Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us

Jour­nal­ist Mur­ray Car­pen­ter has writ­ten a new book about the world’s most pop­u­lar drug — caf­feine. And it answers ques­tions that many cof­fee drinkers sure­ly won­der about: Is caf­feine addic­tive? What exact­ly does it do to our bio­chem­istry? How does it gives us a jolt? And what health con­se­quences does it have (or not have)? These ques­tions all get answered in the book, Caf­feinat­ed: How Our Dai­ly Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us. And much of them were dis­cussed when Car­pen­ter recent­ly vis­it­ed my favorite radio pro­gram in San Fran­cis­co, KQED’s Forum. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”