It's Not Just In Your Head

In this episode we interview leftist civil engineer Justin Roczniak (aka "donoteat01" on YouTube) to better understand the history of single family homes, suburbs, the real estate industry, and try to figure out better ways the built environment can facilitate mental and social wellness among those who... live somewhere. We wanted to talk with Justin about this because in our last episode on the nuclear family, we realized that the history and set of policies around the construction of middle class suburbs was one important puzzle piece related to the decline of cohesive marriages and families. Are single family homes bad? Why is public housing associated with poverty? Does homeownership make people politically right wing? What's a community land trust? Will Biden build me a house with 2.6 dogs? JUSTIN, GIVE US ANSWERS!

We got some guy named Justin on the podcast for episode #20, to continue talking about the nuclear family, single family homes, and what owning McMansions does to people psychologically and politically.

Read about Justin here (more on him in the full episode description)

Harriet describes the invention  of the nuclear family as part of the transition from European feudalism to capitalism, with attention to the function of the patriarch as the familial feudal lord, and children as chattel. Max shares his initial reaction to the idea of the nuclear family being flawed or unnatural, asking: what came before, what alternatives are there, and what options to people have? Both therapists explore what it means for the nuclear family to be a social construct and question why entering into a nuclear family appears to a dice roll which can lead to happiness, love, and prosperity - or isolation, violence, and despair. Co-hosts touch on the bizarre urban design concept of single family homes and suburbs, and put a call out to anyone living within more traditional extended families, within housing cooperatives and co-housing communities, or progressive urban planners, to join in a future podcast to look beyond the nuclear family at what's possible.  

Max plays role of client, Harriet plays role of therapist. This is the trailer to our next episode "Abolish The Family?"

Music: 

Andromeda, Gabriele Tosi 

Thanks to helpfully critical feedback we received on our W.A.P. episode, we were lucky to make contact with guests Gemma Paradise and Dr. Heather Berg. Gemma is a full service sex worker (which she says many know better as "escort" or "prostitute") and Marxist sex worker organizer. Dr. Heather Berg is a feminist scholar who teaches Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

In this episode we talk about struggles facing sex workers seeking mental health services; whether sex work should be considered an especially exploitative form of wage labor under capitalism or just another form of wage labor; the political weaponization of sex trafficking laws and survivor narratives used against sex workers; why some men feel more comfortable hiring sex workers "for therapy" than actually seeing a therapist...and a lot more!

Resources referenced in the episode:

Marxist reading group for current sex workers: https://twitter.com/who_revolution

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3039-revolting-prostitutes

We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival: https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/we-too

Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism https://bookshop.org/books/porn-work-sex-labor-and-late-capitalism-9781469661926/9781469661926

Heather's website: drheatherberg.com

More information on the EARN IT Act: surviveearnit.com

Episode #018 is all about sex work and mental health, featuring Marxist sex worker and organizer Gemma Paradise and Feminist Studies scholar Dr. Heather Berg.

In this episode we interview Christian minister and anti-capitalist psychotherapist Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, whose deep and calming voice happens to be an FDA approved anti-anxiety medicine.  One of Bruce's students emailed to inform us about his writings, and we discovered there is yet another therapist in the U.S. who openly believes capitalism is bad for our mental health. Bruce is associate professor of pastoral theology and counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and author of Caring For Souls in a Neoliberal Age, and an ordained minister.

Contact us at [email protected]

Meet Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, an anti-capitalist psychotherapist and Christian minister. Full episode will be released soon!

We answer four questions from our Patreon community

(Note from the future: thanks to helpfully critical feedback we received for this  episode, we recorded a follow up one with sex worker Gemma Paradise and  feminist studies scholar Dr. Heather Berg, who helped us better  understand the world of sex work and the various societal nuances within  that world. Go here to listen to that follow up episode:

https://anchor.fm/itsnotjustinyourhead/episodes/018-Interviewing-Sex-Worker-Gemma-Paradise-and-Feminist-Studies-Scholar-Dr--Heather-Berg-ekid33)

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