110: Alcohol, Religion & Pandemics

What do alcohol, religion and pandemics have in common?  A lot, as it turns out. This episode is a deep dive to the origins of our human love of alcohol, religion and social connection. In short, whenever a drug (like gambling, opium, sex, religion, social media, lies, alcohol, etc.) becomes more potent and less social, humans get ourselves into trouble. The pandemic has accelerated our already-problematic relationship with both religion and alcohol, and the similarities are pretty obvious once you know where to look.For more on ancient cities built to produce and drink alcohol (including Göbekli Tepe), check out The Guardian article, "10,000 Years of Cheers: Why Social Drinking is an Ancient Ritual" or Edward Slingerland's book, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled our Way to Civilization. For more on human genetic mutations that allowed us to drink much more alcohol than other animals, check out the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article, "Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation." To read more about the relationship between visits to the bar and personal happiness (based on friendship), check out Robin Dunbar's work. For a great supplement to this episode (with lots of additional information) check out Kate Julian's article in the Atlantic, "America has a Drinking Problem." Ted Slingerman's Google Talk is also worth a watch: "Trying not to Try"Music by prazkhanal from PixabaySupport the show