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 explain, so I’m going to list them here in roughly their order of appearance:
The Drug Page is a website that I created. It brings my research on marijuana in the United States to a broader public.
SeepeopleS is James’s brother’s band.
The Alcohol and Drugs History Society (ADHS) is our professional association.
Emily Dufton is a historian who has written about marijuana in the United States.
Haggai Ram is a historian who has written about hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel.
Erika Dyck is a historian and current president of the ADHS. She’s writes a lot about psychedelics.
David Herzberg is a historian who has written a lot about drugs and the pharmaceutical industry in the United States.
David Courtwright is the dean of American drug historians. He coined the terms “limbic capitalism,” “psychoactive revolution,” and more.
Paul Gootenberg is the dean of Latin American drug historians. He has written a lot about cocaine. He was also on my doctoral committee many moons ago.
Oliver Dinius is a historian of Brazil and was a colleague of mine in graduate school.
Matthew Connelly is a historian of international and global history and my first mentor in this business.
James Mills is a historian who has worked on cannabis in the British empire and cocaine in Asia.
Patricia Barton is a historian of pharmacy and drugs in the British empire.
AHA: American Historical Association.
MESA: Middle East Studies Association.
Stephen Snelders is a historian who writes about drugs in the Netherlands and beyond.
Lucas Richert is a historian of pharmacy and psychedelics.
David Guba is a historian who has written about cannabis in France.
Ethan Nadelmann is a drug-policy-reform legend. He’s also got a very interesting podcast of his own.
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