You're Dead to Me - History of Coffee (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Jonathan Morris and comedian Sophie Duker to learn all about the bittersweet history of coffee.Coffee is undoubtedly one of the most popular drinks worldwide, and we consume an estimated 95 million cups of the stuff everyday in the UK alone. But where does coffee come from, and when did we start enjoying its caffeinated effects? From its origins in medieval Ethiopia and Yemen, through the coffeehouses of the Middle East and Europe, to its central importance to soldiers during the American Civil War, this episode traces the complex history of our favourite beverage. Along the way, it explores the uses people have had for coffee over the years, in religious rituals, as a stimulant to intellectual exchange, and even as a medicine. We also debunk some of the myths that have been brewed up about coffee’s history. Did the Pope really call it ‘the devil’s brew’? Was it discovered by an Ethiopian goatherd? And did a Dutch man really have to smuggle coffee trees out of Yemen? Listen to find out!This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Matt Ryan Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

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Real survival stories available now wherever you get your shows. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and today we are grinding our beans, popping on the kettle and plunging our cafeteria as we learn all about the history of coffee and to help us get caffeinated and educated we've invited over two very special coffee guests. In History Corner, he's a research professor in history at the University of Hertfordshire where he's a historian of consumption, especially the history of coffee. Maybe you've read his book,

Coffee, a Global History, or listened to his podcast series, A History of Coffee. It's Professor Jonathan Morris. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you, Greg. Lovely to have you here and in Comedy Corner. She's an award-winning comedian and writer. You will recognise her from loads of TV, including her glorious victory on Taskmaster. Maybe you've seen her new stand-up show, but Daddy, I love her. It's fantastic. And of course you'll remember her from our back catalogue, including recent episodes on naughty nun Benedetta Carlini and the Legend of Atlantis.

It's Sophie Jukka. Welcome back for a sixth appearance, Sophie. Hey, I'm actually fuming because I heard that you tried to get Sabrina Carpenter for this episode. Yeah. Yeah. She was busy doing the Grammys or something. Yeah, I was busy watching the Grammys. So actually. Key important question here, I'm relying on you. Do you drink coffee?

I restrict my coffee intake because I like the smell of coffee. Right. And I like it as a sort of cultural, a sort of a cultural concept. It makes me feel like I want to die. Perfect guess for the podcast. But I do, I'm sort of like, inoculizing, that's not a word. I'm sort of building up my tolerance to coffee. And sometimes people don't know that it causes such reaction on me. So if I'm feeling chaotic, I will occasionally order coffee. No one else knows that it's a big moment, but it is like, it's terrible. Having a coffee is really like opening a vortex into another reality.

I don't drink coffee at all. I don't know anything about coffee. So Jonathan, I'm assuming you're a coffee drinker. I am a coffee drinker. I'm beginning to think it's also a murder weapon within the context of the studio. All right and you're gonna you're gonna talk us through the history of coffee so we're gonna learn plenty today. So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subject and whether you've got a crippling caffeine problem whether you keep it decaf whether like Sophie it is a dangerous thing for you, or if you're like me

you just can't stand the bitterness. You all know what coffee is. In terms of pop culture, coffee is just part of our life. Coffee shops crop up all over our favourite pop culture. You've got Central Perkin Friends, you've got Luke's Diner and Gilmore Girls, you've got Will Ferrell enjoying the best cup of coffee in the world in Elf, Giles from Buffy featuring in the Sexy Nest Cafe adverts from the 90s, Sabrina Carpenter already mentioned by Sophie, the espresso summertime hit, and my personal fave would be Paul Rudd ranting in role models about the stupidly inconsistent name of all the different coffee sizes. Venti means 20, he shouts. But what about the history of coffee? How did it become the world's favourite beverage? And what do goats have to do with it? Let's find out. Right,

Professor Jonathan, there is a story, there's a sort of lovely myth that people like to talk about that the first time people got hooked on caffeine in these wild coffee plants involved an animal. Sophie, do you want to guess what the animal was and what the story was? Oh, do I get any clues on the animal? Sure. Is it a big animal? No. Medium sized. OK, I feel from context clues of being in this room earlier, you said goats. I did say goats.

