John Maier

Our need to get drunk in company may be innate

Edward Slingerland examines alcohol’s ‘genuine evolutionary puzzle’: if it’s so harmful, why hasn’t its use been eliminated by natural selection over the centuries?

‘The Bacchanal of the Andrians’ by Titian, 1523-6 [Getty Images] 
issue 24 July 2021

  • Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

    Edward Slingerland

    Little, Brown, pp. 384, £25

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Hold the front page, sound the alarm, remember where you were – the Lib Dems have come up with a good idea for once. Reinforcing the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Ed Davey’s party has announced a genuinely sensible policy: that playing music out loud on public transport

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