The Book Club: A Philosophy of Addiction episode artwork

EPISODE · Feb 21, 2026 · 46 MIN

The Book Club: A Philosophy of Addiction

from Best of the Spectator

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the philosophy professor Hanna Pickard, whose new book is What Would You Do Alone In A Cage With Nothing But Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. She tells me why we need a new approach to ‘the puzzle of addiction’. She says the idea that addicts are helplessly in thrall to the compulsions of a ‘broken brain’ is wrong, that we need to understand how sometimes using even if it's looks like killing you can make a sort of sense – and describes how her own one-off experience of morphine set her on the path of trying to change the way we think about drugs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the philosophy professor Hanna Pickard, whose new book is What Would You Do Alone In A Cage With Nothing But Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. She tells me why we need a new approach to ‘the puzzle of addiction’. She says the idea that addicts are helplessly in thrall to the compulsions of a ‘broken brain’ is wrong, that we need to understand how sometimes using even if it's looks like killing you can make a sort of sense – and describes how her own one-off experience of morphine set her on the path of trying to change the way we think about drugs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Book Club: A Philosophy of Addiction

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This episode was published on February 21, 2026.

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My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the philosophy professor Hanna Pickard, whose new book is What Would You Do Alone In A Cage With Nothing But Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. She tells me why we need a new approach to ‘the puzzle of...

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