Mental health is a political issue, even though we often discuss it as a personal one. So how is the current mental health crisis connected to capitalism, racism and other social issues? And in a different world, how might we transform the ways that we think about mental health, diagnosis and treatment?

These are some of the big questions Micha Frazer-Carroll asks in her new book, Mad World, as she presents mental health as an urgent political concern that needs a deeper understanding, beyond the scope of today's 'awareness-raising' campaigns.

Micha joins us on the show for a conversation around the themes of the book. We talk about the history of asylums and psychiatry, the connections with disability justice and neurodiversity movements, art and imagination, abolition, policing, diagnosis and knowledge production.

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Micha Frazer-Carroll is a columnist at the Independent. She has previously edited for gal-dem, the Guardian and Blueprint, a mental health magazine that she founded. 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 Burgess Award for Arts Criticism. She is invested in using journalism to challenge systems of power.

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and Bookhaus, an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today.

Episode 9 was recorded in May 2023. David Broder came to Bookhaus to talk about his new book, Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy, which was published by Pluto Press in March. David is a historian of the Italian far-right and Europe editor for Jacobin. His writing has also appeared in the New Statesman, New York Times, Guardian, Independent, New Left Review and Tribune. He’s joined in conversation by John Foot, Professor of Modern Italian History at the University of Bristol, and author of Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism. 

David joined us on Radicals in Conversation in September 2022, shortly after Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party won the Italian general election. Now, several months on, David and John discuss how things have panned out for the new fascist government, both domestically and on the international stage.

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In the sixth and final episode of Locating Legacies, series host Gracie Mae Bradley speaks to Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Often dismissed or set aside as a US-based movement, Gracie and Ruth sit down together to explore how we can think about the histories, legacies and politics of abolition in the British context and beyond. They map how local instances of political organising express themselves globally, as well as interrogating how past struggles express themselves in the present.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences and American Studies at the City University of New York. She is the co-founder of many grassroots organisations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network. She is also the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, and Abolition Geography.

About the Series:

Locating Legacies is a fortnightly podcast created by the Stuart Hall Foundation, co-produced by Pluto Press and funded by Arts Council England. The series is dedicated to tracing the reverberations of history to contextualise present-day politics, deepen our understanding of some of the crucial issues of our time, and to draw connections between past struggles and our daily lives.

Get 40% off books in our ‘Locating Legacies’ reading list: plutobooks.com/locatinglegacies

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and Bookhaus, an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today.

Episode 8 was recorded on 17th May, the same week as Palestinians commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. Hil Aked came to Bookhaus to talk about their new book Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity. Hil Aked is a writer, investigative researcher and activist with a background in political sociology whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Sky News and Al Jazeera. They are a contributor to What is Islamophobia?: Racism, Social Movements and the State. 

Hil is in conversation with Narzanin Massoumi, senior lecturer in the department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter, and co-editor of What is Islamophobia? They discuss the activities of Israel’s advocates in Britain, showing how they contribute to maintaining Israeli apartheid, as they seek to repress a rising tide of solidarity with Palestinians expressed through the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They also consider the parallels with apartheid South Africa, and assess the recent protests in Israel around Judicial reform.

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In episode 5 of Locating Legacies, series host Gracie Mae Bradley speaks to Sita Balani. They explore the legacies of queer liberation struggles on contemporary class politics, and the ways in which queer radicalism has expanded notions of liberatory politics in the everyday. They also discuss the radical potential of the trade union movement, and unpack the material roots of an ongoing transphobic moral panic.

Sita is a Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race, and co-author of Empire's Endgame.

About the Series:

Locating Legacies is a fortnightly podcast created by the Stuart Hall Foundation, co-produced by Pluto Press and funded by Arts Council England. The series is dedicated to tracing the reverberations of history to contextualise present-day politics, deepen our understanding of some of the crucial issues of our time, and to draw connections between past struggles and our daily lives.

Get 40% off books in our ‘Locating Legacies’ reading list: plutobooks.com/locatinglegacies

In May 2023, Pluto published Queer Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering London’s Fierce History, by Dan Glass. The book is a groundbreaking guide that takes you through the city streets to uncover the scandalous, hilarious and empowering events of London's 'queerstory'. Accompanied by a chorus of voices of both iconic and unsung legends of the movement, readers can dip into beautifully illustrated maps and extraordinary tales of LGBTQIA+ solidarity, protest and pride, where the shadows of gentrification, policing, homophobia and racism are time and again resisted.

