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PODCAST

History on Drugs Podcast

This is a podcast about drugs, history, and the endlessly fascinating interaction of the two. Sometimes we"ll talk drugs. Sometimes we"ll talk history. Sometimes we"ll talk about both. This podcast is connected to the Substack newsletter of the same name. https://isaaccampos.substack.com/ isaaccampos.substack.com

history

All Episodes

75:35

Episode #14: Drugs in the Netherlands, with Stephen...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/11/01

My latest guest is Stephen Snelders of Utrecht University. Stephen and I met up in Amsterdam last March to talk about drugs, history, and the Netherlands. A native of Amsterdam, Stephen watched up close as the various drug scenes in that great city evolved during the 1980s. This helped turn him into a drug historian, initially studying the history of LSD in his country, and eventually publishing Drug Smuggler Nation: Narcotics and the Netherlands, 1920-1995 (Manchester University Press, 2021).We

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72:44

Episode #13: Government Secrets, Existential Risk,...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/09/14

This week’s guest is Matthew Connelly, professor of international and global history at Columbia University. This interview was especially fun for me because it was Matt who, back at the University of Michigan in the 1990s, turned me into a historian. My whole way of doing things has been indelibly shaped by him.Matt is of course better known as a great and prolific scholar. His publications include a first monograph on the Algerian War for Independence, his highly-influential book on the history of

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110:22

Episode #12: Waging War on the War on Drugs, with...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/08/10

This week’s guest is drug-policy-reform legend Ethan Nadelmann. Ethan led the charge against the War on Drugs beginning in the 1980s, first as a professor at Princeton and then as the head of the Lindesmith Center (which became the Drug Policy Alliance). He’s published various influential works, including the books Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement and Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (with Peter Andreas),

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84:10

Episode #11: From Drug Addiction to Drug Journalism,...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/06/28

Maia Szalavitz is my latest podcast guest. Maia is the author of Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, and Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, along with several other books.We met up at her office in New York City last November to talk about her extraordinary life and career. She describes a tough childhood that led into a period of hardcore drug

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107:57

Episode #10: The History of Cocaine, a Long Career,...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/05/26

My latest podcast is with Paul Gootenberg, one of the towering figures in drug history. Paul just retired from his longtime position as the SUNY Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at Stony Brook University, and I was there in November to both fete and roast him at a symposium in his honor. It’s a very fun conversation. There are lots of great stories about 1960s radicals and the drug culture of that time, hitchhiking across America, a showdown with Studs Terkel, getting arrested in

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92:06

Episode #9: The World of Psychedelics, with Erika Dyck

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/04/14

My latest guest is historian Erika Dyck. Erika is one of the world’s leading authorities on psychedelics both past and present. She hails from Saskatchewan, Canada, which back in the 1950s was ground zero for new scientific research into psychedelic therapy, an era she wrote about in her first book, and which we talk about at some length in our conversation. We also discuss her youth in Saskatoon, how she became a historian, the current psychedelic renaissance, and even a chance encounter she had

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112:43

Episode #8: Smart Cities, Universities, and a Career...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/03/02

This week’s guest is Davarian Baldwin, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity University. He’s the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021), Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (UNC Press, 2007), and co-editor of the essay collection Escape From New York! The New Negro Renaissance (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Davarian and I talked way back in March

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109:27

Episode #7: A View from Inside the Cannabis...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2025/01/22

Today on the podcast I talk to Dale Gieringer, the longtime head of California NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). Dale came in last spring to talk about what it was like to be there for some of the most important shifts in twentieth-century drug history, from the explosion of drug-taking in the 1960s, to California’s historic Prop. 215, which legalized medical marijuana, through recreational legalization in that state in 2016. Dale was there and talks about all of it

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102:33

Episode #6: From 18th Century Central America to 21st...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/12/19

My guest in Episode #6 is historian Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara. Bri is a specialist in colonial Central America, especially the history of women and religiosity. She’s also my friend and colleague here at the University of Cincinnati. We have a great, wide-ranging conversation that explores her childhood in California, the kinds of struggles that most young people have as they try to figure out what to do with their lives, graduate school, being mentored by the great Bill Taylor, the ins and outs of

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86:24

Episode #5: Psychedelics, Bigfoot, and the Nature of...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/10/01

In the fifth installment of the History on Drugs podcast, John O’Connor joins Isaac to discuss his recently published book—The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster (Sourcebooks, 2024)—along with his new project on psychedelic guru Terence McKenna. They talk about the psychedelic renaissance, John’s trip to Colombia’s Putomayo region, how to successfully combine your coca and tobacco, the similarities between the “psychonauts” of the 1970s and today’s Bigfoot hunters,

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106:07

Episode #4: Tales of the High Seas and the Soviet...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/08/20

This week’s guest is my colleague Willard Sunderland. Willard is the Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati and an expert on the history of the Russian Empire. Our conversation centers around a great adventure from which Willard had just returned—sailing a 32-foot sailboat from Lake Erie to Finland. Though there’s a lot of history involved in this too, as the trip shadowed the same route taken by John Quincy Adams back in 1809. We discuss not only the ins and

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102:08

Episode #3: Addiction, Overdose, and Gender, with...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/05/05

In this episode I talk to Nancy Campbell about a life in drug history. From growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, to Seattle and northern California in the 1980s during the height of the War on Drugs, to a historic 1990s summit of young drug scholars organized by the legendary David Musto, to a quarter century of researching and publishing on drugs, gender, addiction, and overdose.Episode Outline (with approximate time stamps)0:00-4:30: Episode introduction.4:30-13:00: Growing up in Berwick,

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106:53

Episode #2: From the "Upper Station of Low Life" to...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/04/14

In this episode, my colleague Jeff Zalar joins me. This is a wide-ranging conversation that takes us from the post-industrial, working-class Rustbelt, to Panama and the first Gulf War (via the Marines), through graduate school at Georgetown, and finally to the University of Cincinnati. It’s a story of grit and determination with a heavy Midwestern accent. It also includes about the finest explanation of the value of a humanities education that you will ever hear. Plus thoughts on the culture of

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105:18

Episode #1: Opium, Afghanistan, and the Life of a...

History on Drugs Podcast ·

2024/03/24

My guest this week is James Bradford of the Berklee College of Music. It’s a great conversation. James is a really interesting guy with a really fascinating story, and he generously shares a lot of it. We talk about his growing up in Maine, youthful drug use, families and addiction, becoming a historian, researching Afghanistan, opium, cannabis, and much much more.As I note in the introduction to the interview, there are a bunch of people and organizations that we talk about and don’t really

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