Alcohol

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange and the mundane.

Speaker: We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera.

Speaker: On today's episode, we're talking about alcohol.

Speaker: Does alcohol change who we are or simply lower our inhibitions to be who we truly want to be?

Speaker: Was the prohibition movement justified?

Speaker: And can alcohol induce mystical experiences?

Speaker: Welcome back to Philosophy on the Fringes.

Speaker: First of all, sorry about the delay.

Speaker: We have had a round of illnesses in our house.

Speaker: I guess it was kind of time for it.

Speaker: Like when you have kids, everyone's sick all the time.

Speaker: But we hadn't been sick all summer.

Speaker: I wasn't sick.

Speaker: Frank actually has still not been sick.

Speaker: Frank never gets sick, which is great because he can care for me and the kid when we're sick.

Speaker: But we were overdue for an illness and we got it kind of a double whammy.

Speaker: And we're sick for quite a while, but we're better now.

Speaker: So let's jump into today's content on alcohol.

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Speaker: So Frank, you recently reread a classic text of philosophy in which alcohol is, you know, almost not a main character, but a really necessary background condition for the entire drama.

Speaker: Yeah, so today we're talking about alcohol.

Speaker: Alcohol, yeah, I think it's like a fringe topic.

Speaker: You don't see like philosophy of alcohol classes or anything like that.

Speaker: But alcohol does appear from time to time.

Speaker: One place it appears pretty prominently is in Plato's dialogue, The Symposium.

Speaker: So I just read that again recently.

Speaker: It's really, really good.

Speaker: There's a lot of... There's like, compared to other dialogues by Plato, there's a lot of action, right?

Speaker: Like Alcibiades, one of the...

Speaker: characters like barges in at the end and he's like you guys aren't drinking enough we need to drink some more no more spoilers about the end though but but anyway it's pretty good it's really good dialogue so i guess we just say what a symposium is right because megan cares a lot about symposia i do i bring them back right so what is a symposium megan

Speaker: Yeah, so, well, Frank, as you know, Plato's Symposium is probably my favorite dialogue of Plato's aside from The Republic.

Speaker: I love the Symposium.

Speaker: In this case, a Symposium is kind of like, I mean, it is sort of like a drinking party.

Speaker: Yeah, I guess they eat dinner too, but... Yeah, although I'm not sure if that's necessary for it to be a Symposium.

Speaker: Maybe little snackies.

Speaker: But the point of a symposium beyond kind of, you know, being drunk at the end is that each person, each participant in the gathering has to give a speech in defense of something.

Speaker: So it kind of depends what the topic of your symposium is.

Speaker: In Plato's dialogue, the topic is love.

Speaker: They're sort of, they each have to give their view when it comes to be their turn to speak.

Speaker: They have to give a speech in praise of a particular picture of love.

Speaker: What is love?

Speaker: Baby, don't hurt me is not anyone's view in the symposium.

Speaker: I participated in a symposium, kind of.

Speaker: It was an informal one, just during dinner with some friends.

Speaker: And it was also, I don't want to say how many years ago because I don't want the listeners to know how old I am, but it was before I was able to drink.

Speaker: And in fact, before any of us were able to drink, we were not of legal age.

Speaker: And so it really lacked the inhibition-lowering

Speaker: features that like an alcohol fueled symposium might have but the topic of ours was like i think it was like what's the best body part and uh what do you think i are what what do you think i i made a speech in praise of uh the butt the no i was too shy then uh i said do you want to be creeped out i said skin yeah that's creepy

Speaker: So in Plato's symposium, they give speeches about love.

Speaker: But I guess in the historical symposia, this is like a thing that the ancient Greeks did.

Speaker: They sometimes read poetry or, you know, sang songs, things like that.

Speaker: So, yeah, so the kind of entertainment that took place in these drinking parties was not always like philosophy, but philosophy was one of the things that they did.

Speaker: Yeah, but everyone is supposed to like participate at some point and it's supposed to your participation is supposed to be about the theme of the topic, whatever.

Speaker: So you've said this before, Megan, you said we should bring symposiums back.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like why, though?

Speaker: I mean, is having alcohol help with doing philosophy?

Speaker: Well, now you're making it sound like I want to make philosophy events like ragers, which I absolutely don't.

Speaker: Oh, no, no, no, no.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: No, I think I mean, what I think the most important part of symposia is, is just getting like kind of having this requirement that there's going to be.

Speaker: dialogue about a particular topic among all participants in a gathering.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know, as anyone who's ever taught philosophy or been in a philosophy class knows, discussion, you know, even when you try your hardest as an instructor is, you know, often dominated by, you know, two, three, four people with everyone else just kind of listening.

Speaker: And, you know, sometimes dominated by one person and that's the lecturer.

Speaker: And while that format can be fine and can be good,

Speaker: There is also, I think, a lot to be gained when everyone is like, where the expectation and the desire is that everybody participates and even maybe like comes prepared with stuff.

Speaker: So that, I mean, I think that's good.

Speaker: And then just having the alcohol and the food there, I think just, you know, it helps you loosen up.

Speaker: Yeah, good.

Speaker: I mean, this is one aspect of the symposium is that having the wine there allows people to be maybe a little more intimate, like say things they wouldn't normally say.

Speaker: I know you said not to give more away about the dialogue, but I should mention Alcibiades, he feels free enough to talk about his love for Socrates in this environment.

Speaker: He's really baring his soul, and that's the kind of thing that you do at a symposium.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What would a dialogue on love be if there wasn't like a fraught, you know, romance, you know, within the drama of the story?

Speaker: And we definitely have that Alcibiades sort of like confessing his unrequited love for Socrates.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Socrates likes someone else.

Speaker: Socrates kind of toys with him at the end.

Speaker: So Socrates is like he's like he tells another character to sit next to him.

Speaker: It's very romantically fraught.

Speaker: Very.