We are joined on the show by Queer Footprints author, Dan Glass, and Josh Rivers. Josh is the creator and host of the award-winning Busy Being Black podcast, and Head of Cultural Partnerships at UK Black Pride - the world’s largest pride celebration for LGBTQIA+ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Middle Eastern heritage.

Dan and Josh discuss the connections and solidarity that has existed over the years between queer, feminist, anti-racist and labour movements; equivocations around celebrating the anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality; and how we metabolise grief - with particular reference to the AIDS crisis. They also talk about the exciting work being done by UK Black Pride, the process of researching, writing and editing Queer Footprints, and much more.

Queer Footprints is 40% off for podcast listeners. Go to plutobooks.com/podcastreading for more information.

In episode 4 of Locating Legacies, series host Gracie Mae Bradley speaks to Vijay Prashad. They discuss the legacies of the Cold War from the vantage point of the Global South, to contextualise the global economic, ecological and political crises that we're struggling through today. They also consider the liberatory potential of nationalism, what meaningful solidarity might look like for climate activists in the Global North, and the profound and lasting impact of taking collective action.

Vijay Prashad is a Marxist historian and writer. He is Executive Director at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, a movement-driven research institution based in Argentina, Brazil, India and South Africa, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books. His recent publications include The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power; Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and Red Star Over the Third World.

About the Series:

Locating Legacies is a fortnightly podcast created by the Stuart Hall Foundation, co-produced by Pluto Press and funded by Arts Council England. The series is dedicated to tracing the reverberations of history to contextualise present-day politics, deepen our understanding of some of the crucial issues of our time, and to draw connections between past struggles and our daily lives.

Get 40% off books in our 'Locating Legacies' reading list: plutobooks.com/locatinglegacies

In episode 3 of Locating Legacies, series host Gracie Mae Bradley speaks to Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. They discuss how politics moves between the world of ideas and the material world, the process by which radical ideas are co-opted by elite interests, and the importance of organising across difference.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in the New Yorker, The Nation, Boston Review, Al Jazeera and more. He is the author of Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.

About the Series:

Locating Legacies is a fortnightly podcast created by the Stuart Hall Foundation, co-produced by Pluto Press and funded by Arts Council England. The series is dedicated to tracing the reverberations of history to contextualise present-day politics, deepen our understanding of some of the crucial issues of our time, and to draw connections between past struggles and our daily lives.

Get 40% off books in our 'Locating Legacies' reading list: plutobooks.com/locatinglegacies

In 1950s suburban England, a friendship bloomed between Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O'Neill - both gay men coming of age during a time when homosexuality was still a crime. Their relationship was inflected by secrecy and fear, and when the prohibition on same-sex relationships was partially lifted in 1967, they were already well into adult life; the shadows that had distorted their adolescent years were never wholly dispelled. 

This is the subject of Private Worlds: Growing Up Gay in Post-War Britain, the new memoir by Jeremy Seabrook. Lyrical, candid and poignant, it is a tale of sexual identity, working-class history and family drama.

Jeremy joins us on the show this month to talk about life in 1950s Northampton, the advent of Gay Liberation in the 1960s, and what we can learn from a past shadowed by oppression and concealment in relation to today's struggle towards LGBTQIA+ freedom. 

Private Worlds is 40% off for podcast listeners. Use the coupon PODCAST at the checkout on plutobooks.com.

In episode 2 of Locating Legacies, series host Gracie Mae Bradley speaks to Françoise Vergès. They explore the connections and disparities between the anticolonial politics of the 1950s and 1960s in relation to today's movements to decolonise educational, arts and heritage institutions.

Françoise Vergès is an activist and public educator. She grew up on the island of La Réunion, and worked for many years as a journalist and editor in the women's liberation movement in France. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and is the author of several books, including A Decolonial Feminism and A Feminist Theory of Violence. She regularly works with artists, has produced exhibitions and is the author of documentary films on Maryse Condé and Aimé Césaire.

About the Series:

Locating Legacies is a fortnightly podcast created by the Stuart Hall Foundation, co-produced by Pluto Press and funded by Arts Council England. The series is dedicated to tracing the reverberations of history to contextualise present-day politics, deepen our understanding of some of the crucial issues of our time, and to draw connections between past struggles and our daily lives.

Get 40% off books in our 'Locating Legacies' reading list: plutobooks.com/locatinglegacies