No Mercy / No Malice: Firewater

As read by George Hahn. https://www.profgalloway.com/firewater/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:19Scott Galloway?

  I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Young people are turning away from alcohol and other risky behaviors. This decline has many positives, but it comes at a cost. Firewater, as read by George Han.

• 1:42George Hahn?

  Humans have been writing for 5,000 years and drinking longer. Archaeologists recently discovered a 13,000-year-old beer in a cave near modern-day Haifa, Israel. And there is archaeological evidence of alcohol consumption around the globe by 5,000 BCE. Alcohol's draw is a cocktail of biology, psychology, and social norms. Among other things, it lights up the brain's dopamine reward system. For much of history, it was safer to drink something fermented than water. If TikTok had been around before Christ, there'd likely have been fitness influencers encouraging us to drink less water and more Modelo.

• 2:28George Hahn?

  Through the modern era, we've integrated the fire-water into some of our most enduring rituals. Humanity has a deep-rooted affair with fermentation.

• 2:39George Hahn?

  But the data suggests that Western culture is undergoing a structural shift away from alcohol as entertainment, social lubricant, self-medicament, or ritual. Everyone but the liquor industry views this as a positive development, as alcohol is the third-leading cause of death in the US and the number-one risk factor for premature death among young men. Like our relationship with alcohol itself, the story isn't that simple.

• 3:11George Hahn?

  Between 2002 and 2018, the share of college students who don't drink alcohol jumped from 20% to 28%. And overall, Gen Z drinks 20% less alcohol per capita than millennials did at the same age, which was, in turn, 20% less than Gen X consumed.

• 3:36George Hahn?

  Among high school students, 39% drank alcohol in 2011; just 23% drink today. Think about that. In just a decade, the number of high school students who drink has been almost halved. Youth drinking is declining despite another broad shift: the shrinking gender gap. Older Americans are drinking more as a cohort, as a generation of women who grew up when drinking was more acceptable for them ages. The trend is global. In Japan, where drinking binges are ingrained in the work culture as a means of establishing trust,

• 4:19George Hahn?

  60% of the population now believes that after-work drinking is no longer necessary.

• 4:28George Hahn?

  Youth drinking in the UK has been falling for two decades. Drinking hasn't vanished from youth experience in the same fashion as mixtapes or call waiting, but the cultural impact of the shift is greater than the numbers suggest. Concert promoters report dramatic declines in alcohol sales at shows with younger audiences, and they've started stocking more no and low alcohol options at concessions. Alcohol giant AB Inbev projects no or low brands, variants of traditionally alcoholic beverages without alcohol, will make up 20% of sales by 2025. High-end mocktails and dry bars are on trend,

• 5:12George Hahn?

  and millions of people participate in Dry January every year.

• 5:18George Hahn?

  This generation's wariness toward alcohol is not unmerited. It can be toxic. Long before it destroys your liver or gives you cancer, it can destroy your life... or someone else's. Thirty million Americans are in a clinically unsafe relationship with alcohol. And in addition to killing over 80,000 people per year through chronic illness, alcohol leads to nearly 60,000 acute deaths: drunk driving, overdoses, suicide. Including more than 4,000 among people between 18 and 24. When I was in high school in Los Angeles, it felt as if there was a picture and flowers every month for a kid killed in a drunk-driving accident.

• 6:05George Hahn?

  Our understanding of alcohol's dangers has evolved, and recently. We've known for millennia that alcohol has serious negatives. Plato believed in a drinking age of 18. But we've mainly worried about excessive drinking and dependence, especially after prohibition, when scientists wanted to avoid being associated with the perceived overreach of the temperance movement. Moderate drinking was deemed harmless, even beneficial.

• 6:37George Hahn?

  The first director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Morris Chafetz, who championed treating alcoholism as a medical rather than moral issue, wrote books about the virtues of alcohol, claiming in the 1960s, "There is no sound evidence whatsoever that alcohol causes permanent direct damage to the body."

• 7:01George Hahn?

  Dr. Chafetz was wrong. We now know even light drinking can increase your risk of cancer. Alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen, the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos and tobacco. Research in Europe has found that half of all alcohol attributable cancers are caused by light or moderate drinking. It's not just cancer risk. Moderate drinking shrinks your brain. Older studies finding that light drinking could have health benefits have been reevaluated, and their conclusions called into serious doubt. In 2022, the World Heart Federation stated,

• 7:44George Hahn?