Speaker: There's a lot of like juicy, you know, drama in it, which is kind of which makes it extra fun.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I think if you say the term drinking parties, that's how we describe symposium.

Speaker: That sort of suggests that it's like a rager and people are getting super duper drunk.

Speaker: But in at least Plato's symposium, they don't drink that much.

Speaker: In fact, this is one thing that one of the characters makes clear.

Speaker: They're already kind of hung over from the previous day.

Speaker: They were celebrating the fact that one of the participants won a prize in the Greek tragedy contest.

Speaker: And so they're like, let's not drink too much.

Speaker: They mix the wine with water and they're trying to be moderate there.

Speaker: So to the extent that

Speaker: Plato thought that wine was important for the good life or doing philosophy or whatever, I think he would say, yeah, a moderate amount.

Speaker: In moderate amounts, it has a kind of civilizing effect.

Speaker: And this is the sort of thing that you can see in the ancient sources.

Speaker: They discuss wine.

Speaker: as like part of civilization.

Speaker: Wine is just another kind of food stuff that goes along with living in an urban society or a complex civilization.

Speaker: So I have this quote from an ancient Roman senator.

Speaker: So he's Greek by birth.

Speaker: This is Cassius Dio.

Speaker: He lived from 165 to 235

Speaker: AD.

Speaker: He was a governor in a province in Eastern Europe in the Roman Empire.

Speaker: And in this province, they don't have wine.

Speaker: And he's very, very upset about that.

Speaker: He says, the inhabitants here lead the most miserable existence of all mankind, for they cultivate no olives and they drink no wine.

Speaker: I would be fine without the olives.

Speaker: Well, you need the olives for, you know, olive oil.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Olive oil for a lot of stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, no good point.

Speaker: That would be.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so wine seems like at least has this kind of association with civilization.

Speaker: It also is used in rituals and ceremonies.

Speaker: Yeah, so wine is obviously in our culture very closely associated with religious ceremonies, in particular, probably most prominently Christianity.

Speaker: Wine is, I mean, at least in most, well, yeah, I mean, so in like Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Anglicans and different like Protestant denominations, wine is served with the communion or Eucharist.

Speaker: I guess like Baptists use grape juice.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: There's a lot of jokes about that and probably some other denominations do too.

Speaker: But right.

Speaker: So normally communion, the Eucharist is celebrated with wine.

Speaker: The Jewish holidays, wine is very important.

Speaker: It's like Passover, Shabbat.

Speaker: Wine is an extremely crucial part of these religious celebrations.

Speaker: There are more you were reading about others.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: In China, for instance, also wine is used in, at least in Bronze Age China, wine was used in rituals that were involved in ancestor worship.

Speaker: And you can find really, really cool artifacts, these ancient Bronze Age Chinese drinking vessels that they put the wine in.

Speaker: So wine is going back to the idea that

Speaker: wine is associated with civilization, you have like art going with wine.

Speaker: So the and often like the communion chalices were also very beautiful, too.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So this is a Holy Grail.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The Holy Grail.

Speaker: Allegedly very beautiful.

Speaker: So, yeah, wine associated with civilization, associated with like art and all of that.

Speaker: What about things that sort of ride the line?

Speaker: So like alcohol used in religious rituals that's also like out of control, crazy, like Dionysian revelry.

Speaker: That's sort of it that that has a foot in both camps.

Speaker: It's alcohol used for the sort of, you know, debaucherous revelry that's also part of religious ritual.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, so some people have found that kind of thing, like, threatening.

Speaker: So the Romans, for instance, once tried to ban the Dionysian cult.

Speaker: That was going a little too far.

Speaker: Like these, like, drunken, ecstatic revelries.

Speaker: We like our wine in our drinking parties, too.

Speaker: The Romans had drinking parties as well.

Speaker: They were called conviviums, convivia, where we get our word convivial.

Speaker: So they liked wine, obviously, but the bacchanal was too much for them.

Speaker: You keep your wine and your or your drunkenness and your religion separate.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And like I guess like insofar as the philosophers are critical of alcohol in the tradition, in the ancient tradition, it's because of drunkenness.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like what is Aristotle going to say about drunkenness?

Speaker: That you need to be temperate.

Speaker: That drunkenness, at least if you're drunk often or if you're very, very drunk, is a sign of not having the virtue of temperance.

Speaker: Yeah, Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, he's going to say that you should, interestingly, he's going to say that...

Speaker: I guess he's going to say that failing to drink at all, maybe, like failing to enjoy a fine wine is also kind of a vice, right?

Speaker: He's going to call that the vice of insensibility, the vice of deficiency.

Speaker: But certainly overindulgence, like getting drunk all the time, is going to be a vice of excess for Aristotle.

Speaker: And he thinks people are way more prone to that vice.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He mentions this just for the sake of completeness, right?

Speaker: He's like, yeah, obviously we're more prone to overindulgence.

Speaker: I guess it's possible to be so insensitive to the finer things in life that you would fail to enjoy even a nice wine.

Speaker: And that would be bad too.

Speaker: The virtuous person enjoys the nice wine.

Speaker: That'd be like an aesthetic deficiency or something like that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And the Romans, too, the Roman Stoics, they valued self-control, self-mastery.

Speaker: What happens when you get drunk, you lose your self-control, you lose your reason.

Speaker: Kant's going to say something similar.

Speaker: Immanuel Kant's going to say... So I was going to bring up Kant because this is actually kind of... So we love to talk about Immanuel Kant on this podcast.

Speaker: Yes, of course.

Speaker: Every episode.

Speaker: If you're just tuning in for the first time, Immanuel Kant was a German... Well, no, a Prussian...

Speaker: philosopher but Kant's moral theory is based around a principle that basically amounts to don't treat any rational person as a mere means to your ends and that includes yourself you're not allowed to treat yourself as a means to an as a mere means to an end you have to treat yourself like the rational infinitely valuable thing that you are

Speaker: So I wonder for Kant if like getting drunk or inebriated at all, is that like always prohibited?

