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Sorry, Hank, but Coffee Is Just Better

2025-09-09 · letter vlog · John · 4:35 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: History & curiosities, Personal life) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: self promotion

Answering Hank's caffeine video, John playfully argues that coffee is better than tea, using coffee's history (15th-century Yemen, Europe, Afro-Eurasia) and Keats & Co. subscriber numbers, tells how Remeron for his OCD led him to coffee and how he is now moving to decaf, and notes Keats & Co. has raised over $1 million for tuberculosis care.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting from a DC hotel floor; thanks for Hank's caffeine video; Remeron for OCD made John a coffee drinker

  • ★ John greets Hank from the floor of a hotel room in Washington, D.C. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says he barely consumed caffeine until his 30s, when he began taking Remeron for his OCD; it makes thoughts more manageable but makes him very sleepy in the morning. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — History of coffee (15th-century Yemen, Sufi mystics, European monks, 17th-century health claims), longevity correlation, tea's longer history in China

  • ★★ John says he treated the drug's side effect, in a classic American way, with another drug, coffee, and slowly developed a deep, profound love for coffee. (playful) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John relays a Crash Course European History writer's remark that one could write a history of humanity through caffeine: access, cultivation, and who was enriched or impoverished. — 00:00:29 · Crash Course
  • ★★ John says strong evidence for harvesting and brewing coffee goes back only to the 15th century. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says that means humans may have lived without coffee for 98% of human history, which he calls terrible to imagine. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says coffee was certainly brewed by the 15th century in Yemen by Sufi mystics who stayed up late or rose early for their religious rituals. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says an early use of coffee in Europe was likewise religious: priests, monks and nuns drank it to wake early for predawn prayers. — 00:00:58 · Europe
  • ★★ John says coffee was seen as good for health, especially the gut, with people from Africa to the Americas to Europe praising it for the stomach. — 00:00:58 · Europe
  • ★★★ John says coffee is associated with longer life, correlatively not causally: people who drink between one and a half and three and a half cups live longer. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says that by the 17th century coffee was well established throughout most of Afro-Eurasia. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says tea has a much longer history, at least 2,200 years, when it was definitely consumed in China. — 00:01:27 · China

00:01:56 — Coffee versus tea: tea is popular only because older, chill vibes versus a rocket ship, more coffee than tea subscribers at good.store

  • ★★ John offers a theory he admits has no evidence: tea stays more popular because it is older and better established in cultures, not because it is better. (playful, speculative) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says Hank's video did not quite criticize coffee but came close, strongly implying tea is better because of a chemical giving chill vibes with awareness. (playful) — 00:01:56 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John says he needs no chill vibes in 2025: in the morning he needs a rocket ship, coffee, specifically Keats & Co.'s Octavia Blend, available at good.store. (playful) — 00:02:26 · Keats & Co., Good Store
  • ★★ John concedes Hank is right that tea is more popular than coffee. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says that in Nerdfighteria and adjacent spaces coffee is more popular than tea, since good.store has more coffee subscribers than tea subscribers. — 00:02:26 · Nerdfighteria, Good Store

00:02:55 — Caffeine dependence, the old coffee-and-aging joke, John's move to decaf, a Prufrock line, new medications

  • ★ John says the only explanations are that coffee is better or that he is a better salesperson, and they both know he is not. (playful) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John notes that caffeine is addictive and people can become physically dependent on it. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says he has drunk his coffee black for about the last 10 years but is starting on decaf, enjoying the occasional cup of Paradoxica, their decaf. — 00:03:24
  • ★ John says that after his most recent birthday he needs no evidence that he is approaching old age, but he has it anyway. (playful) — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says he no longer takes Remeron but different medications for his mental health, so it is a fine time to switch to decaf. — 00:03:24 · mental disorder

00:03:53 — Coffee is the best kind of tea; Keats & Co. passes $1 million for tuberculosis care; discount code and sign-off

  • ★★★ John concludes coffee is far better than tea, unless coffee is a kind of tea as Hank argued, in which case coffee is the best kind of tea. (playful) — 00:03:53 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ John says he is glad that Keats & Co., "this little coffee and tea company", has now raised over $1 million for life-saving tuberculosis care in impoverished communities. — 00:03:53 · Keats & Co., tuberculosis
  • ★★ John offers viewers who have not tried the coffee 11% off their first order with the code BEANSRULE. — 00:04:23 · Keats & Co.

Humor (significant)

  • John thanks Hank for his scientific overview of caffeine. — 00:00:00

    “I found it enriching and invigorating, which is precisely how caffeine makes me feel.”

  • After lamenting that people lived without coffee for most of history, John pities them. — 00:00:58

    “Those poor souls, how did they take their Remeron?”

  • Rejecting tea's chill vibes, John says he would live in the 18th century and watch wheat grow if he wanted those; this is 2025. — 00:02:26

    “I need a frickin' rocket ship.”

  • John recalls an old joke about how people drink coffee as they age: milk and sugar, milk only, black. — 00:02:55

    “then we drink it decaf, then we die.”

  • John recites a line of poetry about growing old, then apologizes to Hank. — 00:03:24

    “Sorry, that was poetry. I know you can't, uh, I know you can't hear poetry.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: coffee · Keats & Co. · tea

Also: Projects: Good Store

Works: Octavia Blend · Paradoxica · The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Concepts: caffeine · correlation does not imply causation · death anxiety · Decaffeination · life expectancy · mental disorder · Mirtazapine · obsessive-compulsive disorder · poetry (concept) · Sufism · Theanine · tuberculosis

Places: Africa · Afro-Eurasia · Americas · China · Europe · Washington, DC · Yemen

Only in the description or credits: Crash Course

Also centred on coffee: Nauseous Puddle Water · Three Mornings

Also centred on tea: Sipping the Tea with Hank · Some New Things… · Caffeine is Very…

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