Podcasts by New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
Interviews with Scholars of Drugs, Addiction, and Recovery about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe
Podcast on the topic Wissenschaft
All episodes
Legal Regulation of Drugs from 2022-07-05T08:00
Carl Hart speaks with Kim about America’s punitive drug laws, and how we might change them for the better. He argues that we should legalize and regulate the sale of all drugs, in the same way we r...
ListenOn Addiction and Spirituality from 2022-05-12T08:00
Chris Grosso is a youth mental health group facilitator with Newport Academy, public speaker, writer, and author of Indie Spiritualist (Beyond Words/Simon&Schuster, 2014), Everything Mind (Sounds T...
ListenM. Newhart and W. Dolphin, "The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Medical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates dilemmas for patients who participate in state ...
ListenSara Luna, "Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border" (U Texas Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sex, drugs, religion, and love are potent combinations in la zona, a regulated prostitution zone in the city of Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. During the years 2008 and 2009, a tim...
ListenJennifer J. Carroll, "Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Against the backdrop of a post-Soviet state set aflame by geopolitical conflict and violent revolution, Narkomania: Drugs, HIV, and Citizenship in Ukraine (Cornell UP, 2019) considers whether subst...
ListenCarly Israel, "Seconds and Inches" (Jaded Ibis Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I interview Carly Israel about her bold new memoir, Seconds and Inches (Jaded Ibis Press). In the opening sentence of her introduction, Israel writes, “My last name, Israel, means one who wre...
ListenLinville Meadows, "A Spiritual Pathway to Recovery from Addiction: A Physician’s Journey of Discovery" (The Meadows Farm, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Addiction occurs among physicians at the same rate as in the general population, about 10%. Unlike the general population, however, an intensive rehabilitation program, geared specifically for thei...
ListenJoseph E. Davis, "Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades hav...
ListenDanielle Giffort, "Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the Quest for Medical Legitimacy" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decade...
ListenLesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities c...
ListenHe Bian, "Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
He Bian’s new book Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2020) is a beautiful cultural history of pharmacy in early modern China. This trans-dy...
ListenThomas John Lappas, "In League Against King Alcohol" (U Oklahoma Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many Americans are familiar with the real, but repeatedly stereotyped problem of alcohol abuse in Indian country. Most know about the Prohibition Era and reformers who promoted passage of the Eight...
ListenCasey Schwartz, "Attention: A Love Story" (Pantheon, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Combining expert storytelling with genuine self-scrutiny, Casey Schwartz details the decade she spend taking Adderall to help her pay attention (or so she thought) and then considers the role of at...
ListenBrian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...
ListenChris Fleming, "On Drugs" (Giramondo Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"After I’d finished my rapid-fire history of self-justification he paused and then said, deadpan and rural-Australian-slow: 'Right. Ok. So how is that all working out for you?'" On Drugs (Giramondo...
ListenB. Earp and J. Savulescu, "Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships" (Stanford UP, 2020) ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Consider a couple with an infant (or two) whose lives have become so harried and difficult the marriage is falling apart. Would it be ethical for them to take oxytocin to help them renew their emot...
ListenLaurence Monnais, "The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Situated at the crossroads between the history of colonialism, of modern Southeast Asia, and of medical pluralism, this history of medicine and health traces the life of pharmaceuticals in Vietnam ...
ListenLeslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...
ListenLina Britto, "Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In her recently published book Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise (University of California Press 2020), Lina Britto tells the forgotten story of the first boom in ...
ListenConor Picken and Matthew Dischinger, "Southern Comforts: Drinking and the US South" (LSU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Conor Picken and Matthew Dischinger about their edited collection, Southern Comforts: Drinking and the US South from Louisiana State University Pres...
ListenTravis Lupick, "Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction" (Arsenal, 2108) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
North America is in the grips of a drug epidemic; with the introduction of fentanyl, the chances of a fatal overdose are greater than ever, prompting many to rethink the war on drugs. Public opinio...
ListenMatt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...
ListenPhillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...
ListenK. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...
ListenNancy D. Campbell, "OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys?an ugly death awaiting social deviants?neither scientifically nor clin...
ListenJoe Miller, "US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism" (Chicago Review Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the aftermath of Prohibition, America’s top scientists joined forces with members of a new group, called Alcoholics Anonymous, and put their clout behind a campaign to convince the nation that a...
