May 25, 2018 • 39 mins
Want to know who to blame for your coffee addiction? From goats, Turks to the Archangel Gabriel, Will and Mango chase down a whole world of (coffee) pot stirrers while shedding light on whether monkey spit coffee is tastier than your traditional beans and whether coffee is good for cats (Spoiler: probably).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what will? What's that mango? So when you
were a kid, were you told that you couldn't drink
coffee because it was bad for kids? I mean, not
specifically about my parents, but I do remember people saying that.
So there was a great piece in the Atlantic a
few years ago about how this story spread, and it
was all thanks to none other than that cereal tycoon C. W. Post.
It turns out that even before his days of creating
(00:24):
all those delicious breakfast foods like grape nuts and whatever like,
Post was selling this caffeine free coffee substitute called Post Them,
and apparently it was Cereal based Post Them. So this
was a serial based coffee substitute that you did you
actually drink it? Uh? That sounds gross, Yeah, I mean
it sounds disgusting, But it actually found a pretty big audience,
(00:48):
largely because Post marketed the heck out of it. And
you should see the ads. They are bonkers, like they
only focus somewhat on how good Postum is and instead
mainly they try to scare people by talking about how
terrible that of coffee are on kids. So, in one
ad for Posting serial from the nine thirties were told
that coffee rob's children of their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes.
(01:09):
It lowers their vitality, lessens their resistance to disease, and
hampers proper development and growth. Well, I mean, I guess
it's okay if it lessens their resistance to disease, but
losing their rosy cheeks and their sparkling eyes like that
is unacceptable, I know. And and even worse, Post sited
some world famous research institute. Right, there's no mention of
(01:30):
what this institute is, but it says that they found
that coffee cause kids to get bad grades in school.
But I think my favorite part of the marketing plan
by Post was this creation of a comic strip character
who was named Mr. Coffee Nerves. Okay, at this point, Maga,
you're just you're making this up, be honest. I mean
I wish I were. But Mr Coffee Nerves was always
(01:51):
causing problems and making people all restless and sick, and
even causing kids to run away from home. But unfortunately
the stories would always end on a happy note, with
the victims, you know, making the very wise decision to
switch to post them. Oh thank goodness. But but really,
I mean, you can see how even if all of
this was a bunch of baloney, how that that idea
(02:13):
that drinking that much coffee being that unhealthy and all
that kind of stuff, you can see how this might
stick around. Actually, yeah, and we'll discuss all of that today.
I mean, it's far from the only time in history
that people went to great lens to keep people from
drinking coffee. But of course, you know, we live in
a coffee obsessed world, so you and I wanted to
know how this all got started, what countries are the
(02:33):
biggest drinkers, and what did the studies say about the
connection between coffee and our health. So that's what we'll
be looking at today. Let's dive in ye aither podcast listeners,
(03:02):
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and
on the other side of the soundproof glass preparing to
take his very first sip of Palm Civit coffee, that's
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now this is a
big day for Tristan because he's been waiting for weeks
to try this stuff, and of course Palm Civic coffee
(03:23):
can be tough to get your hands on, especially here
in the States. And in fact, he actually ordered this special,
ordered these beans all the way from Indonesia, so I'm
glad they arrived just in time for this episode. Yeah,
but I feel like you're kind of varying the lead here, like,
don't you think I mean, the real story is that
Tristan is about to drink what is essentially cat poop coffee,
(03:44):
Like those beans have actually passed through the digestive tract
of a wild animal. That might be true, and I
don't want to be that guy, but I do want
to clarify here that these came from an Asian palm civit,
which isn't technically a cat, but it doesn't make this
a less gross and honestly, as strange as this all sounds,
gathering coffee beans from animal droppings has become this whole
(04:06):
little kind of the subsection of the coffee industry, and
I guess most of this has really developed over the
past decade or so. An assigned from civits you can buy,
you know, those that have passed through the bodies of
everything from monkeys to elephants, And it really isn't just
for novelty's sake. There there's an idea behind this, and
that's that these beans ferment naturally in an animal stomach,
(04:28):
and so because of that, it results in this smoother
and less acidic cup of coffee than any other bean
that's out there. That's pretty funny because I actually read
a review that described the taste as quote petrified dinosaur
dropping steeped in back to water, which just sounds gross.
But at least it's not acidic back to water. I
(04:49):
don't know. I feel like we have to pause for
just a second and check out Tristan's facial expression, because
I'm going to say, based on that alone, it's probably
a pretty fair description. But anyway, you today's show isn't
just about Tristan's quest for this pricey cup of nasty coffee.
And I will say it's pretty telling that even such
a niche variety of coffee can attract an audience. And
(05:11):
that's because coffee in general has become such a ubiquitous drink,
and today it's consumed in one form or another and
just about every region on the planet. But it hasn't
always been that way, and and in fact, you know,
when you compare it to the two most popular hot
beverages in the world. That's, of course, you know, tea
and hot chocolate. Coffee is the youngest by far, and
you know, the history is only about a third as
(05:33):
long as you know these others that we were talking about.
So anyway, with that in mind, we thought we'd take
a look at just how far coffee has come, and
of course why people all across the globe can't seem
to get enough of it. You know, in college, I
was in someone's car and they breaked really hard and
I ended up spilling coffee on my nice white shirt.
So I had this immediate idea for an invention, which
(05:55):
is clear coffee, like if you can make purple catchup
and crystal PEPSI like, I not a clear coffee that
doesn't stain your teeth through your shirts. And I really
thought it was in genius. I'm sure I talked to
your ear off about it. I remember you talking about this,
and honestly, every single person I I tried to tell
about this was totally underwhelmed, Like especially chemistry majors. They
(06:15):
just were unenthusiastic. It was a little like you're putting
truck idea where a cement truck would come around like
an ice cream truck and just dispense putting into kid's hands.
I mean, you have to admit the omago that idea
is still pretty genius, I know, and so is clear coffee,
and I can't wait to get the series A on
both of those. But back to regular old brown coffee.
(06:35):
So one thing we should get out of the way
right upfront is who likes coffee the most, or at
least who drinks the most of it. And while the
US might seem like a safe bet given the size
of our coffee cups and you know the way, we're
never more than thirty ft from a Starbucks at any moment.
According to the latest stats from the International Coffee Organization,
the US doesn't even crack the top twenty when it
comes to per capita consumption. And that's actually saying something
(06:59):
because the tooth in fifteen Gallop poll found that sixty
percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee
per day and two point seven cups on average. And
not only that, we also consume a little over I
believe it's nine pounds per capita every year. Wow, So
nine pounds per person and we're still not even in
(07:19):
the top twenty. I mean, I feel like these other
countries must just be like mainlining coffee, so how much
could they possibly be drinking? Well, Finland tops the list,
with each person consuming about twenty six and a half
pounds of it every year, and the other Nordic countries
aren't too far behind it. In fact, Norway, Iceland, Denmark,
the Netherlands and Sweden all round out the top six.
(07:42):
And that's what they're citizens, down in between eighteen and
twenty two pounds per person per year. You know, I
feel like this is the third or the fourth time
that Scandinavian countries have dominated lists like this, you know,
thinking back to some of our previous episodes, they have
the happiest citizens, they eat the most chocolate. I think
they have the best prisons, and and now they drink
(08:03):
the most coffee. Like what's going on here? Well, I
mean we are talking about some pretty chilly countries here,
so they probably just need all the help they can
getting through those long, dark winters. Wow. Well, you know,
I feel like at least were number one in something,
and that has to be the number of Starbucks, because
I can't imagine any other country has this beat on that,
at least on a per capita basis. So I hate
(08:25):
to break your heart here because I actually thought the
same thing. I thought we had Starbucks domination as well,
but Monico edged us out a few years ago. Monaco
they currently have a fifty two star Wucks branches for
one million citizens compared to our forty one. So I mean,
I guess we're number two in Starbucks. But now that
we've established how much everyone loves the stuff, well, why
(08:47):
don't we talk about where coffee comes from and how
we wound up drinking it in the first place. Well,
I mean, it's a nice idea, but it's it's kind
of easier said than done. You know, as we were
starting to do our research on this, I just googled
origins of coffee and of course got something like twenty
million results, and even just clicking around through a handful
of these, I do get this feeling that there's not
(09:08):
a lot of consensus on the history of coffee. And
we've run into this before, whether we were looking at
the origins of chocolate or cheese. It it really is
tough to pin down where and when a staple food
like this got it's you know, got its start. Yeah,
I mean, that's definitely true, and the specifics are pretty hazy,
but thankfully there's some broad points that most historians agree about.
(09:29):
For instance, we know the coffee plant originated on the
plateau of Ethiopia, and that's actually because it tends to
spontaneously grow there like no place on Earth. And in fact,
the region in question is even called Kafa. You know,
we're not sure if coffee took its name from the
region or the other way around, but it's definitely linked somehow.
