WEBVTT - Edward Slingerland on Intoxication & Civilization 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.600 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.040 show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.840 of view is expressed here do not represent those of 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.760 I Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:26.000 heat as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.280 may not even represent my own and nothing contained in 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.240 this show should be used as medical advice or encouragement 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:45.120 to use any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.199 I'll tell you one of the most frequent comments or 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:52.920 suggestions I've gotten from friends and other listeners since I 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:57.200 started the podcast over a year ago was what about alcohol? 0:00:57.280 --> 0:00:59.880 What about booze? You haven't done any episodes on that, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.480 and that's got to be, you know, in some respects, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.319 one of the you know, biggest drugs of them all. 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:08.840 And so I thought the best way to have a 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:13.639 first episode that addresses the issue of alcohol would be 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:20.160 with Professor Edward Slingerland, who published a book last year 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.840 called Drunk. The subtitle is How We sit, danced, and 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:28.600 stumbled our way to Civilization. Now. Edward is the Distinguished 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.360 University's Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.560 British Columbia and Canada, with adject deployments in Asian studies 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.400 and psychology, and he's a co director of the Center 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:42.120 for the Study of Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture and 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:46.920 director of the Database of Religious History. He's also a sinologist, 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:48.800 which means he's not an expert in sinus as he's 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.520 an expert in china um and that's a lot of 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.400 his more academic writing, although this is quite an academic 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:56.800 book in its own way as well. So I just 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.280 thought he would be a wonderful interest. Edward, thank you 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.520 so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Thanks for having me. 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:07.560 So what would be the elevator? Pitch the basic argument 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.480 of your book in a few sentences. We've long been 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.800 told that our taste for alcohol and other chemical intoxicants 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.840 is an evolutionary mistake, and that's not the case. And 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:23.280 in fact, there are a host of both individual and 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:28.400 social benefits to intoxican use, and these benefits have paid 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.800 for the obvious costs. So so alcohol consumption is costly, 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.880 it's it's bad for our bodies. It can lead to 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.200 all sorts of social ills, um. But the taste for 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:42.200 alcohol has remained in our both genetic and cultural repertoire 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:48.280 because of these various individual and social benefits that have 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.720 been trucial in allowing human beings to make the transition 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:57.880 from small scale hunter gatherer societies to these large civilizations 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:01.320 that we live in now. And so, you know, far 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:06.960 from being a byproduct or a mistake, intoxication has been 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.200 at the center of civilization, um for as long as 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.880 as human beings have been doing anything in an organized 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.880 fashion as a species. Let me go say the audience, 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:21.279 stead of all the books I've read, uh for this podcast, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.760 this has to be easily the most enjoyable read. It's 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.520 not just scholarly and thoughtful, but it's written with an 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.400 incredible sense of humor and a dry witticisms, and it's 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.600 just a pleasure. And one of those little lines that 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.440 Edward uses at the beginning is he says people like 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.160 to masturbate. They also like to get drunk and eat twinkies, 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:44.720 not typically all at the same time, but that's a 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.800 matter of personal preference. So why Edward, why is that 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:52.920 line right at the top of your book. Well, first 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.280 of all, that line was written at probably about point 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:00.720 oh eight blood alcohol content. So I had been working 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.880 on the book proposal. I had written ten versions of it, 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.960 I think, and my every time my agent would send 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.960 it back and she's just like boring. Zache read to 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.880 it and she and she was right. So I had, Um, 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.480 you know, I had all the science and it all history. 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.880 The arguments were there, but it was a very kind 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.320 of plotting aid to B two. See, you know this 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:25.400 is a puzzle. This is why it's interesting. Um, it 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.280 didn't draw you in. And I realized, oh, you know what, 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.200 I haven't taken my own advice in the book, which 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.440 is that if you need a creative insight or you 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.880 need something new, you need to drink a little bit. 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:41.000 So I was on a conference trip. This was pretty pandemic, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.680 and I had a couple of hours before I was 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:47.000 meeting my colleagues for dinner. So I took my laptop 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.000 down to the hotel bar and ordered myself a Negroni 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:55.880 And by the end of that Negroni, it felt like 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.160 I was taking dictation. So that line came to me, 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.600 and then the rest of that what's now pages one 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:04.400 to two of the book just appeared in my head 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.320 and I just wrote it down. You know, I needed 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:13.640 something to draw people in and get them hooked. You know, 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.240 I start with masturbation and junk food, just because the 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.520 standard story has been that, you know, alcohol is just 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.240 like those things, It's just like these other vices. It's 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.960 a kind of evolutionary mistake. And the main motive for 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:31.839 writing Drunk was to point out that that's not the case. 