember the country's interstate highway system was
Speaker 1: brand new at this time, so that idea of one
Speaker 1: more for the road, it was really intended as a
Speaker 1: safety measure to make sure Americans were staying awake or
Speaker 1: not falling asleep while they were at the wheel during
Speaker 1: these long distance drives. That's awesome, but speaking of one
Speaker 1: more for the road, it looks like Tristan still got
Speaker 1: a full pot of Civic coffee over there. If you're
Speaker 1: feeling thirsty before the fact, Yeah, I think I was
Speaker 1: gonna be a hard pass from the mango, But but
Speaker 1: I am ready for the fact off. So I'm reading
Speaker 1: up for this episode. I was looking at this New
Speaker 1: York Times article from a couple of years back that
Speaker 1: was about the fact that a surprising number of flights
Speaker 1: are delayed each year because of broken coffee makers. So,
Speaker 1: as the article explained, these are incredibly expensive coffee pots,
Speaker 1: and we're talking ten dollars apiece, sometimes more, and that's
Speaker 1: because they have so many safety features like circuit breakers
Speaker 1: and special wiring. What that also means is that there
Speaker 1: are more things that could possibly go wrong, and so
Speaker 1: if a coffee maker isn't working, they then have to
Speaker 1: do the full investigation to make sure it's not because
Speaker 1: of bad wiring on the plane or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, people can't live without their coffee, so
Speaker 1: we just deal with this. That's amazing. So here's the
Speaker 1: fact about the role coffee played and trying to get
Speaker 1: the Brazilian Olympic delegation to the Nine two Games, and
Speaker 1: this was in Los Angeles. It was a super expensive trip,
Speaker 1: so they decided to load up fifty thousand bags of
Speaker 1: Brazilian coffee on the ship they were traveling on, and
Speaker 1: the plan was to sell as much of it as
Speaker 1: possible along the way to pay for the trip. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they didn't sell quite as much as they had hoped,
Speaker 1: and when they made it to the port in l
Speaker 1: a they couldn't afford to pay the one dollar per
Speaker 1: person charge, so only about half the team could get
Speaker 1: off the boat, and in fact, there were still fifteen
Speaker 1: athletes who were never able to get off the ship
Speaker 1: in the States, so during the entire voyage, these fifteen
Speaker 1: people never got off the ship. Yeah, it's terrible. I've
Speaker 1: been wondering if there was an actual Maxwell House. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I was wondering this, but you know,
Speaker 1: it turns out that there was so Maxwell House hotel.
Speaker 1: It up just a few years after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and it was the fanciest hotel in Nashville. Apparently Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt liked visiting, as well as several of the Vanderbilts,
Speaker 1: and the coffee actually got its name from this hotel.
Speaker 1: I was looking into the history of it and Sally
Speaker 1: the hotel burned down in nine so it's no longer there.
Speaker 1: But there was actually a Maxwell house. That's crazy. It
Speaker 1: was there until the sixties though. That's pretty impressive. So
Speaker 1: it turns out Beethoven was a big fan of coffee,
Speaker 1: but he was also incredibly particular about how it was
Speaker 1: to be made. In fact, he only wanted his cups
Speaker 1: made with precisely sixty beans. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: I find that surprising, but that's actually how I'll be
Speaker 1: ordering my coffee from now on, like like a venti
Speaker 1: Beethoven style. Right, all right, Well, I think I had
Speaker 1: actually seen this fact before. But did you know that
Speaker 1: the first ever webcam was used at Cambridge? But it
Speaker 1: was actually set up to do something much less academic
Speaker 1: than you might imagine. It was used to give the
Speaker 1: researchers there the ability to monitor the coffee in the
Speaker 1: break room without having to get up to check it.
Speaker 1: I love that that became like an Internet star and
Speaker 1: everyone was checking the Cambridge coffee. But you know what
Speaker 1: we opened talking about cat poop coffee. Well, I figured
Speaker 1: maybe we should close the show with an equally gross,
Speaker 1: but different kind of bean processing. That's vanilla flavored monkey
Speaker 1: saliva coffee and this comes from Taiwan. Apparently, these monkeys
Speaker 1: were becoming a big problem for coffee farms because they
Speaker 1: were like trying to get their buzz and destroying the crops.
Speaker 1: They would just suck on the coffee cherries and then
Speaker 1: spit out the pits. But one thing a farmer noticed
Speaker 1: was that these beans the monkeys that spit out, had
Speaker 1: a unique vanilla flavor to them. So he just decided
Speaker 1: to team up with the monkeys, and now we have
Speaker 1: an even more rare coffee for Tristan to love. That
Speaker 1: is pretty wild. And I have to respect Mango, the
Speaker 1: fact that you were bold enough to start off the
Speaker 1: episode talking about poop coffee and in the episode talking
Speaker 1: about monkey spit coffee. So those might both be gross,
Speaker 1: but I respect that. So I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: give you today's trophy. Thank you very much, and thank
Speaker 1: you guys for listening. I'm sure we left out some
Speaker 1: great facts about coffee, so don't hesitate to let us
Speaker 1: know the ones that we missed. We always love to
Speaker 1: hear from You can email us part time Genius and
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com or call us one Fact
Speaker 1: hot line. That's eight four four pt Genius. You can
Speaker 1: always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening, Kay, thanks again for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
Speaker 1: the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
Speaker 1: does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
Speaker 1: exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support
Speaker 1: from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Speaker 1: Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to
Speaker 1: your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard,
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Speaker 1: like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good
Speaker 1: review for us, do you, Suget Jason who