Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast.

This week I'm joined by Hannah Picard, who is a professor of philosophy and bioethics

at Johns Hopkins University and whose new book is called What Would You Do Alone in a Cage

with Nothing But Cocaine,

a Philosophy of Addiction.

Welcome, Hannah.

Now, obviously, this is a book with unquestionably the best title of any in recent non-fiction publishing.

But it's a subtitle I wanted to start by asking you about,

because obviously addiction is a very

complex and over-determined kind of area of inquiry, and we approach it medically, we approach it

psychologically, we approach it even theological and sociologically. Why do we need a philosophy

of addiction? Well, first, thanks so much for having me on the show some. And no one has asked me

that question yet. So I'm delighted to be able to start with it. And, you know, I suppose the

answer is kind of twofold. One is the mundane fact that I am by training and at heart a philosopher.

So it is the discipline that anchors me, even though the book is extremely interdisciplinary. And I also draw on an unusual experience I had for a philosopher,

which is a decade of work in a therapeutic community in the UK working with people with

personality disorder and complex needs. But nonetheless, my own sort of, my heart is in philosophy,

right? So it's reflective of me. But I also think that what you say about addiction is entirely

right. We are required, if we're to understand it, to approach it through a variety

of disciplinary lenses and social and political orientations as well, in my view, really

fundamentally, is listening to what people with addiction say themselves. And in some sense,

philosophy is at least historically a

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