Speaker 1: All right, we're scrapping the cute stuff and cutting straight
Speaker 1: to the chase. I'm Dessa. This is deeply human. Today
Speaker 1: we're talking about drugs and we're already like five and
Speaker 1: a half seconds in. Let's go hit it, James. Could
Speaker 1: we speed it up a little. I've just I've just
Speaker 1: got like an insane amount of stuff to get to
Speaker 1: in this episode. Great, thank you. Hey, come on, man,
Speaker 1: don't speed me. You know that always makes me dizzy,
Speaker 1: and you know it, okay. I work as a touring
Speaker 1: musician where it's not considered unprofessional to drink on the job.
Speaker 1: In fact, taking a slug of whiskey on stage often
Speaker 1: elicits a round of applause. This business is full of fascinating,
Speaker 1: brilliant weirdos, and intoxicants are easy to get and sometimes
Speaker 1: hard to avoid. Alexis Stevenson, an author friend of mine,
Speaker 1: once told me I'm not a writer, I just drink
Speaker 1: a lot about it, which I immediately cribbed for a
Speaker 1: song lyric. Sub instants, use and abuse is sort of
Speaker 1: baked into the culture. And that's true at the indie
Speaker 1: level and for the A listers. To quote the late
Speaker 1: great Robin Williams, cocaine is God's way of saying that
Speaker 1: you are making too much money. Even being so surrounded
Speaker 1: by it, there is still something that's sort of paradoxical
Speaker 1: about drugs to me, not just the many hazards of abuse,
Speaker 1: but the very idea of drugs. Isn't every organism supposed
Speaker 1: to be out here fighting for survival. Wouldn't getting messed
Speaker 1: up slower reflexes and make us worse a hunting or
Speaker 1: escaping whoever is hunting us? Why would we choose to
Speaker 1: regularly impair ourselves? And even if you don't drink or smoke, odsar,
Speaker 1: you probably had the occasional cup of coffee or tea.
Speaker 1: Caffeine is the most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world,
Speaker 1: So the question of the day why do we use intoxics?
Speaker 1: My name was Marikaniac. I am a post doctoral research
Speaker 1: or at the University of Salford near Manchester, and I
Speaker 1: study primates and how they have adapted to eating different foods.
Speaker 1: Primates includes us, right, yes, that's right, we are premates.
Speaker 1: It turns out that people primates have a particular genetic
Speaker 1: advantage when it comes to digesting alcohol a k A
Speaker 1: ethanol Marika says we may have first developed a special
Speaker 1: interest for alcohol when we transitioned from being tree dwelling
Speaker 1: creatures to a more terrestrial lifestyle. When we started living
Speaker 1: on the ground, we were more likely to come across
Speaker 1: fallen fruit. When fruit becomes overripe and has a lot
Speaker 1: of sugar in it, what tends to happen is that
Speaker 1: yeasts get in there, and yeast will start to eat
Speaker 1: the sugars, and the end product of that is ethanol,
Speaker 1: a substance that smells really strongly, right, so it could
Speaker 1: be almost like an advertisement. It's like this this odor plume.
Speaker 1: It's like, there's sugar here, Eat me. And we have
Speaker 1: a particular genetic advantage that allows us to process that ethanol,
Speaker 1: meaning we can potentially eat more energy rich fruit. There's
Speaker 1: this mutation that humans have, and what's interesting about this
Speaker 1: mutation is that it makes our ethanol metabolism really really efficient,
Speaker 1: like forty times more efficient. Early hominids may have been
Speaker 1: attracted to boozy stuff because it was a reliable source
Speaker 1: of energy. Genetic evidence implies this mutation may have surfaced
Speaker 1: ten million years ago, though it could be much longer too,
Speaker 1: and it's not only primates who are interested in this fruity,
Speaker 1: boozy business. The big story, the most famous story, is
Speaker 1: that elephants go for these fermented marilla fruits. And it's
Speaker 1: a story that's so widespread, like it's brought up in
Speaker 1: these pursures for Safari's. There's a famous liqueur that's made
Speaker 1: out of marilla fruits. It's called Amarilla. Amarula is a
Speaker 1: lot like Bailey's. I have toured South Africa, I have
Speaker 1: headed over ice and it is awesome. I have all
Speaker 1: heard the stories of elephants totally lit up on fermented
Speaker 1: marula fruit, stumbling around and making a mess of themselves
Speaker 1: like a thirty ton bachelor party with tusks. But humans
Speaker 1: want to see is that elephants want to become intoxicated.