Speaker: Is that going to be prohibited all the time?

Speaker: Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker: I'm not sure exactly what Kant says.

Speaker: My guess is that given that Kant thought like masturbation involved treating yourself as a mere means.

Speaker: I think he's going to he's probably going to say the same thing about drunkenness.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: seems more that one seems more mere meansy to me than drunkenness because there might be like you know you might think well there i value myself you know as an infinitely valuable rational being and that's consistent with being inebriated for celebration because like it's like an appropriate way to celebrate something i'm not sure what tale one could spin about masturbation that would

Speaker: I mean, maybe you could.

Speaker: Who knows?

Speaker: But but I but I do struggle to see how Kant could say that.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Celebratory drinking was like ever.

Speaker: Yeah, I guess we just look that up later.

Speaker: What did Kant have to say about alcohol?

Speaker: I'm sure he had some opinion on that.

Speaker: But on its surface, given that he values like rational nature and he and in other instances, he says, you know, disrespecting your rational nature is bad insofar as alcohol like drunkenness.

Speaker: undermines your rational rationalities and he's not going to like it.

Speaker: So these are all examples from the Western philosophical tradition.

Speaker: But in the Eastern philosophical tradition, you can find similar sorts of qualms about drunkenness and overindulgence, intoxication.

Speaker: So one very clear cut example is from Buddhism.

Speaker: So one of the five precepts of Buddhism.

Speaker: So these are

Speaker: certain ethical prohibitions that some scholars have likened in import to like the Ten Commandments.

Speaker: So the five of them, the five precepts are abstain from killing living beings, abstain from theft, abstain from sexual misconduct, abstain from speaking lies.

Speaker: And the fifth one is abstain from intoxication.

Speaker: So that's like a central pillar of Buddhism is to avoid like drunkenness.

Speaker: So what exactly that involves or how much is too much?

Speaker: It's an important question for all these kinds of ethical frameworks.

Speaker: But we can see the philosophers in both traditions are worried about drunkenness, even if wine is used in ceremonies, used in drinking parties to some degree.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, I mean, one thing that, you know, stands out in all of these questions about, oh, you know, drinking, yes, drinking, no, is that like drunkenness is like this gradient sort of thing.

Speaker: You know, it's not like you're sober and then you're drunk and those are just like the two states you can be in.

Speaker: There are various states of inebriation from like

Speaker: completely and utterly sober to like blackout drunk and everything in between frank knows that i'm like pretty much a lightweight so if i just have like a few sips of a beer and i haven't you know eaten a meal i'm you know i'm not drunk but i definitely am feeling a little giggly yeah she said she was still feeling half a light beer from like two hours ago so i don't know i don't know i don't know you know

Speaker: So it's a sliding scale.

Speaker: And I guess a lot of these questions, you know, that especially these debates that involve temperance is sort of, you know, they're not going to be able to give a firm answer on, you know, is a person doing something right or wrong?

Speaker: Unless it's like an extreme case, because there's a lot of space in the middle.

Speaker: And contemporary ethical debate where this also comes up is the question of sexual consent.

Speaker: Mm hmm.

Speaker: Because so the you know, the standard line is, well, if someone's drunk and you know that and so their inhibitions are lowered and you use that knowledge to have sex with them because you want to do that, that that involves a violation of consent and is, you know, therefore impermissible, maybe even like, you know, assault.

Speaker: But a big question there is like how intoxicated does someone have to be before they cannot give consent any longer?

Speaker: Because if we want to say it's just like any level of intoxication, it almost puts us into the realm of unbelievability because like almost...

Speaker: Every casual college hookup would be sexual assault.

Speaker: That seems really bad.

Speaker: That seems like a result that, I mean, if it's true, that'd be really bad.

Speaker: And if it's true, we should believe it's true.

Speaker: But it seems a little unbelievable.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I know that sometimes philosophers try to argue that the kind of relationship you have is a crucial factor in determining whether and to what extent alcohol undermines consent.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So one idea I think I've seen bandied about is that alcohol in like casual sexual encounters like can very, very easily and quickly like make the encounter morally objectionable, can very easily and quickly undermine consent because the encounter is casual.

Speaker: You don't know the person very well.

Speaker: Maybe it's like a one night stand.

Speaker: You just met them.

Speaker: But in like really long term committed relationships where people like know each other very well, like married couples like there, how much alcohol is needed to undermine consent is like different.

Speaker: Do you get this idea?

Speaker: Like is this is this?

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: This.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: There's a really good paper.

Speaker: whose title I forget, we'll put it in our bibliography, by the philosopher Quill Cuckula.

Speaker: And in that paper, they argue something really similar.

Speaker: I mean, I think actually what they argue is that, you know, in fact, in these kinds of relationships, you know, maybe consent is undermined a little bit, but that's not as ethically bad in some relationship contexts as in others.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So it's like really ethically bad in maybe like casual encounters, but like or really ethically bad in situations where there's like low trust in the relationship.

Speaker: But in like high trust, committed, long term, whatever relationships like slightly undermine consent from alcohol, maybe that wouldn't be as ethically dubious.

Speaker: So why not, though?

Speaker: Is it because like the consent is only a proxy for something else?

Speaker: And in a long term community relationship where you know the person very well, like you already know that thing that consents a proxy for.

Speaker: So it doesn't matter if it's diminished.

Speaker: Is that the idea?

Speaker: What makes the difference?

Speaker: I think it's been a while since I read this, so forgive me if I get something a little wrong.

Speaker: But I think the idea is the consent is like one thing among many things, like a big like soup of concepts that go into making a sexual encounter like good and ethical.

Speaker: And like, you know, in some and depending on the kind of relationships, some of those factors are much more crucial than in others.

Speaker: OK, so the consent does matter in itself for even the long term committed relationship.

Speaker: But there's a bunch of other factors that maybe can outweigh the diminished consent.

