Hosted By
It gets you drunk, hungover and sick. And yet we go back for more. What’s the attraction of alcohol?
According to Professor Edward Slingerland, author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Stumbled, and Danced Our Way to Civilization, alcohol is the key to civilisation. In this insightful episode of Drinks Insider, he tells host Felicity Carter that much of what we think about alcohol is false.
We did not, for example, develop a taste for it because over-ripe, fermenting fruit has more calories. Nor did we value it primarily as a way of rendering dirty water safe to drink.
Instead, it’s a cultural technology that helped early humans forge larger cooperative societies, overcoming the limitations of small-group living. Without it, we’d never have learned to trust strangers.
In this episode of Drinks Insider, Prof. Slingerland discusses:
Professor Slingerland argues that alcohol's benefits in fostering social cohesion and creativity have been fundamental to the development of human civilisation, even if modern high-strength options present new challenges.
#DrinksInsider #Podcast #AlcoholHistory #Civilization #EdwardSlingerland #ScienceOfDrinking #SocialDrinking #Creativity #MythsBusted #FelicityCarter #DrinksPodcast
How would it change your business if you could predict how successful your products would be before you launched them? Or what about if...
One of the hardest problems to solve in the non-alc category is the substitute wine. Charlie Friedmann, the president and co-founder of Proxies, was...
How can wine businesses innovate while remaining true to tradition? Jonathan Steyn, convener of the Wine Business Management and Hospitality Leadership program at the...
