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

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. 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/podcasts Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? is an episode from Spectator Books by The Spectator.

This episode is 46:04 long.

This episode was published on Feb 18, 2026.

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