How a 6:30 AM cup of coffee carries 1,000 years of Ethiopian tradition, colonial history, and the power to vote with your wallet every morning.

Welcome to Better Vice Club, Season 1, Episode 1. Host Anthony McDonald opens his kitchen at 6:30 AM and pulls apart the most ordinary moment of the day — making coffee — to reveal something extraordinary underneath.

In this episode, you will travel from the Ethiopian highlands, where the Oromo people created the first coffee ceremonies over 1,000 years ago, to the 17th-century European coffeehouses where the American Revolution was planned over shared cups. You will learn the geography of the Coffee Belt (25°N to 30°S), the economics of a $4 latte (the farmer gets $0.12), and the cultural difference between Ethiopian Buna ceremony and your local drive-thru.

This is more than a podcast about a drink. It is an invitation to see your morning routine as a daily vote for the kind of world you want to live in. Whether you support fair trade, direct trade, or commodity coffee, your choice ripples back to farmers in Colombia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam.

Better Vice Club is an educational podcast for high school students, teachers, and curious adults, aligned to Indiana Academic Standards across Geography, Social Studies, Economics, and English Language Arts. New episodes weekly.