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UnDisciplined: Drunk Flies And Stoned Dolphins

If you started your day with a cup of coffee, kept it going with a cup of cola, or ended it with a glass of wine, you are part of a long human tradition of spicing up your life with intoxicating substances. As a species, we have been getting drunk and stoned for a very long time. But, like so many other things, it turns out we aren't all that unique in this way. Animals were getting blitzed long before we were. Oné Pagán is a professor of biology at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. His new book is called "Drunk Flies and Stoned Dolphins."

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.