Speaker 1: They want to get not the sugar, but they want
Speaker 1: to get the side effects. And it's like this intentionality aspect.
Speaker 1: It's really really difficult. But how do you prove that
Speaker 1: an animal is trying to get faded and not just
Speaker 1: give food. So there's one to study with um something
Speaker 1: called an i I. It's a it's a type of
Speaker 1: lemur from Meta Gascar. They're they're so cool looking and
Speaker 1: they're really cute um that well, it's in the eye
Speaker 1: of the beholder. I think I think they're cute. Some
Speaker 1: people don't agree. Wait, hold on Google Google search. They
Speaker 1: have very large ears, and I don't know good about it.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. But they have great tails, save
Speaker 1: these grape bushy tails. And they have this amazing middle
Speaker 1: finger that's all along and spin delete that they used
Speaker 1: to tap on tree trunks with to find hollow parts.
Speaker 1: And then when they found a hollow part, they gouge
Speaker 1: it and usually there's some kind of big bug or
Speaker 1: grub in there that they pull out with their spindle
Speaker 1: a finger and then eat. But they don't just eat bugs.
Speaker 1: They also eat a lot of nectar. And the nectar
Speaker 1: that they consume you can tell there's ethanol in it
Speaker 1: just from smelling it. When researchers gave eye eyes the
Speaker 1: choice between an alcoholic mixture and just plain water, they
Speaker 1: drank twice as much as the booze. And in a
Speaker 1: study on elephants and alcohol, researchers allowed them to drink
Speaker 1: from a boozy trough then took detailed notes on their behavior.
Speaker 1: The things that they wrote down were like swaying and
Speaker 1: increased vocalizations and increased aggression, which it's like, are you
Speaker 1: looking for those things because that's what humans do? Or
Speaker 1: you know, is that really how the intoxication manifests? Why
Speaker 1: the animals only have access to alcohol when they come
Speaker 1: across naturally fermenting sugars or I guess research teams who
Speaker 1: are willing to fill up a trough with booze? But
Speaker 1: when did people start making alcohol on purpose? So? I
Speaker 1: mean this is when we get into archaeological evidence, which
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing. It's just so cool that you
Speaker 1: can get residues from things that are thousands of years
Speaker 1: old and and find evidence that you know, these were
Speaker 1: used ferment beverages. So it goes back like about ten
Speaker 1: thousand years that we have evidence of humans intentionally fermenting
Speaker 1: foods and beverages. Fermentation practices might go back even further,
Speaker 1: but that's hard to prove. Like if a pot was
Speaker 1: made of wood, it might not survive millennia to be discovered. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's transition now from prehistory to the bleeding edge of
Speaker 1: scientific investigation. My name is David Nattimer, a psychiatrist. I'm
Speaker 1: a psycho pharmacologist, so I studied effects of drugs on
Speaker 1: the nervous system and the psychological consequences of those. David
Speaker 1: is an internationally recognized veteran in his field. He spent
Speaker 1: ten years advising the British government on how to create
Speaker 1: a rational approach to drugs and how to minimize their harms,
Speaker 1: and in the UK he's also known for controversy. He
Speaker 1: was dismissed from his position after arguing that alcohol was
Speaker 1: more harmful than a host of other drugs, and to
Speaker 1: illustrate the relative dangers of taking the drug ecstasy, he
Speaker 1: noted that it was no more dangerous than horseback riding.
Speaker 1: I'd probably given more different classes of drugs to human
Speaker 1: beings and possibly anyone ever in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's almost no class of drugs that I
Speaker 1: haven't studied in humans, and humans use a bunch of drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean almost no human doesn't take any doctor, tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco.
Speaker 1: The God's population used and intoxicant or a brain changing
Speaker 1: drive for some purpose, generally for benefits. I think, for example,
Speaker 1: of the reason you might order a drink on a
Speaker 1: first date. Alcohol makes you sociable, and it makes you
Speaker 1: convivial and relaxed in companies enough to take away the
Speaker 1: natural social anxiety we all have when we're meeting strangers
Speaker 1: or go into parties. Stress is part of human and
Speaker 1: animal experience. But then there's a second thing, which is novelty.