Speaker: I believe that's the argument.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I really like this paper.

Speaker: We'll link it in our bibliography.

Speaker: But I think that, you know, something in that realm.

Speaker: I also like your idea, Frank, and I'm sure someone's argued this.

Speaker: I just don't.

Speaker: I just haven't read a paper on it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: The consent is maybe like this.

Speaker: helpful, but ultimately false like proxy for some other thing that we actually value and care about.

Speaker: So people like Kukla are motivated to have this view because they don't want to say that like a couple that's been married for like 20 years, both of whom get drunk, assault each other.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like when they have sex.

Speaker: That's the idea.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: And in the paper, they give another example of someone whose spouse has like dementia or like episodes of dementia.

Speaker: And like, you know, one night they like have sex.

Speaker: And then, you know, like later the spouse finds out that, you know, they were in like an episode of dementia at the time.

Speaker: You know, surely you wouldn't want to say or I mean, maybe you would.

Speaker: But, you know, at least Cukla doesn't want to say that that was like an instance of rape.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because of like all of the.

Speaker: Structural elements of the relationship and circumstances.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But there's other interesting issues on alcohol and consent that don't involve consent to sex acts, sex encounters, sex encounters.

Speaker: Sexy encounters.

Speaker: And that is in the realm of crime.

Speaker: If someone's really, really, really intoxicated and they commit a crime, depending on what the crime is, not all the time, but often it will get you kind of like a reduced sentence or something.

Speaker: Like your agency in the crime is considered diminished if you are extremely intoxicated.

Speaker: And so you get like a lighter sentence than you would get if you did this like completely sober and clear eyed.

Speaker: And that's really interesting to me because that sounds right.

Speaker: But at the same time, if we think of alcohol as just lowering our inhibitions to act on desires we already have, you know, why think of alcohol as like turning off our agency, you know, to be the person we are rather than just like acting as a truth serum where our real self comes out.

Speaker: Yeah, it just reveals what was already there, right?

Speaker: I mean, we're halfway through the podcast and we haven't even uttered the slogan yet.

Speaker: The slogan.

Speaker: In Vino Veritas.

Speaker: In vino veritas, in wine there is truth.

Speaker: And Pascal says something similar.

Speaker: He says, with too much wine, you can't find truth.

Speaker: But also with too little wine, you can't find the truth.

Speaker: Plato probably would agree with that.

Speaker: Probably.

Speaker: Going back to the crime thing.

Speaker: So I guess, like, here's an argument you might raise for why, you know, you shouldn't get a mitigated sentence or be excused or whatever.

Speaker: It's because, like, you know, you knowingly and intentionally chose to drink the wine with full knowledge that what it could lead to.

Speaker: Like, we're not born yesterday.

Speaker: We know when people drink a lot, sometimes they get violent.

Speaker: Even people who are normally not violent when they're sober, like, get that way.

Speaker: I am just really, really happy and I yell a lot.

Speaker: Sometimes I yell too much in Megan's ear because I think she can't hear me.

Speaker: But anyway, but yeah, people, they will get like, they should know they get violent or whatever.

Speaker: They should know this is a possibility.

Speaker: So shouldn't they just be like responsible for like the actions that result?

Speaker: Shouldn't like the agency with which they began to drink and get drunk, shouldn't that like extend outward into their actions that they take when they are drunk?

Speaker: Like that's

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So like when you choose to get drunk, it's like signing a contract saying I vow to be responsible for everything I do in the state, like fully responsible.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I don't know.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I guess someone could raise questions of like, you know, alcoholism is a kind of like disease or disease adjacent kind of condition where maybe like, I don't know, some people are less able to, you know, be the kind of competent contract signers that we imagine people being.

Speaker: But yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: That was always just kind of a thought I had.

Speaker: Like, doesn't alcohol bring out like the real you?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Frank, what do you think?

Speaker: Is the real you like a really loud, yelly person?

Speaker: No, no.

Speaker: I'm just not aware that it's so often like when, you know, we're drinking, we're in a bar or something.

Speaker: I'm just not aware that, you know, you can't hear me.

Speaker: Like, I'm not aware that, you know, I don't need to talk that loud or something like that.

Speaker: I don't think the real me is a very loud person or anything like that.

Speaker: So maybe alcohol does, you know, in addition to lowering our inhibitions or like, I don't know, showing us some secret truths, maybe too much alcohol goes beyond that and kind of, I don't know, turns us into a different person.

Speaker: A monster.

Speaker: Drunk Frank.

Speaker: That really loud guy.

Speaker: So a couple of years ago, I want to shift gears a little bit.

Speaker: So a couple of years ago, I watched, I guess you watched this too, right?

Speaker: This documentary by Ken Burns called Prohibition.

Speaker: I guess I watched that too.

Speaker: Yeah, we were in Utah at the time.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it was a long time.

Speaker: But yeah, Prohibition by Ken Burns, great documentary.

Speaker: I want to watch it again, to be honest.

Speaker: Lots of great images, great quotes, great music.

Speaker: It's a really good documentary.

Speaker: And I don't usually like documentaries.

Speaker: I'm usually anti-documentary, but this was a good one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I guess one thing I really learned, I'm not sure a lot of people know this, is that like the prohibition movement went hand in hand with the women's suffrage movement.

Speaker: Like that to me was like a huge takeaway that I had never learned like in my entire life.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And that's like a huge important part of the prohibition movement.

Speaker: Because people associate them with different like.

Speaker: So when you think of prohibition, I mean, I think the average person would think of like super, super ultra conservative.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And you think of women's suffrage is like a progressive movement.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But yeah, but they sort of like the temperance movement went hand in hand with the women's suffrage movement.

Speaker: And why was that?

Speaker: Well, I guess it's because the women were upset with the men for being drunkenly abusive and wasting all their money on alcohol and coming home and...

