Podcast with Edward Slingerland on religion and collaboration and alcohol and society

Why did ancient civilizations bury 20% of their GDP in tombs and turn half their grain into beer? Edward Slingerland, scholar of Chinese philosophy and cognitive science of religion, argues that religion and alcohol are not evolutionary mistakes but the hidden engines of large-scale human collaboration. Subscribe for more episodes exploring the deep roots of how humans work together. Edward Slingerland brings an extraordinary interdisciplinary range to this conversation: early Chinese philosophy, comparative religion, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. His research asks why humans engage in behaviors that appear enormously costly, religious ritual, alcohol consumption, yet persist across virtually all known societies for thousands of years. The central argument is counterintuitive: religion and chemical intoxicants, particularly alcohol, evolved as social technologies that enable collaboration at scales beyond what our tribal psychology naturally supports. Humans are wired for small-group cooperation , roughly 150 individuals. Scaling beyond that requires mechanisms to build trust between strangers, and both religion and alcohol serve this function. Slingerland explains how alcohol works as a collaboration tool through its effect on prefrontal cortex function. At moderate doses, it reduces the executive control that makes us strategic and self-interested, creating a temporary state of openness, creativity, and genuine emotional signaling. This is why business deals, diplomatic negotiations, and creative collaborations have historically involved drinking together , it provides a credible signal of trustworthiness that cannot be easily faked. Religion operates through a different but complementary mechanism. By imposing costly commitments, taboos, rituals, resource sacrifice, religious practice signals genuine group membership. The terracotta army buried by the first emperor of Qin represented an enormous economic cost, but societies that invested in such "wasteful" religious infrastructure consistently outcompeted those that did not, because the shared commitment created social cohesion at scale. The conversation connects these historical insights to contemporary challenges. Slingerland argues that modern secular societies have dismantled the collaborative infrastructure that religion provided without replacing it. The result is visible in the tribalization of issues like vaccine acceptance , where rational evidence should suffice but does not, because the underlying trust mechanisms have eroded. On engineering new forms of collaboration, Slingerland is cautiously hopeful. His database of religious history project aims to identify common features of successful religions, which could theoretically inform the conscious design of new collaborative frameworks , perhaps ecological movements that incorporate the binding mechanisms religion has always provided. When pressed on what he would change about humans, Slingerland refuses to answer definitively , any modification to selfishness could have unpredictable effects on parenting, friendship, and agency. His practical suggestion: a self-limiting alcohol absorption system that keeps everyone at the optimal 0.08 sweet spot. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.