You know, it was fun and reading about some of
(09:50):
these origins, and you know, you see these stories that
go back to this old Ethiopian legend and I think
we may have talked about this one before, but it's
this story about this goat chew bird name called e
or a k A that you know, the happiest hurd
and happy Arabia, And the reason for his happiness was
that one day Caldy noticed his goats had started dancing
and jumping all over the place, and he noticed that
(10:12):
they've been eating the fruits and leaves of this certain bush,
so naturally called. He gets curious, and he goes over
and decides to try some of the fruit for himself,
and of course he feels this big burst of energy
and immediately started sharing these magic beans with his friends
and family. And this is something that supposedly happened around
eight fifty, but again, nobody really can say for sure.
(10:34):
So I honestly love how many discoveries are goat based.
Like there's a legend about a blind goat walking through
a thorn and carrying his cataracts, and that's how we
started cataract operations. I want to say, there's like a
goat hurd who went to look for his missing goat,
and that's how we discovered the Dead Sea scrolls. Like
we owe a lot to goats, and about all the
productivity that comes from like coffee, from balls, act Beethoven,
(10:58):
to the Velvet Revolution, to musicians, to politicians staying up late,
to craft laws, academics meeting deadlines. Like I mean, we
kind of owe a lot to goats. Yeah, I mean
that that may be true, and that is pretty funny,
But I feel like we were talking about coffee, have
we have we shifted to an episode on goats in
a total goat direction here, but so so that so
(11:20):
the man on the other side of the soundproof glass
now ramming his cataracts into a bunch of bushes. That's
our friend and producer Tristan Mingo. Right, so we're going
in a different direction. Maybe we should get back to coffee.
So well, one thing we do know about coffee is
that in its earliest days it was chewed rather than sipped,
just like the goats did it. And you know, to
make sense of that, it helps to know that coffee
(11:41):
beans aren't actually beans at all. There are seeds which
are found in the pits of the cherry like fruits
that grow on coffee plants. And while we coffee drinkers
are much more interested in the seeds than the fruit,
it was just the opposite for early Ethiopian tribes. For example,
the Gala tribe would soften these coffee fruits and liquid
and then they blend them with this animal fat to
(12:02):
make kind of like a chewable energy ball. It's amazing, huh. Well,
whatever the true origin, it definitely seems like the earliest
folks to imbibe coffee, we're really doing it for the
same reason we do today, and that's of course, for
that caffeine kick. I mean, there's always the chance that
some desperate nomad was the first to eat a coffee
cherry just to stay alive. But coffee's energizing effect is
(12:22):
definitely why people kept coming back for more, and even
the prophet Mohammed is said to have enjoyed the stimulation.
There's this one account where um Mohammed was feeling under
the weather until he was visited by the archangel Gabriel,
who gifted him this hot drink that was quote dark
as the holy black stone of Mecca. So does that
mean that Mohammed is supposed to have been the first
person to actually drink coffee rather than eat it. I
(12:45):
mean possibly, but if not, there's this other contender, this
Persian doctor and philosopher who lived around the same time
that Collide danced with his goats. His name was Rozzie
and he was the first person known to write about coffee.
In his writings, he talked about this medicinal bever it
she'd made from the bun fruit, which is the Ethiopian
word for the coffee cherry. And there are also early
(13:05):
writings that point to Yemen is the first place where
coffee was cultivated, roasted, ground and brewed as a liquid.
And this would have been around the early fifteenth century. Alright,
So I know coffee plants aren't native to Yemen, so
it's safe to assume they were imported from Ethiopia. Once
word of their discovery, it's spread. But but do we
know the story from there? Like how did it get
from Africa and this Arabian peninsula all the way to
(13:27):
Europe and North America and I guess just about everywhere. Well,
A big part of coffee spread is thanks to those
early adopters in Yemen. Many of them were Sufis who
used the plant's roasted seeds and leaves to prepare a
beverage that helped them stay awake through long nights of prayer.
And then these holy men took their beans and all
this brewing, know how, all across the Islamic world through
the fifteenth century. And then you get to the sixteenth century,
(13:50):
like coffee begins its global journey. The Ottoman Empire rises
to power, and Muslims they've got this religious ban on
alcohol that starts to take hold, and soon coffee replaces
wine throughout the region. And by the fifteen fifties, the
first known coffee house opens in Constantinople. But here's the thing, right, Like,
the Ottomans knew they had stumbled into something special during
(14:10):
their conquest, which is why they tried to keep coffee
this exclusive product of Yemen. And to do this they
really had to do something clever. They only allowed coffee
beans to be exported if they'd been sterilized first. So
while like Europeans started developing a taste for coffee during
the sixteenth century, they really couldn't use the seeds to
grow their own. But of course the Ottoman Empire couldn't
(14:32):
keep an eye on every single bean, so pretty soon
Muslim pilgrims as well as like Dutch and Venetian merchants,
they were all smuggling these precious beans off the Arabian peninsula.
All right, So you know, we're looking at the early
seventeenth century, and so obviously coffee had made its way
into Europe, both legally and illegally, but you know, not
everybody took to it from the start. It was interesting
(14:53):
reading about this and seeing that, you know, like even
the Catholic Church was strongly opposed the coffee because of
those stimul lighting effects that we were talking about. Apparently
Pope Clement the eighth was urged by his councilman to
speak out against this drink, and they referred to it
as the bitter invention of Satan, which might have been
a slight overreaction on their part, But what happened, Like
did the Pope actually take their advice? Well, he was
(15:16):
never one to follow the crowd, so Pope Clement insisted
on tasting the coffee for himself before he made a
decision on what to do about it. And you know,
thankfully he turned out to be a big fan. In fact,
here's what he told his counsel. He said, the devil's
drink is so delicious, we should cheat the devil by
baptizing it. And so it was with that endorsement that
Christian Europe decided to really indulge and it quickly became
(15:38):
the world's favorite pick me up. So I love that,
And also, like, can you just baptize anything you have
reservations about? Like led Zeppelin might have sold their soul
to the Devil's to make led Zeppelin one through four,
but I'm gonna baptize it, Like it's just such a
convenient solution. But of course it wasn't just the Catholic clergy,
who had all these qualms with coffees growing roan socide.
(16:00):
Various rulers of the Ottoman Empire also tried outlining coffee
and coffee houses over the years, but you know, the
band's never really stuck for long. The worst of these
crackdowns came during the rule of Murad the fourth between sixty.
Murad had already outlawed tobacco, and he was so committed
to this band, like sometimes he wore a disguise in
(16:21):
public just so he could catch illegal smokers in the act.
And whenever the emperor did catch someone like sparking a cigarette,
he'd reveal himself and then he'd wail on the culprit
with his royal mace floor. So was he doing the
same kind of thing with coffee as well? Yeah, I
mean it was horrible, and Murad was pretty angry when
he realized that many of his subjects had been meeting
(16:41):
at coffee houses to discuss I guess what a buzz
kill of a ruler he was. So, of course, the
response was to outrighte band coffee throughout the Ottoman Empire,
and while getting caught with a cup of coffee carried
the same punishment as tobacco as a first offense. The
repeat offenders got much worse than a beating. Anyone caught
drinking be a second time was actually sewn into a
(17:02):
sack and chucked into a local waterway. Man, it just
sounds like such a fun guy, what a party, you know.
But what's weird is like this isn't even the most
bizarre opposition coffee faced in its early years. And I
feel like we need to talk about these extremes, and
especially those that some of the European officials went to
while trying to stamp out coffee altogether. But before we
(17:23):
get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening
to part time Genius and we're giving you the full
scoop on the history of coffee. All right, mango, So
(17:44):
banning coffee and coffee shops is pretty bad, but actually
this was funny to read about. Did you know that
in Sweden they actually went even further and at one
point actually outlawed cups and saucers to what So this
was the mid eighteenth century. It was during the rule
of eight Frederick, and the king believed that coffee stimulated
radical thinking and let his citizens to behave badly, so
(18:06):
he imposes this heavy tax on coffee imports and even consumption,
and he punished those who refused to pay the tax
by confiscating their cups and saucers, and even that happened
to fail, so they had to try to find another
way to stop the coffee drinkers. So the king decided
to ban coffee altogether. I mean, it's pretty great that
he thought taking away cops with solve the problem. But
(18:28):
obviously the Sweedes are some of the biggest coffee drinkers
in the world today. So I'm guessing the band died
with King Frederick. Well not quite. I mean, his son
tried to keep this going. His son was goosed off
the third It just sounds like somebody who would want
to ban coffee, right, and so he that's right. I mean,
he shared his father's distaste for coffee and became convinced
(18:49):
that it was incredibly unhealthy. In fact, the guy was
so convinced that coffee was harmful that he conducted this
long running experiment to prove to his subjects that coffee
was bad for him. So this is what he did.
