Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1663 - Edward Slingerland

Edward Slingerland is the Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. His newest book, “Drunk”, is available now.

Joe RoganhostEdward Slingerlandguest
Jun 27, 20242h 45mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:33

    From Chinese philosophy to alcohol as a tool for spontaneity (wu wei)

    1. JR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) So what possessed you to write a book about getting hammered? (laughs) .

    4. ES

      (laughs) Yeah, that's a really good question. Like, my colleagues are, are flabbergasted when they see the topic. Uh, so my day job's early Chinese philosophy and I do comparative religion, and then I'm writing this book on alcohol. It actually, i- it grows organically out of work I've done before. So my, my specialty is early Chinese philosophy. My early work focused on this idea in early China of what I translated as effortless action. The word is wu wei. It literally means no doing or not trying, but it's this, it's this spontaneous, it's kinda like being in the zone in sports. So it's a state where you lose a sense of yourself as an agent, you feel like everything's just happening, you're not making any effort, and yet everything works perfectly. You solve problems, people like you, everything works out. And the early Chinese thinkers wanna get you into this state of wu wei, but they have this problem that I call the paradox of wu wei, which is how do you try not to try?

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. ES

      Y- you, you wanna be spontaneous. You're not being spontaneous. How do you get from A to B? And all of what I argue in my dissertation is that all of early Chinese philosophy is this, uh, series of attempts to solve the paradox, and no one does it because it's a genuine paradox. And so I revisit... My first general audience book is called Trying Not to Try, and it's about this tension, and I walk people through the various strategies that the early Chinese came up with. But none of 'em really can be 100% effective because what's hap- when you're trying not to try, cognitively, you're activating the part of your brain that you wanna shut down.

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. ES

      It's c- Dan Wegner, the social psychologist, talked about the, what he called the white bear problem. So if I say, "Don't think of a white bear," you think of a white bear because I've just activated that concept in your brain. If you are, if you're a standup comedian and you're choking, like, your everything's falling flat, the audience is turning ugly, you're getting nervous, and part of your brain's like, "Just relax. Just do your stuff. Be funny," how do you, how do you be funny if you're (laughs) not feeling funny? How do you force yourself to do that? And so this is a real tension, and I... That, that's what my previous work focused on. But there is a story in one of these texts, this Taoist text, where Zhuangzi, this early Taoist thinker, compares the person who's in wu wei to someone who's drunk. They kind of lose a sense of themself.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. ES

      They're relaxed. They can bump into things and not harm themselves. And it's clear that in that text it's just a metaphor for the spiritual state Zhuangzi wants you to get into. But I think that story made me start thinking about how cultures might use alcohol as a technology for getting around this paradox of wu wei. You wanna be spontaneous, you wanna be relaxed, you wanna just be loose, but thinking about it's not gonna get you there.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. ES

      Alcohol's a way to kinda directly reach into your brain and just turn down your prefrontal cortex a little bit so you can relax. And so that's what started me thinking about alcohol as a, as a cultural technology to enhance spontaneity.

  2. 3:33 – 7:44

    Why distilled liquor changed the risk profile of drinking

    1. JR

      And it has to be modulated correctly.

    2. ES

      Oh-

    3. JR

      That's the, the thing about alcohol, right? The, one of the things about alcohol is when you are, when you start drinking, the moment you start to lose your inhibitions, you also lose the inhibition to drink too much.

    4. ES

      Yeah. (laughs) I know. That's the problem.

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. ES

      So that's why alcohol is super dangerous. Uh-

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. ES

      ... especially that kinda alcohol. Distilled liquor, super dangerous.

    9. JR

      Buffalo Trace.

    10. ES

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      I feel like we should have a drink.

    12. ES

      I, I think it, we would be remiss-

    13. JR

      I think we have to.

    14. ES

      ... if... I think we're professionally-

    15. JR

      If we're doing, if we're doing a podcast-

    16. ES

      ... obligated to drink. Yeah.

    17. JR

      Hit it, right? (glass clinks) There we go.

    18. ES

      That's nice.

    19. JR

      We're doing a podcast about drinking.

    20. ES

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      It just makes sense we should have at least a small... (liquid sloshes in glass)

    22. ES

      So the... Historically, there's been a safety feature built into alcohol. So for most... We've been drinking... (liquid sloshes in glass) .

