History on Drugs Podcast

About the show

Latest episodes

• Tales of True Crime and Drug Smuggling, with David Tuch

  September 20, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

  My latest guest is independent scholar David Tuch, author of The Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade (Icon Books, 2025). The book tells the story of Harold Derber, the man who…

• White Market Drugs and a Late Twentieth-Century American Story, with David Herzberg

  August 16, 2026 · 1 hr 37 min

  My latest guest is drug-history pioneer David Herzberg. In two important books—Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Johns Hopkins, 2008) and the prize-winning White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in…

• Opioids, Methadone, and the History of Medication-Assisted Treatment, with Emily Dufton

  June 17, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min

  My latest guest is Emily Dufton. Emily is an independent scholar and historian who has written a lot about drugs over the years. Her first book, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017), told the…

• A Strange Trip into Terence McKenna and Psychedelics, with John O'Connor

  April 14, 2026 · 1 hr 27 min

  My latest guest is John O’Connor, author of A Short, Strange Trip: An Untold Story of Magic Mushrooms, Madness, and a Search for the Meaning of Life in the Amazon, which was published today (April 14, 2026). This is the story of Terence…

• Graham Harding and the History of Champagne in the UK

  February 2, 2026 · 1 hr 19 min

  My latest conversation is with Graham Harding, author of Champagne in Britain, 1800-1914: How the British Transformed a French Luxury (Bloomsbury, 2023). Graham and I met last spring in London, where we talked about the history of…

• Drugs in the Netherlands, with Stephen Snelders

  November 1, 2025 · 1 hr 16 min

  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…

• Government Secrets, Existential Risk, and Higher Education, with Matthew Connelly

  September 14, 2025 · 1 hr 13 min

  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…

• Waging War on the War on Drugs, with Ethan Nadelmann

  August 10, 2025 · 1 hr 50 min

  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…