  "Contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart."

• 7:52George Hahn?

  And in January 2023, the World Health Organization said what researchers had known for years, "No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health."

• 8:06George Hahn?

  Today's youth don't need to read scientific journals to stay up on the latest science regarding alcohol, because it's a hot topic on social media. TikToks and Reels about the dangers and downsides of drinking are a genre, and a skit about hangxiety was a recent SNL hit.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  That after-party on Saturday was wild, huh? Super wild, man. That open bar got me good. Yep, can't help but have a little hangxiety. Hangxiety? About what? I don't know. I wasn't like weird to anyone, was I?

• 8:38George Hahn?

  Alcohol companies spend nearly $2 billion per year in the US on advertising featuring society's most attractive people and opulent production values. But on social, a Swedish doctor in cool glasses can reach millions with the shitty news that women are six times more likely to develop cirrhosis of the liver with equivalent alcohol consumption, adjusted for weight, as men.

• 9:08George Hahn?

  A doctor with a cool beard can reach even more people. Social media has many harms, and even on drinking, it's not great. Google hashtag #Borg for more. But it is giving voice to messages that don't have corporate power behind them.

• 9:26George Hahn?

  Despite my experience at Summit at Sea, the turn away from alcohol does not appear to be substituting one chemical for another. The use of marijuana, which gets no free ride on health either, is increasing as legalization brings weed into the mainstream. Psychedelic drugs, used as party drugs or microdosed for creativity or productivity, are experiencing a resurgence. But these increases are dwarfed by the overall decline in the consumption of substances. Marijuana use among teens is actually down over the past decade, and opioid abuse is flat. Something more is at play.

• 10:08George Hahn?

  The science of alcohol's harms is the science of statistics, odds and long-term chances, not typically winning arguments against youthful energy. Why is this generation so amenable to abstinence?

• 10:26George Hahn?

  Drinking isn't the only vice young people are turning away from. Risky behaviors are down across the board. Young people are much less likely to drive. Between 1995 and 2021, the share of teenagers with driver's licenses declined from 64% to less than 40%.

• 10:48George Hahn?

  As someone who got his driver's license on his 16th birthday and spent 200% of his disposable income on a 1980 Renault Lacar, this seems insane to me. Also, fewer young people are having sex. In 2011, 47% of high school students said they had had sex. By 2021, that number had fallen to 30%. Note: In unrelated news, I lost my virginity at 19. See above: Renault Lacar. Before I had access to a Discover card or Android phone, I found an equally powerful prophylactic.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Nou à San Francisco, la Renault 5, on s'amuse bien avec. On la pelle le car.

• 11:40George Hahn?

  A French lawnmower with doors that screamed, "Don't procreate with this person!" Similar declines have been observed in other measures of sexual activity such as numbers of partners. Lawbreaking has been on the decline since the mid 90s, and the rate of decline accelerated after 2010. But there's one risky behavior young people are increasingly engaged in: suicide. Between 2007 and 2021, the suicide rate among Americans

• 12:15George Hahn?

  aged 10 to 24 rose from 6.8 per 100K to 11. This is the tragic tip of an iceberg: the teen mental health crisis Jonathan Haidt predicted a decade ago. Since 2011, the share of high school students reporting "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness" has risen from 28% to 42%. A recent study of rising suicide rates found that "the increase in the prevalence of depression among young people during the 2010s was

• 12:56George Hahn?

  so large, it could explain nearly all the increase in suicide mortality among those under 25."

• 13:07George Hahn?

  Take a pause.

• 13:11George Hahn?

  What's the fucking point of any of this if 50% more of our children feel hopeless?

• 13:20George Hahn?

  Gen Z'ers tell us why they feel so bad. They face insecurity on every front. Their careers will be gigs on Zoom calls with low pay and no health care. They'll struggle to pay off their student loans, or buy a house, or have children. Mating and sexual dynamics have become increasingly risky, if not plain demoralizing. And always, in the background, is the knowledge that their life has a permanent public record. 49% of Gen Z'ers say their online image is in the back of their mind when they are socializing or drinking.

• 14:01George Hahn?