And I feel it might have been a goat. It is a goat. So tell me the story. Recount for me this fabled myth. OK, so there's like a goat. There's just a guy, but he's also a goat and he lives on a farm. There's a farmer who's called Guy. He has a goat. And then he realizes that his goat is acting like really unconventionally.

It's an old goat, but he's acting more like a kid, you know, he's got like, he's got a spring in his step. I think Sophie should be writing the origin definitely in that one. It's definitely an improvement. The real origin myth, it's just real origin myth, it's not real. It's really about the goat herd, a guy called Caldy and he sees his goats and they're dancing away. I said that. And he's thinking, what's going on? And he's seeing that they're eating these red berries and then they're starting to dance. Caldy thinks, red berries, let's see what I can

do. Takes a few berries on himself, throws some very good moves, decides to take these back, goes to the kind of scholar in his local village and the guy tries them, doesn't like them, throws them on the fire, somehow or other smells that smell that you really liked and says, oh, we should take these, grind them down, make a coffee beverage with it. And that is the story of how coffee is formed. It's an Ethiopian heritage. It's really from the sort of the southwest of Ethiopia. That's our kind of mythic origins. But what about an actual historical reference, Jonathan? Have we got something that we can say this is the first mention of coffee?

I think what we can best say is we've got the first Arabic manuscript that mentions coffee that we can definitively say mentions coffee and that's written in about 1515, written by a guy with a very long name that ends in Al-Jazari. It concentrates and tells his version of the story of coffee and in it he highlights that another sort of Sufi mystic, a man called Al-Dubani, said that the Sufis should bring over coffee to Yemen from Ethiopia to consume in place of cat, which was in short supply because this would enable them to sort of stay awake and go into their trance-like state while they were carrying out their nightly devotions. So that seems to be the most viable option, as it were, for what we can say is the earliest clear use of coffee

in that way. And what we can say is probably that obviously the indigenous people in southwest Ethiopia, in Kaffir in particular, were probably using coffee for a variety of things, but foraging the coffee, not growing it. Matthew 4.10 Ethiopia to Yemen crosses across the straits and into Yemen, so we're into the Arab world. From Yemen, do we get it then spreading out through those sort of trade routes out through the Middle East? Matthew 4.10

Yeah, essentially coffee kind of circulates through the Middle East up the Red Sea, that kind of diaspora, really the kind of sort of Islamic diaspora around there. The big next stage is in a sense at a certain point the Yemenis start growing the coffee themselves. And that's quite a big transformation. So what we can also definitively say is they are the first to cultivate coffee as opposed to forage coffee. Gotcha. And so it spreads through trade routes. You've got Mecca, Jeddah, Medina, Cairo, these big, big cities in the Islamic world. At what point do people go, but it tastes nice and I'm not a syphilistic, but could I just drink it? When does it become

a beverage? Yeah, so probably relatively quickly in the 1500s. The big question here and why this is so important in Islam is coffee intoxicating, because if it is, you shouldn't be drinking it. But if it is not intoxicating, then you could start drinking it. And if you could start drinking it, well, of course, then you're going to start socializing around it. And this moves into the creation of the coffee house, etc. So it begins to become at that point, a social drink.

It's used a lot by students, for example. What a change that might be for students in the 15th century. How would that work? Yes. Gosh. And it's Suleiman the Magnificent. He closes down the coffee houses in Istanbul and Aleppo and Damascus. And yet somehow, as you say, the coffee house culture starts to thrive.

