History on Drugs Podcast Isaac Campos

In this episode, my colleague Jeff Zalar joins me. This is a wide-ranging conversation that takes us from the post-industrial, working-class Rust Belt, to Panama and the first Gulf War (via the Marines), through graduate school at Georgetown, and finally to the University of Cincinnati. It’s a story of grit and determination with a heavy Midwestern accent. It also includes about the finest explanation of the value of a humanities education that you will ever hear. Plus thoughts on the culture of drinking in the military.
Episode outline:
0:00-4:00—Episode introduction.
4:00-18:15—Growing up in working-class, greater Milwaukee; Slavic immigrant roots; schoolboy days and learning to love learning.
18:15-27:00—Deciding to join the Marines; military intelligence; Panama; the Gulf War, and developing a deep thirst for education.
27:00-33:30—The culture of drinking in the Marines.
33:30-47:00—Off to college; from struggles to excellence; the huge difference a professor can make; deciding to pursue a career in academia.
47:00-56:30—Off to graduate school; Washington, D.C. and Georgetown.
56:30-1:04:00—Finishing graduate school; humility and learning the value of teaching.
1:04:00-1:12:00—First academic job in California; life struggles; early teaching struggles; the critical role of grit.
1:12:00-1:23:00—Dumb luck and finding the right job posting; coming to Cincinnati and the challenges of pulling up stakes with a family.
1:23:00-1:28:30—Current project on Catholics and natural science in the nineteenth century; I interject a story about the discovery of intoxicant cannabis in Mexico by an eighteenth-century Catholic man of science.
1:28:30-1:41:00—The value of history and the humanities; cultivating excellence, virtue, integrity, humility, and charity.
1:41:00-end—The story of Saint Boniface, which is the name of the church near my house. You can hear the church bells at the start of the podcast, though that was totally unintentional.
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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.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit isaaccampos.substack.com/subscribe