Red Medicine

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.com/redmedicine Soundtrack by Mark Pilkingto...

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 by Ramsey McGlazer: https://www.nplusonemag.com/o...

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 Studies in Gender & Sexuality and of Counterspa...

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 also run seminars on philosophers such as Deleuze...

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 and ecological crisis. Amedeo Policante is a Rese...

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 Attica Revolt.   SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/r...

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 Guide to University and the author of Through a...

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 community union.   SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com...

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 b...

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 SUP...

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...

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 corporat...

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 a...

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 t...

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 t...

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-...

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 Bu...

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/) 20:50 - A...

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: ht...

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 Lux...

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...

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 , Antic...

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...

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 Intel...

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 Disorde...