    23. JR

      Oh.

    24. ES

      Thank you.

    25. JR

      Cheers.

    26. ES

      Cheers. Yeah. (glass clinks) .

    27. JR

      (gulps) Let's try this.

    28. ES

      Ah.

    29. JR

      Woo!

    30. ES

      Yeah. That's nice.

  3. 7:44 – 17:06

    The deep history of alcohol: primates, fermentation, and ‘beer before bread’

    1. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    2. ES

      ... 'cause it's really, it's dangerous, so it's hard to do. So we only mastered it, um ... I mean, I'm telling an evolutionary story, so.

    3. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. ES

      My story begins 10 million years ago with primate ancestors who adapted to alcohol. And just, so 10 million years ago, about 20,000 years ago to 13,000 years ago, we start making alcohol seriously, not just relying on fruit lying around that has some alcohol in it. And then distillation happens probably around 1300s in China and 1500, 1600s in Europe. So that sounds like a long time ago, but really, evolutionarily it's yesterday. We just, we really haven't had time culturally or genetically to adapt to access to this kinda alcohol.

    5. JR

      And a long time ago when people were drinking beer and, um, drinking wine in particular, like, a lot of what they were doing, like, if they were carrying it around with them, they would carry beer or wine when they were going on trips because it didn't go bad the way water would, right?

    6. ES

      Um, beer, unhopped beer goes bad pretty quickly.

    7. JR

      How qu- It won't the same as water?

    8. ES

      Like, a couple days, couple days, yeah.

    9. JR

      Yeah?

    10. ES

      Um, there's a theory that, uh, beer might have been useful in some cultures because it pur- fermenting water purifies the water.

    11. JR

      Hmm. Right, so if you had-

    12. ES

      So if you've got-

    13. JR

      ... bad water from a pond or something like that, and then you ferment it and make beer out of it.

    14. ES

      Yeah, yeah.

    15. JR

      And drink it.

    16. ES

      So that's one of the stor- I mean, the purpose of my book is to try to explain the puzzle of why we do this. Why do we put poisons into our body? Why do we like to drink? And it's mysterious because it's so, it's really costly. It's, it's damaging physiologically, it's got all these social, potential social problems, and yet we've been doing it forever. We've been making and drinking alcohol for just about as long as we've been doing anything in an organized fashion.

    17. JR

      Hmm.

    18. ES

      In fact, we, the, it, it's looking likely that we were doing this before agriculture, and that it's possible that the, the desire to make beer and wine is what motivated agriculture. So hunter-gatherers, hunter-gatherers were making beer before they had agriculture.

    19. JR

      Really?

    20. ES

      Yeah. And, uh-

    21. JR

      They were still making it in clay pots, and ...

    22. ES

      Yeah, there's, um, you know, they're pounding the stuff, they're malting it to up the sugar content. I think that's the effect of that, and then they're fermenting it. And so we have these sites, like in, in what's present-day Turkey, this site called Göbekli Tepe is this really cool ritual site. It's, um, these huge stone-

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. ES

      Uh, have you seen pictures of it?

    25. JR

      Yeah, I'm f- super familiar with it because of Graham Hancock, who's been-

    26. ES

      Okay.

    27. JR

      ... on my podcast multiple times.

    28. ES

      Okay.

    29. JR

      He's obsessed with ancient civilizations, and that is, uh, sort of the Rosetta Stone of ancient civilizations because it's, uh, at least 12,000 years old.

    30. ES

      Yeah.

  4. 17:06 – 20:26

    Ritual intoxication and hallucinogen-laced beers in ancient cultures

    1. JR

      Are you aware of, uh, Brian Muraresku's work?

    2. ES

      No.

    3. JR

      He wrote a book called The Immortality Key and it's all about, uh, ancient Greece and the Eleusinian mysteries.

    4. ES

      Okay.

    5. JR

      And, uh, he, uh, has, uh, proven through, uh, examination of these vessels that they used to carry their wine in, that the, uh, wine was laced with ergot. It was-

    6. ES

      Yeah, yeah.

    7. JR

      Yeah, so they were, they were tripping balls.

    8. ES

      I have heard about this theory, yeah.

    9. JR

      They were adding psychedelic compounds to their wine.