Speaker: And this was at a time when women didn't have any kind of like rights of property ownership or ability to like have a bank account, you know, ability to have like custody of children or anything.

Speaker: So they didn't have any ways of getting away from these men who were just coming home super drunk and and beating them and, you know, losing all their money.

Speaker: So they were like, hey, we should do something about this.

Speaker: Yes, I think going back to what you said before, I think people think of prohibition in America as this kind of like weird failed experiment, right?

Speaker: Like the government tried to overstep its bounds, tried to legislate away people's desire to be happy and enjoy a nice drink.

Speaker: And it led to a lot of crime, led to the mob and all bootleggers.

Speaker: And it was a big mistake.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: A big thumbs down for moralism.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But Megan, you I don't want to say you're pro prohibition because you just had your half of a light.

Speaker: I'm going to put the pro in prohibition.

Speaker: But, you know, you want to raise the possibility that, you know, we should talk about this again.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like you want to play you want to play devil's advocate for prohibition.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So what's what's what's your argument here?

Speaker: Like, why should we take prohibition more seriously?

Speaker: Yeah, so I guess the best way of describing my position on this is that to poo-poo prohibition should entail that way more things are legal now than are, right?

Speaker: So prohibition came—I mean, actually, like you were saying earlier, when prohibition was officially enacted, Americans had actually started drinking much less than they had been like half a century before, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And what are the numbers on that?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So in like the at its height in like the early 19th century, Americans were drinking on average like seven gallons of pure alcohol per year.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So that fact that that ends up being something like, I don't know, like 20

Speaker: 20, 27 to 30 drinks per week.

Speaker: So right now it's about two gallons of pure alcohol on average per year, which ends up being around nine alcoholic beverages per week.

Speaker: So around the time prohibition was enacted, it was around that level.

Speaker: So actually, I saw an article from 2020, so January 2020, so before the pandemic,

Speaker: Which said that levels of drinking in America had reached pre-Prohibition levels, that they had reached and then slightly exceeded the levels that they were at when Prohibition was enacted.

Speaker: In the 19th century, it was crazy.

Speaker: Like the founding fathers, James Madison.

Speaker: He drank reportedly he drank a pint of whiskey per day.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: A pint glass.

Speaker: That's just unreal.

Speaker: That is unreal.

Speaker: That's crazy.

Speaker: And yeah, this is just like they drank so much.

Speaker: It had gone down by the time prohibition was enacted.

Speaker: But in like the 19th century, it was off the charts.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It was way higher than it is now.

Speaker: So we're back to, on average, pre-prohibition levels in the United States.

Speaker: But when prohibition was enacted, there was a lot of health concerns arising from the amount that people drank, which, again, on average was the same as the average today, but the distribution was different.

Speaker: So right now, most people don't drink as much as any given person did pre-prohibition.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So here there's some interesting statistics when it comes to the distribution.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So 10 percent, the top 10 percent of drinkers right now, right now in the United States, they drink 10 drinks per day and they consume 50 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the United States.

Speaker: That is insane.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: 50 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the United States is consumed by 10 percent of the drinkers.

Speaker: So for any given person today, they probably still drink much less than someone did right before prohibition.

Speaker: So all this drinking that people were doing pre-prohibition was leading to a lot of health problems.

Speaker: Liver cirrhosis incidences were like off the charts.

Speaker: And so, you know, that's obviously a strain on the medical system, on just like civil life in general.

Speaker: We talked about like the domestic abuse and poverty issues that arose from this.

Speaker: Gambling, I think, was a big thing too, arising from people just kind of being constantly drunk.

Speaker: And so prohibition went on into effect for that reason and other reasons.

Speaker: So, I mean, when you think about the background conditions, it's a little bit, even if you think, well, it was a bad move, ultimately, it's kind of understandable why they might want to, you know, prohibit alcohol, given the sort of bleak situation that we found ourselves in.

Speaker: But there's like a lot of things today.

Speaker: I'm sure that we can think, you know, it's not too hard to think about what they are.

Speaker: that are illegal, that where the civil situation would not be nearly as bad were they to be made legal.

Speaker: Like, I mean, obviously, I'm thinking of like marijuana or like, I don't know, not wearing seatbelts or something like that.

Speaker: Like things that are prohibited, like the federal level.

Speaker: I guess seatbelts are seatbelts.

Speaker: This state, like New Hampshire or something, doesn't have seatbelt laws.

Speaker: But marijuana is still federally prohibited.

Speaker: A lot of other recreational drugs, acid or shrooms or whatever, those are prohibited.

Speaker: And one might think, well, you know, that stuff's prohibited, but alcohol's not.

Speaker: And I don't know.

Speaker: To me, it just seems like prohibition doesn't seem like a crazy thing when you think about the other things that we prohibit right now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I guess so here's one.

Speaker: I mean, here's one argument that prohibition is a mistake, even though things that don't seem as bad are prohibited.

Speaker: As we talked about at the beginning, there's a long cultural history associated with alcohol, wine and beer and whatever.

Speaker: Maybe there's not a long cultural history associated with like Four Loko or something like that.

Speaker: But, you know, wine and beer and all that, that's not just sort of a thing people do to, like, feel good, right?

Speaker: There's, like, cultural and social norms and all that stuff associated.

Speaker: Now, alcohol is still allowed for religious ceremonies during Prohibition, I think, right?

Speaker: At least not religious.

Speaker: There were some exceptions, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think it was allowed for, like, medical reasons, too, so that's why a lot of people got prescriptions for, like, whiskey and stuff.

Speaker: But anyway.

Speaker: I need my medical booze.

Speaker: I got my medical booze card.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But yeah, but like, so like one way to argue that it's not inconsistent or whatever is to say, well, look, there isn't this kind of long, long cultural social history associated with cocaine or something like that, you know, or so even if they're not as bad or they're as bad as alcohol, there are there is some kind of relevant difference, maybe.

Speaker: So there are some goods that sufficiently outweigh the bad.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And they're entirely historically contingent.

