Why humans tolerate the hangover.
For all its merrymaking highs, alcohol comes with a steep price tag. It slurs speech, dulls senses and impairs decision-making. It ruins some lives and ends others. So why do we as a species keep bellying up to the bar? That’s the question behind the new book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland, ’91, PhD ’98. Historically, scientists wrote off our taste for intoxication as “an evolutionary mistake, a method that we’ve developed for tricking our biological reward system into releasing little shots of pleasure for no good reason,” Slingerland, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia, writes in the Wall Street Journal. But that doesn’t explain why cultural and genetic evolution continue to tolerate it. The implication, he says, is that the high cost of alcohol consumption is offset by its benefits.
Slingerland’s thesis is that by enabling us “to become, at least temporarily, more creative, cultural, and communal . . . intoxicants provided the spark that allowed us to form truly large-scale groups.” In other words, alcohol facilitates the cooperation, creativity and openness that’s at the base of human civilization, and which is “entirely unmatched among our closest primate relatives.” No booze, he argues, possibly no civilization.
Not that Slingerland endorses alcohol abuse. The relatively recent advent of potent distilled liquor and solitary drinking has produced problems ancient tipplers never dreamed of. A helpful guideline? As Slingerland told the Atlantic, “Drink only in public, with other people, over a meal—or at least, he says, ‘under the watchful eye of your local pub’s barkeep.’”
Show us the money.
There’s no one-size-fits-all financial plan, but author and adviser Ramit Sethi, ’04, MA ’05, gives the same advice for everyone no matter their income: Identify what you have to spend on, figure out what you want to spend on, and put some amount of money into savings and retirement accounts as early as possible. “So many of us feel anxious, frustrated and overwhelmed with money. We say things like, ‘I need to try harder’ or ‘I know I spend too much,’” says Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. “But do we ‘try harder’ to brush our teeth every morning? No! We built a habit long ago, and now it’s part of our daily routine.”
You never forget your first.
There’s no question Stanford has the goods to back up its claim to being the Home of Champions. No other Division I school comes close to its more than 600 individual national titles and 128 NCAA team championships.
But amid so much glory, there can be only one first. And that was Flint Hanner, Class of 1922, MA ’30, an athletic all-arounder most renowned for hurling the javelin. One hundred years ago this month, he arrived in Chicago as the lone Stanford athlete at the very first NCAA track and field championships. Armed with techniques he’d picked up from Finnish athletes at the 1920 Olympics, Hanner unleashed a throw measuring just over 191 feet. His accomplishment is modest by contemporary standards (Stanford’s current javelin record is 245 feet, 4 inches) but the win made Hanner part of Stanford history. Happy 100 to the throw that led the way.
Nearly normal.
Photo: Erin Attkisson
While department ceremonies and Baccalaureate were virtual, Stanford’s 130th Commencement did include two in-person ceremonies spread across the stadium grass over two days and with chairs in precise, socially distanced lines. Plus speakers Atul Gawande, ’87, and Issa Rae, ’07; a wacky walk; real guests; and perfect weather. We’ll take it.
Diaries of a soldier.
Ahead of the first Juneteenth National Independence Day, law professor emeritus William Gould IV talked about the inspiration he has found in the journals of his great-grandfather, who escaped slavery and fought in the Civil War.
And in celebration of the day, Stanford Dining executive chef Terry Braggs presented Foods of the Black Diaspora, a cooking demonstration of catfish étoufée and raspberry lemonade. Those dishes and other recipes are available and will be served in Stanford dining halls this week. Save us a piece of beet cornbread, please.
Forget the UFOs—flying cars are real.
Stanford adjunct professor Sebastian Thrun has a dream “to free the world from traffic”—and he’s not talking about joining a vanpool. Thrun, a computer scientist who founded Google’s self-driving car project, is chief executive of Kitty Hawk, an air taxi company that aims to be an Uber for the skies. And they hope to deploy vehicles as soon as 2024. He believes self-driving (er, flying) aircraft could be adopted more readily than autonomous cars. “You can fly in a straight line and you don’t have the massive weight or the stop-and-go of a car [on the ground],” he told the New York Times. But don’t go prepping your home landing pad just yet, Jane Jetson. “It is going to take longer than people think,” said professor of aeronautics and astronautics Ilan Kroo, ’78, MS ’79, PhD ’83, who previously served as chief executive of Kitty Hawk (then called Zee.Aero). “There is a lot to be done before regulators accept these vehicles as safe—and before people accept them as safe.”
And the award goes to . . .
Jackie Botts, ’16, MA ’18, was a journalism student in the spring of 2018 when her class began working with a team from Reuters on a data journalism project to determine whether judges in excessive force cases sided more often with police than victims. Botts continued the work in an internship that was twice extended as she and others amassed a vast database gleaned from thousands of federal court opinions. The resulting report, “Shielded,” shows how the obscure legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” protects police from prosecution for excessive force. In June, Botts (who we’ll casually mention is also a former Stanford magazine intern) and her Reuters teammates shared a Pulitzer in explanatory reporting for their work.
But wait, there’s more.
Looking for a summer read? For the sixth year, Stanford magazine asked faculty for their best book suggestions.
Grace Hartman, ’90, isn’t sure now if she even knew what a yurt was when she saw one posted for sale on the notice board of the general store in Wilson, Wyo. But she needed a change of pace, so she jumped at the adventure. Eleven years later, she still lives in the 320-square-foot tent with her husband and kids. There’s no running water but vacuuming is a cinch. “By the second or third year,” she says, “I just stopped wanting things because I knew I had no room for them.”
One year ago, ICU physician Nathan Nielsen, ’97, shared his experiences treating COVID-19 patients in Stanford magazine. Now, he writes about what life is like a year later and his struggle to answer the question everyone asks: How are you?
Garry Nolan, PhD ’89, a professor of microbiology and pathology, has a fascinating research side hustle—analyzing alleged UFO artifacts. “I’m not making a conclusion. I’m just saying that there is data here that is anomalous and that somebody needs to explain,” he told KQED. And if we don’t find aliens, at least we’ll have flying cars.
Professor emeritus of history Clayborne Carson has retired after 35 years as director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. He spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle about his work on the King Paper Project.
Everyone’s talking about In the Heights—that dance number in the pool, yes, but also questions of representation of Afro-Latino actors and, among alums, the depiction of Stanford as an inhospitable, unaffordable place. “I enjoyed the movie, and I’m a fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda,” writes Cisco Barrón, ’04, in an essay on Medium. “At the same time, I don’t want the future Ninas and the future Sonnys watching In the Heights to walk away thinking that Stanford is ‘not for them.
As much of the U.S. looks toward a period of post-pandemic celebration, there is also a need for caution. As we transition to what comes next, many people will face new mental health challenges, according to two Stanford experts on stress and trauma recovery. But we can learn to manage. “We often talk about resilience as a trait, as something you have or don’t have, but it’s actually a set of behaviors people can learn,” Debra Kaysen, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, told Stanford Medicine’s Scope blog.
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the editor of Stanfordmag.org and the Loop. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
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