    10. ES

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      So they were, they were doing these things where they would have these ceremonies where everybody would get together and they would ... I mean, th- and this is where they figured out democracy.

    12. ES

      (laughs) Right.

    13. JR

      They solved a lot of the world's problems.

    14. ES

      You get a lot of new ideas-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. ES

      ... when you're doing hallucinogens. That's very common. So in, in Europe, a lot of the beers were clearly mixed with hallucinogens.

    17. JR

      Yeah, he talks about beer as well.

    18. ES

      And I think these, th- the Golden Triangle it's called, this region in Turkey, you know, around 12,000 years ago, there's a, uh, there's a carving from a site near Gobekli Tepe, uh, that has a picture. It's a carving of two ... A human dancing with these two dancing turtles.

    19. JR

      Wow.

    20. ES

      And, uh, it's hard to imagine seeing that on 2% to 3% in your beer, right?

    21. JR

      (laughs)

    22. ES

      (laughs) Like, you have to have ... There's gotta be something else going on.

    23. JR

      Right, right.

    24. ES

      And so I think it's likely that they were lacing their beer with hallucinogens. It's a really common thing to do.

    25. JR

      Well, they were all probably eating mushrooms too, right, if they found them.

    26. ES

      And they're possibly eating mushrooms as well, yeah.

    27. JR

      Um, that's ... D- d- why turtles? I wonder why t-

    28. ES

      (laughs)

    29. JR

      Is that, like, that ... Look at this.

    30. ES

      Oh, yeah, there it is. Yeah, that's great.

  5. 20:26 – 27:58

    Prefrontal cortex ‘playground monitor’: why intoxication boosts creativity and bonding

    1. ES

      Well, so it's doing a lot of different things for you. It's, it's helping with creativity. So one of the functions of alcohol and hallucinogens is its ... You mentioned four-year-olds. So there's good work on creativity and development by Alison Gopnik, who's a child psychologist at, um, child developmental psychologist at Berkeley, and she's got this great task where you've gotta ... You have to figure out this really counterintuitive problem. And she's got a graph that I reproduced in the book of how people do on it as they age. And so four-year-olds are awesome at it. They solve it right away. And it just l- goes down in a line until adults are really bad at it. And what I do in the book is lay that on top of a, a, a chart showing the development of the prefrontal cortex. So this part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, is really important. It's in charge of self-control, cognitive control, executive function. It's what allows you to stay focused on a task. It's w- it's what allows you to not meander in a conversation-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. ES

      ... and actually (laughs) stay focused on what you're talking about. Um, but it's, it's a enemy of creativity, for one thing, so it seems to interfere with your ability to think out of the box, or think laterally.

    4. JR

      Doesn't this also coincide, though, with responsibilities in life?

    5. ES

      Yeah, yeah. Well, it-

    6. JR

      Like the, the timeline?

    7. ES

      Well, it's the other ... I mean, in a way, it's the other way around. So you get more responsibilities 'cause you can handle them, because you actually have a prefrontal cortex.

    8. JR

      But is that really what's going on? Or is it just that you actually have a family and you have to feed them-

    9. ES

      That-

    10. JR

      ... and then you have these primal responsibilities that sort of rise up that force you to think much more pragmatically? I mean, what came first, the chicken or the egg, right?

    11. ES

      I think they're happening, they're co-happening.

    12. JR

      Mm.

    13. ES

      So it's developing the way it's developing because evolution has a problem it needs to solve. It ... The prefrontal cortex is the enemy of spontaneity. It's the enemy of creativity. It's the enemy of, of kind of childlike trust. You know, you see kids just walk up to a stranger in the airport and be like, "Hey, do you wanna meet my stuffed animal?" (laughs) You know?

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. ES

      Kids, kids are just ... They're open, right? Um, that's a good trait for some things, but kids also can't tie their fricking shoes and get to school in the morning, right?

    16. JR

      Right.

    17. ES

      They ... And so we ... There's this tension. Evolution wants us to be able to take care of our families and do our jobs and get food, and so its solution, essentially, is to give us this really extended childhood. So we have this long period where we're just gradually building our prefrontal cortex, and that allows us to be open, to make ties to other people, to learn from our culture, to learn language. We have all these skills we need to learn. And then right around kind of mid-20s, like 24 or 25 is when you're, you finally finish developing your PFC, and that's around the time when you have to start being hyper-responsible. And so it seems like a good solution f- for evolution to do that. The problem is once you've got that fully developed PFC, you've lost a lot of these childlike traits. So you've lost your ability to trust people implicitly. You've lost your ability to be creative, as, as Gopnik's work shows. And so it would be awesome if you could be a grownup and have a PFC, and be able to get to work on time and do everything you need to do, but you had a way to temporarily be like a child again-

    18. JR

      Hmm.