ListenBenjamin Breen, "The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade" (U Penn Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), we are transported back to a time when there was no such thing as "recreation...
ListenMaziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a fascinating, n...
ListenKathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...
ListenJ. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...
ListenDavid Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed (Cambridge University Press, 2019...
ListenThomas Hager, "Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine" (Abrams Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be a researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effec...
ListenLucas Richert, “Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs” (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Strange Trips isn’t only the title of Dr. Lucas Richert’s new book; it’s also a good description of the journey substances take from the black market to the doctor’s black bag—and, sometimes, back ...
ListenEvan Bennett, "When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont" (UP Florida, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Professor Evan Bennett of Florida Atlantic University, author of When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont (University Press of Florida, 2015) discusses the de...
ListenJudith Grisel, "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Doubleday, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not a lot of authors go from spending their early twenties homeless and addicted to cocaine to becoming one of the world’s leading researchers on the neuroscience of addiction. But Dr. Judith Grise...
ListenTravis Rieder, "In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids" (Harper Collins, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On a spring day in 2015, Dr. Travis Rieder’s life changed. A motorcycle accident, a shattered foot, and a long series of surgeries later, the John Hopkins University bioethicist had a far deeper un...
ListenEmily Dufton, "Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America" (Basic Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Marijuana. Weed. Cannabis. Pot. Whatever term you use, this intoxicant and medical product leads to long discussions. Emily Dufton visits the podcast to talk about the ups and downs and highs and l...
ListenJames Tharin Bradford, "Poppies, Power, and Politics: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Afghanistan and the United States have a complicated relationship. And poppies have often been at the center of the problem between the two countries. In James Tharin Bradford's new book, Poppies, ...
ListenMike Jay, "Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Psychedelics are not terribly new. And the drug mescaline is certainly not new. Mike Jay's new book, Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic (Yale University Press, 2019), tells two tr...
ListenMatt Oram, "The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are we in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance? If so, what can we learn about the present moment through the history of psychedelic experiments in the past? Matt Oram discusses contemporary deba...
ListenCeleste Watkins-Hayes, "Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do women -- especially poor and low-income women with histories of childhood sexual trauma and drug addiction -- respond to and deal with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis? How do some manage to not merely...
ListenTricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections ...
ListenAnthony Ryan Hatch, "Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Over the past forty years, U.S. prisons and jails have used various psychotropic drugs. In this interview, Anthony Ryan Hatch discusses the need to think deeply about mass incarceration, pharmaceut...
ListenJeanette M. Fregulia, "A Rich and Tantalizing Brew: A History of How Coffee Connected the World" (U Arkansas Press, 2019)) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this this interview, Carrie Tippen talks with Jeanette M. Fregulia about the movements of coffee beans, coffee drinking, and coffee houses from Ethiopia and Yemen, across the Mediterranean regio...
ListenChris S. Duvall, "The African Roots of Marijuana" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
There's so much discussion in the contemporary United States about marijuana. Debates focus on legalization and medicalization. Usually, Reefer Madness, Harry Anslinger, and race are brought into t...
ListenJohn O'Brien, "States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilisation" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is alcohol a universal feature of human society? Why is problematic in some countries and not others? How was alcohol helped build the modern state? These are just a few of the questions that socio...
ListenErika Dyck, "Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (...
ListenDavid Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, v...
ListenVivian Percy, "Saving Jenny: Rescuing Our Youth from America's Opioid and Suicide Epidemic" (Radius Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Normal turned to PTSD and a substance abuse nightmare for Jenny the instant a taxi struck her, catapulting her twenty feet across a busy New York City street. Jenny is one of the lucky ones to have...
ListenJules Evans, "The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience" (Canongate Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishin...
ListenDiscussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...
ListenDave Chase, "The Opioid Crisis Wake Up Call: Health Care is Stealing the American Dream. Here is How We Take It Back" (Health Rosetta Media, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The opioid crisis in America is considered by many to be the worst national public health crisis in the last 100 years. In his new book, The Opioid Crisis Wake Up Call: Health Care is Stealing the ...
ListenAlexander S. Dawson, "The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Peyote occupies a curious place in the United States and Mexico: though prohibited by law, its use remains permissible in both countries for ceremonial practices in certain religions. As Alexander ...
ListenMcKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...
