Former Drug Policy Allliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann has come out of retirement to host a new podcast Psychoactive produced by Darren Aronofsky and his company Protozoa Pictures and iHeartRadio.
The first two episodes featuring Andrew Weil and James Forman Jr. were posted July 15. A new episode will be available every Thursday. Upcoming guests include Dan Savage, Dr. Nora Volkow, Michael Pollan and Dr. Carl Hart. Listen to the episodes below.
At a party in Manhattan to promote the show, also on July 15, Nadelmann told the crowd that included current DPA director Kassandra Frederique: "I had wonderful decades running the Drug Policy Alliance. When I left four years ago the first thing I was thinking of doing was a podcast. It seemed like no responsibility, no schedule, you don't have to be anywhere like you're teaching a course or doing a radio show. I talked to people about it and nothing really came together. I didn't want to work that hard after working around the clock for 40 years."
Nadelmann, post-DPA: "I didn't want to be talking about drugs anymore, I wanted to be doing them."
"Almost a year ago I got this email out of the blue from Darren," Nadelmann continued. "He wanted to do a podcast. He said how about doing something about psychedelic drugs? I said, no, I want to do something on all drugs. He said, let's do it. It's really about talking about all drugs: drug policy, drug culture, drug markets, legal drugs, illegal drugs, you name it... I'm going to have fun. It feels like a new stage of life."
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Aronofsky, director of such films as Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan and The Wrestler, introduced Nadelmann who he'd met several years before: "We started to think about possibilities of people and I thought, what's Ethan doing? I heard that he had retired and just was hanging out, so I called a few friends and they said Ethan might be interested. Luckily for Protozoa and iHeart, he was available."
