Empire of Pain The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

He recently put out a book called Empire of Pain which is like, I mean it's popular everywhere okay? I'm not like special. It's his newest release. I highly suggest go giving that a read.

It's covered in the book dope sick, but there's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the 50s and the 60s. In such exquisite detail.

I call it Charles Dickens in hell. I mean, it's very I want to read that.

There's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the 50s and the 60s in such exquisite detail.

I bet that book by the way, "Empire of Pain". I haven't read that one.

Patrick Radden Keefe. Brilliant book about how they started making certain, you know, kind of medical company, three brothers, and then the dynasty, how they created various drugs, each of them in different ways, problematic, like with side effects, and then the mother of all terrible drugs, which was the Oxys and whatever, and a lot of them live in Stade now apparently. Do you know Stade in Switzerland? Like, it's a playground of the wealthy.

So if you've been following Dope Sick on TV or reading Empire of Pain, this is what this is all about.

I just want to highlight another case it's kind of unusual at the court because it's a bankruptcy case but it's one that you might be familiar with if you've been watching dope sick or pain killer Tyler kish forever. And if you read Empire of pain then you know that Purdue Pharma which is the maker of oxy content has reached a settlement in the significant number of cases concerning opioid abuse in the United States...

If you'd like to learn more about the opioid epidemic, we recommend the books Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Dovesick by Beth Macy, American Overdose by Chris McGreal, Painkiller by Barry Meyer, Dreamland by Sam Quinonez, the documentary The Climb of the Century directed by Alex Gibney, airing on HBO.

If you'd like to learn more about the opioid epidemic, we recommend the books Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Dovesick by Beth Macy, American Overdose by Chris McGreal, Painkiller by Barry Meyer, Dreamland by Sam Canonas, and the documentary The Crime of the Century directed by Alex Gibney, airing on HBO.

I interviewed both the author of the book Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe, and...

And I interviewed both the author of the book empire of pain Patrick Rad and Keith about his book about the Sackler family but also Kate Nicholson who started an organization you know to represent the interest of people who are using pain medications pharmaceutical opioids responsibly but now can't get to many more because doctors are afraid to prescribe them because there's the pendulum has swung so far the other direction

My favorite book about it is Patrick Raddenkief's Empire of Pain. It's about not just the introduction of oxycodone, but really how one family, the Sacklers, made billions of dollars by rewriting the story of the poppy seed.

Purdue-formulated oxycodone. Crucially, according to Purdue, oxycodone was not addictive.

Grief from the loss of a child is not a process. "It's a lifelong weight upon one's soul."

As the fascinating book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe reveals, it was definitely greed.

I picked up at a bookstore on vacation at the beach earlier this year. Fantastic.

Well, that's interesting because the reason I was asking was not to understand necessarily your ethical worldview but rather your journalistic instinct. If a story is black and white, is it less interesting to you and maybe not? Uh, yeah, I mean I would say so. Um I from a narrative point of view Literally just talking about myself and what what would I read on a Saturday afternoon if you gave me an hour I want something that's going to take some surprising twists and turns um Complexity you like complexity. I like complexity and surprise. And so if you have a story in which you know, you meet a character and they're totally virtuous on page one and Totally virtuous an hour later. Um It's going to sleep you're young yeah to be sure there are people out there like that and there are those stories should get Written but I may not be the guy to do it I want to ask you a question and then we'll get into some of the particular stories because they're fascinating and you mentioned a couple There's a question that I get a lot And i'm sure you get it as well given what you write about Why do people do bad things? And I can give you some context, you know, I get asked that because of the job I used to do and I answer in some measure that obviously There are people do bad things for different reasons and there's some Who do it for greet? There's some who do it because of love There's some who do it because they make a mistake and they double down And there's some who are just I think Rotten to the core. How do you answer that question?

And the reason I asked the question what I was going to say is the next book I did was on the Sackler family and that's all moral clarity. Like I think that's a pretty straightforward story.