I will be the first person to tell you that I am truly and completely addicted to coffee.

It is the very first thing I do every single morning. I do it in a kind of zombie-like state.

I know all the steps without actually having to turn my brain on.

Do you like coffee, Jeannie? No, I don't want any.

Besides being just my own personal addiction, coffee is a plant that transformed the world.

It's a plant that helps people, everywhere, become human beings each morning.

It is a plant that is sold in nearly every grocery store across the entire globe.

And for decades, the place at the center of this essential coffee trade, this essential

coffee explosion, was a building in Brazil.

Its official name was Bolsa Eficial de Cafe, but it became known as the Coffee Palace.

I'm Dylan Thurus and this is Atlas Obscura, the celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places. Today, we're taking a trip to the epicenter of Brazil's coffee

boom. We are headed into the coffee palace after this.

The coffee beans were the center of a love triangle.

A Portuguese sergeant was stationed in French Guiana and he was tasked with smuggling these

coveted beans into Brazil. So he got cozy with the wife of a local politician and she

gifted him a bouquet, laced with coffee seeds. According to the legend, these would become

the very first seeds of Brazil's booming coffee industry, an industry that would transform

the country. Whether or not this legend is true, coffee arrived in Brazil in the early

1700s and the place where the spark really began was the port city of Santos.

Santos was the provincial port. Ian Reed is a professor of Latin American studies at

Soca University of America. He spent a lot of time in Santos and he did much of his

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