Most of us think we know cocaine — a glamorous party drug with a dark side, a scourge of the 80s, a straightforward villain in the story of addiction. But what happens behind the scenes - in the months of work and miles of travel that take the coca leaf of Central and South America to the consumers all around the world?

Emilia Ziosi is a researcher and science communicator whose work has focused largely on the cocaine trade.

In this episode, Zale and Emilia dig into the assumptions we carry about cocaine and where they actually come from, including:

- How cocaine was used medically for decades — and why that history got buried

- What's actually happening in the brain during cocaine use, and why the "addiction = weak willpower" framing misses the point

- The racial politics behind cocaine prohibition and how moral panic shaped drug policy

- Why cocaine's cultural image has shifted so dramatically across time and class

- What harm reduction gets right that abstinence-only approaches keep getting wrong

- Whether we're asking the right questions when it comes to drug policy reform

Preconceived is a weekly Society & Culture podcast where each episode challenges a widely-held assumption. Hosted by Zale Mednick. New episodes every week.

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