In 1698, a broker named John Castaing started publishing a twice-weekly list of stock and commodity prices from Jonathan's Coffee House in Exchange Alley, London. That document is the direct ancestor of every financial data feed that exists today. The London Stock Exchange, Lloyd's of London, the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Arts, Sotheby's, Christie's — all of them trace their origin to a coffeehouse.
This episode traces the history of coffee from the Ethiopian highlands through its near-prohibition in multiple cultures, to its role as the physical and social infrastructure of the Enlightenment. The argument: when Europe switched from ale to coffee at breakfast, it wasn't making a dietary choice. It was making a pharmacological one. A CNS depressant gave way to a stimulant — and the institutions that emerged from coffeehouse culture bear the chemical signature of that shift.
Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.
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