Speaker 1: I mean, the human brain is a is a novelty
Speaker 1: seeking or you know, humans fascinated by new things, which
Speaker 1: is why we are so successful in the world. Because
Speaker 1: we've discovered new things, and we've remembered them, and we've
Speaker 1: adapted them and reinforced them. There's something fundamentally appealing and
Speaker 1: feeling our consciousness temporarily transformed into something less familiar than
Speaker 1: our work day minds. Alcohol has been used in military purposes.
Speaker 1: People ink before they fight because the alcohol dampens down
Speaker 1: the fair response. The reason alcohol is so popular has
Speaker 1: been so popular for so many thousands of years, is
Speaker 1: a really good drug and gets in fast and gets
Speaker 1: in the brain fast. You know, it's reliable in terms
Speaker 1: of what you get. The effect is those related. My
Speaker 1: very first taste of alcohol was probably a sip of
Speaker 1: a relative's Manhattan cocktail. I was maybe eight. It was gross,
Speaker 1: and I drank it anyway as a demonstration of my worldliness,
Speaker 1: not too long afterwards, I would have sipped wine from
Speaker 1: a heavy metal goblet held by a priest at Catholic mass.
Speaker 1: Communal drinking is often a rite of passage socially and
Speaker 1: sometimes religiously, And pretty soon I was a sneaky teenager
Speaker 1: trying to weasel my way into the liquor cabinet at
Speaker 1: my friend Katie's dad's house. We poured a little bit
Speaker 1: from every bottle to create a seriously unfortunate slurry that include,
Speaker 1: among other things, mid Doory whiskey and Bailey's Irish Cream.
Speaker 1: So how does alcohol actually work? What is it doing
Speaker 1: to us? David Nutt explains that it affects several pathways
Speaker 1: in the brain, and it mimics a particular neurotransmitter called gabba,
Speaker 1: and in humans and all out of primate wear, in fact,
Speaker 1: pretty much all vertebrates, Gabba calms the brain. Another neurotransmitter
Speaker 1: called glutamate has the opposite effect. It revs you up.
Speaker 1: And both substances are always at play in your brain,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like your your brain is walking the
Speaker 1: tight rope. Too much glutamate and you become hyper excited,
Speaker 1: and then you end up getting anxious or having a seizure,
Speaker 1: and so gather protects you against that. But too much
Speaker 1: gabba you fall asleep and then you get eaten with
Speaker 1: a tiger. So you've got to get the balance right.
Speaker 1: When people drink, it's like they're putting a thumb on
Speaker 1: the scale, suppressing anxiety by blunt chemical force. But of
Speaker 1: course there are diminishing returns. To share a little poem
Speaker 1: from the writer and Total Boss Dorothy Parker, I like
Speaker 1: to have a martini to at the very most, after three,
Speaker 1: I'm under the table. After four, I'm under my host.
Speaker 1: Alcohol impairs judgment and cognition, and it can have life
Speaker 1: destroying chronic consequences, disease and addiction among them. To quote F.
Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald, First you take a drink, then the drink
Speaker 1: takes a drink, Then the drink takes you. Our psycho pharmacologist,
Speaker 1: David Nutt has been in the field of substance abuse
Speaker 1: for almost forty years. I'll give you an example. One
Speaker 1: of the recent patients of mine and his life was
Speaker 1: to get up in the morning and he'd get a
Speaker 1: bus up the road to the supermarket. He'd buy two
Speaker 1: liters of strong cider, which is about two weeks worth
Speaker 1: of alcohol and the just sit there all day and
Speaker 1: drawing that, and he was destroying himself. And that's really
Speaker 1: quite common people drinking alone and or they're using alcohol
Speaker 1: then as an anesthetic to deaden the pain of their
Speaker 1: lives rather than getting any benefit from it. People suffering
Speaker 1: from addiction using toxic ins because it feels like they
Speaker 1: have to. Some people cite the dangers of booze in
Speaker 1: an argument for abstinence, but David is working on inventing
Speaker 1: a new drug, an alternative to alcohol. Alcohol works on
Speaker 1: multiple neurotransmitter systems. It's also a poison, you know. It
Speaker 1: damages your deliver in your heart and your blovelesss. Accential
Speaker 1: alcohol is like playing a piano with boxing glob zone.
Speaker 1: David has a lab team working to design a chemical
Speaker 1: substance that can imitate the gabba effective alcohol without wreaking
Speaker 1: as much havoc on the rest of the system, like
Speaker 1: a proper piodist that plays the song and then goes home.