    19. ES

      ... for f- for a few hours. And this, this is how you do it, right?

    20. JR

      (laughs)

    21. ES

      It's a, it's basically a cultural technology for temporarily turning down your prefrontal cortex, so you can be like a four-year-old for a little bit.

    22. JR

      That explains comedians.

    23. ES

      That explains comedians.

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. ES

      I mean, it's central to com-

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. ES

      I mean, it's gotta be the case. Do you use ... You must use alcohol-

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. ES

      ... when writing and-

    30. JR

      Yeah. I like a little bit of alcohol and a little bit of marijuana mixed together.It's good for writing, it's also good for performing. You know, y- it's like, uh, don't give a fuck sauce.

  6. 27:58 – 44:56

    Non-alcohol paths to altered states: exercise, sleep deprivation, music, meditation

    1. JR

      What do you, uh, say about sober people that are also very cooperative? What techniques are they using if they're not using alcohol?

    2. ES

      There's a l- there's a lot of ways you can get into these kinda states. So, you can use exercise, you can use meditation. Meditation can do it. You can use breathing exercises, right? You can do extreme breathing. You can stay up all night. So, re- religious traditions that, for various reasons, decide they don't wanna use chemical intoxicants usually substitute some other way to do it.

    3. JR

      Um, I like that you said, "Stay up all night," because, uh, I used to be on this sitcom called NewsRadio, and the writers, uh, they had that strategy. It was a, uh, amazing show because the writing was so good. But the way they wrote it was so nuts. They were a bunch of young, really smart guys who were kinda crazy, and they would stay up until, like, 4:00 in the morning playing video games-

    4. ES

      (laughs)

    5. JR

      ... and then start writing.

    6. ES

      Yeah, (laughs) that's crazy. Right, yeah.

    7. JR

      So, sometimes we would show up, you know, like, maybe call time would be, uh, 9:00 or 10:00 AM, and they were, uh, just done with, like, the first draft of scene one.

    8. ES

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. JR

      You know? And, and we're like, "What are you guys doing?" Like, they, they were all fucked up and their hair was a mess-

    10. ES

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      ... they were barefoot.

    12. ES

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      They were animals. But they... It was a strategy.

    14. ES

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      The strategy was-

    16. ES

      Yeah, it's good.

    17. JR

      ... to get overtired and really, really silly.

    18. ES

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      And then they would come up with some of the most preposterous scenarios for f- And oddly enough-

    20. ES

      That's smart.

    21. JR

      ... they weren't getting high. These people were getting high that way. They-

    22. ES

      Yeah, no, you can do it through s- sleep deprivation will give it to you, yeah.

    23. JR

      That's literally how they did it on purpose, which-

    24. ES

      Yeah, it's cool.

    25. JR

      ... I'd never heard of before. But then once they told me about it, I was like, "Well, that does make sense." Because when I'm loopy, you know-

    26. ES

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... if, like, I'm hanging out with my friends and I've been up, like, and it's 4:00 in the morning, w- we just laugh at anything.

    28. ES

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      Like, you get full down silly.

    30. ES

      And you don't give a shit anymore.

  7. 44:56 – 54:30

    Dosing, predictability, and why alcohol is the ‘king of intoxicants’

    1. JR

      Okay. I know exact ... We're modulating correctly. And the, by ... The thing about recognizing the, the correct dosages for all these different things is we have a roadmap, and that's one of the problems with illi- the illegality of certain drugs.

    2. ES

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      You know?

    4. ES

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      And it's like, it's always been a really big problem with, in Los Angeles with marijuana, because, uh, it's the Wild West there, and especially-

    6. ES

      You never know what you're getting.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. ES

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Especially with edibles.

    10. ES

      Yeah, yeah. Oh, edibles are bad.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. ES

      This is, so one of my arguments in the book is that there ... Alco- I call alcohol the king of intoxicants.

