How did coffee help to usher in an unprecedented wave of discovery and innovation? In this episode of Johan Norberg’s New and Improved, Norberg traces the unexpected roots of coffee and how it rose to dominance and changed our world along the way.

Coffee reigns supreme in the daily routines of people all around the world, but it wasn’t always that way. Coffee found its place in the lives of Europeans in the early 1600s, contributing to the emergence of a new age in history.

Offering a sober alternative to alcohol, coffee, with its stimulating effects on the mind, gave rise to a new cultural phenomenon where people would gather in public coffee shops to debate theories and exchange new and world-changing ideas.