ListenAnn Taves, “Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I’ve often asked myself this question: “How do religions begin?” I don’t know about you, but I think I would be very, very skeptical if someone told me that they’d had just received a revelation, c...
ListenStephanie Elizondo Griest, “All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the United States, contemporary discourse concerning “the border” almost always centers around the country’s southern boundary shared with Mexico. Rarely, in conversations public or private amon...
ListenBeth Macy, “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America” (Little, Brown & Company, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“Appalachia was among the first places where the malaise of opioid pills hit the nation in the mid-1990s, ensnaring coal miners, loggers, furniture makers, and their kids.” This is how journalist B...
ListenJacob Levine, “Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context” (Jacob Levine, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What is the landscape of our cannabis knowledge? In his new book Jacob Levine author of the Cannabis Discourse: Facts and Opinions in Context (Jacob Levine, 2018) gives readers an overview of the p...
ListenEdward Khantzian, “Treating Addiction: Beyond the Pain” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Treatment of addiction often focuses on abstinence or ‘harm reduction.’ While many people benefit greatly from such approaches, the underlying pain and heartache often go untreated, leaving individ...
ListenMatthew R. Pembleton, “Containing Addiction: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Origins of America’s Global Drug Wars” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s common to place the start of the War on Drugs with the Nixon or Reagan Administrations, but as Matthew Pembleton tells us, those are only phases II and III of a much longer drug war that began...
ListenAndrew Lees, “Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment” (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) is a fascinating account by one of the world’s leading and most decorated neurologists of the profound influence...
ListenMark Fleischman, “Inside Studio 54” (Rare Bird Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Studio 54 opened its doors 40 years ago and since that time it has held a place in American popular culture. Studio 54 was the place to go dancing to great music, mingle with celebrities and beauti...
ListenClaire D. Clark, “The Recovery Revolution” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Before the 1960s, doctors were generally in control of the treatment of drug addicts. And that made a certain sense, because drug addicts had something that looked a lot like a disease or mental il...
ListenMichael Muhammad Knight, “Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing” (Soft Skull Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Michael Muhammed Knight writes this book from a first-person perspective, as a piece of creative non-fiction. The book includes a liberal amount of swearing and sexual references, and Knight’s wri...
ListenEugene Raikhel, “Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic” (Cornell UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Alcoholism is a strange thing. That it exists, no one seriously doubts. But it’s not entirely clear (diagnostically speaking) what it is, who has it, how they get it, or how to treat it. The answer...
ListenTravis Linnemann, “Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If all you knew about methamphetamines came from popular culture (“Breaking Bad”) or government anti-drug campaigns (“Faces of Meth”), then you’d probably think that the typical meth user was a une...
ListenNorman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) explores the drug culture of Nazi Germany. Far from being a nation of physical and mental purity portrayed by Goeb...
ListenEricka Johnson, ed. “Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On the frontier of feminist technoscience research, Ericka Johnson’s collaborative project Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) explores how the gendered ...
ListenMatthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the early modern Spanish Atlantic world. The Andean W...
ListenGeorge T. Diaz, “Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande” (U. of Texas Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that has received scant attention by historians, but...
ListenSam Quinones, “Dreamland: The True Tale of American’s Opiate Epidemic” (Bloomsbury Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the early 2000s, the press–at least in Boston, where I was living at the time–was full of shrill stories about drug-crazed addicts breaking into area pharmacies in search of something called “Ox...
ListenSuzanna Reiss, “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire” (University of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Though the conventional history of the U.S.-led “War on Drugs” locates the origins of this conflict in a reaction to the domestic culture of excess of the 1960s, a new book argues that internationa...
ListenKristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade links West Africa within a larger global economy. ...
ListenStefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Drugs exist that are meant to help people feel better. The doctors who prescribe them might believe that they work, while their patients do not. In explaining the drugs to their patients, should th...
ListenPaul A. Christensen, “Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering Sobriety in Tokyo” (Lexington Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Paul A. Christensen‘s new book is a thoughtful ethnography of drinking, drunkenness, and male sociability in modern urban Japan. Focusing on two major alcohol sobriety support groups in Japan, Alco...
ListenTodd Meyers, “The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy” (U of Washington Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Todd Meyers‘ The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy (University of Washington Press, 2013) is many things, all of them compelling and fully realized. Most di...
