Overview

⏱️Schedule:  Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle

We drink it every day, build our routines around it, and many of us can’t start the morning without it – but most of us have very little idea what’s actually in our cup.

In this live storytelling session, audio journalist James Harper takes us on a fast-paced journey through the full story of coffee: from wild plants in Ethiopian forests to colonial plantations, from radical coffee houses to global brands, and into an uncertain, climate-shaken future.

Over one hour, we’ll follow coffee as it moves across continents and centuries – fuelling empires, revolutions, artistic scenes and office culture – while also leaving behind a long trail of exploitation and environmental damage. We’ll finish in the present day, where coffee farmers, traders, roasters and drinkers are all caught in a price and sustainability crisis that most café menus never mention.

This is not a technical cupping or a barista workshop. It’s the story behind the drink: how coffee shaped the modern world, and why its future is far less secure than we like to think.

What we’ll explore

• From forest to roast

  Where coffee plants grow, how cherries become beans, and why roasting is essential for flavour and chemistry.

• Ethiopia, Yemen and the birth of coffee culture

  How coffee moved from wild Ethiopian forests into cultivation in Yemen in the 1500s – and how the first coffee cultures emerged.

• Coffee houses and the first “third places”

  The role of coffee in early global trade and how 17th-century coffee houses became centres of ideas, finance and social change.

• Empire in a cup

  How colonial expansion spread coffee across the tropics, and the human cost of building a global addiction on forced labour and extractive systems.

• Brazil and industrial coffee

  Why Brazil became the powerhouse of coffee production, and what industrial-scale coffee growing did to landscapes, labour and taste.

• Crisis in the supply chain

  How decades of volatile prices and unequal value distribution have pushed many coffee farmers to the brink, even as café culture booms in rich countries.

• Climate change and the future of coffee

  What rising temperatures, changing rainfall, disease and consumer expectations mean for the long-term survival of coffee as we know it – and what might have to change.

Expect an evening that feels like an audio documentary brought to life: stories, voices and big-picture context, rather than guilt or technical jargon. You’ll never look at your morning coffee in quite the same way again.

Speaker

James Harper

Audio Journalist & Creator of the Filter Stories Podcast

 James Harper is an audio journalist and the creator of Filter Stories, a narrative documentary podcast that explores coffee through history, science and sustainability. His work has been heard by tens of thousands of coffee professionals around the world and brings together farmers, scientists, historians and industry leaders to unpack the deeper forces behind one of the world’s most traded agricultural products.

He regularly presents live talks, collaborates with researchers and producers across the global coffee sector, and produces audio documentaries for broadcasters including the BBC.

Location