What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?

Podcast: The Book Club (LS 49 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?Pub date: 2026-02-18Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationMy 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.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.