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.919 Our our taste for alcohol and other chemical intoxicants is 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:42.240 actually qualitatively different from vices like junk food or masturbation. 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.440 And it's important to realize that because we can't understand 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:50.360 um why it's been so central to civilization with without 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:54.000 realizing that that dis analogy, right, I think you you 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.480 make the analogy partially in the context of saying, there 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.880 are two major theories about why alcohol has been so 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:05.040 prevalent and survived for thousands of years among humankind, notwithstanding 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.400 its abundant negative consequences. And you see, there's a hijack 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.160 theory and a hangover theory, and you kind of disabuse 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.240 readers of both, so say a little more about that. 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:20.120 So hijack theories argue that alcohol is just the ethanol 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.560 molecule just happens to hijack a reward network that evolved 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.840 for other reasons, and so that's where masturbation comes in. 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:33.000 Masturbations a classic example of the hijack. So um evolution 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:38.760 gives us this awesome reward, the orgasm, for the thing 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.960 that it most wants us to do, which is pass 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.039 on copies of our genes to the next generation. So 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.240 the adaptive target of the orgasm is reproductive sex, and 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.320 yet humans and other organisms have figured out all sorts 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:57.680 of wildly nonreproductive ways to get that reward. So that's 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.840 a classic hijack. We're getting the reward even though we're 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.640 not doing the thing it's supposed to be. For the 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.960 reason evolution lets us get away with that is because 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.960 it's not very costly. Despite what you might have been 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.080 told when you were younger, masturbation doesn't cause you to 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:17.559 go blind. It's pretty physiologically negligible in terms of its cost, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.680 and the basic system works right. Um evolution is not 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.960 into perfection, it's into a broke don't fix it. So 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.880 this is it works well enough um the other type. 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.080 So that's the dominant story. If you open a psych 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.000 one on one textbook. It's going to tell you that's 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.920 why we we like to drink this this hijack theory. 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:42.360 Um mismatches are a different type of evolutionary mistakes. So 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.880 this is where something was adaptive in our evolutionary past 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:50.280 but is not adaptive now, and that's where the twinkies 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.160 come in. So junk food is a classic example of this. 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.840 So having a taste for sugar and fat and wanting 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.560 to gorge on sugar and fat when we come across 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.600 it has historically been a very adaptive trait in humans 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.800 because those things were in short supply and you should 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:09.440 gorge on them when you find them. It really only 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:14.040 becomes a problem quite very recently in history when we 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:18.080 live in these affluent industrial societies where we have access 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.600 to twinkies and junk food and all sorts of bad things, 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:26.120 and it's very costly, So unlike masturbation, it's actually very 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:30.680 bad physiologically. It's to obesity and diabetes and all these problems. 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.760 But it's a very recent problem and it's still not universal, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:36.839 so there's still plenty of places in the world where 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.319 getting enough calories is a challenge. So here's a case 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.920 where um it's it is costly, but it's so recent 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:48.640 and geographically localized that evolution hasn't had time to deal 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:53.280 with it. So when it comes to alcohol, the problem 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.640 is it's not like either one of those things. So 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.440 it did evolve for a good reason, but now things 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:02.680 have changed and it's it's not adaptive. So unlike masturbation, 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:08.800 alcohol is very costly physiologically, it's physiologically dangerous, it's economically costly. 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:14.520 Unlike junk food, it's ancient. We've been producing and consuming 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.720 alcohol all over the world, um for you know, probably 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.160 at least twenty thousand years, probably much longer. So it's 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.800 an ancient problem. So evolutions had plenty of time to 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.000 deal with it, um if it were actually a mismatched 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.480 type of mistake. And so UM I argue in the 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:37.120 book that given the ubiquity and the costliness and the 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.720 ancientness of our taste for alcohol, there's got to be 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.120 something else going on. There have to be some adaptive 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.520 benefits that are paying for the costs, and so probably 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.439 the bulk of the book is dedicated to walking readers 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.280 through both you know, what the challenges are that we 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.760 face as species, as humans and then how alcohol might 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.120 be giving us these adaptive benefits. Right, So, in the book, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.520 I mean, you make this fascinating set of arguments about 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:08.120 why alcohol and how alcohol has been essential in human evolution, 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:09.880 and then bring it up to the present day, which 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:11.960 we'll get to later. And you also