David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)

David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, vice, and capitalism. His new book is called The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business (Harvard University Press, 2019). During our discussion, Courtwright walks us through the emergence of the worldwide commodification of vice and shares his views on "limbic capitalism," the network of competitive businesses targeting the brain pathways responsible for feeling, motivation, and long-term memory. The book is equally interesting and disturbing. And Courtwright offers timely recommendations about how we can understand and address the Age of Addiction. Coming from one of the world's leading experts on the history of drugs and addiction, this important work raises stimulating and sobering questions about consumption and free will. Courtwright is the author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 2001) as well as Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Harvard University Press, 1982). Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2199)

Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha male intensity of Russell Crowe’s Noah, in Darren Aro...

21 Mar 50min

Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)

Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)

Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction considers nonfiction filmmakers and film collectives whose work advances an understanding of land as a locus of social and environmental responsibility. Diving into...

21 Mar 1h 10min

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected ...

20 Mar 1h 13min

Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)

The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland. Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But afte...

20 Mar 1h 10min

 Miriam Ticktin, "Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Miriam Ticktin, "Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

In this timely and bold book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World (U Chicago Press, 2025), Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends u...

19 Mar 1h 3min

H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect" (Princeton UP, 2025)

H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect" (Princeton UP, 2025)

James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seamlessly between academia and politics. He was, among ...

17 Mar 58min

Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)

Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)

Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us. We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultu...

15 Mar 53min

Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story (Reaktion, 2026) proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Dr. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site ...

15 Mar 51min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
liberal-halvtime
sinnsyn
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
forskningno
rss-rekommandert
fjellsportpodden
smart-forklart
vett-og-vitenskap-med-gaute-einevoll
jss
villmarksliv
rss-overskuddsliv
kvinnehelsepodden
rss-radium
rss-inn-til-kjernen-med-sunniva-rose
nordnorsk-historie
nevropodden
hva-er-greia-med