Transcripts

T. R. Reid:
People who are decaffeinating coffee have big sacks of powdered caffeine sitting around, so they sell it down the street to the pop bottler.

T.R. Reid is the author of the cover story in January 2005 issue of National Geographic called "Why We Love Caffeine." T.R. says caffeine occurs naturally in about a hundred different plants. And people all over the world have been hooked on the caffeine in those plants for thousands of years.

There are two good things about this particular addictive drug. One is, it’s really hard to overdose because if you drink too much you get so giggly and nervous that you just kind of stop automatically. And the other thing is that, unlike other psychoactive addictive drugs, caffeine washes out of your system pretty completely in just a few days.

And some would argue that the Industrial Revolution was fueled by caffeine.

Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate became common drinks in Europe right at the time… we’re talking 1850… when the Industrial Revolution was taking place.

And the argument is that, when people changed their daily rhythm from getting up with the sun and working on the farm to getting up to an alarm clock and going to work in a factory, they needed the jolt of caffeine to push them onto a regular schedule independent of the sun’s rhythm. So, caffeine made the modern world possible, that’s the argument.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net, I’m Mike Carruthers, and that’s Something You Should Know.