The Ottomans basically sort of take over influence in the peninsula. We can kind of trace the way that the coffee house moves up through Aleppo, Damascus, and eventually arrives into Istanbul. And Suleiman at first is very welcoming, and then 10 years later, he wants them all closed. The reason seems to be about, if you like, the fear of what might be going on in the coffee houses. The stated reasons are, you know,

well, this is all a bit dubious. There might be things being consumed there that aren't actually coffee. There are things that he thinks or articulates are wrong with coffee houses. And then there's the underlying assumption that we have that is Suleiman a bit worried that people might be going around saying he's not so magnificent. I see. Okay. How do you think the Pope, Pope Clement the Eighth, where do you think he

stood on the moral question of coffee in the 1600s? I feel like maybe he was pro. Mm-hmm. Because I feel like coffee as a beverage is kind of like God squad. It's very like, I think it gives you fervor, more diligent as well. And I think it's like an alternative to maybe like alcohol. Maybe it's like a relatively new thing in Europe that could give people vim and vigor. Matthew 10 So the story goes that they took him the coffee and he sort of sips it and says, this devil's drink is delicious. We've got to cheat the devil. We're going to baptise

it. We're going to make it a good Christian thing. Except he never did. Matthew 11 That's a shame though, because the line, this devil's drink is delicious, is a really good line. Stick that on a t-shirt. I feel like Cluny could really. Yeah, exactly. By the 1600s, I think we find coffee in Europe.

We know in Venice, which obviously was a port city, you'd have a lot of Turkish merchants in there. One of them died in Venice in about 1575. He was murdered, right? He was murdered. Yeah, he didn't just die, he was killed. So they had an investigation, so they obviously had to go and look at his stuff.

And in it, they found little coffee cups. So we kind of deduced from that that coffee was beginning to be drunk in Venice, at least by those sort of expatriate merchants. From that, then we begin to hear things about coffee being used as a medicine so you could be prescribed coffee. Sophie, would you take a prescription of coffee? It doesn't sound like you would do anything

good. I feel like it doesn't do good stuff for me, but not medicinally but functionally. So like the medicine to get you through your essay crisis. We've seen in the Ottoman world that the idea of the coffee house could be seditious and dangerous but also there would be intellectual activity there, people gathering, discussing, debating political ideas. Does the same thing happen in Europe? This is Britain's greatest contribution to coffee. Oh!

In my personal view, because once you kind of really go into it, actually the date suggests that the first thing that is definitively a coffee house, i.e. a place that you go, get served coffee, sit around, drink it, have a chat, is here in London in 1652 to 54 because we have a guy called Pasquero Rosé who sets this up. There are people who talk about coffee houses being present in Italy, but when you look at those, they look more like places that sell coffee beans. So Pascua Rosé comes over, he is recruited by a local businessman here, comes over as his man servant, then opens his coffee house under his patronage near St. Michael's Church in Cornhill, just by the Bank of England. And with two years, he's actually got a proper coffee house.

You can imagine there are different kinds of coffee houses for different kinds of people. But a lot of the coffee houses become places where people are transacting, as it were, some form of business. I'm going to mention Jonathan's because after all, I should. And Jonathan's is really the origin of the London Stock Exchange. Traders meeting their trading bonds, et cetera. But then you get other ones where you kind of bring together, you know, your clear and tell comes together and they're a very particular kind.

So you would have people who were interested in science as in science as was understood then. There's a natural philosophy at the time. Yeah, exactly. Who come together to debate things, you would get people who are interested in politics, who come together to debate politics. One of the origins of the ballot box is supposed to be that a ballot box was invented for holding debates in coffee houses because you then have to go around and get everyone to vote.

So you get them to throw their ballot into a box. Oh really? Yeah, absolutely. We need to talk about the darker side of this coffee boom. Where do these things originate from? By the 1600s and definitely 1700s, we're getting coffee plantations? So really by the very end of the 1600s, the 1700s really. So what has happened is that

the Ottomans have really kind of controlled the trade in coffee. It's all done through the port of Almacare or what we call Mokka. Absolutely. They're very careful to try and protect that and make it a monopoly. Eventually, the Dutch managed to get hold of some coffee, which they find actually growing in India. They take it to Indonesia. They plant it on the island of Java originally. So that's the first time that coffee has really grown outside of its sort of indigenous areas. Then also the French get hold of it, the other European powers, and the place that they then take it, the French take it to the Isle of Bourbon, which is now Reunion of Africa. But really the big

