Red Medicine

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. 

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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. 

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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/

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. 

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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/

The British state is currently imprisoning activists from the Palestine movement without trial. Many of them are engaging in a hunger strike, demanding an end to censorship, immediate bail, right to a fair trial, the de-proscription of Palestine Action, and an end to shut down the death-making work of Elbit Systems. Charlie Thomas joins the podcast to talk through these developments and reflect on his own experience of being incarcerated for his work in the Palestine solidarity movement. We talk about the increasing waves of repression coming from the government in recent years as well as what we need to learn, as a movement, from experiences of incarceration and criminalisation. 

PRISONERS FOR PALESTINE LINK: https://prisonersforpalestine.org/

Charlie Thomas is a researcher, trade unionist, and a member of Workers For a Free Palestine. 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

I went on the Death Panel podcast to talk about the past, present, and future of the NHS. Death Panel is a podcast about the political economy of health, hosted by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Phil Rocco, and Jules Gill-Peterson

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Jake Romm joins the podcast to explain why anti-semitism and zionism have more in common than separates them. In this conversation we discuss the work of mid-century thinkers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, as well recent scholarship from Nadia Abu El-Haj and the writing of Palestinian political prisoners, to better understand the many consistencies between anti-semitic and zionist ideology. This conversation draws on two of Jake's recent essays ('Elements of Anti-Semitism' and 'Idée Fixe' both published in Parapraxis Magazine) and references a short course he recently ran with the Psychosocial Foundation titled Zionism as an Antisemitism.

Jake Romm is a writer and human rights lawyer based in Brooklyn. He is associate editor of Protean Magazine and the US Representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation. His writing has appeared in The Nation, the Brooklyn Rail, The Baffler, Parapraxis and elsewhere.

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

We talk about Wes Streeting. Who is he, what are his politics, and what does it mean for health policy in Britain? 

Jonas Marvin is a writer and researcher based in Stoke-on-Trent. He is the author of a forthcoming book, The Breaking of the English Working Class (Spring 2026, Verso), cohost of Life of the Party podcast, and blogs at Marx’s Dream Journal.

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/