He found two convicted murders and they've been sentenced to death,
and he offered them this chance to live. And so
he said, here's this experiment, and if you participate in
(19:09):
this will give you life sentences instead. And so the
men agreed. And what happens next is they were given
their marching orders. So one of them was required to
drink three pots of coffee every day. The other one
was asked to drink an equal amount of tea. Wait,
that's it. Like all they had to do is drink
a bunch of tea and coffee and they got to live. Yep.
I feel like this is like the luckiest convicted murderers
(19:31):
in history. Oh definitely. I mean, Gustaf was convinced that
the coffee drinker would be dead in no time, and
this is how dangerous he thought coffee was. But of
course Gustav was wrong. In fact, not only did both
prisoners outlive the king, they even outlived the doctors that
have been charged with overseeing them. The tea drinker lived
to be I think it was like eighty three years old,
(19:52):
and the coffee drinker actually survived even longer than that.
So that's amazing, and it actually reminds me of something
similar that happened in Prussia around the same time. Apparently
the Prussian King Frederick was also convinced that coffee was
a dangerous influence on these people. So not only did
he ban coffee drinking, he even made it illegal to
roast it. I was just pretty ridiculous, and I can
(20:13):
to enforce something like that. I mean, that's the funny part,
Like he actually sent royal sniffers into the streets to
track down criminals just by the smell of the illicit brew.
But again, all of this was ultimately in vain, and
coffee culture continued to thrive across Europe, you know, and
we're lucky that it did, because if you think about it,
prior to this spread of coffee, most people in Europe
(20:33):
were drinking alcohol pretty much all day long, and you know,
they'd have some beer with breakfast, some wine with lunch,
a little bit of both in the evening. And I actually,
believe it or not, this was the healthiest way to
go because most of the water that people had access
to wasn't safe to drink. So you've got the fermentation
process working in their favor and that would kind of
take care of the problem and the alcohol. But it
(20:55):
also has a downside, and that's the fact that everybody
was walking around drunk all the time. I guess that.
You know, once that population switched from this more of
a depressant to these stimulants like coffee and tea, suddenly
there was this this real explosion of new ideas and innovations.
Is more and more people began to think clearly again. Yeah,
I mean, I've heard before how the spread and development
(21:17):
of alignment owed a lot to coffee and also more
specifically to coffee houses, because you know, just like today,
coffee houses became these community gathering places where people could
get together to share ideas or conduct business. Um. The
first ones in Europe open in the seventeenth century, with
England getting its first in sixteen fifty two, and about
a decade later London was up to about eighty different
(21:41):
coffee houses, and forty years after that the city contained
more than five hundred. Wow. I mean, the idea really
did take off from the start. But you know, just
like in the Ottoman Empire, coffee houses also had their
share of detractors in Europe, and some of them are
pretty funny to read about. You know. For instance, in
England that was a group of women who banded together
in sixteen seventy four and they wrote something called the
(22:03):
Women's Petition against Coffee, which was this manifesto that claimed
that coffee robbed men of their masculinity. So the women
refer to their husband's new pastime as quote the excessive
use of that new fangled, abominable heathenish liquor called coffee.
But it's been baptized. But right right? What they think
was so bad about drinking coffee? Well, I mean, I
(22:25):
guess the idea was that these once vera hard working
men were now just sitting around in coffee shops all days,
sipping coffee, talking like a bunch of frenchmen, I guess.
But you know, the men of England actually didn't take
this affront of their manhood lying down, and instead they
pinned their response to this, and it was called Men's
Answer to the Women's Petition against Coffee. I love the
titles of these stages in that here's what they claimed that,
(22:49):
far from making men impotent, coffee actually made quote the
erection more vigorous, adding a spiritual ascendency to the sperm.
I don't even know what that means. I'm sure I
don't want to either. Is really wild to hear how
dead certain people were that like, coffee must be bad
for you somehow. I mean, it's kind of ironic considering
(23:11):
how often we hear about the potential health benefits of
drinking coffee today. Well, you know, and I actually did
a little bit of digging on some of those health
claims because there's something I've heard pretty often too, and
you know, the most prevalent one is that drinking a
certain number of cups of coffee will help you live longer.
And surprisingly, the science actually seems to bear this out.
Like I was looking at this study that was released
(23:31):
last year by the European Society of Cardiology. So about
a decade ago, these researchers got together about twenty volunteers
in Spain, and they asked them about their food and
coffee drinking habits, as well as their overall health history
and lifestyles and all kinds of stuff like that. And
so they look at them ten years later, and the researchers,
you know, we're reconnecting with them and wanted to see
(23:53):
how they were holding up. And what they found was
that those participants who drank at least four cups of
coffee a day were astounding sixty more likely to avoid
premature death than those who hardly drank coffee at all.
But it's kind of not the weirdest part. The researchers
also found that for each additional two cups of coffee
that I participant drink each day, their risk of any
(24:16):
causes immortality was actually reduced by an extra twenty two
per cent. So I think what you're saying here is
if I drink like a dozen cops of coffee a day,
I'll basically live forever. Yeah, I'm not sure that that's
what I'm saying, but you know, you take away from
it what you want. But you know, the real explanation
for why coffee can boost your longevity is pretty interesting.
(24:38):
And I was looking at the study out of Stanford,
and what they found was that the caffeine and coffee
actually combats the inflammatory processes that go along with aging
and these age related conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's.
So basically, the antioxidants in the coffee function like anybody's
fighting off an illness, you know, they attack the harmful
(24:58):
byproducts of our bodies metabolic reactions or like these are
the ones that would otherwise trigger that inflammation. Yeah, well,
I've actually got good news for any of our non
human listeners out there, because apparently coffees health benefits extend
to the animal kingdom as well. And we know this
because the oldest cat ever on record was actually an
avid coffee drinker. Her name was cream Puff, and she
(25:21):
lived to be a whopping thirty eight years old and
three days as well. Um, and this was actually thanks
to her daily morning coffee, not to mention the bacon,
eggs and broccoli she also ate. It doesn't sound like
a bad diet, and obviously that's super impressive, But how
do you know it was the coffee that kept around
so long? Like, couldn't have this just been a coincidence? Yeah,
(25:42):
of course, anything's possible. But it is worth keeping in
mind that the previous record holder before cream Puff was
a thirty four year old cat named Grandpa Rex Allen.
And not only the Gramps have the same owner as
cream Puff, he was fed the exact same diet too,
including that all important daily dose of java. And that
is pretty convincing, to be honest with you. But there's
(26:03):
still one health aspect of coffee. I'm not so sure
about it, and that's whether or not it should be
considered cancerous. And scientist seemed to go back and forth
from this from time to time. But if we're going
to commit four or more cups of coffee a day,
I feel like it'd be pretty nice to have a
definitive answer on this. Yeah. Well, you're in luck because
the World Health Organization actually made a statement about this
(26:23):
not too long ago, and their conclusion was sort of surprising.
Oh really, so what did they say? Well, I'll tell
you about that in a minute, but first let's take
another quick break. Okay. Well, so I know you were
(26:48):
curious about whether or not coffee causes cancer, and honestly,
the answer is kind of a mixed bag. So first
the good news, there's no conclusive evidence that drinking coffee
leads to cancer. In the past, that in antional Agency
for Research on Cancer had actually labeled the coffee as
quote possible carcinogen, which landed in the same category as
chloroform and lots of other harmful substances. I mean, it's
(27:10):
a little weird to think of coffee in the same
class as chloroform. I feel like that's kind of extreme.
But but you're saying that warning has been reversed at
this point. Yeah, so the i r C changed its
mind after reviewing over a thousands scientific studies and humans
and animals, none of which provide enough evidence to support
the quote possibly carcinogenic label. Okay, so that feels like
a win for all of us. So why did you
(27:32):
say it was a mixed bag? Yeah? I mean that's
because of the bad news, which is that the agency
also conclude that basically all very hot drinks are most
likely carcinogenic. Apparently there's now enough evidence to suggest that
drinking anything a hundred forty nine degrees fahrenheit or hotter
probably causes cancer of the esophagus. And since the average
cup of Joe is typically served between one sixty and
(27:54):
one degrees fahrenheit, that's not so great news for coffee drinkers. Yeah,
I mean, if you think about it, t or hot
water drinkers for that matter. But um, alright, So the
good news is is that coffee itself probably isn't cancerous,
but very hot coffee might be. And I don't know,
I feel like if that's not a ringing endorsement for
cold brew, I'm really not sure. What would be. Yeah,
(28:15):
I know, and I'm a huge cold brew drinker. But
on a lighter note, when I was looking into the
cancer angle, I also came across this bizarre thought experiment
in Scientific American and it's actually just too weird not
to share. So you know how on the show Friends,
the cast is always drinking those enormous mugs of coffee
at the central perk. Oh, yeah, definitely were huge. Yeah.
