Three authors capture in detail a portrait of an addicted nation—and the powerful industry forces complicit in stoking dependency.


In journalist Sam Quinones’s The Least of Us—the follow-up to his New York Times bestselling and NBCC Award winning Dreamland—the detrimental effects of the opioid epidemic are explored in depth via both community-focused reportage and a close look at the “corporations who act like traffickers” fueling the crisis. Award-winning investigative reporter Lauren Etter’s The Devil’s Playbook brings us into the boardrooms of Philip Morris: How did the tobacco company, blinded by the profit potential of e-cigarette maker Juul, help pave the way for yet another public health disaster? And Dopamine Nation, the latest from Stanford Addiction Medicine medical director Dr. Anna Lembke, delves into our very brains, revealing how our pursuit of instant gratification—a pursuit made increasingly easy by corporations skilled in behavioral economics—opens for us new vistas of pain, dependency, and discomfort.

In association with The Atlantic

• Moderator: Don Peck, Atlantic editor at large
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Lauren Etter, Anna Lembke, Sam Quinones, The Devil’s Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth