Johann Hari

Johann Hari is the author of The New York Times bestselling book Chasing the Scream, the product of his four-year, 12-country, 30,000-mile journey into the war on drugs. Called “breathtaking” by The Guardian, “gripping” by The Financial Times, and “riveting” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs explores three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens. Hari’s viral TED Talk—viewed online now nearly 12 million times—based on the book, is a funny, fascinating, and moving look at the ways in which we turn to addiction as a response to conditions of isolation and disengagement in our lives. In his new book, the instant New York Times bestseller Lost Connections, Hari turns his empathetic lens onto depression, discovering, as with drugs and addiction, that everything he thought he knew was wrong.

Hari has written for many of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Slate, El Mundo, and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was a lead op-ed columnist for The Independent, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, for nine years, and was named ‘National Newspaper Journalist of the Year’ by Amnesty International twice. He was named ‘Environmental Commentator of the Year’ at the Editorial Intelligence awards, and ‘Gay Journalist of the Year’ at the Stonewall awards. He has also won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for political writing.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has lived in London since he was a baby. He graduated from King’s College, Cambridge with a double first in Social and Political Sciences in 2001. He is currently a Visiting Fellow with Purpose, the New York-based progressive campaigning group.