So this writer named Kyle Hill remembers too, and he
(28:37):
actually crunched the numbers to see just how many people
you could kill with all the caffeine and the cast
of Friends consumed over the course of the show's ten seasons,
And it turns out that, assuming each episode represents a
week of time, on average, the six Friends down an
incredible gallons of coffee, which is enough to send over
people to the hospital. I like how this is the
(29:00):
lighter note that you wanted to talk about. I mean,
I guess it at least raises the interesting question of
how much caffeine is actually safe to consume. So did
did you get a sense of that apart from this
ridiculous hypothetical. Yeah, so, some scientists say it's about ten
grams of caffeine. That's enough to do most people in
but there are also reports of people dying from as
little as four milligrams. Honestly that there isn't like a
(29:23):
universal overdose amount for caffeine because the number varies from
person to person, and that's because of all sorts of factors,
from you know, your heart help to your body weight. Yeah,
that's what I was gonna say, with like heart health,
especially because everybody's is so different, it seems like issues
could be triggered with even a little bit of caffeine
for some people. But but what about that ten grams
you mentioned? How easy is it to ingest that much?
(29:45):
So not very thankfully, Like that would be the equivalent
about fifty shots of five hour energy. And since there's
only about a hundred fifty milligrams of caffeine and an
eight ounds cup of coffee, you'd actually need to drink
a full seventy cups to get to ten grams. And
if that wasn't unlikely enough, like you'd actually have to
drink all those cups at the same time. Because caffeine's
(30:06):
effects less in over time. So there's some good news.
It's effectively impossible to odeon caffeine from coffee. There's just
no way you could fit that much liquid in your stomach.
Not and not to mention that most people's coffee breaks
aren't long enough to bruise seventy cups of coffee, much
less drink them. That's true. But you know, speaking of
coffee breaks, and this is a total detour from what
we were talking about, did you ever wonder how that
(30:27):
practice got it start? Yeah, like I used to know
the answer at one point. I feel like it has
to do with some sort of ad campaign or something. Well,
yes and no, and they're there are actually some conflicting
reports about this, much like the origins of coffee itself.
But according to City Lab, coffee breaks are a product
of early twentieth century unions. So factories finally standardized the
(30:47):
work day. They came to be eight hours a day,
but they also added these rest breaks into the schedule,
and it was during these breaks that workers would drink
coffee to get that quick jolt of energy so they
could finish the work day. And of course, entrepreneurs took
notice of this practice, and pretty soon you started seeing
these street carts and coffee counters and vending machines just
popping up all over the place. So I mean, it
(31:10):
makes complete sense to me that coffee breaks would be
this American invention, you know, American workers coming up with it.
But you said some folks don't actually bind it that theory. Well,
in particular, these would be the citizens of Stoughton, Wisconsin.
They don't buy into it at all. So on the contrary,
this tiny town insists that it was actually the area's
population of Norwegian female immigrants who invented coffee breaks. And
(31:31):
this would have been back in the late nineteenth century.
So apparently there was a tobacco warehouse in the town
that hired these Norwegian women to help strip the plants,
and since the warehouse wasn't too far from their homes,
the women would routinely pop in to check on their
kids or get dinner started, and of course grab a
cup of coffee before heading back to work. And even
though outsiders continue to challenge Stoughton's claim to fame, the
(31:54):
town itself has no doubt about this local lore being true.
In fact, the residents still under the town's history each
year by holding this official coffee break festival, and they
build it. As quote the weekend when everyone is Norwegian.
Well that's pretty sweet. But wait, so I was thinking
coffee breaks had something to do with marketing and ad
(32:15):
Caffei's did Did I just make that up? Now? So
that's another legit option. See, if you look back to
the early nineteen hundreds, you had multiple companies beginning to
offer coffee breaks as these official job perks for their employees, like,
for instance, the company that makes bark A Loungers agreed
to give workers short breaks during the morning in the
afternoon and then they could heat up a cup of
(32:36):
coffee on like a kerosene fueled hot plate. While all
kinds of companies like claim to having offered the first
official coffee break, the first group to actually coin the
phrase coffee break didn't come along until nineteen fifty two.
And that's the year that Pan American Coffee Bureau launched
an ad campaign encouraging the public to quote, give yourself
a coffee break and get what coffee gives you. That's
(32:59):
just great ad coffee right there. But I always think
it's so fun to find out where the lingo surrounding
words and phrases comes from. And did you know the
phrase cup of Joe might have come from a US
naval secretary named Josephus Daniels. No. He apparently banned all
drinks stronger than coffee from being served in the mess halls,
so the officers started applying his name to the only
(33:21):
stiff drink he approved of. And of course there's also
a good chance the phrase goes back even further, like
some people say, Joe is a shortening of the word jamoke,
which I guess is a hybrid of java and mocho,
you know, two regions known for coffee cultivation. I'd actually
never heard that. Well, since we're on that subject, the
bureau that gave us coffee breaks was also behind another
(33:44):
famous coffee phrase, and that's the phrase one for the road.
You know that phrases typically used now to mean like
one more drink before I go, It was originally more
literally taken. So remember the country's interstate highway system was
brand new at this time, so that idea of one
more for the road, it was really intended as a
safety measure to make sure Americans were staying awake or
(34:05):
not falling asleep while they were at the wheel during
these long distance drives. That's awesome, but speaking of one
more for the road, it looks like Tristan still got
a full pot of Civic coffee over there. If you're
feeling thirsty before the fact, Yeah, I think I was
gonna be a hard pass from the mango, But but
I am ready for the fact off. So I'm reading
(34:30):
up for this episode. I was looking at this New
York Times article from a couple of years back that
was about the fact that a surprising number of flights
are delayed each year because of broken coffee makers. So,
as the article explained, these are incredibly expensive coffee pots,
and we're talking ten dollars apiece, sometimes more, and that's
because they have so many safety features like circuit breakers
(34:51):
and special wiring. What that also means is that there
are more things that could possibly go wrong, and so
if a coffee maker isn't working, they then have to
do the full investigation to make sure it's not because
of bad wiring on the plane or anything like that.
But you know, people can't live without their coffee, so
we just deal with this. That's amazing. So here's the
(35:11):
fact about the role coffee played and trying to get
the Brazilian Olympic delegation to the Nine two Games, and
this was in Los Angeles. It was a super expensive trip,
so they decided to load up fifty thousand bags of
Brazilian coffee on the ship they were traveling on, and
the plan was to sell as much of it as
possible along the way to pay for the trip. But unfortunately,
they didn't sell quite as much as they had hoped,
(35:32):
and when they made it to the port in l
a they couldn't afford to pay the one dollar per
person charge, so only about half the team could get
off the boat, and in fact, there were still fifteen
athletes who were never able to get off the ship
in the States, so during the entire voyage, these fifteen
people never got off the ship. Yeah, it's terrible. I've
been wondering if there was an actual Maxwell House. I
(35:54):
don't know why I was wondering this, but you know,
it turns out that there was so Maxwell House hotel.
It up just a few years after the Civil War,
and it was the fanciest hotel in Nashville. Apparently Teddy
Roosevelt liked visiting, as well as several of the Vanderbilts,
and the coffee actually got its name from this hotel.
I was looking into the history of it and Sally
(36:14):
the hotel burned down in nine so it's no longer there.
But there was actually a Maxwell house. That's crazy. It
was there until the sixties though. That's pretty impressive. So
it turns out Beethoven was a big fan of coffee,
but he was also incredibly particular about how it was
to be made. In fact, he only wanted his cups
made with precisely sixty beans. And I don't know why
(36:35):
I find that surprising, but that's actually how I'll be
ordering my coffee from now on, like like a venti
Beethoven style. Right, all right, Well, I think I had
actually seen this fact before. But did you know that
the first ever webcam was used at Cambridge? But it
was actually set up to do something much less academic
than you might imagine. It was used to give the
(36:56):
researchers there the ability to monitor the coffee in the
break room without having to get up to check it.
I love that that became like an Internet star and
everyone was checking the Cambridge coffee. But you know what
we opened talking about cat poop coffee. Well, I figured
maybe we should close the show with an equally gross,
but different kind of bean processing. That's vanilla flavored monkey
(37:18):
saliva coffee and this comes from Taiwan. Apparently, these monkeys
were becoming a big problem for coffee farms because they
were like trying to get their buzz and destroying the crops.
They would just suck on the coffee cherries and then
spit out the pits. But one thing a farmer noticed
was that these beans the monkeys that spit out, had
a unique vanilla flavor to them. So he just decided
(37:38):
to team up with the monkeys, and now we have
an even more rare coffee for Tristan to love. That
is pretty wild. And I have to respect Mango, the
fact that you were bold enough to start off the
episode talking about poop coffee and in the episode talking
about monkey spit coffee. So those might both be gross,
but I respect that. So I'm going to have to
give you today's trophy. Thank you very much, and thank
(38:01):
you guys for listening. I'm sure we left out some
great facts about coffee, so don't hesitate to let us
know the ones that we missed. We always love to
hear from You can email us part time Genius and
how stuff works dot com or call us one Fact
hot line. That's eight four four pt Genius. You can
always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so
much for listening, Kay, thanks again for listening. Part Time
(38:35):
Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support
from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to
(38:57):
your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard,
and we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really
like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good
review for us, do you, Suget Jason who
I guess what will? What's that mango? So when you
were a kid, were you told that you couldn't drink
coffee because it was bad for kids? I mean, not
specifically about my parents, but I do remember people saying that.
