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

Amber Husain returns to discuss the experience of being diagnosed with anorexia after struggling to find the will to eat. She discusses the experience of diagnosis, treatment, and her reengagement with questions of food, community, and hunger that came as a result. We talk about wartime starvation experiments, psychedelic assisted therapy, and why we need a politics of pleasure that isn't about capitalist consumption.

 

Amber Husain is the author of Replace Me (2021) and Meat Love (2023). Her essays have been published in Granta, New Left Review, The White Review, The Believer, Bookforum LA Review of Books and New York Times Magazine. She has a PhD in art history from UCL and teaches critical and creative writing. Her newest book is titled Tell Me How You Eat. 

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

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