Red Medicine

Callum Cant and Matthew Lee rejoin the podcast as we travel around the country speaking with people about work, struggle, and the 1926 general strike. We speak with mental health workers, trade union organisers, communists and local historians across Scotland, Manchester, and the Midlands. 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington
Twitter: @red_medicine__
www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Callum Cant and Matthew Lee talk us through the history of the 1926 general strike in Britain. To mark the centenary and publication of their book The Future In Our Past: The General Strike 1926/2026, we talked about how workers in Britain brought the country to a standstill and engaged in open conflict with the British state. We also talked about what this moment tells us about class struggle today.

In addition to this discussion, we’re going to be traveling up and down the country taking part in events. At these events we’re going to be recording more conversations and we want to hear from YOU! We want to talk about work, struggle, organising and the strike. So grab a ticket to an event, come along and say hi: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/the-future-in-our-past-uk-book-tour?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the_future_in_our_past_26 SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

James Schneider returns to the podcast to talk about Britains relationship to the United States of America, how this relationship is shaping the terrain of struggle in in the face of escalating imperialist aggression and the resulting economic turbulence this is causing. We also discuss his recent trip to Cuba as part of the Nuestra América Convoy.

 

James Schneider is a writer and political organizer. He serves as the Communications Director for the Progressive International and was Director of Strategic Communications for the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. He is the author of Our Bloc: How We Win (Verso books, 2022.)

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine
Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington
Twitter: @red_medicine__
www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Joana Masó joins the podcast to talk about the life and work of Francesc Tosquelles. Tosquelles was a radical psychiatrist, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and a hugely influential figure in the lives of figures such as  Frantz Fanon, Felix Guattari and Jean Oury. Joana explains how his life unfoleded and developed, from the co-operatives of Catalonia, to resisting nazi occupation in France, to his relatioship with other parts of the radical psychiatry movement.  

 

Joana Masó is a professor of French literature at the University of Barcelona. She is a researcher with the UNESCO Chair on Women, Development and Cultures, and works at the intersection of literature, critical thinking, contemporary art, and curating exhibitions. She has co-edited Jacques Derrida’s text on aesthetics, Thinking Out of Sight: Writings on the Art of the Visible (University of Chicago Press, 2020), and on architecture, in French, Les arts de l’espace: Écrits et interventions sur l’architecture (La Différence, 2015). She has also coedited Hélène Cixous’s essays dedicated to art, Poetry in Painting: Writings on Contemporary Arts and Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). Since 2017, she has led the research project “The Forgotten Legacy of Tosquelles” at the University of Barcelona, under the ADHUC—Research Center for Theory, Gender, Sexuality. She has published Tosquelles. Healing Institutions (Semiotext(e) and Divided, 2026), and Tosquelles. Avant-garde psychiatry, Radical Politics and Art (2024), the American Folk Art Museum in New York exhibition catalogue. 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine
Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington
Twitter: @red_medicine__
www.redmedicine.substack.com/

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/redmedicine
Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington
Twitter: @red_medicine__
www.redmedicine.substack.com/