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. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington www.redmedicine.xyz

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 Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington www.redmedicine.xyz

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 the author of Meat Love (Mack, 2023) and Replace Me (Peninsula Press, 2021). Her essays on politics, literature and art have been published in...

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 Justice Now. He has been a campaigner against corporate globalisation for over 20 years, working with organizations including War on Want, Amnesty...

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 Desire. They’re also a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Newcastle University, and blog at xenogothic.com SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine...

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 Professor of Gender, Technology and Cultural Politics at the University of West London. She is a member of the international working group Laboria...

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 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. He is the author of a number of books including, The End of...

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 writes on gender and communist theory. She co-edits two magazines, Pinko and Parapraxis. She received her PhD from NYU. She is the co-author of...

Sian Norris discusses the increasing attacks on reproductive care and abortion rights by an international network of right-wing organizations and funders. Sian Norris is a writer and investigative journalist who has covered far-right movements and their relocation to the mainstream for a range of publications, including the UK's Byline Times and openDemocracy. Norris is a leading voice in the UK feminist movement and her writing on issues ranging from men's violence against women, to...

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 of the Year Award, and the Observer/Anthony Burgess Award for Arts Criticism. Her new book Mad World is now available from Pluto Books....

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.plutobooks.com/9780745346717/mad-world/) 10:50 - Amber Husain...

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 Feminist Philosophy of Miscarriage. EVENT LINK: https://bit.ly/3ZPFu7H SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington...

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 democracy and political economy for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and is a research associate for the think tank Common Wealth. He co-hosts the...

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 pillar, Blueprint. EVENT LINK: https://bit.ly/3ZPFu7H SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington...

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 and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism, Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and Popular Politics and Twenty-First Century...

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 Drift. He is currently writing a book for Harvard University Press titled Make Your Own Job: The Entrepreneurial Work Ethic in Modern America. It...

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 including The Angela Y. Davis Reader, Imprisoned Intellectuals, and The New Abolitionists. Her most recent book In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love...

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 and Death of Psychoanalysis and Conversion Disorder. Her writing has appeared regularly in publications such as Artforum, Spike Art Magazine,...

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 F***s, American Genius and Men and Apparitions. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an Andy Warhol Creative Capital...

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 Alto: A History of California Capitalism and the World. EVENT LINK: https://bit.ly/3ZPFu7H Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington www.redmedicine.xyz

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 appeared in The Nation, Bookforum and the New York Times, among others. She teaches critical journalism at the New School for Social Research in...

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 and elsewhere. Mark Spencer has a MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine and a BS in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. He...

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 Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and a recipient of numerous awards, including the MacArthur...

In this episode James Wilt explains how alcohol corporations have caused and profited from a health crisis relating to drinking. He explains how capitalist accumulation and expansion has caused a health crisis that disproportionally effects working class, racialized and colonized communities internationally. We also discuss how the left need to balance the complex harms caused by the corporate alcohol industry with people’s real desire for collective pleasure. James Wilt is a freelance...

Founded by friend of the show, Hannah Zeavin, Parapraxis is a new magazine about psychoanalysis with a commitment to uncovering the psychosocial dimensions of life. In this conversation Alex Colston and M.E. O'Brien discuss what it means to think psychoanalytically about politics and politically about psychoanalysis. As well as their experiences of putting together the magazine. M. E. O’Brien writes and speaks on gender freedom and capitalism. She has two books: a co-authored speculative...