Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Hello, this is James, and welcome to the podcast. And this week, my guest is Justin Garson.

Justin is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He has published several books and articles on biology,

The Mind and Madness, including Madness of Philosophical Exploration in 2022. He also contributes to psychology today and Eon. His latest book

is entitled The Madness Pill, One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia, and it was

published by St Martin's Press in April 26. In this interview, Justin joins us to talk about the work

of Solomon Snyder, whose discoveries ushered in the era of biological psychiatry.

We also talk about the race to develop new psychiatric drugs based on his research and the implications for our understanding of psychosis.

Justin, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Madden America podcast.

We last spoke in 2024, and in that interview we focused on your book at the time, Madness

of philosophical exploration, which discusses the ways in which society has attempted to explain

or categorize madness over the years.

And that was a very, very popular interview for us. So I'm delighted that we can get to talk again.

Yeah. Thank you so much, James, for inviting me back. I'm really looking forward to this.

So here we are in 2026. And your latest book is about to come out, and it's entitled

The Madness Pill, One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia, and it's published

by St. Martin's Press.

And before we talk about the book, I have to say, I really admire the way that you intertwine

personal experience, neuroscience, and pharmacology.

It's a really, really fascinating insight into the development of new drugs and the rise of

biological psychiatry. And it's been referred to as a rollicking ride, and I can really, really

understand why. Thank you. Yeah, it was a tough new because it's the first trade book I've written.

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