place is the Caribbean. They go to the Caribbean, plant coffee in a variety of places. The Dutch plant it on Suriname. The French plant it in what was then their colony called St-Domingue, which becomes Haiti. So by the 1780s, 80% of the world's coffee supply comes from the Caribbean. Just to make this absolutely explicit, that is plantation coffee grown by enslaved people. So that's the key thing. Right, okay. So where does Britain muscle in to this history? So the Brits, they're sort of one period that they really get into coffee is when they take

over the island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, from the Dutch. They go into Ceylon and the overthrow actually, there's an area called the Kingdom of Kandy, it's got an indigenous sort of areas rule in the corner of the interior. They then kind of clear down the forests and want to sort of introduce production and what they think is the ideal crop is coffee. It's pretty destructive process. So they kill off a lot of the wildlife, kill off 60% of the Ceylon's elephants pretty destructive process. So they kill off a lot of the wildlife, kill off 60% of the Ceylon's elephants. Oh no.

No, really bad. They also bring over to work this a lot of workers from Tamil Nadu, Tamils from India, on a kind of indentured labour type schemes. I think the easiest way to say these people are not well treated. Lots of them die. I mean, this is totally new territory for them. They're marched all the way up into the islands. So it is not a great scenario. So this is 1815, this deforestation and plantation happens. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we've had some pretty horrible history there. Let's try and be a little cheerier. Sophie, when do you think America fell in love with their cup of Joe?

The US, what do you think their kind of inciting moment is where they go hang on a second with coffee drinkers? I feel like maybe the late 1900s? Oh, you've gone late? No, the late 19th century. You've gone, okay, so you're like 1880s. Yeah, that's what I think. That's 1880s is what came into my head.

It's too late, isn't it? It is quite late, yeah. I think we can go early in that. Okay, fine. If I say to you Boston Tea Party. No, um. You just reject that outright. No.

The early 17th century? So you've gone too early now, I think. Maybe, or maybe you haven't. Jonathan? The Boston Tea Party is obviously in the 1770s. Yes. So, the Boston Tea Party is obviously in the 1770s. Yes. So actually, no. In one sense, I think Sophie's right both times, which is quite an achievement given that she put two different centuries in there. Because, you know, yeah, there's coffee in America being sold in America. I mean, there's a first person that's licensed

to sell coffee, something called Dorothy Jones, and that's 1670. So I mean it's in colonial America. Well done Sophie. You can take the point. What does really kick off coffee in the states I think is really two events. One key one is the Civil War. And the Civil War, if you like, there is almost an explanation of the Civil War that goes one side has coffee and the other doesn't. And the side that has coffee, which is actually the North, win. Because they give their troops coffee, enough coffee to probably serve maybe even 10 cups of coffee a day. But they recognise that, you know, the generals recognise coffee is kind of comforting, it's warm, it's very easy to do, and it's a stimulant. And that kind of creates a class of people who then want to drink coffee thereafter. And then at the same

time, and this goes back to your point about the 1880s, right, that's the point of obviously mass immigration into America from Europe. So getting coffee is kind of a proof of arriving in America and having made America. Do you see what I mean? It's an aspirational thing in Europe. You get to America, you can probably drink coffee because the coffee is more easily obtained. The American Civil War was in the 1860s obviously. The extraordinary thing, soldiers' diaries mentioned the word coffee more than the word bullet or rifle. We also have a lieutenant colonel, Walter King, a soldier called Lieutenant Colonel Walter King. He's a soldier in Missouri Cavalry Regiment who designs a rifle which has got an inbuilt coffee grinder.

Aww. We also get, Jonathan, at this time customers buying loose green coffee beans, they're roasting them at home. So you can now make coffee at home. When does coffee granule show up? When is it something that comes in a little pack, you spoon it out and you stir it in the bottom of the cup? Yeah, so there are attempts at doing this sort of soluble coffees from about the 1900s. And indeed some of them are developed, the First World War we see the American soldiers get some sort of supposedly instant coffee. But actually what we understand as instant

coffee is really a product more of the Second World War. Just before then, we see the invention of, as it were, Nescafe or the creation of Nescafe, which is really the first of those sort of instant brands. And that sort of then ironically is brought back into Europe by the Americans because the work has to be done over in the States because it can't be done in Europe because it's in the middle of conflict. They bring it back on their backpacks, essentially.