Speaker: Yeah, sure.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like we can imagine a possible world where like a lot of social, cultural things spring up around opioids or something like that.

Speaker: But they haven't.

Speaker: So that so it's not as big of a deal.

Speaker: Yeah, I agree.

Speaker: I guess my perspective is just like the answer to, you know, whether, you know, assuming that we think the things that are prohibited now ought to be prohibited.

Speaker: It's kind of an open question whether then, you know, alcohol prohibition was good or not.

Speaker: It's not obvious that that was really misguided.

Speaker: You know, it's kind of this open question and does involve maybe a really complicated weighing of

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you after like watching the Ken Burns documentary, like I totally get it why they were why they wanted to ban alcohol.

Speaker: Yeah, it seemed really like chaotic.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, certainly things got chaotic also after, you know, Moonshiner started moonshining or whatever.

Speaker: A lot of crime networks sprung up from that.

Speaker: Yeah, like murders happened like almost immediately after Prohibition was enacted, like like literally like bootleggers might killed each other like immediately.

Speaker: But that happens with, I mean, obviously, the war on drugs.

Speaker: That's a thing now.

Speaker: So while I'm not pro-prohibition, I'm not necessarily, I don't think it's obvious that the prohibition was really misguided or something like that.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: All right, so shifting gears a little bit, we talked a lot about the ethics and political elements of alcohol.

Speaker: Let's shift to like aesthetic, the aesthetic angle.

Speaker: So there are a few books discussing wine and philosophy.

Speaker: And a lot of this discussion in these books is about, you know, the aesthetics of it.

Speaker: So for instance, wine tasting, like what's the deal with all those like weird adjectives that people assign to wines?

Speaker: Like they take a glass of wine,

Speaker: They sniff it and they say, oh, yes, I'm getting notes of pineapple and black peppercorn.

Speaker: And you know what?

Speaker: This just strikes me as quite a masculine wine.

Speaker: It's a bit closed, but I think with a bit of time, aging will open up.

Speaker: Like, what's going on there when people describe wines in this sort of way?

Speaker: Is this just all projection?

Speaker: Is there something in the wine that grounds these sorts of tastes?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So there's questions like that.

Speaker: Like is wine tasting is like the evaluation of wines.

Speaker: Is that objective or subjective?

Speaker: People discuss the objectivity and subjectivity of art all the time.

Speaker: You can think of wine as a kind of aesthetic object.

Speaker: And we can raise the question, like, is there something objectively good about the $300 bottle?

Speaker: Is it objectively better than the two buck chuck?

Speaker: I guess with inflation, it's like a four buck chuck now.

Speaker: But you know,

Speaker: I think three.

Speaker: Oh, is it?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But yeah, is there something better like objectively about that wine or is it just sort of like snobbery?

Speaker: Is it all just sort of like, you know, the elites liking what they like?

Speaker: Like how like, is there any there there?

Speaker: Does it sound

Speaker: happen with wine?

Speaker: Are there not is there not any other alcohol that has like the extent of like I don't know like douchey descriptions of them?

Speaker: I think I think with the craft beer movement maybe it's headed a little toward that direction although I feel like things have quieted down a little recently but I don't know I've been a milkshake Worcestershire craft IPA.

Speaker: Yeah I guess we haven't mentioned at all yet that I used to be a bartender so in grad school I was a bartender for about like a year and a half.

Speaker: Are we going to tell our beer story?

Speaker: What's our beer store?

Speaker: So before Frank and I started dating, I we are the only relationship we had with each other was just like passing each other in the hallways in like the department in grad school and just me like giving him absolute crap all the time whenever I had the chance, like on Facebook.

Speaker: And one day he posted something on Facebook that was like and again, this was before we hung out, like we never talked in person, but he posted like happy International IPA Day.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is at a time when like everything was an IPA.

Speaker: Everything.

Speaker: And like a fancy, like stupid IPA flavor.

Speaker: And you were also really into IPAs at the time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I don't remember what I commented.

Speaker: I think I just said something like.

Speaker: That's a shame or something like that.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: And then I responded with the middle finger emoji.

Speaker: Yeah, no.

Speaker: That was the beginning of our happy relationship.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, but this wasn't like a cute, like flirty, like, like, like, yeah.

Speaker: And I, yeah.

Speaker: And part of it was that you seem like really into these kind of like ridiculous.

Speaker: I wasn't that into it.

Speaker: It was I just was trying to be nice.

Speaker: But that movement's like over.

Speaker: No one really.

Speaker: When I see IPAs in the store now, they're like hazy IPAs, like citrusy IPAs, like IPAs that don't taste as bitter as the IPAs from like five years ago.

Speaker: Descriptions that make sense of a beer, which probably looks hazy and has citrus in it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But getting back to what we're talking about.

Speaker: So, yeah, you ask, like, is this sort of complexity of flavors and whatnot?

Speaker: Is this just a feature of wine tasting?

Speaker: I think, you know, craft beer heads toward that territory.

Speaker: But I don't think it rises to the level of wine.

Speaker: So, for instance, like they sell these sorts of wine aroma products.

Speaker: wheels that are supposed to help you identify the aromas and the flavors in the wine.

Speaker: So one of these wheels was made famous by the chemist and wine scientist at UC Davis, her name is Anne C. Noble.

Speaker: And yeah, she made a wheel based on her research, supposed to help you figure out what is going on in your wine.

Speaker: And yeah, let me read you some of these sorts of possibilities that she allows for wines.

Speaker: Yeah, so wines might be sauerkrauty.

Speaker: They might be sweaty.

Speaker: They can be rosy, licorice.

Speaker: Hold on.

Speaker: Blackberry.

Speaker: Pineapple.

Speaker: I said that one already.

Speaker: Yeah, that's caramel.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Dusty.

Speaker: That's an interesting one.

Speaker: Yeah, so it runs the gamut.

