Science: How to be a better coffee taster
So you’ve just taken a sip of a very rare coffee, and flavours of passion fruit explode in your mouth. But here’s the thing: that flavour of passion fruit is not coming from your mouth. It’s not even...
8 Jan 202444min
Introducing: Season 2 of The Science of Coffee
We're back with another series of The Science of Coffee! Across 10 science stories, narrative audio producer and coffee professional James Harper takes you on a journey into coffee's hidden microscop...
2 Jan 20242min
History: America’s love affair with coffee
America is coffee-obsessed. From Central Perk’s red couch being the centre of major plot twists in Friends to the fact the average American drank more than two cups a day. And the conventional explan...
29 Maj 202344min
History: Italy’s democratic espresso culture
One morning back in the ‘80s, Howard Schultz walks out of his Milan hotel, stumbles into an espresso bar, and fundamentally changes coffee history. He discovered (and then popularises) the iconic, t...
15 Maj 202344min
History: Haiti, Colonialism and Coffee
Haiti was once the biggest, most profitable coffee growing region in the world. But today Haiti is one of the world’s poorest nations where you can’t get a bag of Haitian beans delivered to Berlin i...
1 Maj 202347min
History: How coffee houses changed the world
A coffee shop is a lot more than just a place to drink coffee. The seats and sofas encourage you to invite a friend, and chat. And chatting is powerful: ideas that emerge from these caffeine-fuelled ...
17 Apr 202345min
Introducing: Series Two of A History of Coffee
We're back with more stories about the tiny psychoactive seed that changed the world and continues to shape our lives today. In Series Two, we reveal how the invention of the coffee shop revolutionis...
3 Apr 20235min
Science: Sonic Seasoning
Imagine you’ve got a cup of coffee in front of you. You haven’t tasted it yet. You therefore don’t know what it tastes like, right? Wrong. Some scientists argue that you actually do know what it wil...
31 Jan 202353min