And so this becomes then sort of the takeoff of instant coffee after the Second World War, becomes part of the range of the big American roasters in America. But it actually becomes really big in Europe, particularly in those sort of non-traditional country, coffee drinking countries like the UK. Interesting. I have a question.

Yeah, go for it. Was there like a, was there or does there emerge a sort of gendered narrative about coffee, about women not drinking coffee because they'll get nervous or shaky or start trying to get the vote? There's actually been that narrative for some time, actually right back to the introduction of coffee in Britain. I mean, it's very much a male thing. Coffee is the male drink, tea is the female drink, et cetera.

And then there's the whole thing about women really not being in coffee houses at that time. But I think also the interesting thing with these kind of, you know, the use of advertising is another way around where people write ads that are basically about, are you a good enough wife? Do you know how to make your husband's coffee just right? Will Barron By the late 19th century, the Americans are getting their coffee from South America now. Brazil becomes a huge coffee producing nation, doesn't it? Paul Wilson Yeah, Brazil becomes the dominant coffee

producer in the late 19th century and it still is the largest coffee producer in the world. São Paulo and the paulistas, the coffee barons of São Paulo become so powerful that actually when the Portuguese, well when Brazilians imperial family, which is an off-spute of the Portuguese royal family, too complicated to get into, but when they get thrown out, it's these paulistas who really take over the running of the country. So the coffee barons take over the country. The coffee barons take over the country, help the coffee grow, it's got help the country grow its coffee to the point that, well the key date is perhaps by 1906, 1906, they produce

over 80, 85% of the world's coffee. The world's coffee? The world's coffee. The world's coffee? The world's coffee. Wow. And I have to say 70% of that 85% then get shipped into the States, which is the world's big coffee market. So that's the way that it works.

And by the 1920s, Columbia, Central American countries, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala also- Are also beginning to get into this. Yeah, exactly. And the world starts to become familiar to us now. The coffee, the labels, the names in our pockets, we start to go, hang on, yeah, I know that. And we also get the rise of Robusta.

Robusta is a different species? So Robusta is a different species, and it is somewhat more tolerant. It gets replanted in Asia, and it gets replanted in those new, particularly West African states. And as a result of that, you know, Africa again becomes quite a powerful producer of coffee from about the 1970s. Okay, yeah. So both West Africa and East Africa where it originated in the first beginning

of our episode. Okay, so we're into the 20th century. And then by 1971, we get a major moment in global history, globalization history, we get the founding of which coffee shop in Seattle, Sophie? In Seattle, it's going to be Starbucks. It is Starbucks. And this is important, I suppose, for economic reasons, for corporate reasons, but also just the sort of taste reasons in terms of the idea of specialty coffees, the idea of coffee is something you can enjoy, almost like you can enjoy red wine. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think one of the things to say about the original Starbucks is actually the original Starbucks just sells coffee beans. And what it's doing is selling a whole different set of varieties of coffee beans. So what it's saying is it's not just coffee. There are all these different kind of coffees. They have all these different kinds of flavours and processes, et cetera, and you should pick one that you like. And it's this sort of speciality coffee

idea is that this is therefore not ordinary coffee. It's not the stuff that you're getting in the supermarket, but it's something quite distinctive. So there we go, Sefa. We've done a lot of latte history. We've gone around the world. We've seen coffee was religious, medical, political, colonial, cultural, industrial. Does it change your view of, are you more tempted to go out and drink a coffee now or are you less tempted? I think it feels like I want to be in on the party. I felt sort of maybe like a psychosomatic reaction to talking about coffee so long, like I feel quite hyped up. It's not been a relaxing chat.

