GZERO World with ian bremmer

Hosted by Ian Bremmer, GZERO World is an award-winning, nationally syndicated PBS television program featuring the most influential leaders and thinkers in the world.

Alcohol. It's a dangerous drug that has ruined countless lives and derailed many a global summit. But it's also humanity's oldest social lubricant, a magical elixir that can fuel diplomatic breakthroughs, well into the wee hours of the night. As Winston Churchill once quipped, "I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." On GZERO World, we take a deep dive down the bottle and examine the role alcohol has played in society, politics, and global summitry—from the earliest hunter-gatherer days to that memorable Obama Beer Summit in 2009. Joining Ian Bremmer is philosopher Edward Slingerland, whose new book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way Into Civilization makes a compelling, if nuanced, case for alcohol's place in the world.

Also: since alcohol isn't the only social drug, a look at the state of marijuana legalization across the US and around the world.

More from GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Choose a year:

About the Show

Every week on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Ian explains the key global stories of the moment, sits down for an in-depth conversation with the newsmakers and thought leaders shaping our world.

Watch GZERO World on US public television and on GZERO's YouTube channel. GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS.

Powering what's next

Energy used to be a predictable cost. Now it's a constraint on growth, and businesses are rethinking how they plan and build.

GZERO Media’s Tony Maciulis sat down with Susan Uthayakumar, Chief Energy and Sustainability Officer at Prologis, to discuss how rising power demand from automation, AI and fleet electrification is changing where and how companies build. Together, they examine the role real estate plays in energy infrastructure, what effective public-private partnerships look like, and how on-site power generation can support communities in crisis.

GZERO Series