Speaker: So what's going on here?

Speaker: Give me your sweatiest, caramel-iest, dustiest wine.

Speaker: So, Maggie, you like wine more than I do.

Speaker: I was never really that into wine.

Speaker: I think I can appreciate a decent bottle of wine.

Speaker: I think I can tell the difference between a two-buck chuck and a $20 bottle.

Speaker: But beyond that, it's beyond me.

Speaker: But I don't know.

Speaker: You have...

Speaker: probably thought a little bit more about wine than I have when you drink it.

Speaker: So, I mean, is your experience of drinking wine like this complex?

Speaker: Uh, no.

Speaker: I mean, actually, like, I always thought, and I still do kind of think, that maybe, like, 70% of what sommeliers do is just made up.

Speaker: Are there different, like, flavors in different wines?

Speaker: Of course.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: You know, the grapes taste different.

Speaker: I know because my dad grows grapes and makes wine.

Speaker: not only do the grapes taste different some years you get a good harvest and some you don't and if you get a bad harvest your wine's just gonna be a little bit sour no matter how much you like dope it up with like sugars and flavorings and stuff like that so if you want a good wine you need to check how the grape harvest was that year and you should know how the different grapes taste in the wines but if you like know that you like

Speaker: I don't know, like a particular kind of, you know, a Cabernet grape and you know that it was a good harvest that year.

Speaker: You're probably going to like what you're drinking.

Speaker: It seems to me who is not a sommelier, whether it's like a twelve dollar bottle or like a two hundred dollar bottle.

Speaker: I mean, I don't know.

Speaker: Does that sound right to you?

Speaker: What is a sweaty?

Speaker: What does sweaty mean?

Speaker: Does she go?

Speaker: So there's like main categories.

Speaker: So like here are the main categories.

Speaker: Fruity, spicy, floral.

Speaker: So sweaty falls under microbiological and then lactic.

Speaker: And that is sweaty.

Speaker: So like main genus, microbiological, subgenus, lactic.

Speaker: And then the species therein are sauerkraut, sweaty, and yogurt.

Speaker: So I don't know about what's going on.

Speaker: Oh, my God.

Speaker: Sounds like a bad wine.

Speaker: I don't want to drink a sweaty wine.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But, like, I don't know.

Speaker: Have you ever had, like, a licorice-y wine or a black pepper wine or a clove wine?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I can see where that's.

Speaker: So I associate, like, Australian wines being more peppery, I guess.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then, like, you know, obviously, like, Merlot is a super dark wine.

Speaker: A lot of people don't like Merlot.

Speaker: I might, like, describe it as sort of, like, smoky.

Speaker: So I guess, yeah, I can identify flavors like that.

Speaker: You know, sometimes you can get like a aftertaste of something that tastes like vanilla-y.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Or something like that.

Speaker: So it seems to you that there's something to this, right?

Speaker: Especially in some cases, like vanilla, for instance.

Speaker: There is an objective chemical reason why some wines taste vanilla-y.

Speaker: So if the wine is oaked, the literal chemical that gives us the vanilla taste is in the oak and that's imparted to the wine.

Speaker: So there's some chemical basis for some of these judgments.

Speaker: So too with buttery.

Speaker: So I recently learned this.

Speaker: This was interesting.

Speaker: So sometimes people just describe Chardonnay's as buttery.

Speaker: Maybe that's why you don't like Chardonnay's.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, I hate them.

Speaker: But the fermenting process can lead to a chemical called diacetyl, which is also the chemical used in artificial butter flavoring.

Speaker: So there is some like chemical reason for some of these these judgments.

Speaker: But yeah, I guess you want to say that maybe some of it is more interpretive or projective.

Speaker: masculine a masculine unless there are like unless there are like super tasters out there maybe there's like super tasters who can like experience more taste than the average person and I think I've seen like a lot of times even like super experts like you know level 10 sommeliers or whatever like black belt sommeliers under like certain conditions that aren't what they're used to like tasting in they do a really bad job

Speaker: Yeah, this is one interesting area to explore the empirical research on wine tasting.

Speaker: So there is a journal called the Journal of Wine Economics.

Speaker: And one thing people want to know is like when you do blind taste tests, do the experts perform well?

Speaker: Can they tell the difference between a four buck chuck or three buck chuck and a $300 bottle?

Speaker: And here the evidence is kind of ambiguous.

Speaker: So there have been some studies that seem to suggest that it's all nonsense.

Speaker: I saw some people responding to that saying, well, hold on.

Speaker: It's not as bad as it looks.

Speaker: There are things that the people trained in tasting wine can do better.

Speaker: They do, on average, they do prefer more expensive bottles.

Speaker: So I'll link to some of that research.

Speaker: But yeah, it is kind of up in the air.

Speaker: I think people's intuitive inclination who don't

Speaker: don't drink a lot of wine.

Speaker: They're inclined to think that it's just like nonsense, that it's just bullshit.

Speaker: I don't know, because I think like people want, especially people who are, you know, who enjoy fine dining, they want to think that they're having like this super curated culinary experience and having like a person come up and tell you

Speaker: that like the microbiological notes in your wine go perfectly.

Speaker: You know, they hit the divine high note with your sirloin steak or whatever.

Speaker: That kind, you know, just like thinking that.

Speaker: I guess I'm thinking of like the Coors Light drinker.

Speaker: Like that guy doesn't take wine tasting seriously.

Speaker: But OK, so I know that my dad's going to be listening to this at some point.

Speaker: So I just have to say when he goes to a restaurant, he's like, I'm really going to enjoy myself.

Speaker: Part of this involves like really like cross examining the waiter about their beer list and like which ones go with which food and how different lagers taste and such.

Speaker: Well, so so I don't know.

Speaker: I think that it is something that can like elevate the experience even of like a mid tiered diner.

Speaker: What about the objective subjective thing?

Speaker: Like, so I think you would you incline at least against aesthetic subjectivism.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So, I mean.