So there was a great piece in the Atlantic a
few years ago about how this story spread, and it
was all thanks to none other than that cereal tycoon C. W. Post.
It turns out that even before his days of creating
(00:24):
all those delicious breakfast foods like grape nuts and whatever like,
Post was selling this caffeine free coffee substitute called Post Them,
and apparently it was Cereal based Post Them. So this
was a serial based coffee substitute that you did you
actually drink it? Uh? That sounds gross, Yeah, I mean
it sounds disgusting, But it actually found a pretty big audience,
(00:48):
largely because Post marketed the heck out of it. And
you should see the ads. They are bonkers, like they
only focus somewhat on how good Postum is and instead
mainly they try to scare people by talking about how
terrible that of coffee are on kids. So, in one
ad for Posting serial from the nine thirties were told
that coffee rob's children of their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes.
(01:09):
It lowers their vitality, lessens their resistance to disease, and
hampers proper development and growth. Well, I mean, I guess
it's okay if it lessens their resistance to disease, but
losing their rosy cheeks and their sparkling eyes like that
is unacceptable, I know. And and even worse, Post sited
some world famous research institute. Right, there's no mention of
(01:30):
what this institute is, but it says that they found
that coffee cause kids to get bad grades in school.
But I think my favorite part of the marketing plan
by Post was this creation of a comic strip character
who was named Mr. Coffee Nerves. Okay, at this point, Maga,
you're just you're making this up, be honest. I mean
I wish I were. But Mr Coffee Nerves was always
(01:51):
causing problems and making people all restless and sick, and
even causing kids to run away from home. But unfortunately
the stories would always end on a happy note, with
the victims, you know, making the very wise decision to
switch to post them. Oh thank goodness. But but really,
I mean, you can see how even if all of
this was a bunch of baloney, how that that idea
(02:13):
that drinking that much coffee being that unhealthy and all
that kind of stuff, you can see how this might
stick around. Actually, yeah, and we'll discuss all of that today.
I mean, it's far from the only time in history
that people went to great lens to keep people from
drinking coffee. But of course, you know, we live in
a coffee obsessed world, so you and I wanted to
know how this all got started, what countries are the
(02:33):
biggest drinkers, and what did the studies say about the
connection between coffee and our health. So that's what we'll
be looking at today. Let's dive in ye aither podcast listeners,
(03:02):
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer and
on the other side of the soundproof glass preparing to
take his very first sip of Palm Civit coffee, that's
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now this is a
big day for Tristan because he's been waiting for weeks
to try this stuff, and of course Palm Civic coffee
(03:23):
can be tough to get your hands on, especially here
in the States. And in fact, he actually ordered this special,
ordered these beans all the way from Indonesia, so I'm
glad they arrived just in time for this episode. Yeah,
but I feel like you're kind of varying the lead here, like,
don't you think I mean, the real story is that
Tristan is about to drink what is essentially cat poop coffee,
(03:44):
Like those beans have actually passed through the digestive tract
of a wild animal. That might be true, and I
don't want to be that guy, but I do want
to clarify here that these came from an Asian palm civit,
which isn't technically a cat, but it doesn't make this
a less gross and honestly, as strange as this all sounds,
gathering coffee beans from animal droppings has become this whole
(04:06):
little kind of the subsection of the coffee industry, and
I guess most of this has really developed over the
past decade or so. An assigned from civits you can buy,
you know, those that have passed through the bodies of
everything from monkeys to elephants, And it really isn't just
for novelty's sake. There there's an idea behind this, and
that's that these beans ferment naturally in an animal stomach,
(04:28):
and so because of that, it results in this smoother
and less acidic cup of coffee than any other bean
that's out there. That's pretty funny because I actually read
a review that described the taste as quote petrified dinosaur
dropping steeped in back to water, which just sounds gross.
But at least it's not acidic back to water. I
(04:49):
don't know. I feel like we have to pause for
just a second and check out Tristan's facial expression, because
I'm going to say, based on that alone, it's probably
a pretty fair description. But anyway, you today's show isn't
just about Tristan's quest for this pricey cup of nasty coffee.
And I will say it's pretty telling that even such
a niche variety of coffee can attract an audience. And
(05:11):
that's because coffee in general has become such a ubiquitous drink,
and today it's consumed in one form or another and
just about every region on the planet. But it hasn't
always been that way, and and in fact, you know,
when you compare it to the two most popular hot
beverages in the world. That's, of course, you know, tea
and hot chocolate. Coffee is the youngest by far, and
you know, the history is only about a third as
(05:33):
long as you know these others that we were talking about.
So anyway, with that in mind, we thought we'd take
a look at just how far coffee has come, and
of course why people all across the globe can't seem
to get enough of it. You know, in college, I
was in someone's car and they breaked really hard and
I ended up spilling coffee on my nice white shirt.
So I had this immediate idea for an invention, which
(05:55):
is clear coffee, like if you can make purple catchup
and crystal PEPSI like, I not a clear coffee that
doesn't stain your teeth through your shirts. And I really
thought it was in genius. I'm sure I talked to
your ear off about it. I remember you talking about this,
and honestly, every single person I I tried to tell
about this was totally underwhelmed, Like especially chemistry majors. They
(06:15):
just were unenthusiastic. It was a little like you're putting
truck idea where a cement truck would come around like
an ice cream truck and just dispense putting into kid's hands.
I mean, you have to admit the omago that idea
is still pretty genius, I know, and so is clear coffee,
and I can't wait to get the series A on
both of those. But back to regular old brown coffee.
(06:35):
So one thing we should get out of the way
right upfront is who likes coffee the most, or at
least who drinks the most of it. And while the
US might seem like a safe bet given the size
of our coffee cups and you know the way, we're
never more than thirty ft from a Starbucks at any moment.
According to the latest stats from the International Coffee Organization,
the US doesn't even crack the top twenty when it
comes to per capita consumption. And that's actually saying something
(06:59):
because the tooth in fifteen Gallop poll found that sixty
percent of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee
per day and two point seven cups on average. And
not only that, we also consume a little over I
believe it's nine pounds per capita every year. Wow, So
nine pounds per person and we're still not even in
(07:19):
the top twenty. I mean, I feel like these other
countries must just be like mainlining coffee, so how much
could they possibly be drinking? Well, Finland tops the list,
with each person consuming about twenty six and a half
pounds of it every year, and the other Nordic countries
aren't too far behind it. In fact, Norway, Iceland, Denmark,
the Netherlands and Sweden all round out the top six.
(07:42):
And that's what they're citizens, down in between eighteen and
twenty two pounds per person per year. You know, I
feel like this is the third or the fourth time
that Scandinavian countries have dominated lists like this, you know,
thinking back to some of our previous episodes, they have
the happiest citizens, they eat the most chocolate. I think
they have the best prisons, and and now they drink
(08:03):
the most coffee. Like what's going on here? Well, I
mean we are talking about some pretty chilly countries here,
so they probably just need all the help they can
getting through those long, dark winters. Wow. Well, you know,
I feel like at least were number one in something,
and that has to be the number of Starbucks, because
I can't imagine any other country has this beat on that,
at least on a per capita basis. So I hate
(08:25):
to break your heart here because I actually thought the
same thing. I thought we had Starbucks domination as well,
but Monico edged us out a few years ago. Monaco
they currently have a fifty two star Wucks branches for
one million citizens compared to our forty one. So I mean,
I guess we're number two in Starbucks. But now that
we've established how much everyone loves the stuff, well, why
(08:47):
don't we talk about where coffee comes from and how
we wound up drinking it in the first place. Well,
I mean, it's a nice idea, but it's it's kind
of easier said than done. You know, as we were
starting to do our research on this, I just googled
origins of coffee and of course got something like twenty
million results, and even just clicking around through a handful
of these, I do get this feeling that there's not
(09:08):
a lot of consensus on the history of coffee. And
we've run into this before, whether we were looking at
the origins of chocolate or cheese. It it really is
tough to pin down where and when a staple food
like this got it's you know, got its start. Yeah,
I mean, that's definitely true, and the specifics are pretty hazy,
but thankfully there's some broad points that most historians agree about.
(09:29):
For instance, we know the coffee plant originated on the
plateau of Ethiopia, and that's actually because it tends to
spontaneously grow there like no place on Earth. And in fact,
the region in question is even called Kafa. You know,
we're not sure if coffee took its name from the
region or the other way around, but it's definitely linked somehow.
