Red Medicine

The ANTI-SELF-HELPLINE is a place to share and make sense of our experiences of political struggle. Political struggle is hard; yet there are very few resources for thinking through the emotional and psychic dimensions of these experiences. Those of us who want to radically change the world are often exposed to the depoliticizing tendencies of mainstream therapy, the disciplining functions of self...

Hannah Zeavin and Helen Charman return to the podcast to discuss the history of technology, media and mothering throughout the 20th century. We discuss the role media and technology play in the labor process of mothering, how media often becomes a site of panic and pathology, and what this all tells us about the relationship between the state and the so-called private household. Hannah Zeavin is A...

Jess Thorne returns to the podcast to discuss workers' self-management – from the Lucas Plan of the 1970s to Yugoslavian workers' councils. She explains how workers have challenged the idea that innovation only happens thanks to top-down management structures and asks what worker autonomy offers in the face of current political problems. Jess Thorne is a trade union organiser who has spent the las...

The hosts of Ordinary Unhappiness join the podcast to discuss D. W. Winnicott; one of the most influential figures in the history of psychoanalysis in Britain. They explain how Winnicott's work was shaped by the traumatizing effects of World War 2, debates between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, and the place of mothers in the construction of the British welfare state. We also discuss how this histo...

Erik Baker returns to the podcast to demystify the entrepreneurial work ethic – from depression era spiritualism to contemporary pop-psychology via struggles over the meaning of work throughout the twentieth century.   Erik Baker is Lecturer on the History of Science at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, n+1, The Baffler, Jewish Currents, and The Drift, where he is Senior Ed...

Emily Callaci unpacks the history and legacy of Wages for Housework, the feminist movement that demanded payment for the unpaid work of women required to sustain capitalism. She discusses five women at the centre of this movement: Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, Wilmette Brown, and Margaret Prescod.   Emily Callaci is a historian and writer, currently Professor of History at t...

Ellen Clifford contextualizes the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill – often referred to as the assisted dying or assisted suicide bill – within the long history of eugenic politics and welfare reform. Ellen Clifford is a disabled activist and writer. She is on the National Steering Group for Disabled People Against Cuts and is the author of The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare an...

Peter Apps and Anna Stec discuss the Grenfell Tower fire, placing the incident in a longer political history of deregulation and privatisation as well as the ongoing dangers caused by the toxic nature of the fire.   Peter Apps is a journalist who has covered the housing sector for Inside Housing and other publications for over 10 years. He has reported extensively on the Grenfell Tower fire, autho...

Callum Cant joins the podcast to explain 'workers inquiry', a form of research that places the working class as its centre and protagonist. He explains how it differs from other forms of theoretical work and why its so essential for building a militant working class.   Callum Cant is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Essex Business School, he is the author of Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in t...

If access to care is so expensive, why are care workers so poorly paid? Historically, feminist discourses have looked at how ideology structures how we understand and value care work. However, in this discussion Alyssa Battistoni makes the argument that we need to update and develop these arguments, to provide a better answer to this question.    Alyssa Battistoni is Assistant Professor of Politic...

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 specialist advisor on the award-winning Museum o...

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 is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Gen...

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 more strongly and urgently to this genocide. Some...

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, and John's experiences of workplace organising...

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 of Cambridge. Her critical writing has been publi...

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 about politics including Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth...

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 as well as some lesser-known figures such as Sylvi...

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 attacks on trans and reproductive healthcare.   He...

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 Dayna discuss putting the collection together, how it...

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 Conservatism and Counterrevolution: Extravagance and...

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 magazine. She is the author of two books Borde...

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 the International Journal of Transgender Health...

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-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Mov...

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 Philosophy, and has been published in Jacobin, Tribune, T...

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, and Jacobin. He is the author of Against Landl...