Red Medicine

Sasha Warren returns to the podcast to give a talk on the political economy of madness and psychiatry. In this talk he draws on his research and experience as a community mental health worker to unpack the political terrain that shapes psychiatry; arguing that it is only by acknowledging psychiatry (and mental health care more generally) as bound up in political processes that we can actually understand it and meet people's needs.   Sasha Durakov Warren is a writer based in Minneapolis. He cofounded the group Hearing Voices Twin Cities and is the author of the fantastic book Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt which published last year with Common Notions. He runs the substack Of Unsound Mind.  SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Amber Husain, writer and art historian who explores food, politics, and personal experience, talks about being diagnosed with anorexia in her thirties. She discusses treatment pathways, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and the limits of medical narratives. Conversations move through wartime starvation studies, communal cooking, and why pleasure and politics both matter for how we eat.

M.E. O'Brien and Max Fox joins the podcast to talk about After Accountability, an oral history of the concept of 'accountability' in movement spaces, and to respond to questions and comments submitted by listeners for the third episode of the Anti-Self-Helpline. The Anti-Self-Helpline is a new episode format where listeners write in with their experiences of political struggle so we can take seriously the psychic and emotional content of political experiences. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington Twitter: @red_medicine__ www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Lydia and Connor join the podcast to talk about the newest issue of Notes from Below, which explores social care in Britain via the contributions and analysis of workers themselves. Both Lydia and Connor are care workers, so we discuss their experiences of work before explaining how social care is (dis)organized in Britain, some of the larger dynamics and histories shaping social care, and the recent upswing in worker militancy across the sector.  SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Erik Baker, author of Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, returns to the podcast to talk about self-help and respond to questions and comments submitted by listeners for the second episode of the Anti-Self-Helpline. The Anti-Self-Helpline is a new episode format where listeners write in with their experiences of political struggle so we can take seriously the psychic and emotional content of political experiences. Erik's essay How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Shitty Life: https://www.thedriftmag.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-my-shitty-life/ 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 Editor. His first book Make Your Own Job published with Harvard University Press in January 2025.  SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

The British state is currently imprisoning activists from the Palestine movement without trial. Many of them are engaging in a hunger strike, demanding an end to censorship, immediate bail, right to a fair trial, the de-proscription of Palestine Action, and an end to shut down the death-making work of Elbit Systems. Charlie Thomas joins the podcast to talk through these developments and reflect on his own experience of being incarcerated for his work in the Palestine solidarity movement. We talk about the increasing waves of repression coming from the government in recent years as well as what we need to learn, as a movement, from experiences of incarceration and criminalisation.  PRISONERS FOR PALESTINE LINK: https://prisonersforpalestine.org/ Charlie Thomas is a researcher, trade unionist, and a member of Workers For a Free Palestine.  SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

I went on the Death Panel podcast to talk about the past, present, and future of the NHS. Death Panel is a podcast about the political economy of health, hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Phil Rocco, and Jules Gill-Peterson SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Jake Romm joins the podcast to explain why anti-semitism and zionism have more in common than separates them. In this conversation we discuss the work of mid-century thinkers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, as well recent scholarship from Nadia Abu El-Haj and the writing of Palestinian political prisoners, to better understand the many consistencies between anti-semitic and zionist ideology. This conversation draws on two of Jake's recent essays ('Elements of Anti-Semitism' and 'Idée Fixe' both published in Parapraxis Magazine) and references a short course he recently ran with the Psychosocial Foundation titled Zionism as an Antisemitism. Jake Romm is a writer and human rights lawyer based in Brooklyn. He is associate editor of Protean Magazine and the US Representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation. His writing has appeared in The Nation, the Brooklyn Rail, The Baffler, Parapraxis and elsewhere. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

We talk about Wes Streeting. Who is he, what are his politics, and what does it mean for health policy in Britain?  Jonas Marvin is a writer and researcher based in Stoke-on-Trent. He is the author of a forthcoming book, The Breaking of the English Working Class (Spring 2026, Verso), cohost of Life of the Party podcast, and blogs at Marx’s Dream Journal. 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 (Fertility, reproduction and body autonomy) and Sexualities (Trans Genealogies). She is also the author of Understanding Trans Health. SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Lily Scherlis joins the podcast to talk about her recent essay Experiences in Groups, which was published in the most recent issue of n+1 magazine and documents her experience of attending a Group Relations conference in the English countryside. Group relations refers to an offshoot of psychoanalytic theory and practice which applies the ideas of Wilfred Bion, to understand group dynamics and organizational structures.  Lily is a a writer, artist, and PhD candidate living in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in publications such as n+1, Harper's, The Guardian, Parapraxis, The Baffler, The Drift, and many other publications. Her work often addresses ideas from psychoanalysis, pop-psychology, and the history of social science.  Lily's essay, Experiences in Groups can be read here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/essays/experiences-in-groups/ SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicineSoundtrack by Mark PilkingtonTwitter: @red_medicine__www.redmedicine.substack.com/