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. ES

      So there are other ways you could do it. You could do it with cannabis. You can do it with kava, which is, is this intoxicating drink they drink in the Pacific. What's special about alcohol is that it's easy to dose. Like you were saying, you kno- ... So it's easy to dose. You know how much you're getting.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. ES

      The cognitive effects are similar across individuals, so it does kind of the same thing to different people. Whereas cannabis is really ... Like, I can't ... I've been, my whole life, I, you know, I spent my 20s in San Francisco, and everyone's smoking pot. When I smoke cannabis, it ... I get briefly really paranoid, and then I get horny for about, like, two minutes.

    17. JR

      (laughs) You get-

    18. ES

      And then I, and then I fall asleep.

    19. JR

      Catch it in, in that two minutes?

    20. ES

      Yeah. If you catch me, if you catch me in those two minutes, I have a great time. But-

    21. JR

      (laughs)

    22. ES

      ... other ... That's it, and then I fall asleep. Like all I wanna do is go to sleep. And so, and I ... And everyone's been like, "Oh, you haven't had sativa. You haven't had the right strain." It's bullshit. Like, every strain of cannabis affects me that way, but-

    23. JR

      Well, I de- I definitely think there's biodiversity in terms of, like, the way your body responds to cannabis. I've seen it.

    24. ES

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      And, uh, there's a guy, uh, Alex Berenson. He was a writer for the, uh, a, a journalist for the New York Times, and he wrote a book called Tell Your Children that's highly criticized by people that love cannabis. But I had him on with this guy, Mark Har- Mike Hart, who is a, a doctor from Canada who prescribed cannabis. And Alex's, his take on it was we, uh, by just pretending that cannabis does no harm, it doesn't do anybody any good 'cause some people have schizophrenic breaks-

    26. ES

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... while they're on cannabis. And I, I personally know of people that, especially with eating cannabis-

    28. ES

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      ... have had schizophrenic breaks and some people who smoked too much of it and smoked it all the time went, went nutty.

    30. ES

      Yeah.

  8. 54:30 – 1:00:37

    Genes, tolerance, and why some populations flush while others develop alcoholism

    1. JR

      But it's interesting that different cultures have almost like a...... the, where they d-- if cultures, uh, traditionally don't have, uh, a use of alcohol as a part of their culture, they have lower tolerances.

    2. ES

      They do.

    3. JR

      And then individuals, for whatever reason, some individuals are, like, predestined to be alcoholics.

    4. ES

      Yeah, yeah.

    5. JR

      Which is really weird.

    6. ES

      That's, it's part of the puzzle I'm trying to explain. So the estimate is that up to 15% of the human population has a predisposition to alcoholism.

    7. JR

      Wow.

    8. ES

      So they can't-

    9. JR

      That's really high.

    10. ES

      ... they can't, it's really high. You can't use... If you have that predispo- you can't use alcohol safely. And so the question is, why has our taste for alcohol been allowed to stay in our gene pool for so long? And so one of those stories I tell is we have... So, uh, one possibility... The standard scientific story about why we like alcohol is it's a mistake. So, uh, it's a way we get a reward for no good reason, and so it's kind of an evolutionary hijack. And so it's, it's, it's similar to masturbation. So, uh, people can get rew- pleasure is our genes' way of getting us to do what they want us to do. So they give us pleasure for things that advance their cause, and they give us pain for things that don't. And the best pleasure you could have as a human being is an orgasm. It's, everything else is compared to that, and it's because that's most directly associated with the thing the genes most want us to do, which is make copies-

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. ES

      ... and pass it on to the next generation. But it's a, it's not a perfect system because we can get orgasms in other ways (laughs) , right? So we-

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. ES

      ... masturbate, we engage in all sorts of non-reproductive sex, but it works good enough because the cost of whatever else we're doing is minimal. The, the point is, over evolutionary history, statistically speaking, orgasms were associated with getting us to pass on genes to the next generation.

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. ES

      And it's because the, the reason evolution can tolerate all the non-reproductive hijinks we get up to is because they're not costly. It's not imposing adaptive costs on us. In the case of alcohol, especially if you have a predisposition to alcoholism, it's imposing huge costs on you. And so evolution should be really interested in getting... We sh- our taste for alcohol should be eliminated from the human species if it really is only a costly mistake.