want to say, 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:17.199 we could not have civilization without intoxications. And now without 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:21.120 understanding the evolutionary dynamics of intoxic in use, we cannot 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.280 even begin to think clearly or effectively about the role 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.880 in toxic cannon should play in our lives today. So 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.559 when you say, you know, we could not have civilization 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:36.880 without intoxication, it's a bold statement. Say more about that, well, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.880 and there's one sense in which, quite literally, intoxication probably 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:45.440 gave rise to civilization. So so one thing I'm trying 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:48.200 to flip on its head in the book is the 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.640 standard story that I had learned, which is that our 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.839 production of alcohol is kind of a mistake. So it's 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.920 an evolutionary mistake that we like to drink. And then 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.880 the fact that we make alcoholic beverages is a kind 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:05.760 of byproduct of civilization and agriculture. So the standard story is, 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:09.280 you know, we got agriculture, we started civilization and then 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:13.240 at some point are you know, excess production. We decided 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:15.240 to play around with a little bit and discovered we 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.800 could make beer and wine and things like that. Um. 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.400 When I started to look at the archaeological record, when 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.400 I started doing the research for the book, I realized 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.400 that the it's almost certainly the case that it's the 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:29.839 other way around. So in the book I talked about 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.840 this beer before bread hypothesis. So if we want to 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.800 talk about the Fertile Crescent, so the mid East where 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:39.640 probably where agriculture first started, we see these hunter gatherers 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:46.120 coming together, building this massive religious architecture. We don't know 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.880 what it's for, exactly what they did there, having these feasts, 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:54.760 So we have the remains of feasts and then drinking liquids, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.439 and they have these big vats that held liquids, and 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.240 maybe they were drinking sparkling water, but it's really unlikely. Um. 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:05.160 We don't have direct chemical evidence from the one site 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.200 that I talked about in the book, Gobeck Late Tepe, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.640 but we know that people were making beer in the region. Um, 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.640 we have evidence from thirteen thousand years ago. So this 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.440 is the Psyche Cobeck Late Tepe is ten tend to 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:20.320 twelve thousand years old, way before agriculture we did. We 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.520 don't have agriculture yet in that region, and yet hunter 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:28.480 gatherers are coming together and and brewing beer. And so 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:33.560 the idea is that, um, what motivated hunter gatherers to 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.440 then start settling down and cultivating crops and making them 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:42.240 more productive was the desire to make more and better beer, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.920 not to make bread. It wasn't for nutrition, it was 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.120 for psychoactive reasons. And then you know, I look at 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:53.600 evidence from other parts of the world that wherever you look, 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.680 it seems like the first cultivated plants were chosen for 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.160 their psychoactive properties, not for a new trition. And so 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.960 that's a sense in which quite literally the desire to 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.920 get intoxicated gave rise to civilization. It's what caused hunter 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.600 gatherers to settle down in the first place. You know, 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.480 you reminded me, Edward. You know, when I've over the 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:16.960 decades as I've been speaking around the world around drug 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.160 policy or reform, and I put, you know, oftimes make 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:21.559 the point that there's, you know, almost never been a 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.800 drug free society and human history, UM, which is a 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.000 relatively few exceptions, and that if you look about it, 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:30.880 whether you're looking at alcohol, you know you have basically 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.719 hunter gatherer tribes living in remote areas, oftentimes with no 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.960 contact with other societies, who somehow figure out alcohol. And 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.240 it seems like you have cultures figuring this out independently, 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:44.520 and somewhat the same thing happens with some of the 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.439 psychedelic plants, and so it sounds like that's partially what 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:49.160 you're saying that. So why why do you think the 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:54.599 agricultural hypothesis that alcohol came with agriculture became so dominant? 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.120 I mean, wasn't there enough evidence even before these theories 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.880 of the agricultural impetus for for alcohol. I don't know 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.600 if we had some of this data. So we didn't. Um, 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.000 we didn't have sites like go Beckley Teppe back then. Um, 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:10.839 we didn't have some of this more recent work. We 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.560 have evidence now and very this is very recent of 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:17.560 beer making thirteen thousand years ago in present day Israel. 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.080 So I think partly it was we didn't have the data. 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:23.280 We didn't we hadn't discovered some of these sites. But 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:27.840 I also think it's um, it's part of this broader prejudice. 