ListenRick Strassman, “DMT and the Soul of Prophecy” (Park Street Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
DMT and the Soul of Prophecy:A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible (Park Street Press, 2014) asks a number of provocative questions about drugs, consciousness, prophecy, and the...
ListenJoseph M. Gabriel, “Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry” (U Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Commercial interests are often understood as impinging upon the ethical norms of medicine. In his new book, Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutic...
ListenKeith Wailoo, “Pain: A Political History” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is pain real? Is pain relief a right? Who decides? In Pain: A Political History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014),Keith Wailoo investigates how people have interpreted and judged the suffering...
ListenLisa L. Gezon, “Drug Effects: Khat in Biocultural and Socioeconomic Perspective” (Left Coast Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Khat, the fresh leaves of the plant Catha edulis, is a mild psycho-stimulant. It has been consumed in Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia for over one thousand years. Khat consumption is an...
ListenJeremy A. Greene, “Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Is there any such thing as a generic drug? Jeremy A, Greene‘s new book Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) treats its subject matter with a learned ske...
ListenJames Martin, “Drugs on the Dark Net: How Cryptomarkets are Transforming the Global Trade in Illicit Drugs” (Palgrave, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
I am old enough to realise that we have entered a science fiction world in which the old systems of the market place are being sidestepped by new technology. We who follow the tried and true method...
ListenSharon K. Farber, “Hunger for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties” (Aronson, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But th...
ListenMiriam Kingsberg, “Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Miriam Kingsberg‘s fascinating new book offers both a political and social history of modern Japan and a global history of narcotics in the modern world. Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in...
ListenPeter Maguire and Mike Ritter, “Thai Stick” (Columbia Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Reading Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter‘s book Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade (Columbia Press, 2013) is the most fun I have had doing this podcast. Maguire ...
ListenCarlo C. DiClemente, “Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change: Selecting and Planning Interventions” (Guilford Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, I talk with Carlo C. DiClemente, a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland- Baltimore County, about his co-authored book, Subs...
ListenKaren G. Weiss, “Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community” (Northeastern UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus...
ListenEugene Raikhel and William Garriott, eds., “Addiction Trajectories” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Addiction has recently emerged as an object of anthropological inquiry. In a wonderful, focused volume of ethnographies of addiction in a wide range of contexts, Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott...
ListenIoan Grillo, “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency” (Bloomsbury, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Today I spoke to Ioan Grillo about his book El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (Bloomsbury, 2012). This book is an excellent introduction to the state of conflict between drug cartels th...
ListenKathleen J. Frydl, “The War on Drugs in America, 1940-1973” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs.” We are still fighting that war today. According to many people, we’ve lost but don’t know it. Rates of drug use in the US remain, by hist...
ListenPaul Kan, “Cartels at War: Mexico’s Drug-Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security” (Potomac Books, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The violence in Mexico is receiving a lot of media attention internationally. Paul Rexton Kan has produced a book that provides us with a comprehensive and comprehendible introduction to the backgr...
ListenChris Cooper, “Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his defense against charges that he had engaged in...
ListenIsaac Campos, “Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs” (UNC Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Isaac Campos is the author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Campos is an assistant professor of history at the Universit...
ListenDavid Linen, “The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good” (Viking, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
What happens in our brains when we do things that feel good, such as drinking a glass of wine, exercising, or gambling? How and why do we become addicted to certain foods, chemicals and behaviors? ...
ListenErica Prussing, “White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community” (University of Arizona Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United States. Reservation communities have been no e...
ListenEric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the American City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music bands was The Velvet Underground. They were fro...
ListenTeresa Gowan, “Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders-Homeless in San Francisco” (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why do people become homeless? Is it because some people have made bad decisions in their lives or can’t hold onto a stable job? Or is homelessness the result of a depilating mental illness or chem...
ListenNick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” (Bloomsbury, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I also noticed that there were a lot of drugs. One...
ListenPeter Maguire and Mike Ritter, "Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade" (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the 1970s surfing and smoking pot went hand in hand. As surfers traveled the world in search of perfect waves in places like Bali, Indonesia, some of them encountered high quality Afghan hashish...
ListenIdo Hartogsohn, "American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activat...
ListenNick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” (Bloomsbury, 2009) from 2009-08-14T17:30
In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I also noticed that there were a lot of drugs. One...
ListenNick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” (Bloomsbury, 2009) from 2009-08-14T17:30
In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I also noticed that there were a lot of drugs. One...
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