  It's tempting to write all of this off as teen angst and the struggles of young adulthood, but these are fears that didn't exist 30 years ago. How would you have handled any of this? Were you a thoughtful model of grace at 18?

• 14:19George Hahn?

  The irony, and in part the answer, is that no generation has ever had more support and protection. We used to joke about helicopter parents who hovered above their kids, but now we have snowplow parents who carve a path for their offspring, clearing life's obstacles. Parents are closer than ever with their young adult children, thanks to technology that tracks their every movement. As a member of Gen X, I'd leave home Saturday morning with my Bond skateboard, 35 cents, and an Abba Zaba bar, not to be seen or heard from for 12-plus hours. If my kid is more than 15 minutes late, the Navy SEALs

• 15:04George Hahn?

  and MI6 are activated. Kids' lives are programmed, pre-planned, and packaged, leaving them with 50% less unstructured time than earlier generations enjoyed. The result is lower resilience and greater anxiety. We use so many sanitary wipes on our kids' lives, they don't develop their own immunities.

• 15:29George Hahn?

  Once they're out of the physical nest, but often still tethered electronically, young people respond to this combination of coddling and fear in various ways. Rising anxiety is paired with an obsessive need for control. Optimization bros have taken to tracking every glass of water, hacking their sleep cycles, and pushing ever more elaborate diet and wellness regimes on their cohort. Tech companies are happy to facilitate this, building tracking of all kinds into our devices and encouraging us to wear them constantly. Clearly, there's no room for beer in that schedule. Every generation inherits the assets and liabilities of previous generations.

• 16:14George Hahn?

  However, we are maturing an immature generation less capable of dealing with some of the real challenges and opportunities we're leaving them. Instead, we shield them from dangers that likely make them stronger: rejection, a B-, hangovers, the unknown, while letting technology exploit their fears of real or perceived dangers. "My mom worried I'd get into too much trouble. Now, I worry my kids won't get into enough." The decline in youth drinking is not just about drinking. It's about a generation that fears the consequences

• 16:58George Hahn?

  of the slightest slip of impulse control, which could be a spark in a world with a permanent gas leak, social media, ready to ignite a firestorm of shame. The decline in alcohol consumption has many positives, but it also means a decline in the rites of passage and communal bonding that alcohol historically facilitated. It means a decline in drunken hugs and slurred "I love yous", fewer first dances, first kisses, first dates. Drinking comes with a lot of risk, but it also opens us to new experiences. It doesn't have to be via substances, but sometimes, you need to lower your inhibitions.

• 17:45George Hahn?

  The phases of my life correspond with an evolution of my favorite intoxicants. High school? Nothing. I hung out with Mormons. College? Beer and THC. Early career? Vodka. Mid-career? Bourbon and rum. Present? Less bourbon and rum, and more THC. I love alcohol and THC, and believe I've gotten more out of them than them me. Intoxicants have been a social and professional weapon, as integrated into my life as exercise and eating. I'm a better version of me a bit fucked up. The very definition of "a good drunk."

• 18:29George Hahn?

  Funnier, more affectionate, and more in touch with my emotions. Every romantic partner I've had has, in a variety of ways, encouraged me to drink more. It's a bug, not a feature. Some fucked-up sense of masculinity still inhibits my ability to express how much friends and colleagues mean to me unless I have that rush of euphoria inspired by alcohol. Often, when writing this newsletter, I'll have a zacapa and coke and text people to tell them how much they mean to me. The next day, after reviewing the texts, I feel embarrassed. But no regret. My problem isn't saying things I don't mean when drunk, but not saying things I do mean

• 19:12George Hahn?

  when sober. Hemingway said he drank to make other people more interesting. I drank to make myself more interesting. If the previous sentence sounds a bit pathetic, or like a form of alcoholism, trust your instincts. Life is so rich.

• 19:47Speaker 05

  Support for the show comes from Delta Airlines. Every athlete at the top of their game knows that greatness isn't just a destination. It's a grueling, lifelong journey. It's built on early mornings, silent sacrifices, and an unwavering drive to outclimb the achievements of yesterday. That is the journey of a WNBA athlete, and Delta is there every step of the way. Delta is proud to host these competitors, providing charter flights for every WNBA team, to elevate their travel experience and champion equity on every leg of their trip. Keep climbing with Delta Airlines, the official airline of the WNBA.

• 20:32Speaker 06

  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.