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:31.000 Or kind of weird. Um. I call it a kind 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:35.520 of neo pured in blind spot in scholarship. So you 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:38.200 see it in religious studies. So that's my my PhDs 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.680 and religious studies. And let's say we're talking about ritual Um, 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:47.240 we talked about you know, synchrony and singing and music 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:51.200 and maybe sleep deprivation or how people are using pain 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.520 you know, painful activities and rituals to enhance their their 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.440 mood or feeling of bonding. And what no one ever 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.320 talks about out is these people are often high as 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:06.200 hell when they're doing this. Yeah, and so um, it's 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.280 this weird blind spot where we're fine talking about piercing 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.000 and scarification and sleep deprivation, but you want to start 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:20.000 talking about psychedelics or about alcohol use, and people get 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:24.200 really oddly queasy. I talked in the book about some 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:28.120 of the seminal figures in religious studies. So merch Aliata, 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.880 who wrote this classic big book on shamanism. Um, you 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.320 know he's got this whatever, seven eight page book on shamanism, 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.160 and I think he mentions chemical and toxicans two or 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:42.200 three times, and always in a negative way. Um, you 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.000 know this is kind of fake shamanism is when you're 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:50.680 using psychedelics. So there's just it's a weird lacuna in scholarship, 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:52.880 and I think it has to do with this kind 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:56.320 of this odd puritanism where we don't like to talk 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:59.080 about chemical on toxicans. I mean, at one point you 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:02.800 make the argument fact that it's those societies which most 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:07.200 integrated alcohol, including getting raucously drunk, that ended up being 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.200 the more successful ones. Now I was wondering, as I'm 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.600 reading your book, do you actually have a decent control 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.200 group that you're comparing all this too and making that statement. 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.160 But you provide a lot of good examples of that. 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.640 So in terms of control groups, UM, the control group 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:26.920 is the extinct cultures that we don't know about because 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.600 they didn't they lost the competition. I mean, that's one 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:32.760 of the connections of this book with my earlier work. 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.240 So I did UM in cognitive science Evolution of Religion. 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.880 I was involved in a large research group that was 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.680 trying to explain, you know, what this mysterious thing we do, 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.000 which is religion. So you look all over the world 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.560 and you see people worshiping invisible beings and you know, 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.720 piercing themselves and do engaging in these painful rituals and 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.440 cutting off the foreskin of their penis and um, refraining 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:04.200 from eating delicious poor and shellfish, and and building these massive, 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:09.800 useless monuments. So um. You know what really got me 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:14.119 thinking about religion in this way was the first Emperor 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.240 of Chin's tomb. I don't know those people were familiar 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.320 with this terra cotta army they discovered in China's as 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:26.800 the person who unified China. Um massive fake army made 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:32.320 out of terra cotta, individually made, each soldier carrying real weapons, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.600 and then lots of real wealth was thrown in the ground. 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:40.760 Gold and these labor bronze vessels, Horses were killed, people 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.439 were killed and thrown in the pit, and then they 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.080 buried it all in the grounds for this dead guy 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:50.120 in the afterlife. And I remember when I first kind 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.800 of learned about that site and realized how much of 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.840 the gross national product of the state of Chin went 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:59.000 into that tomb. You know, I thought this was a 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.560 period when these these states were in brutal competition with 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.960 one another. Why isn't the case that there was a 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.639 state as powerful as Chin, But instead of building a 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.959 fake terra cotta army. They built a real army, and 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.160 instead of throwing all this wealth in the ground, they 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.280 used the labor to you know, build more effective city 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.400 walls and do practical things. Why did they not outcompete 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.959 this culture that was throwing all this wealth in the ground. 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:28.120 And the answer has to be there has to be 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.960 some adaptive benefits to doing that kind of crazy stuff. Um. 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.600 And so you know, we explored how these kind of 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:40.040 costly displays and um sacrifices helped to build solidarity and 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:43.359 and get people past cooperation problems. And I think the 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:45.560 same is true of alcohol. You know, an ancient sumer, 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:49.240 it's estimated they took half of their grain and turned 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.560 it into beer. So they're taking really nutritious stuff that 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.480 could make into bread and turning it into a liquid neurotoxin. Essentially, 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:00.840 you would think that groups that didn't do that would 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.159 out compete groups that did um, that just kept all 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.720 their grain for nutrition. And yet that's not the case, 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:11.640 because we see that the cultures that survive use psychoactives 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.639 in this way, So it's got to be doing something 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:16.919 for us. Well, let me just stop you one second. