Red Medicine

Youbin Kang and John Ferretti discuss the compounding issues of austerity, policing, and propaganda on the New York City subway system. Specifically, they explore the way incidents of harm and violence are taken up as part of a cycle of media panics and carceral crackdowns. Youbin's recent essay All Aboard the Moral Panic, published in n+1 magazine, and John's experiences of workplace organising provide the basis for the discussion.

Youbin Kang is a writer and Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

John Ferretti is a NYC Subway train conductor and a proud member of TWU Local 100, NYC's Subway and Bus workers' union. John is also a co-founder of the Local 100 Fightback Coalition – a rank-and-file Coalition of NYC Transit workers that is made up of both Revolutionary Socialists and Progressive Democrats in our union which was founded in September of 2018. 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

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Helen Charman describes some of the many political and historical struggles over the meaning and status of motherhood, by way of thinkers such as Denise Riley and Jacqueline Rose, as well as figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Helen Charman is a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Her critical writing has been published in the Guardian, The White Review, Another Gaze, and The Stinging Fly among others. As a poet, Charman was shortlisted for the White Review Poet's Prize in 2017 and for the 2019 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, and has published four poetry pamphlets, most recently In the Pleasure Dairy. Charman volunteers as a birth companion in Glasgow.

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

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Richard Seymour analyses the global far-right, asking how movements across the world have managed to capitalize on the resentment produced by the capitalist system to generate a form of violent rebellion that leaves that same system fully in-tact. 

Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and the author of numerous books about politics including Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics and The Twittering Machine. His writing appears in the The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, Prospect, Jacobin, and innumerable other places including his own Patreon. He is an editor at Salvage magazine. His most recent book Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization,  publishes this month with Verso Books.

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Sasha Warren explores the history of psychiatry in relationship to the development of capitalism. We discuss how best to frame the different movements that have emerged with the intention of transforming or abolishing psychiatry. We then spend some time talking about figures such as Foucault, Fanon, and R. D Laing that may be familiar to listeners as well as some lesser-known figures such as Sylvia Marcos, and Marie Langer. 

Sasha Warren is a writer based in Minneapolis publishing work on madness, psychiatry, and the history of medicine. His first book Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, Revolt published earlier this year. 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

This episode features a recording of live discussion with Richard Seymour and Helen Charman about the medical imaginaries of the far right. This recording is from illness (3), the third in the event series that runs alongside the podcast. We discuss why the far-right has so many paranoid fantasies about medicine, from race science and eugenics, to attacks on trans and reproductive healthcare.

Helen Charman is a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Her critical writing has been published in the Guardian, The White Review, Another Gaze, and The Stinging Fly among others. As a poet, Charman was shortlisted for the White Review Poet's Prize in 2017 and for the 2019 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, and has published four poetry pamphlets, most recently In the Pleasure Dairy. Charman volunteers as a birth companion in Glasgow. Her first book Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood is now available.

Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and the author of numerous books about politics including Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics and The Twittering Machine. His writing appears in the The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, Prospect, Jacobin, and innumerable other places including his own Patreon. He is an editor at Salvage magazine. His most recent book Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization is now available.

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Dayna Tortorici and Lisa Borst discuss The Intellectual Situation, a new anthology of writing from the literary magazine n+1. The anthology brings together writing from the period of 20014-2024, including contributions from people such as Gabriel Winant, Alyssa Battistoni, Tabi Haslet, Nikil Saval, and many others. In this conversation Lisa and Dayna discuss putting the collection together, how it feels to read back essays written during different political struggles from the last decade, and how they think about the relationship between writing and organising.

EVENT: bit.ly/3ShrqCi 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Melinda Cooper describes the combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes neoliberal monetary policy and how these ideas emerged from the crises of the 1970s. 

Melinda Cooper is Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She is the author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism and Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. 

EVENT: bit.ly/3ShrqCi 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Leah Cowan explains the long and complex relationship between British feminism and British policing. From women's suffrage, through the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s, to recent conflicts over the murder of Sarah Everard by a London Metropolitan Police officer.  

Leah Cowan is a writer, editor and previously the political editor of Gal-dem magazine. She is the author of two books Border Nation: A Story of Migration (Pluto Books, 2021) and Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? (Verso Books, 2024)

Some of My Best Enemies are Feminists: On Zionist Feminism by Sophie Lewis (https://salvage.zone/some-of-my-best-enemies-are-feminists-on-zionist-feminism/)

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Ruth Pearce explains the many problems surrounding the recently published Cass Review into trans healthcare for young people.

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/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Michael Hardt analyses the revolutionary political movements of the 1970s and what they might teach us about political struggle, social transformation, and liberation. 

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. His most recent book is The Subversive Seventies (Oxford University Press.) 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/