You know, it was fun and reading about some of
(09:50):
these origins, and you know, you see these stories that
go back to this old Ethiopian legend and I think
we may have talked about this one before, but it's
this story about this goat chew bird name called e
or a k A that you know, the happiest hurd
and happy Arabia, And the reason for his happiness was
that one day Caldy noticed his goats had started dancing
and jumping all over the place, and he noticed that
(10:12):
they've been eating the fruits and leaves of this certain bush,
so naturally called. He gets curious, and he goes over
and decides to try some of the fruit for himself,
and of course he feels this big burst of energy
and immediately started sharing these magic beans with his friends
and family. And this is something that supposedly happened around
eight fifty, but again, nobody really can say for sure.
(10:34):
So I honestly love how many discoveries are goat based.
Like there's a legend about a blind goat walking through
a thorn and carrying his cataracts, and that's how we
started cataract operations. I want to say, there's like a
goat hurd who went to look for his missing goat,
and that's how we discovered the Dead Sea scrolls. Like
we owe a lot to goats, and about all the
productivity that comes from like coffee, from balls, act Beethoven,
(10:58):
to the Velvet Revolution, to musicians, to politicians staying up late,
to craft laws, academics meeting deadlines. Like I mean, we
kind of owe a lot to goats. Yeah, I mean
that that may be true, and that is pretty funny,
But I feel like we were talking about coffee, have
we have we shifted to an episode on goats in
a total goat direction here, but so so that so
(11:20):
the man on the other side of the soundproof glass
now ramming his cataracts into a bunch of bushes. That's
our friend and producer Tristan Mingo. Right, so we're going
in a different direction. Maybe we should get back to coffee.
So well, one thing we do know about coffee is
that in its earliest days it was chewed rather than sipped,
just like the goats did it. And you know, to
make sense of that, it helps to know that coffee
(11:41):
beans aren't actually beans at all. There are seeds which
are found in the pits of the cherry like fruits
that grow on coffee plants. And while we coffee drinkers
are much more interested in the seeds than the fruit,
it was just the opposite for early Ethiopian tribes. For example,
the Gala tribe would soften these coffee fruits and liquid
and then they blend them with this animal fat to
(12:02):
make kind of like a chewable energy ball. It's amazing, huh. Well,
whatever the true origin, it definitely seems like the earliest
folks to imbibe coffee, we're really doing it for the
same reason we do today, and that's of course, for
that caffeine kick. I mean, there's always the chance that
some desperate nomad was the first to eat a coffee
cherry just to stay alive. But coffee's energizing effect is
(12:22):
definitely why people kept coming back for more, and even
the prophet Mohammed is said to have enjoyed the stimulation.
There's this one account where um Mohammed was feeling under
the weather until he was visited by the archangel Gabriel,
who gifted him this hot drink that was quote dark
as the holy black stone of Mecca. So does that
mean that Mohammed is supposed to have been the first
person to actually drink coffee rather than eat it. I
(12:45):
mean possibly, but if not, there's this other contender, this
Persian doctor and philosopher who lived around the same time
that Collide danced with his goats. His name was Rozzie
and he was the first person known to write about coffee.
In his writings, he talked about this medicinal bever it
she'd made from the bun fruit, which is the Ethiopian
word for the coffee cherry. And there are also early
(13:05):
writings that point to Yemen is the first place where
coffee was cultivated, roasted, ground and brewed as a liquid.
And this would have been around the early fifteenth century. Alright,
So I know coffee plants aren't native to Yemen, so
it's safe to assume they were imported from Ethiopia. Once
word of their discovery, it's spread. But but do we
know the story from there? Like how did it get
from Africa and this Arabian peninsula all the way to
(13:27):
Europe and North America and I guess just about everywhere. Well,
A big part of coffee spread is thanks to those
early adopters in Yemen. Many of them were Sufis who
used the plant's roasted seeds and leaves to prepare a
beverage that helped them stay awake through long nights of prayer.
And then these holy men took their beans and all
this brewing, know how, all across the Islamic world through
the fifteenth century. And then you get to the sixteenth century,
(13:50):
like coffee begins its global journey. The Ottoman Empire rises
to power, and Muslims they've got this religious ban on
alcohol that starts to take hold, and soon coffee replaces
wine throughout the region. And by the fifteen fifties, the
first known coffee house opens in Constantinople. But here's the thing, right, Like,
the Ottomans knew they had stumbled into something special during
(14:10):
their conquest, which is why they tried to keep coffee
this exclusive product of Yemen. And to do this they
really had to do something clever. They only allowed coffee
beans to be exported if they'd been sterilized first. So
while like Europeans started developing a taste for coffee during
the sixteenth century, they really couldn't use the seeds to
grow their own. But of course the Ottoman Empire couldn't
(14:32):
keep an eye on every single bean, so pretty soon
Muslim pilgrims as well as like Dutch and Venetian merchants,
they were all smuggling these precious beans off the Arabian peninsula.
All right, So you know, we're looking at the early
seventeenth century, and so obviously coffee had made its way
into Europe, both legally and illegally, but you know, not
everybody took to it from the start. It was interesting
(14:53):
reading about this and seeing that, you know, like even
the Catholic Church was strongly opposed the coffee because of
those stimul lighting effects that we were talking about. Apparently
Pope Clement the eighth was urged by his councilman to
speak out against this drink, and they referred to it
as the bitter invention of Satan, which might have been
a slight overreaction on their part, But what happened, Like
did the Pope actually take their advice? Well, he was
(15:16):
never one to follow the crowd, so Pope Clement insisted
on tasting the coffee for himself before he made a
decision on what to do about it. And you know,
thankfully he turned out to be a big fan. In fact,
here's what he told his counsel. He said, the devil's
drink is so delicious, we should cheat the devil by
baptizing it. And so it was with that endorsement that
Christian Europe decided to really indulge and it quickly became
(15:38):
the world's favorite pick me up. So I love that,
And also, like, can you just baptize anything you have
reservations about? Like led Zeppelin might have sold their soul
to the Devil's to make led Zeppelin one through four,
but I'm gonna baptize it, Like it's just such a
convenient solution. But of course it wasn't just the Catholic clergy,
who had all these qualms with coffees growing roan socide.
(16:00):
Various rulers of the Ottoman Empire also tried outlining coffee
and coffee houses over the years, but you know, the
band's never really stuck for long. The worst of these
crackdowns came during the rule of Murad the fourth between sixty.
Murad had already outlawed tobacco, and he was so committed
to this band, like sometimes he wore a disguise in
(16:21):
public just so he could catch illegal smokers in the act.
And whenever the emperor did catch someone like sparking a cigarette,
he'd reveal himself and then he'd wail on the culprit
with his royal mace floor. So was he doing the
same kind of thing with coffee as well? Yeah, I
mean it was horrible, and Murad was pretty angry when
he realized that many of his subjects had been meeting
(16:41):
at coffee houses to discuss I guess what a buzz
kill of a ruler he was. So, of course, the
response was to outrighte band coffee throughout the Ottoman Empire,
and while getting caught with a cup of coffee carried
the same punishment as tobacco as a first offense. The
repeat offenders got much worse than a beating. Anyone caught
drinking be a second time was actually sewn into a
(17:02):
sack and chucked into a local waterway. Man, it just
sounds like such a fun guy, what a party, you know.
But what's weird is like this isn't even the most
bizarre opposition coffee faced in its early years. And I
feel like we need to talk about these extremes, and
especially those that some of the European officials went to
while trying to stamp out coffee altogether. But before we
(17:23):
get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening
to part time Genius and we're giving you the full
scoop on the history of coffee. All right, mango, So
(17:44):
banning coffee and coffee shops is pretty bad, but actually
this was funny to read about. Did you know that
in Sweden they actually went even further and at one
point actually outlawed cups and saucers to what So this
was the mid eighteenth century. It was during the rule
of eight Frederick, and the king believed that coffee stimulated
radical thinking and let his citizens to behave badly, so
(18:06):
he imposes this heavy tax on coffee imports and even consumption,
and he punished those who refused to pay the tax
by confiscating their cups and saucers, and even that happened
to fail, so they had to try to find another
way to stop the coffee drinkers. So the king decided
to ban coffee altogether. I mean, it's pretty great that
he thought taking away cops with solve the problem. But
(18:28):
obviously the Sweedes are some of the biggest coffee drinkers
in the world today. So I'm guessing the band died
with King Frederick. Well not quite. I mean, his son
tried to keep this going. His son was goosed off
the third It just sounds like somebody who would want
to ban coffee, right, and so he that's right. I mean,
he shared his father's distaste for coffee and became convinced
(18:49):
that it was incredibly unhealthy. In fact, the guy was
so convinced that coffee was harmful that he conducted this
long running experiment to prove to his subjects that coffee
was bad for him. So this is what he did.
He found two convicted murders and they've been sentenced to death,
and he offered them this chance to live. And so
he said, here's this experiment, and if you participate in
(19:09):
this will give you life sentences instead. And so the
men agreed. And what happens next is they were given
their marching orders. So one of them was required to
drink three pots of coffee every day. The other one
was asked to drink an equal amount of tea. Wait,
that's it. Like all they had to do is drink
a bunch of tea and coffee and they got to live. Yep.