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.280 I remember hearing reading that if you look in American history, 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.080 the period when we had the highest levels of alcohol 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.879 consumption in American history. We're back at the origins in 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.159 the late at late eighteenth century, early nineteenth century. But 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:31.840 that also one of the factors was that it was 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.119 that turning alcohol into grain was a good way of 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.480 preserving it, a good way of transporting it. So that 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.000 you know, yes, there are these arguments for drinking and 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:43.399 then all this, and and there's the arguments about it 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.320 being safer than water when water was impure, but also 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.600 easier to preserve and to transport. So how do those 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.959 things figure into all this? So those are kind of 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.360 in the mix of the various mismatch theories. So one 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.040 of the mismatch theories is the dirty water hypoth This 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.040 so um, you know, contaminated water has been a problem 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.000 for most of our history. Is a species. If you 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:11.040 take contaminated water and fermented into beer, it becomes possible. 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:13.720 So that's one of the mismatch theories is that it was, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.919 you know, our taste for alcohol was adaptive in our 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.680 evolutionary paths because it helped us hydrate in situations where 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:24.000 the water was contaminated. Um. The problem with that theory 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.840 is that there are lots of ways to to fix 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.480 contaminated water, including just boiling it. And boiling it is 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.760 a lot easier than turning it into beer, um, and 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:38.520 doesn't have the downsides of you know, the negative physiological 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.840 impacts that beer it could have. Another of the theories 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:45.280 is calorie storage. The problem again, problem with this one 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:47.159 is we think while you turn into beer and it 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.840 lasts for a really long time, that's actually not true. Um. 0:20:50.880 --> 0:20:54.280 That's true now because we have hops and other ways 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:58.479 to preserve beers, but most historically made beer is actually 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.840 spoiled quite quickly. Like chea cha beer made out of 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:06.960 maize in South America, I think has to be consumed 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.359 within two or three days. Um, So it actually doesn't 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.000 last that long. When you're thinking about the American frontier, 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:16.879 what you have in mind is distilled spirits, and that 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.280 is a really good way to preserve things. Distilled spirits 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:23.439 last for a really long time. They're relatively easy to 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.159 transport because you're packing a lot of ethanol in a 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.400 small package. Um. But distilled spirits are relatively recent thing too. 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:32.480 As I point out in the book, they're really in Europe, 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:36.560 really only seventeen hundreds that we had these. But yeah, 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:40.000 once you get distilled spirits, you can now preserve your 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.720 grains in a way that um is not only long lasting, 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:49.240 but compact and easy to transport and trade. And so 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.840 alcohol really becomes a different type of thing once we 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:55.720 figure out distillation. But that can't be part of the 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.200 story if we're talking about, you know, some behavior that 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:03.200 started twenty tho years ago. We'll be talking more after 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:19.640 we hear this ad part of the way you also 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:21.359 frame this thing, and this gets into i think a 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:23.800 little more. The meat of the argument is you frame 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.120 some of this is a struggle between two Greek gods, 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:31.000 between Apollo on the one hand and Dionysius on the 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.720 other hand. So lay that out for our audience. Yeah, 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:38.240 so Apolo. One way to look at this is Apollo 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.840 is the god of the prefrontal cortex. So I talked 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:44.520 the prefrontal cortex plays a big role in my book. 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:49.320 It's really important part of the human being, right, whether 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:52.439 it's very physiologically expensive. We wouldn't have it if it 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:57.240 wasn't doing something important. You need it to control your behavior, 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.720 you need it to be ordered. So you know, a 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.040 Paulo is the god of order, kind of doing things 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:08.760 the right way, symmetry control, you know, it's about control, 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.359 and the PFC is the center of cognitive control of 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:17.560 executive functions. What allows you to um suppress desires or 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:21.000 um stay focused on a task and not get distracted. 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:24.560 It's what allows you to persevere in the face of 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:28.200 you know, tiredness or boredom. It's everything that a four 0:23:28.280 --> 0:23:31.560 year old doesn't have, UM, but that a successful adult 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.920 has to have. And civilizations need this. We couldn't build 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.760 civilization without this kind of UM, perseverance, focus, self control, 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:42.919 and that's all the realm of Apollo. The friends of 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:48.640 Apollo chemically are stimulants, so things like caffeine and nicotine, 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:51.240 you know, they strengthen our ability to focus and stay 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:53.879 on task. But the Greeks, you know, and the Greeks 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:57.040 thought Apollo was really important, but they also worshiped Dionysius, 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:01.080 and so UM. You know, Dionysius is the the god 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:04.480 that comes out when we thrown the PFC or turn 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:07.720 it down a few notches. Dionysus is more like our 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:14.320 childlike cells um, so creative, trusting, open to new experience, 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:19.240 willing to try anything, engaged in play. Kids are like this, 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:24.480 and adults can be like that temporarily when they essentially 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:28.840 reverse uh cognitive maturation and go turn the PFC down 0:24:28.840 --> 0:24:31.239 and go back to being like like they were when 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:34.520