Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. 

Greetings from the floor of a hotel in Washington, DC. Thanks for your scientific overview of caffeine. I found it enriching and invigorating, which is precisely how caffeine makes me feel. 

Now, I think I wasn't much of a consumer of caffeine until my 30s, when I started taking a drug called Remeron for my OCD. Remeron is a great drug insofar as it makes having thoughts more manageable, but it also makes you incredibly sleepy in the morning. So, I used a classic American strategy of treating my drug side effects with a different drug: this one called coffee, and slowly, I developed a deep, profound love for coffee. 

So, Hank, one of the writers for Crash Course: European History, told me once that you could write a history of humanity just about the history of caffeine: who had access to them at various places and times, how they were cultivated, who was enriched and impoverished by their production, and so on. We only have strong evidence for coffee harvesting and brewing going back to the 15th century, which means, for 98% of human history, humans may have lived without the invigorating joy that is coffee, which is just terrible to imagine. Those poor souls. How did they take their Remeron?

But it was certainly brewed by the 15th century in Yemen by Sufi mystics, who stayed up late or woke up early for their religious rituals. Interestingly, that was also one of the early uses of coffee in Europe. Priests, monks and nuns would use it to wake up early for pre-dawn prayers. Coffee was also seen as having a positive impact on health, especially gut health, from Africa to the Americas to Europe. By the 17th century, everyone was talking about how great coffee was for your stomach. 

And interestingly, Hank, coffee is associated - although, in a correlative way, not a positive one - with longer life. People who drank between one-and-a-half and three-and-a-half cups of coffee lived longer. So, by the 17th century, coffee was well-established throughout most of Afro-Eurasia. 

Tea, meanwhile, has a much longer history, stretching back at least 2,200 years, where it was definitely being consumed in China. 

And, I have a theory, which admittedly, I have no evidence for, that one of the reasons tea remains more popular today is that tea has a longer history. It's been around longer. It's better established in our cultures. It's not because it's better, Hank. It's because it's older. 

Now, Hank, in your video, you didn't quite criticize coffee, but you did come darn close, strongly implying that tea is better because of some chemical that gives you chill vibes along with a sense of awareness. And I just want to say, if I want chill vibes, I would live in the 18th century and watch wheat grow all day. This is 2025, baby. Life goes hard. I don't need chill vibes to wake me up in the morning. I need a freaking rocket ship. And that rocket ship is called coffee. Specifically, Octavia Blend, Keats and Co. coffee, available to you and yours right now at good.store. 

And although you're right that tea is more popular than coffee, in Nerdfighteria and adjacent spaces, coffee is actually more popular than tea, as evidenced by the fact that we have more coffee subscribers at good dot store than we have tea subscribers. So, how do you like them apples? 

The only two explanations I can think of are that coffee is better, or else I'm a better salesperson. And I think we both know I'm not a better salesperson.

Now, Hank, it is worth noting that caffeine is addictive and that you can get a physical dependence upon it. I'm reminded of an old joke that goes, "When we are young, we drink our coffee with milk and sugar. As we age, we drink it with milk only. Eventually, we drink it black. Then we drink it decaf. Then we die." 

I have long been, like for the last ten years or so, on black. But I'm starting to be on decaf. I can't help but enjoy the occasional cup of Paradoxica, our delicious decaf coffee. Of course, on the heels of my most recent birthday, I don't need any evidence that I'm approaching old age, but still, I have it, Hank. 

I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled. 

Sorry, that was poetry. I know you can't, uh, I know you can't hear poetry. Plus, I don't take Remeron anymore; I take different medications to manage my mental health, and so it's not a bad time to transition to decaf, even if it does mean I'm one stop closer to the chasm from which no one has ever returned. 

Anyway, this wasn't supposed to be a video about my mortality.  This was supposed to be a video about coffee, which is far better than tea, unless coffee is a kind of tea, which you argued, in which case, coffee is the best kind of tea. Anyway, coffee rules, and I'm glad that Keats and Co., this little coffee and tea company, has now raised over $1,000,000 (one million) to provide life-saving tuberculosis care in impoverished communities.

In fact, if you haven't tried our coffee yet, good news. I'll give you a 11% off your first order if you use the offer code "BEANS RULE."

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.