I feel like this is like the luckiest convicted murderers
(19:31):
in history. Oh definitely. I mean, Gustaf was convinced that
the coffee drinker would be dead in no time, and
this is how dangerous he thought coffee was. But of
course Gustav was wrong. In fact, not only did both
prisoners outlive the king, they even outlived the doctors that
have been charged with overseeing them. The tea drinker lived
to be I think it was like eighty three years old,
(19:52):
and the coffee drinker actually survived even longer than that.
So that's amazing, and it actually reminds me of something
similar that happened in Prussia around the same time. Apparently
the Prussian King Frederick was also convinced that coffee was
a dangerous influence on these people. So not only did
he ban coffee drinking, he even made it illegal to
roast it. I was just pretty ridiculous, and I can
(20:13):
to enforce something like that. I mean, that's the funny part,
Like he actually sent royal sniffers into the streets to
track down criminals just by the smell of the illicit brew.
But again, all of this was ultimately in vain, and
coffee culture continued to thrive across Europe, you know, and
we're lucky that it did, because if you think about it,
prior to this spread of coffee, most people in Europe
(20:33):
were drinking alcohol pretty much all day long, and you know,
they'd have some beer with breakfast, some wine with lunch,
a little bit of both in the evening. And I actually,
believe it or not, this was the healthiest way to
go because most of the water that people had access
to wasn't safe to drink. So you've got the fermentation
process working in their favor and that would kind of
take care of the problem and the alcohol. But it
(20:55):
also has a downside, and that's the fact that everybody
was walking around drunk all the time. I guess that.
You know, once that population switched from this more of
a depressant to these stimulants like coffee and tea, suddenly
there was this this real explosion of new ideas and innovations.
Is more and more people began to think clearly again. Yeah,
I mean, I've heard before how the spread and development
(21:17):
of alignment owed a lot to coffee and also more
specifically to coffee houses, because you know, just like today,
coffee houses became these community gathering places where people could
get together to share ideas or conduct business. Um. The
first ones in Europe open in the seventeenth century, with
England getting its first in sixteen fifty two, and about
a decade later London was up to about eighty different
(21:41):
coffee houses, and forty years after that the city contained
more than five hundred. Wow. I mean, the idea really
did take off from the start. But you know, just
like in the Ottoman Empire, coffee houses also had their
share of detractors in Europe, and some of them are
pretty funny to read about. You know. For instance, in
England that was a group of women who banded together
in sixteen seventy four and they wrote something called the
(22:03):
Women's Petition against Coffee, which was this manifesto that claimed
that coffee robbed men of their masculinity. So the women
refer to their husband's new pastime as quote the excessive
use of that new fangled, abominable heathenish liquor called coffee.
But it's been baptized. But right right? What they think
was so bad about drinking coffee? Well, I mean, I
(22:25):
guess the idea was that these once vera hard working
men were now just sitting around in coffee shops all days,
sipping coffee, talking like a bunch of frenchmen, I guess.
But you know, the men of England actually didn't take
this affront of their manhood lying down, and instead they
pinned their response to this, and it was called Men's
Answer to the Women's Petition against Coffee. I love the
titles of these stages in that here's what they claimed that,
(22:49):
far from making men impotent, coffee actually made quote the
erection more vigorous, adding a spiritual ascendency to the sperm.
I don't even know what that means. I'm sure I
don't want to either. Is really wild to hear how
dead certain people were that like, coffee must be bad
for you somehow. I mean, it's kind of ironic considering
(23:11):
how often we hear about the potential health benefits of
drinking coffee today. Well, you know, and I actually did
a little bit of digging on some of those health
claims because there's something I've heard pretty often too, and
you know, the most prevalent one is that drinking a
certain number of cups of coffee will help you live longer.
And surprisingly, the science actually seems to bear this out.
Like I was looking at this study that was released
(23:31):
last year by the European Society of Cardiology. So about
a decade ago, these researchers got together about twenty volunteers
in Spain, and they asked them about their food and
coffee drinking habits, as well as their overall health history
and lifestyles and all kinds of stuff like that. And
so they look at them ten years later, and the researchers,
you know, we're reconnecting with them and wanted to see
(23:53):
how they were holding up. And what they found was
that those participants who drank at least four cups of
coffee a day were astounding sixty more likely to avoid
premature death than those who hardly drank coffee at all.
But it's kind of not the weirdest part. The researchers
also found that for each additional two cups of coffee
that I participant drink each day, their risk of any
(24:16):
causes immortality was actually reduced by an extra twenty two
per cent. So I think what you're saying here is
if I drink like a dozen cops of coffee a day,
I'll basically live forever. Yeah, I'm not sure that that's
what I'm saying, but you know, you take away from
it what you want. But you know, the real explanation
for why coffee can boost your longevity is pretty interesting.
(24:38):
And I was looking at the study out of Stanford,
and what they found was that the caffeine and coffee
actually combats the inflammatory processes that go along with aging
and these age related conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's.
So basically, the antioxidants in the coffee function like anybody's
fighting off an illness, you know, they attack the harmful
(24:58):
byproducts of our bodies metabolic reactions or like these are
the ones that would otherwise trigger that inflammation. Yeah, well,
I've actually got good news for any of our non
human listeners out there, because apparently coffees health benefits extend
to the animal kingdom as well. And we know this
because the oldest cat ever on record was actually an
avid coffee drinker. Her name was cream Puff, and she
(25:21):
lived to be a whopping thirty eight years old and
three days as well. Um, and this was actually thanks
to her daily morning coffee, not to mention the bacon,
eggs and broccoli she also ate. It doesn't sound like
a bad diet, and obviously that's super impressive, But how
do you know it was the coffee that kept around
so long? Like, couldn't have this just been a coincidence? Yeah,
(25:42):
of course, anything's possible. But it is worth keeping in
mind that the previous record holder before cream Puff was
a thirty four year old cat named Grandpa Rex Allen.
And not only the Gramps have the same owner as
cream Puff, he was fed the exact same diet too,
including that all important daily dose of java. And that
is pretty convincing, to be honest with you. But there's
(26:03):
still one health aspect of coffee. I'm not so sure
about it, and that's whether or not it should be
considered cancerous. And scientist seemed to go back and forth
from this from time to time. But if we're going
to commit four or more cups of coffee a day,
I feel like it'd be pretty nice to have a
definitive answer on this. Yeah. Well, you're in luck because
the World Health Organization actually made a statement about this
(26:23):
not too long ago, and their conclusion was sort of surprising.
Oh really, so what did they say? Well, I'll tell
you about that in a minute, but first let's take
another quick break. Okay. Well, so I know you were
(26:48):
curious about whether or not coffee causes cancer, and honestly,
the answer is kind of a mixed bag. So first
the good news, there's no conclusive evidence that drinking coffee
leads to cancer. In the past, that in antional Agency
for Research on Cancer had actually labeled the coffee as
quote possible carcinogen, which landed in the same category as
chloroform and lots of other harmful substances. I mean, it's
(27:10):
a little weird to think of coffee in the same
class as chloroform. I feel like that's kind of extreme.
But but you're saying that warning has been reversed at
this point. Yeah, so the i r C changed its
mind after reviewing over a thousands scientific studies and humans
and animals, none of which provide enough evidence to support
the quote possibly carcinogenic label. Okay, so that feels like
a win for all of us. So why did you
(27:32):
say it was a mixed bag? Yeah? I mean that's
because of the bad news, which is that the agency
also conclude that basically all very hot drinks are most
likely carcinogenic. Apparently there's now enough evidence to suggest that
drinking anything a hundred forty nine degrees fahrenheit or hotter
probably causes cancer of the esophagus. And since the average
cup of Joe is typically served between one sixty and
(27:54):
one degrees fahrenheit, that's not so great news for coffee drinkers. Yeah,
I mean, if you think about it, t or hot
water drinkers for that matter. But um, alright, So the
good news is is that coffee itself probably isn't cancerous,
but very hot coffee might be. And I don't know,
I feel like if that's not a ringing endorsement for
cold brew, I'm really not sure. What would be. Yeah,
(28:15):
I know, and I'm a huge cold brew drinker. But
on a lighter note, when I was looking into the
cancer angle, I also came across this bizarre thought experiment
in Scientific American and it's actually just too weird not
to share. So you know how on the show Friends,
the cast is always drinking those enormous mugs of coffee
at the central perk. Oh, yeah, definitely were huge. Yeah.
