Archive: Coffee
In Our Time

Archive: Coffee

B2Upper-intermediateAugust 13, 202656 min
  • History

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His second choice, first released in December 2019, is the history and social impact of coffee. From its origins in Ethiopia, coffea arabica spread through the Ottoman Empire before reaching Western Europe where, in the 17th century, coffee houses were becoming established. There, caffeinated customers stayed awake for longer and were more animated, and this helped to spread ideas and influence culture. Coffee became a colonial product, grown by slaves or indentured labour, with coffea robusta replacing arabica where disease had struck...

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We all have bad days, and sometimes bad weeks, and maybe even bad years.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 27%A2 31%B1 21%B2 17%C1 4%
  • 79% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 172 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 268 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. We all have bad days, and sometimes bad weeks, and maybe even bad years. But the good news is we don't have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of TED's How to Be a Better Human podcast.

1:02

And our show is about the little ways that you can improve your life, actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better. Whether it is setting boundaries at work or rethinking how you clean your house, each episode has conversations with experts who share tips on how to navigate life's ups

1:18

and downs. Find How to Be a Better Human wherever you're listening to this. This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found

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