Speaker: But that doesn't mean that there can't.

Speaker: I mean, there are subjective aesthetic experiences, but aesthetic goodness and badness is objective, I think.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So you.

Speaker: But then you want to say that at least some wines are objectively bad, right?

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: OK.

Speaker: Oh, I've had it.

Speaker: OK.

Speaker: Didn't mean I didn't drink it, but it was bad.

Speaker: I believe they call that cooking wine.

Speaker: Yeah, so in my research for this episode, I came across some really, really florid descriptions of people drinking wine.

Speaker: So like I said before, I'm really not that into wine, but I really could appreciate, and I was happy for these people that they have enjoyed their glasses of wine so much.

Speaker: And these descriptions border on a kind of religious experience, and that's sort of the way some of these...

Speaker: These folks have talked about their experience with really, really good wines.

Speaker: It's like the kind of thing that they remember for like days.

Speaker: I can't even imagine that.

Speaker: I can't imagine like remembering the taste of a wine for days.

Speaker: That's the way they describe it.

Speaker: Describe as kind of like almost religious or mystical experience.

Speaker: And this got me thinking, yeah, it'd be interesting to think a little more about like mysticism and whatnot.

Speaker: And one philosopher who has discussed this at length is the philosopher and psychologist William James.

Speaker: So in his Varieties of Religious Experience, this series of lectures that given around 1900, 1901, 1902,

Speaker: He has two chapters on mysticism, and he says something quite interesting about alcohol in this chapter.

Speaker: So aside from his interesting definition of a mystical experience, he says that it involves something ineffable, hard to describe in words.

Speaker: He does mention alcohol, and he says, quote,

Speaker: The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Speaker: Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no.

Speaker: Drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

Speaker: It makes him, for the moment, one with the truth.

Speaker: The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness.

Speaker: What do you think, Megan?

Speaker: I mean, it certainly does make you say yes to a lot of things you wouldn't say yes to when sober.

Speaker: I kind of like that.

Speaker: I mean, I think that James is doing a little bit of like, I mean, he is.

Speaker: He's doing a little bit of psychoanalysis here, trying to kind of like uncover what's really going on.

Speaker: I don't think most people would describe their experience being drunk, at least most of the time, as like a mystical experience.

Speaker: You know, they probably report feeling happier.

Speaker: And in fact, there's there's been studies recently that have shown that alcohol acts like an antidepressant and sort of like routing routing blood away from the part of the brain that focuses on the self.

Speaker: So like that, like, oh, you know, we're all like friends.

Speaker: We're all like we're all one.

Speaker: We're all unified.

Speaker: Like that part of the brain, alcohol like reroutes blood to that part of the brain.

Speaker: So it kind of works like an antidepressant, which unfortunately is why a lot of people who struggle with depression fall into alcoholism more easily.

Speaker: But I like I like the re-description of it as like, actually, this is a mystical experience.

Speaker: You know, this is like the kind of experience one has when like uniting with like the divine.

Speaker: Yeah, so James does consider the mystical experience as like on a spectrum.

Speaker: So he says you get the inkling of the mystical experience when like a maxim, like some kind of like moral maxim or truth about the universe that just like strikes you as true.

Speaker: Or maybe when you're walking in the forest and you sort of forget who you are.

Speaker: Like this is all on a scale.

Speaker: And I think, you know, alcohol consumption is like after that.

Speaker: The intoxicant he talks the most about in this chapter is nitrous oxide, laughing gas.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And he says, you know, the people who I have known that have done this have had a lot of mystical experiences.

Speaker: And yeah, they have described their experiences as trending toward this kind of unity or monism, like the diminishment of the self.

Speaker: You were super into reading about dudes who like to do nitrous oxide in like the late.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: A couple years ago.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Humphrey Davy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: My favorite.

Speaker: My favorite 19th century chemist.

Speaker: He he was really into Michael Faraday.

Speaker: No, he didn't.

Speaker: No, he was a very devout man.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He did not do that.

Speaker: But Humphrey Davy.

Speaker: Yeah, he did that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But anyway.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But one thing that that William James mentions, and I think this is something we could talk about a lot more and maybe we'll save this discussion for like another episode, is he mentions that the source of

Speaker: of the mystical experience doesn't matter.

Speaker: At least he talks as though it doesn't matter.

Speaker: James thinks that if nitrous oxide induces the mystical experience, that's just as good as inducing the mystical experience through meditation or through prayer or anything like that.

Speaker: The mystical experience is the mystical experience, and that's all.

Speaker: Yeah, and you know who I'm thinking of who had really similar things to say?

Speaker: Half a century later, Aldous Huxley wrote his really well-known work, The Doors of Perception, which he wrote about his mystical experiences on LSD.

Speaker: And he says something really similar, that these sorts of experiences are dismissed because they're caused by people being on LSD, but he's like...

Speaker: that's kind of to put the cart before the horse in terms of explanation.

Speaker: Like, why does that, why should that make us take what we're experiencing as like, you know, less real?

Speaker: Why not think that this happens to be something that makes us see things more truly for what they are?

Speaker: We could do a whole episode of mysticism.

Speaker: Maybe we will.

Speaker: We should come back to this.

Speaker: We probably will.

Speaker: So we'll save a lot of this because we've already, we're pretty close to being out of time, but.

Speaker: Yeah, we are close out of time.

Speaker: I think we should, I think we should end with a quote and a drink to celebrate

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, we should.

Speaker: I mean, we should tell our listeners that we are having a drink kind of, you know, in the spirit of the episode, having a small pour of whiskey right now.

Speaker: Notes of pineapple.

Speaker: Notes.

Speaker: I was going to say, what are the notes?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Notes about caramel, you know, toffee.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Great.

Speaker: I think I'm getting notes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is a dusty whiskey because it's been sitting way down there on that bottom shelf because it's Evan Williams.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So let's take a drink and end with a quote.