So this writer named Kyle Hill remembers too, and he
(28:37):
actually crunched the numbers to see just how many people
you could kill with all the caffeine and the cast
of Friends consumed over the course of the show's ten seasons,
And it turns out that, assuming each episode represents a
week of time, on average, the six Friends down an
incredible gallons of coffee, which is enough to send over
people to the hospital. I like how this is the
(29:00):
lighter note that you wanted to talk about. I mean,
I guess it at least raises the interesting question of
how much caffeine is actually safe to consume. So did
did you get a sense of that apart from this
ridiculous hypothetical. Yeah, so, some scientists say it's about ten
grams of caffeine. That's enough to do most people in
but there are also reports of people dying from as
little as four milligrams. Honestly that there isn't like a
(29:23):
universal overdose amount for caffeine because the number varies from
person to person, and that's because of all sorts of factors,
from you know, your heart help to your body weight. Yeah,
that's what I was gonna say, with like heart health,
especially because everybody's is so different, it seems like issues
could be triggered with even a little bit of caffeine
for some people. But but what about that ten grams
you mentioned? How easy is it to ingest that much?
(29:45):
So not very thankfully, Like that would be the equivalent
about fifty shots of five hour energy. And since there's
only about a hundred fifty milligrams of caffeine and an
eight ounds cup of coffee, you'd actually need to drink
a full seventy cups to get to ten grams. And
if that wasn't unlikely enough, like you'd actually have to
drink all those cups at the same time. Because caffeine's
(30:06):
effects less in over time. So there's some good news.
It's effectively impossible to odeon caffeine from coffee. There's just
no way you could fit that much liquid in your stomach.
Not and not to mention that most people's coffee breaks
aren't long enough to bruise seventy cups of coffee, much
less drink them. That's true. But you know, speaking of
coffee breaks, and this is a total detour from what
we were talking about, did you ever wonder how that
(30:27):
practice got it start? Yeah, like I used to know
the answer at one point. I feel like it has
to do with some sort of ad campaign or something. Well,
yes and no, and they're there are actually some conflicting
reports about this, much like the origins of coffee itself.
But according to City Lab, coffee breaks are a product
of early twentieth century unions. So factories finally standardized the
(30:47):
work day. They came to be eight hours a day,
but they also added these rest breaks into the schedule,
and it was during these breaks that workers would drink
coffee to get that quick jolt of energy so they
could finish the work day. And of course, entrepreneurs took
notice of this practice, and pretty soon you started seeing
these street carts and coffee counters and vending machines just
popping up all over the place. So I mean, it
(31:10):
makes complete sense to me that coffee breaks would be
this American invention, you know, American workers coming up with it.
But you said some folks don't actually bind it that theory. Well,
in particular, these would be the citizens of Stoughton, Wisconsin.
They don't buy into it at all. So on the contrary,
this tiny town insists that it was actually the area's
population of Norwegian female immigrants who invented coffee breaks. And
(31:31):
this would have been back in the late nineteenth century.
So apparently there was a tobacco warehouse in the town
that hired these Norwegian women to help strip the plants,
and since the warehouse wasn't too far from their homes,
the women would routinely pop in to check on their
kids or get dinner started, and of course grab a
cup of coffee before heading back to work. And even
though outsiders continue to challenge Stoughton's claim to fame, the
(31:54):
town itself has no doubt about this local lore being true.
In fact, the residents still under the town's history each
year by holding this official coffee break festival, and they
build it. As quote the weekend when everyone is Norwegian.
Well that's pretty sweet. But wait, so I was thinking
coffee breaks had something to do with marketing and ad
(32:15):
Caffei's did Did I just make that up? Now? So
that's another legit option. See, if you look back to
the early nineteen hundreds, you had multiple companies beginning to
offer coffee breaks as these official job perks for their employees, like,
for instance, the company that makes bark A Loungers agreed
to give workers short breaks during the morning in the
afternoon and then they could heat up a cup of
(32:36):
coffee on like a kerosene fueled hot plate. While all
kinds of companies like claim to having offered the first
official coffee break, the first group to actually coin the
phrase coffee break didn't come along until nineteen fifty two.
And that's the year that Pan American Coffee Bureau launched
an ad campaign encouraging the public to quote, give yourself
a coffee break and get what coffee gives you. That's
(32:59):
just great ad coffee right there. But I always think
it's so fun to find out where the lingo surrounding
words and phrases comes from. And did you know the
phrase cup of Joe might have come from a US
naval secretary named Josephus Daniels. No. He apparently banned all
drinks stronger than coffee from being served in the mess halls,
so the officers started applying his name to the only
(33:21):
stiff drink he approved of. And of course there's also
a good chance the phrase goes back even further, like
some people say, Joe is a shortening of the word jamoke,
which I guess is a hybrid of java and mocho,
you know, two regions known for coffee cultivation. I'd actually
never heard that. Well, since we're on that subject, the
bureau that gave us coffee breaks was also behind another
(33:44):
famous coffee phrase, and that's the phrase one for the road.
You know that phrases typically used now to mean like
one more drink before I go, It was originally more
literally taken. So remember the country's interstate highway system was
brand new at this time, so that idea of one
more for the road, it was really intended as a
safety measure to make sure Americans were staying awake or
(34:05):
not falling asleep while they were at the wheel during
these long distance drives. That's awesome, but speaking of one
more for the road, it looks like Tristan still got
a full pot of Civic coffee over there. If you're
feeling thirsty before the fact, Yeah, I think I was
gonna be a hard pass from the mango, But but
I am ready for the fact off. So I'm reading
(34:30):
up for this episode. I was looking at this New
York Times article from a couple of years back that
was about the fact that a surprising number of flights
are delayed each year because of broken coffee makers. So,
as the article explained, these are incredibly expensive coffee pots,
and we're talking ten dollars apiece, sometimes more, and that's
because they have so many safety features like circuit breakers
(34:51):
and special wiring. What that also means is that there
are more things that could possibly go wrong, and so
if a coffee maker isn't working, they then have to
do the full investigation to make sure it's not because
of bad wiring on the plane or anything like that.
But you know, people can't live without their coffee, so
we just deal with this. That's amazing. So here's the
(35:11):
fact about the role coffee played and trying to get
the Brazilian Olympic delegation to the Nine two Games, and
this was in Los Angeles. It was a super expensive trip,
so they decided to load up fifty thousand bags of
Brazilian coffee on the ship they were traveling on, and
the plan was to sell as much of it as
possible along the way to pay for the trip. But unfortunately,
they didn't sell quite as much as they had hoped,
(35:32):
and when they made it to the port in l
a they couldn't afford to pay the one dollar per
person charge, so only about half the team could get
off the boat, and in fact, there were still fifteen
athletes who were never able to get off the ship
in the States, so during the entire voyage, these fifteen
people never got off the ship. Yeah, it's terrible. I've
been wondering if there was an actual Maxwell House. I
(35:54):
don't know why I was wondering this, but you know,
it turns out that there was so Maxwell House hotel.
It up just a few years after the Civil War,
and it was the fanciest hotel in Nashville. Apparently Teddy
Roosevelt liked visiting, as well as several of the Vanderbilts,
and the coffee actually got its name from this hotel.
I was looking into the history of it and Sally
(36:14):
the hotel burned down in nine so it's no longer there.
But there was actually a Maxwell house. That's crazy. It
was there until the sixties though. That's pretty impressive. So
it turns out Beethoven was a big fan of coffee,
but he was also incredibly particular about how it was
to be made. In fact, he only wanted his cups
made with precisely sixty beans. And I don't know why
(36:35):
I find that surprising, but that's actually how I'll be
ordering my coffee from now on, like like a venti
Beethoven style. Right, all right, Well, I think I had
actually seen this fact before. But did you know that
the first ever webcam was used at Cambridge? But it
was actually set up to do something much less academic
than you might imagine. It was used to give the
(36:56):
researchers there the ability to monitor the coffee in the
break room without having to get up to check it.
I love that that became like an Internet star and
everyone was checking the Cambridge coffee. But you know what
we opened talking about cat poop coffee. Well, I figured
maybe we should close the show with an equally gross,
but different kind of bean processing. That's vanilla flavored monkey
(37:18):
saliva coffee and this comes from Taiwan. Apparently, these monkeys
were becoming a big problem for coffee farms because they
were like trying to get their buzz and destroying the crops.
They would just suck on the coffee cherries and then
spit out the pits. But one thing a farmer noticed
was that these beans the monkeys that spit out, had
a unique vanilla flavor to them. So he just decided
(37:38):
to team up with the monkeys, and now we have
an even more rare coffee for Tristan to love. That
is pretty wild. And I have to respect Mango, the
fact that you were bold enough to start off the
episode talking about poop coffee and in the episode talking
about monkey spit coffee. So those might both be gross,
but I respect that. So I'm going to have to
give you today's trophy. Thank you very much, and thank
(38:01):
you guys for listening. I'm sure we left out some
great facts about coffee, so don't hesitate to let us
know the ones that we missed. We always love to
hear from You can email us part time Genius and
how stuff works dot com or call us one Fact
hot line. That's eight four four pt Genius. You can
always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so
much for listening, Kay, thanks again for listening. Part Time
(38:35):
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(38:57):
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