Episode
#74 Edward Slingerland - The Evolutionary Case for Getting Drunk, Alcohol and Neurochemistry, Socialisation, Archaeology, Philosophy
- Published
- Apr 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 6894
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149/episodes/74-edward-slingerland-the-evolutionary-case-for-getting-drunk-alcohol-and-neurochemistry-socialisation-archaeology-philosophy/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-curious-bartender-podcast-7114149/74-edward-slingerland-the-evolutionary-case-for-getting-drunk-alcohol-and-neurochemistry-socialisation-archaeology-philosophy.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Edward Slingerland is a distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, whose research spans early Chinese thought, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology. He is, among other works, the author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Our conversation starts by traging the origins of his thinking on alcohol to his earlier work on wu wei, the ancient Chinese concept of effortless action, and explore how downregulating the prefrontal cortex, whether through drinking, flow states, or long-distance running, unlocks the lateral thinking and spontaneity that the self-conscious mind tends to suppress. We get into the Ballmer Peak, the Google whisky room, and our own experiences of writing and creating under the influence, before turning to the central argument: that alcohol is not an evolutionary mistake but a genuine cultural technology, one that has been helping humans solve the problems of creativity and large-scale cooperation for at least 13,000 years. We dig into what the archaeological record reveals, from Gobekli Tepe to the Epic of Gilgamesh, making the case that the desire for intoxication may have preceded and even driven the development of agriculture and civilisation itself. We explore the hidden social intelligence embedded in drinking rituals, the way toasting customs, rounds at the pub, and the unspoken etiquette of sharing a bottle all serve to pace and regulate consumption within a group, before examining the two conditions that make alcohol most dangerous: distillation and isolation. We compare northern and southern European drinking cultures, look at what Italy's historically low alcoholism rates can teach us, and ask what cultures that abstain entirely reveal about al…