Sorry. Because I think even hearing it, I'm like, maybe it's my associations with coffee have been mainly as a sort of wonder drug to finish an essay and less about the sort of salon culture. Yeah, we've heard a lot today about people getting together and being together and socializing, chatting, communing. Yeah, I think maybe like I'm trying to think about what the modern equivalent is or what the young upstart is.

And I feel like it's probably either like bubble tea or creams milkshakes. And that's where that's the hotbed of political dissent today. The nuance window! This is where Sophie and I sit silently and sip our moccas for two minutes while Professor Jonathan tells us something we need to know about the history of coffee. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away Professor Jonathan. Okay, well, I'm going to start with the risen old farmer who has proudly showed us around his beautiful coffee red cherries drying on the patio outside his house in the province

of Lampung in Sumatra. And so I asked him who he's going to sell those to, and he said, no one, those are the best quality. I'm keeping them for myself. And I can't tell you how much that answer made me happy and moved me, because the coffee trade has long continued to reproduce the structures of its colonial past, a crop that indigenous peoples were forced to cultivate by foreign fiat, that was often tended by unfree labour, enabling the price to consumers in, as it were, the global north to be kept low at the expense of producers in the global south.

Unsurprisingly then, very few producer countries adopted coffee drinking into their own culture. The coffee trade has long continued to reproduce the structures of its colonial past. A crop that indigenous peoples were forced to cultivate by foreign fiat, and that was often tended by unfree labour, enabling the price to consumers in the global north to be kept low at the expense of producers in the global south. Unsurprisingly, few producer countries adopted coffee drinking into their culture. Post-independence, many former colonies continued to actively prevent coffee being consumed within the country in order to garner precious foreign exchange reserves.

It's still not unusual to meet farmers who have never tasted any form of coffee, let alone sampled their own coffee. When I first began my research into coffee in the early 2000s, the trade appeared to be in somewhat of an existential crisis. For four consecutive years, the benchmark price for commodity coffee was below that of the cost of production, leading literally to starvation among families that depended upon it for their livelihood. The price collapse was caused by an excess of global production over demand,

particularly as Brazil and Vietnam upped their output and sought to undercut their competitors. Paradoxically, this coincided with the explosion of the modern coffee shop format exemplified by Starbucks. Today, the picture looks very different. Prices are at their highest since the 1970s. While some of that is due to the impact of climate volatility on supply, an underpinning factor is the growth of demand in new markets, including that of producer countries themselves. Asia is driving this with more coffee shops per capita in Seoul than in Seattle.

China has increased its green coffee imports by 50% in the last five years, much of it from Vietnam, while Indonesia itself now consumes 40% of its coffee. The transnational culture of coffee consumption that has taken off offers both a sustainable future for the global coffee industry and a way out of those colonial hangos of the past. Wonderful. Thank you. Sophie, any thoughts on that? That was very, I mean, I like that there's like a sort of glimmer of hope or like a kind of like re taken of the coffee narrative from those producer countries just sort of being entirely beholden

to the whims of the global north. So yeah, I was just like, okay, I'm cancelling the beans, the beans are cancelled. But I think it's quite cool and it's quite cool to see like the kind of renaissance in cultural coffee consumption and how that fits into different places. Okay, listener, if you want to double down on Juca, you can check out our episodes on Benedetta Carlini, Ashanti Gana, the Chevalier de Saint George, if you want some musical history. And for more foodie historical stuff, we have episodes on the history of chocolate, on the history of ice cream, and on celebrity chef Alexis Soyer, which is one of my favourite

episodes. That's a very fun one. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends, subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the episodes one month before other platforms. Lucky you. Make sure also to have your notifications switched on so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the coffee historian himself, Professor Jonathan Morris from the University of Hertfordshire. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Greg. And enjoy your coffee. I will. I will give it my best. And in Comedy Corner, we have the ever sensational Sophie Duker. Thank you, Sophie.

Thank you so much. Thank you. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we savor another historical delight. But for now, I'm off to try and convince the Pope to sanction my debilitating hot chocolate habit. Bye! Best medicine. Dissecting funny and fascinating medicine. Best Medicine Dissecting funny and fascinating medicine

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