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. ES

      If it's just kind of brain parasite. And so one possibility is, well, evolution just hasn't figured out a solution yet, and that's possible. Like, selection can't work on a mutation that doesn't exist. But there's a gene complex that, uh, evolved separately at least three times, uh, at different points of history and around the world where people don't like to drink. And so, um, the most, I think, people know of it... The most common prevalence of it is in East Asia. So some people from East Asia, if they ha- if they had that first drink we had, like about halfway through that first drink, they would start, they would turn red, they would start to get heart palpitations, they would feel nauseous. They would... That first drink you poured me, about two sips in, they would stop drinking because they would start feeling really uncomfortable. And that's-

    19. JR

      Why, why East Asia?

    20. ES

      Well, s- this is, so it's an interesting story. So it seemed to have arro- it arose about 7,000 years ago at the same time as rice agriculture. So something's going on, there's some connection between this set of mutations and rice agriculture, and one theory is that... So what's happening is they have two mutations. So alcohol gets broken down in your body in two steps. So ethanol comes in, this first enzyme called ADH takes it and pulls a couple hydrogens off it and turns it into this substance called acetaldehyde, which is still really nasty, it's still very poisonous. And so then there's another enzyme, ADLH, that takes another couple hydrogens off that and turns it into acetic acid, which is harmless, you can get rid of that real easily. What, what's going on with people with this, these mutations is that first step, their ADH enzyme is hyper-efficient, so they're taking alcohol and immediately turning it into acetaldehyde. But then the second step, that enzyme is not very good. So all this acetaldehyde's building up in their system and it starts happening right away, and that's what's giving them the flushing and the nausea and all this other stuff. The theory is that there's something about high acetaldehyde concentrations in the body that might help with tuberculosis-

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. ES

      ... or fungal poisoning. And so the theory is this was useful for hunter-gatherers who had just settled down and started to do agriculture. Suddenly you're living in big groups, tuberculosis becomes a problem, suddenly you're storing grain in a wet climate that's gonna start, just gonna start to rot, and so you, you're vulnerable to fungal poisoning.

    23. JR

      Oh.

    24. ES

      And so it may be an adaptation to rice agriculture.

    25. JR

      This, and you said this is East Asia?

    26. ES

      It's, it's, basically it started in kind of where modern-day Shanghai is, so Southeast China. It's spread... In the book I show a map of the distribution of this gene right now and it's, so it spread to Japan and Korea a little bit, but it pretty much stayed there. And so part of my argument in the book is that if alcohol is just an evolutionary mistake, if it's just hijacking reward networks in our brain that evolved for other reasons, this, what's sometimes called the Asian flushing gene complex, this is the silver bullet, this is the solution. Evolution figured out the answer to this. And it's such a good solution that actually a chemical that simulates the same effect of this mutation is used to treat alcoholism. So you give it to alcoholics and they don't wanna drink anymore because they have all these negative effects.

    27. JR

      What's that called?

    28. ES

      Um, disulfide, disulfamine or something like that.

    29. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    30. ES

      It's, uh, it basically creates a chemical version. It, it somehow reproduces the effect of high levels of acetaldehyde in your body.

  9. 1:00:37 – 1:04:13

    Why North America lacked indigenous alcohol traditions (and used tobacco/other drugs instead)

    1. JR

      Now, one of the theories about Native Americans is that, um...... they didn't have alcohol as a part of their culture until the Europeans came and, you know, the, what was it, 13th century or whatever-

    2. ES

      Yeah, pretty late.

    3. JR

      ... they first started coming in.

    4. ES

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      When they started introducing them to alcohol, they didn't have the genes for it.

    6. ES

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      Does that make sense?

    8. ES

      Yeah. So, um, you have to talk about North versus South America. So South America, they've had alcohol for a long time, so they were making-

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. ES

      ... Chicha, this beer. But North America is one of the few places in the world where they didn't have indigenous alcohol cultures.

    11. JR

      Do we know why?

    12. ES

      I think that it's because they had a different drug that was doing the same job. So they had tobac- this really... Native forms of tobacco are really powerful. They're much more power. They, they actually get you a little bit high from just the nicotine high, and then they were including, they were mixing in hallucinogens.

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. ES

      And so I think they had a, they had a smokable dr- For whatever reason, their cultures hit upon this smokable drug that they used in exactly the same way other cultures used alcohol. You smoked it at treaties, you know, signing, uh, when you needed to get along with strangers, you'd sit down first and smoke... You know, the peace pipe-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. ES

      ... is the calumet. This is where it comes from.

    17. JR

      In North America, when you include Mexico, there's a long history of consumption of psilocybin mushrooms, right?

    18. ES

      Yeah, I don't know how far north it goes. I'm not sure they were doing it in North America. It's possible. They were, the hallucinogen they were including in the, the tobacco was Datura. I don't know what. This, um, it'll, it'll get... Jimson weed. It'll get you high, but it's not psilocybin. As far as I know, psilocybin, uh, was primarily used in kind of n- once you start at Northern Mexico going south.

    19. JR

      Hmm.

    20. ES

      And then it's, you know, it was used in ancient times in, in all those regions.

    21. JR

      Datura.

    22. ES

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      Is... Mm... Are, are you saying it right? Is it Datura?

    24. ES

      Maybe Datura, yeah.

    25. JR

      Is that-

    26. ES

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... that one that's, like, really oddly dissociative? There's one that, um, I remember reading, uh, it was, it was again, it was McKenna talking about it, where he had to take it, but he had to stop, stop using it because he, um, was talking to a friend at a market and he realized that the friend believed that they were back in his apartment. Like, he didn't recognize that he wasn't outside in a market.

    28. ES

      Okay.

    29. JR

      And this was... I wanna say he was taking it in India.

    30. ES

      All right. It could be. I mean, hallucinations do all kinds of crazy stuff, but-

  10. 1:04:13 – 1:14:33

    From ketamine dread to simulation theory: do drugs ‘peek’ into other realities?

    1. ES

      Yeah. Have you ever done ketamine?

    2. JR

      No, I have not.

    3. ES

      I did it once, and it sounds a little bit like that, where I was, like, in a d- I was convinced I was just in a different universe now.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. ES

      And it's not a universe I was thrilled about.

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. ES

      It's fucked... It's kind of a fucked up universe, and I was never coming back. Like, it was... I was just filled with this-

    8. JR

      Dread.

    9. ES

      ... "Fuck, why did I walk through that door? And now I'm in this universe and I'm stuck here-"

    10. JR

      Hmm.

    11. ES

      "... and I will never get back to my old universe."

    12. JR

      Wow.

    13. ES

      It was really strongly dissociated feeling that was unpleasant.

    14. JR

      I wonder if that's real. I wonder if you really can, through chemicals, for a brief moment of time, take a poke, just take a peek into a neighboring dimension and experience some sort, like a chemical gateway into... Well, like, we know that there's more, there's more to the universe than what we can observe. Like, if you wave your hand over the top of an earthworm, it has no idea you're there.

    15. ES

      Okay.

    16. JR

      Like, we... How, how many of those senses do we lack to perceive... Like, how many senses to perceive things that exist, but that, for whatever reason, we don't have the instruments to pick up? How much of that we... We can only imagine, right?

    17. ES

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      We can imagine that what we see and what we can measure and what we observe with our eyes and ears and, you know, our, our senses, that this is all that exists. But that's just speculative. We really have no idea. When you take into account things like dark matter and dark energy, we really don't know what the fuck 90% of the universe is.

    19. ES

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      And, and then there's weird things like the, the concept of multiverses and the concept of parallel dimensions-

    21. ES

      Yeah, I, yeah, I saw you had Sean Carroll on the show.

    22. JR

      Oh my God.

    23. ES

      Yeah, yeah.

    24. JR

      He, he hurts my brain.

    25. ES

      Yeah, yeah (laughs) .

    26. JR

      Sean hu- Last time we, we talked, you hurt my brain.

    27. ES

      Yeah, the idea-

    28. JR

      Sean.

    29. ES

      ... of multiple universes is, is trippy.

    30. JR

      Yeah, yeah.

  11. 1:14:33 – 1:45:50

    VR realism and the ‘uncanny valley’: Unreal Engine, haptics, and the metaverse trajectory

    1. NA

      This is the new, uh, background Unreal Engine 5.

    2. JR

      Oh my God.

    3. NA

      Um, I just, I tried to get a good spot here so when they put the lights on here in a second, that's-

Episode duration: 2:45:54

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode LksPQP0YaxA

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome