John Pring documents the history of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), specifically how this department has inflicted 30 years of violence and austerity on sick and disabled people in Britain. John Pring is founder and editor of the news agency Disability News Service. He is co-creator of the Deaths by Welfare timeline, and co-editor and s…

George Severs provides a history of HIV/AIDS in England, paying close attention to the various political and social formations that emerged to address the harms of the virus, which were compounded by institutional homophobia and state abandonment. Dr George Severs is a historian of HIV/AIDS, sexual violence and sexual health in modern Britain. He i…

Nihal El Aasar discusses her recent essay, titled Left-wing Melancholia, which has been published as part of Parapraxis Magazine's Palestine issue. In the essay Nihal explores the responses to the ongoing genocide in Gaza from people in other Arab countries. In her words “there have been certain weighted expectations for the Arab masses to react mo…

Youbin Kang and John Ferretti discuss the compounding issues of austerity, policing, and propaganda on the New York City subway system. Specifically, they explore the way incidents of harm and violence are taken up as part of a cycle of media panics and carceral crackdowns. Youbin's recent essay All Aboard the Moral Panic, published in n+1 magazine…

Helen Charman describes some of the many political and historical struggles over the meaning and status of motherhood, by way of thinkers such as Denise Riley and Jacqueline Rose, as well as figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Helen Charman is a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College, University …

Richard Seymour analyses the global far-right, asking how movements across the world have managed to capitalize on the resentment produced by the capitalist system to generate a form of violent rebellion that leaves that same system fully in-tact. Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and the author of numerous books abo…

Sasha Warren explores the history of psychiatry in relationship to the development of capitalism. We discuss how best to frame the different movements that have emerged with the intention of transforming or abolishing psychiatry. We then spend some time talking about figures such as Foucault, Fanon, and R. D Laing that may be familiar to listeners …

This episode features a recording of live discussion with Richard Seymour and Helen Charman about the medical imaginaries of the far right. This recording is from illness (3), the third in the event series that runs alongside the podcast. We discuss why the far-right has so many paranoid fantasies about medicine, from race science and eugenics, to …

Dayna Tortorici and Lisa Borst discuss The Intellectual Situation, a new anthology of writing from the literary magazine n+1. The anthology brings together writing from the period of 20014-2024, including contributions from people such as Gabriel Winant, Alyssa Battistoni, Tabi Haslet, Nikil Saval, and many others. In this conversation Lisa and Day…

Melinda Cooper describes the combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes neoliberal monetary policy and how these ideas emerged from the crises of the 1970s. Melinda Cooper is Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She is the author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Cons…

Leah Cowan explains the long and complex relationship between British feminism and British policing. From women's suffrage, through the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s, to recent conflicts over the murder of Sarah Everard by a London Metropolitan Police officer. Leah Cowan is a writer, editor and previously the political editor of Gal-dem …

Ruth Pearce explains the many problems surrounding the recently published Cass Review into trans healthcare for young people. Ruth Pearce is a Lecturer in Community Development at the University of Glasgow and a researcher specializing in trans healthcare. She has edited two books (The Emergence of Trans and TERF Wars) as well as special issues of …

Michael Hardt analyses the revolutionary political movements of the 1970s and what they might teach us about political struggle, social transformation, and liberation. Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co…

Hannah Proctor explains why it’s important to understand the messy, emotional, and interpersonal aspects of political struggle. Hannah Proctor is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, interested in histories and theories of radical psychiatry. She is a member of the editorial collective behind Radical Philoso…

Nick Bano explains how landlords and the state collaborate to produce the housing crisis, generating harm and violence in the process of wealth accumulation. Nick Bano is an author and Barrister who specializes in representing homeless people, residential occupiers, and destitute and migrant households. He has written for Tribune, the New Socialist…

In today’s episode I’m speaking to Adam Elliott-Cooper about histories of Black resistance to British policing, specifically how figures such as Claudia Jones, Darcus Howe, and Stuart Hall have theorized and resisted Policing’s role in upholding British Imperialism, racial capitalism, and neoliberalism. Adam Elliott-Cooper is Lecturer in Public and…

Gabriel Winant and Taj Ali discuss the surge of labor organising that has taken place in British and American healthcare over the last few years. Gabriel Winant is an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago and the author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. His writing has be…

Julian Go explains the 200 year history of police militarization in Britain and the U.S. He highlights the relationships between race, moral panics, and criminalization before describing how these connections shed light on the struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and policing. Julian Go is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the …

Jules Gill-Peterson explains what trans misogyny is, why the state cultivates and enlists it, and how this shapes our current political moment. Jules Gill-Peterson is writer, academic, and author based in the US. She is a tenured associate professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and a General Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. H…

Writer Adam Shatz discusses the life and work of the revolutionary, psychiatrist, and philosopher Frantz Fanon Adam Shatz is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is also a visiting professor at Bard College, and the host…

Jess Thorne updates us on the struggle Health Care Assistants in the Wirral face to win adequate wages. Jess Thorne is a writer, historian and trade union organiser. She works as a local organiser for UNISON in the North West region, where she has been assisting healthcare assistants on the Wirral in a re-banding dispute. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.…

Ramsey McGlazer discusses the work of radical psychoanalyst Elvio Fachinelli. Specifically, he traces the history of an anti-authoritarian kindergarten which Fachinelli founded, how this informed his broader engagement with psychoanalysis, and how that work might inform our own understanding of authority, adulthood and freedom. How to Touch Grass b…

Lara Sheehi, Stephen Sheehi and James Schneider discuss events currently unfolding in Palestine and the strategies used media to stifle support for Palestinian liberation and normalize settler colonialism. Lara Sheehi is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University Professional Psychology program. Co-editor of S…

Craig, Adam and Will from Acid Horizon discuss their book Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape, including reflections on cybernetics, police, paranoia, disability, and Ocularity. Acid Horizon is a podcasting collective of artists, musicians, and philosophers formed in 2020 with a focus on Marxist, post-structuralist, and anarchist philosophy. They a…

Erica Borg and Amedeo Policante provide a marxist analysis of gene editing technology, CRISPR, and genetic engineering as they relate to eugenics, capital accumulation and ecology. Erica Borg is a geographer and political ecologist based at King's College, London. Their research focuses on the relations between capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy a…

Orisanmi Burton discusses the criminalized and incarcerated Black radical tradition through the lens of a series of prison rebellions in the New York prison system throughout the 1970s. Orisanmi Burton is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University and the author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long …

Waithera Sebatindira explores how it feels to live as an addict under capitalism and asks how addiction and recovery could remake the world. Waithera Sebatindira is a Kenyan writer based in London. Their previous writing and research interests have included food imperialism, drag kings and gender transformation. They are a co-author of A FLY Girl’s…

Johnbosco Nwogbo from We Own It discusses the future of the NHS, to what degree it can still be considered publicity owned, and what we could expect from a Labour government. Johnbosco Nwogbo is Lead Campaigner at We Own It. For the three years before joining We Own It, he has been a campaigner for renters and community rights as part of ACORN the …

Journalist Vic Parsons discusses the reality facing trans and non-binary people navigating the British healthcare system. Vic Parsons is a journalist based in London. They have written on a number of topics relating to the lives of trans and non-binary people for a number of publications including Novara Media, Democracy Now, Vogue and others. SUPP…

Rhiannon Osborne, Araceli Camargo and Josh Artus from Centric Lab explain the work they do in supporting communities fighting for health justice. Centic Lab is an organization that provides tools for racialised and marginalised communities facing the effects of extractivism and ecological breakdown. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine Soundtr…

The writer Amber Hussain describes a certain kind of middle-class ethical meat consumption she has dubbed as Meat Love. She explores the culture surrounding this type of meat eating and what kind of anxieties, be they class or climate, are being worked through in this mode of consumption. Amber Husain is a writer based in South London, UK. She is t…

Nick Dearden shatters the myth that pharmaceuticals corporations (Big Pharma) play an innovative and productive role in providing people with medicines and how the realities of financialization, intellectual property law, and neocolonialism show that instead we are left with an incredibly harmful system. Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justi…

Narcissism is often deemed the defining pathology of contemporary society. In this episode writer Matt Colquhoun examines these claims and asks if another narcissism is possible. Matt Colquhoun is a writer and photographer from Hull. They are the author of two books, Egress and Narcissus in Bloom, and the editor of Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desi…

Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek describe the home and its function as a site of unpaid labor within capitalist economies. Specifically, they explore how modernization and technology have failed to deliver on their promise of making this labor quicker and easier – and the implications this has for how we give and receive care. Helen Hester is Professo…

Arun Kundnani outlines the limits of liberal anti-racism and explains why we need a radical and materialist analysis of capitalism to understand racism. Arun Kundnani has been active in antiracist movements in Britain and the United States for three decades. He is a former editor of the journal Race & Class and was a scholar-in-residence at the Sch…

M. E. O'Brien discusses her work on family abolition, specifically her new book Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care. Including how the crisis of capitalist over-production changed the nature of the family in the 20th century, and how we might understand what’s happening in moments of insurgent social reproduction. M. E. O'Brien…

Micha Frazer Carroll explains why we need to re-politicize our understandings of mental illness, mental health and madness. Micha is a columnist at the Independent. She has previously edited for gal-dem, the Guardian and Blueprint. Micha has also written for Vogue, HuffPost, Huck and Dazed. She was nominated for the Comment Awards’ Fresh New Voice …

Audio from illness #1, the first Red Medicine event held at The Horse Hospital on May 25th. The evening was a night of readings from Micha Frazer-Carroll, Amber Husain and Matt Colquhoun on the political, cultural and historic significance of illness. TIME STAMPS: 05:00 - Red Medicine introductory text 12:15 - Micha Frazer-Carroll (https://www.plut…

Victoria Browne discusses her work developing a feminist philosophy of miscarriages, still births and pregnancy. Victoria Browne is Reader in Political Theory at Oxford Brookes University. She is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective and the author of two books Feminism, Time and Nonlinear History and Pregnancy Without Birth: A Fe…

Keir Milburn analyses the 'Cosmic Right' a new wave of reactionary politics built around conspiracy theories and new age spirituality and calls for the construction of a Weird Left to counter this worrying turn. Keir Milburn is a writer, researcher, and political activist. His most recent book is Generation Left. He works on municipalism, economic …

Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla explains how an internationalist politics can and should shape international health policy away from structures designed by and for capitalist countries in the Global North towards a system based on sovereignty and solidarity. Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla is a Cabinet member of Progressive International and leads its policy p…

Jeremy Gilbert traces the politics of the body through the counterculture's experiments in music and medicine, comparing the affordances of control and liberation available in the clinic and on the dance-floor. Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural & Political Theory at the University of East London. He is the author of Common Ground: Democracy a…

Erik Baker discusses two of his recent essays which cover the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio and the history of bereavement leave. In reflecting on both of these pieces, Erik asks what it would mean to politicize experiences of grief and illness. Erik Baker is a historian of science and labor at Harvard, and an associate editor at The Dri…

Joy James discusses revolutionary love, care under racial capitalism and the captive maternal. Joy James is a political philosopher, academic and author. She is the author of numerous books including Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Resisting state violence, and Seeking the Beloved Community. She has edited collections incl…

Psychoanalyst Jaimeson Webster discusses her collection of essays, Disorganization and Sex, drawing on thinkers such as Freud, Lacan and Paul Preciado to explain what psychoanalysis offers in understanding sexuality, medicine and the body. Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst based in New York. She is the author of numerous books including The Life …

Lynne Tillman discusses her recent book Mothercare. In one of the few examples of Lynne writing about her own life, Mothercare documents the period when her mother develops and then sadly passes from a rare health condition. Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, cultural critic and author of various books including Haunted Houses, Weird …

In this episode Malcolm Harris describes the interconnected histories of eugenics and American capitalism in California throughout the 19th and 20th Century as well as how this history shapes tech and politics today. Malcolm Harris is an American journalist, critic and editor. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is titled Palo…

In this episode Natasha Lennard reports on the story of two reproductive rights activists who are being charged under a law intended to protect abortion clinics, as well as the broader implications this may have on the struggle for reproductive care and bodily autonomy more generally. Natasha Lennard is a columnist for The Intercept. Her work has a…

Mark Spencer updates us on the struggle to stop the Atlanta Police Foundation building the largest police training facility in the US in Weelaunee Forest, Atlanta. He also explains why ‘health’ is a useful lens by which to understand the overlapping processes of racial capitalism, ecological destruction and the expanding carceral state in Atlanta a…

Nadia Abu El Haj describes the history of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and what it reveals about psychiatry, American imperialism and anti-war politics. She tracks PTSD’s shifting status in medical discourse from Vietnam war veteran 'rap groups' through to its depoliticized iteration in the 21st century. Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Profe…