Alcohol: History's Favorite Mind-Bending Substance

03/02/21 • 17 min

2 Listeners

Vervet monkeys steal it out of people's hands. Chimpanzees in Guinea are known to climb up palm trees and drink it. There’s even a theory that loving it was an important adaptation for our pre-human ancestors, that the smell of fermentation helped them track down very ripe, calorie-rich fruit.

Alcohol has been deeply ingrained in our lives from the beginning, possibly since before we were human. And while the drive to drink is older than civilization, many have worked hard to reign it in. In 1920s America, these desires clashed like never before. It’s a story of a battle between chemists, and the unthinkable lengths the U.S. government went to to try to pry away our favorite mind-altering substance.

Guest:

Deborah Blum is a science writer and journalist.

Footnotes & Further Reading:

For more on the government poisoning program, check out The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum.

For more on the “chemist’s war,” read this article by Deborah Blum.

Credits:

Science Diction is produced by Johanna Mayer and Elah Feder. Elah is our editor and senior producer. Our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, who also mastered this episode. Special thanks to the Arabic scholar Stephen Guth, and to Kat Eschner. This episode was fact checked by Robin Palmer. Chris Wood contributed sound design. Nadja Oertelt is our chief content officer.

This season of Science Diction was sponsored by Audible.

Guest:

Deborah Blum is a science writer and journalist.

Footnotes & Further Reading:

For more on the government poisoning program, check out The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum.

For more on the “chemist’s war,” read this article by Deborah Blum.

Credits:

This season of Science Diction was sponsored by Audible.

Previous Episode

Robot: Making A Mechanical Mind

In 1920, a Czech writer was stumped. He’d written a play about a future where machines that looked like people do our bidding. They were the perfect workers: obedient, hard working, and never demanded a pay raise. But what was the writer to call these marvelous machines? There wasn’t yet a word for this type of creation.

He had initially chosen labori, from the Latin for labor, but something about the word wasn’t quite right. It seemed...stiff, bookish. This play wasn’t just about machines who labored. It was about machines we exploited, relentlessly. And eventually, the writer landed on a word that fit better: R obot.

Robot comes from an old Czech word for drudgery and servitude. Though in his play - like so very many robo-dystopias to come - the writer showed that a mind we create to serve us, isn’t necessarily a mind we can control.

Footnotes & Further Reading:

See more drawings and diagrams in The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Ismail al-Jazari.

Check out some old footage of Unimate, the first worker robot.

Credits:

This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer, Julia Pistell, and Elah Feder. Elah is our editor and senior producer. We had sound design and mastering from Chris Wood. Our music was composed by Daniel Peterschmidt. Thank you to Craig Cravens, senior lecturer at Indiana University, for helping us with research about Karel Capek. We had fact checking help from Danya AbdelHameid. Nadja Oertelt is our chief content officer.

This season of Science Diction is supported by Audible.

Next Episode

Mercury: How It Made Cats Dance

In 1953, in the coastal town of Minamata in Japan, locals noticed some cats were acting strangely—twitching, spinning in circles, almost dancing. The reality was far darker. What looked like dancing was really convulsions. The cats drooled, spun in circles, and flung themselves into the sea. The cause of this strange behavior, residents discovered, was mercury.

Mercury—a silvery liquid, named for a quick-footed Roman God—has captivated humans since ancient times. It’s found in Egyptian tombs that date to 1500 BCE, and the first emperor of unified China believed it was the elixir of life. But what happens when it invades a town, and seeps into our brains?

Footnotes & Further Reading:

For this story, we relied heavily on the book Minamata : Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan.Learn how mercury played a pivotal role in pinpointing a key campsite location in the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Credits:

This episode of Science Diction was written by Kaitlyn Schwalje, and produced by Elah Feder and Johanna Mayer. Elah is our editor and senior producer. Daniel Peterschmidt sound designed this episode and composed all the music, except The Timbo March which is by Tim Garland, from the Audio Network. We had fact checking help from Danya Abdelhameid and Robin Palmer. Nadja Oertelt is our chief content officer.

The season of Science Diction is sponsored by Audible.