Speaker 1: It's not done yet, but in the meantime he's created
Speaker 1: and bottled a prototype that can be concocted from herbs
Speaker 1: already on the market as food stuffs. I met him
Speaker 1: in a corner bar in West London to try something.
Speaker 1: This is a botanical spirit that it's called Centia, and
Speaker 1: it's made of herbs and a combination that will give
Speaker 1: you an effect like a low dose of alcohol, like
Speaker 1: maybe a glass of wine, without having anything like as
Speaker 1: much impact on the rest of your body. Cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1: The very first thing you notice about Sentia is the color.
Speaker 1: It's a burgundy that very much appealed to the vestigial
Speaker 1: Goth teenager in me. And it's a water based drink,
Speaker 1: but to create some of that like alcohol heat on
Speaker 1: the exhale. It has a little bit of pepper in
Speaker 1: it Christmas ee, you know, has that sort of clothy
Speaker 1: aspects of it. And then in a few moments, I
Speaker 1: hope you'll feel that is beginning to have the other
Speaker 1: effects of our not just the mouth effects, but also
Speaker 1: the brain effect. I admit that I didn't really feel
Speaker 1: a buzz after drinking Centia. I didn't go in very
Speaker 1: hard though, because I was afraid to muck up my
Speaker 1: interview with this very accomplished science guy. David hopes the
Speaker 1: one his new compound hits the market, it might shake
Speaker 1: up our whole drinking culture, which is a tall order
Speaker 1: because that well runs really deep. We just so happened
Speaker 1: to have a cultural historian at this little mixer to
Speaker 1: tell us all about it. Angela McShane researches the history
Speaker 1: of intoxicans and she has some insight on why we
Speaker 1: use them and how they fit into our culture at large.
Speaker 1: She recently curated an exhibit on drinking vessels at the
Speaker 1: Victoria and Albert Museum from tusday to welcome h VNA
Speaker 1: in London. The v N A, if you haven't had
Speaker 1: a chance to visit, feels palatial, marble staircases, super high
Speaker 1: ceilings and display cases that are the cleanest glass I
Speaker 1: have ever seen. And I know glasses clear, but this
Speaker 1: was like clearer on the air around it. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just really so clean. Angela's display features rows of
Speaker 1: drinking vessels from heavy metal chalices too delicate Venetian glass.
Speaker 1: The idea of the drink display was here was much
Speaker 1: more about what are the concepts behind drink in particular,
Speaker 1: how did it connect sit with the society. Why did
Speaker 1: people feel the need to drink, Why did they often
Speaker 1: feel the need to drink too much? For tracks of
Speaker 1: our history, drinking was not an off hour's indulgence. It
Speaker 1: was a pre wreck for civic engagement. One of the
Speaker 1: things about the putting this story is the objects together
Speaker 1: was to indicate that drink was at the heart of
Speaker 1: every part of the state. If you're going to demonstrate
Speaker 1: your loyalty to your lord, whether that's an empress or
Speaker 1: whether that's your landlord, the chances are you're going to
Speaker 1: need to have a drink with them to prove that.
Speaker 1: If you're going to go to church, then you're going
Speaker 1: to drink quine. There's also a lying history of competitive
Speaker 1: social drinking. Way before a beer pong, people were egging
Speaker 1: each other on and ribbing one another, and real invested
Speaker 1: in making sure everyone was keeping pace with one another.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase called taking somebody down a peg or two.
Speaker 1: It's actually a peg peg tankards. I didn't know the
Speaker 1: word tankred before kicking it with Angela at the museum.
Speaker 1: So if it's a new term to you, imagine like um,
Speaker 1: like a heavy beer mug, but made out of metal
Speaker 1: and with a hinged lid on top. When you open it,
Speaker 1: what you can see inside is little pegs, light little
Speaker 1: pins in the tankard down where the handle is, and
Speaker 1: these mark off different measures of drink. And that's because
Speaker 1: all of these objects are intended for sharing. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that you measure off one peg, two pegs,
Speaker 1: and you've agreed with the people that are drinking with
Speaker 1: you how many pegs are going to drink. And often
Speaker 1: it can turn into a competition, of course, because they
Speaker 1: all say, let's see you drink three pegs in one go,
Speaker 1: let's see drunk. So so then it becomes a game.
Speaker 1: And so to take somebody down a peg or two
Speaker 1: is literally to take them down the pegs in the tankerd.
Speaker 1: This emphasis on drinking together and ensuring that everyone drinks
Speaker 1: their share goes back thousands of years. The phrase in
Speaker 1: Vino veritas is often credited to Plenty the Elder, a
Speaker 1: Roman statesman, and it's quoted by Plato in his text Symposium.
Speaker 1: You may have heard it translated to means something like
Speaker 1: in wine there is truth. But what it means is
Speaker 1: when you read it within the context of his book
Speaker 1: The Symposium, that because people will say things they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have said if they weren't drunk, everybody has to be
Speaker 1: drunk together. And what happens in the room stays in
Speaker 1: the room. Obviously, many people choose not to drink for
Speaker 1: personal reasons, health concerns, or to abide by the mandates
Speaker 1: of their faith. Alcohol, for example, is forbidden in Islam. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in present day Iran, what is the what is
Speaker 1: the legal position on intoxican irnly is quite easy. Everything
Speaker 1: is illegal, even beyond intoxication. You know, your sexual relationship
Speaker 1: before marriage are illegal. So every and everything you can
Speaker 1: think about that is you know, you know, even fouly
Speaker 1: cool it's is illegal. So I'm Mazzi Mazzi for Friends
Speaker 1: and Enemies. I am an academic at the University of Exeter,
Speaker 1: and I've been working on things related to how people
Speaker 1: intoxicate themselves and why they do so in in the
Speaker 1: Middleast in particular. Mazzi grew up in Iran, then moved
Speaker 1: to Italy, but has returned to Iran for research trips.
Speaker 1: He stresses that the laws on the books aren't the
Speaker 1: laws on the boulevard. Total prohibition is not the reality
Speaker 1: of life in Iran life under the law. It's it's
Speaker 1: far ambiguous and ambivalent. Because everything is prohibited in a way,
Speaker 1: everything is also allowed. So people really kind of do
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. I mean, I've done things that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do elsewhere. It's easier to order, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bag of math or any other drugs in
Speaker 1: Tehran than toward the pizza, and pizza is pretty easy
Speaker 1: to order. The total ban on drugs and the serious
Speaker 1: consequences for getting caught change the social aspect of consuming drugs. Drinkers,
Speaker 1: for example, can't simply lounge and linger in a bar,
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to drink spirits than beer or
Speaker 1: wine because more potent drinks are easier to transport and
Speaker 1: self for profit. The first twenty minutes of a drinking
Speaker 1: session are very different from whatever else you've seen elsewhere.
Speaker 1: So there is a person who is in charge of
Speaker 1: pouring whatever alcoholic drink is available. They call him soggy
Speaker 1: or you know, men or women could be so there
Speaker 1: is also the name for dealer, by the way, and
Speaker 1: he pours the drink for everyone, making sure that everyone drinks,
Speaker 1: and people tend to drink in the good not spping
Speaker 1: you know, Russian way, but jams. Everyone's drunk. Usually, prohibition
Speaker 1: laws are so commonly broken by so many people that
Speaker 1: it would be outlandish for authorities to even try to
Speaker 1: penalize everyone who did so. The law enforcement do what
Speaker 1: they do basically everywhere. They can choose when they need
Speaker 1: to intervene, but Mazzi says they often do so with
Speaker 1: an ulterior motive. In Iran and around the world, drug
Speaker 1: violations provide the state with a pretext to intervene in
Speaker 1: the lives of people who have been flagged as risky
Speaker 1: or problematic for other reasons. Consider, for example, the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century Ottoman crackdown on coffee houses. Coffee was an exotic
Speaker 1: substance when it arrived, you know, in the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 1: The whole culture of coffee drinking started around this new substance,
Speaker 1: you know. And because they were also displaces, the coffee houses,
Speaker 1: where people would meet and you know, discuss, there were
Speaker 1: places which were seen as you know, definitely not conventional,
Speaker 1: but also potentially dangerous in political terms, according to Mazi
Speaker 1: and many of his colleagues. You know, in academia, you
Speaker 1: would struggle to find anyone who supports prohibition because you know,
Speaker 1: if you study drugs and addiction, there is no way
Speaker 1: you can say that the current regime of drug prohibition works.
Speaker 1: Your voice changes when you talk about prohibition like you
Speaker 1: just sound hell a board. Is it just because it's
Speaker 1: just an abject failure and there's nothing interesting to say
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, And so it's funny that he says,
Speaker 1: so prohibition has been a total failure in Iran elsewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, equally As a really little kid, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing a public service announcement on TV, a warning about
Speaker 1: the grave dangers of marijuana, which was prohibited then across
Speaker 1: the US. I ran from the living room television set
Speaker 1: to the kitchen and then back again, and found my
Speaker 1: fears confirmed the glass object on the kitchen shelf was
Speaker 1: in fact a bomb, which meant that one or maybe
Speaker 1: both of my parents was a drug user. I ended
Speaker 1: up in tears on my dad's lap. He admitted the
Speaker 1: bomb was his and tried to soothe me with a
Speaker 1: hug and some patient words. He asked if I thought
Speaker 1: of him differently, and I told him yes, according to
Speaker 1: the after school TV programming, he was a moral hazard
Speaker 1: and a total deviant. But being my dad, he also
Speaker 1: made the rules about bedtime and dinner menus, so I
Speaker 1: didn't really have a light to stand on. Prohibition might
Speaker 1: not be too effective, but it does say something about
Speaker 1: the intensity of our motivation to use intoxicans. People around
Speaker 1: the world are willing to risk serious consequences to get
Speaker 1: drunk or high. Even if how we use them looks different.
Speaker 1: It seems like we've got a really strong universal why,
Speaker 1: and those drives are varied. When you're living Iran, a
Speaker 1: lot of people have the feeling that they are basically
Speaker 1: living in isolation from everything for everything that is happening
Speaker 1: in the world, and that's interesting, you know, they feel
Speaker 1: that they're losing out, and so drugs in a way
Speaker 1: project you in a dimension which is still yours, you
Speaker 1: know if they don't, and the dimension of your everyday life.
Speaker 1: But you're connected, like the people are being high in California,
Speaker 1: you're being high in Tehran. It's a mimicking act. We
Speaker 1: use drugs to feel connected to each other. From communion
Speaker 1: cup to keg stand. We all do use drugs. We
Speaker 1: do because fundamentally we try to feel better in the world.
Speaker 1: Some of them are legal, some of them are illegal.
Speaker 1: Some of them are prescribed by you know, our pharmacists,
Speaker 1: and some you know that may be prescribed by our dealers.
Speaker 1: We use intoxicans to blunt our anxieties to demonstrate our allegiances.
Speaker 1: We use them as part of our ceremonies and to
Speaker 1: compete and connect with one another. And of course the
Speaker 1: particular intoxicans we choose can also send messages about how
Speaker 1: we'd like to be perceived. Like if a woman walks
Speaker 1: into a bar and shoots a double shot of tequila,
Speaker 1: that just reads differently than if she asks for a
Speaker 1: glass of rose or a corps like tall Boy champagne
Speaker 1: is for celebrating Long Island ice teaser for utility. Some
Speaker 1: Irish whiskeys are shunned by Catholics and some shunned by Protestants.
Speaker 1: Smoking a Virginia Slim isn't the same thing as smoking
Speaker 1: a Marlborough Red or a Cuban cigar, And our appetite
Speaker 1: for intoxicants is intense. Listener, I don't relish relaying this
Speaker 1: part of the story, but that slurry of Katie's dad's booze,
Speaker 1: it curdled like maybe a product of mixing red wine
Speaker 1: and dairy, and it had to be strained through a
Speaker 1: sock before drinking. That is so gross, That is so embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But I remember that teenage drive to feel different, that novelty, seeking, thrill, hungry,
Speaker 1: urge to change the settings in my head. Intoxicants might
Speaker 1: not help us hunt or escape being hunted, but the
Speaker 1: desire for them is deeply human. I don't usually do that,
Speaker 1: and like say the name of the show as a
Speaker 1: style thing, but that's like just this one time. I'm
Speaker 1: just asking for a past point. Whatever is in your cup, tea, coffee,
Speaker 1: tava or water from the tap. I am lifting a
Speaker 1: glass in your general direction in this recording studio. Have fun,
Speaker 1: be careful, and I'll see you next question. Deeply Human
Speaker 1: is a BBC World Service and American Public Media co
Speaker 1: production with I Heart Media, and it's hosted by Meek Dessa.
Speaker 1: Find me online at Dessa on Instagram and Dessa Darling
Speaker 1: on Twitter. In Western convention, monogamy is baked into the
Speaker 1: mainstream concept of love and romance. You meet, you catch feelings,
Speaker 1: you share a plate of pasta and discovery, you're eating
Speaker 1: the same noodle, you commit and you've stopped seeing other
Speaker 1: people next time. On Deeply Human, we're asking why are
Speaker 1: you supposed to love only one person at a time.