Coffee
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coffee. Most of us are addicted. We need it on Monday mornings, post nights out, during nights out, in fact every morning. And afternoons. Augustine Sedgewick teaches history at the City University of New York. He has a new book out on how coffee reshaped the world as it became one of the most valuable commodities in history and our 'most popular drug.' He talked to me about the journey of coffee from its obscure beginnings in the Arabian peninsula and explained just how it has transformed our landscapes, physiologies, economy and the nature of work itself.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, |
| 0:00.6 | folks, Dan Snow here. |
| 0:01.6 | I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:06.1 | I'd love for you to be there. |
| 0:07.5 | Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September |
| 0:12.2 | to celebrate the 10 years. |
| 0:14.1 | You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. |
| 0:17.5 | Look forward to seeing you there. |
| 0:24.2 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Stowe's history here. It's still the V-Day holiday weekend here |
| 0:29.2 | in the UK. So people are still buzzing with all things at World War II. This is actually |
| 0:34.1 | a podcast about something completely different, although actually related to World War II. |
| 0:37.1 | World War II would have been a different experience for the troops involved, |
| 0:39.8 | had it not been for coffee. Coffee sustained many people on long, dangerous, arduous shifts, both on |
| 0:47.8 | the home front, also, of course, in foxholes on the front line or in the steel hulls of ships |
| 0:53.8 | churning across the North Atlantic. |
| 0:56.2 | This is an interview with Augustine Sedgwick, who teaches at the City University of New York. |
| 1:00.2 | He's just written a book about how coffee has shaped the world. |
| 1:02.5 | Literally shaped our landscape in many places, becoming responsible for the pulling up of natural landscapes |
| 1:07.7 | and their replacement by a giant monoculture of coffee. |
| 1:12.6 | Augustine is convinced that coffee underpins the way that we work, the way that we relate |
| 1:18.8 | to each other, it's ever present. It's pretty fascinating stuff. So enjoy your morning coffee |
| 1:24.6 | and relax listening to this podcast about its seismic impact on our culture, our way of life and our economy. |
... |
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