Red Medicine

Lily Scherlis joins the podcast to talk about her recent essay Experiences in Groups, which was published in the most recent issue of n+1 magazine and documents her experience of attending a Group Relations conference in the English countryside. Group relations refers to an offshoot of psychoanalytic theory and practice which applies the ideas of Wilfred Bion, to understand group dynamics and organizational structures. 

Lily is a a writer, artist, and PhD candidate living in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in publications such as n+1, Harper's, The Guardian, Parapraxis, The Baffler, The Drift, and many other publications. Her work often addresses ideas from psychoanalysis, pop-psychology, and the history of social science. 

Lily's essay, Experiences in Groups can be read here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/essays/experiences-in-groups/

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Candela Potente and Ramsey McGlazer join to discuss the life and work of Marie Langer; a psychoanalyst who grew up in Red Vienna and fled fascism after fighting in the Spanish Civil War. After fleeing to Argentina she co-founded the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, before being forced to leave the country under the threat of anti-communist death squads. She then found herself in Mexico, supporting the Nicaraguan Revolution by helping to build their mental health infrastructure. This conversation looks at what her legacy offers us in a time of rising fascism and institutional complicity. 

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Ramsey McGlazer lives in Oakland, California, and teaches at UC Berkeley. His first book, Old Schools, was published in 2020, and he is working on a book currently called "The Clinic and its Double," about aesthetics and radical psychiatry in Italy and Brazil. His public writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lux Magazine, n+1, and Parapraxis, among other places. He lived in Argentina a lifetime ago and has more recently translated several books from the Spanish by Argentine writers. These include, most recently, Rita Segato's The War Against Women (published by Polity in 2025).

Candela Potente is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center at Ruhr-University Bochum and the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin. She works on the epistemology of psychoanalysis, taking case studies from its transnational history, and her research has been published in the journals Penumbra, Problemi International, and TRANSIT. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and a degree in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires.

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Hannah Proctor, author of Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat, returns to the podcast to talk through questions and comments submitted by listeners for the first 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.

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Hannah Proctor is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, interested in histories and theories of radical psychiatry. She is a member of the editorial collective behind Radical Philosophy, and has been published in Jacobin, Tribune, The New Inquiry and elsewhere.Hannah Proctor is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, interested in histories and theories of radical psychiatry. She is a member of the editorial collective behind Radical Philosophy, and has been published in Jacobin, Tribune, The New Inquiry and elsewhere. Her first book Burnout published with Verso Books in 2024. 

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SUBMIT TO THE HELPLINE VIA ANY OF THE PODCAST SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS 

OR ANONYMOUSLY BY USING THIS DOCUMENT: https://linktr.ee/redmedicine.xyz

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Micha Frazer-Carroll and Sasha Warren are back on the podcast to discuss the Dialectics of Liberation Congress: a conference that brought together the likes of R. D. Laing, David Cooper, Kwame Ture (FKA Stokely Carmichael), Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsburg, CLR James, Angela Davis, Carolee Schneemann, and many more in London, 1967. The congress attempted to theorize and resist violence in all its forms, we discuss what took place at this weird and intense event and what we can learn from it today. 

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. 

Micha Frazer-Carroll is an author, journalist and editor living in London.  She was previously an editor at the magazine gal-dem and has written for publications including the Guardian, Vogue, Huck, and DAZED magazine. Micha is also the author of Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health which was published in 2023 by Pluto Press. 

All samples in this episode come from the film Dialectics Of Liberation - Anatomy Of Violence (Villon films). 

Submit to the ANTI-SELF-HELPLINE here: https://linktr.ee/redmedicine.xyz 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Emily Lim Rogers and Rouzbeh Shadpey join the podcast to talk about the history of chronic fatigue under capitalism. We explore the way in which medical knowledge reflects and enacts the need for capitalist society to monitor, measure and discipline workers before situating conditions like ME/CFS within these dynamics.  

Emily Lim Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, with secondary appointments in Asian American and Diaspora Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. She has a book forthcoming with Duke University Press called Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness

Rouzbeh Shadpey is an artist, writer, and musician. Rouzbeh has exhibited and performed at TULCA (Ireland), documenta fifteen (Germany), The Mosaic Rooms (UK), Poetry Project (New York), MUTEK (Montréal), and more. His writing appears in artistic and academic journals, including Parapraxis, Decolonial Hacker, Weird Economies, Syllabus Project, and Momus. His musical practice, under the name GOLPESAR / گلپسر , combines avant-garde electronics, guitar, spoken word, and Iranian sonics.

ANTI-SELF-HELPLINE SUBMISSIONS: https://forms.gle/8npHMJmsSXjEdc8s5 

JULY 10th panel information: https://www.outsavvy.com/event/28215/thinking-together-for-consolation-and-towards-liberation 

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

The ANTI-SELF-HELPLINE is a place to share and make sense of our experiences of political struggle. Political struggle is hard; yet there are very few resources for thinking through the emotional and psychic dimensions of these experiences. Those of us who want to radically change the world are often exposed to the depoliticizing tendencies of mainstream therapy, the disciplining functions of self-help, and the pathologisation of political consciousness. The ANTI-SELF-HELPLINE is a space to think through these experiences collectively whilst engaging critically with psychoanalysis, therapy, and histories of struggle.

Send your questions, reflections, and experiences to [email protected]

Or submit here: https://forms.gle/2RzafrqoqLLEav7X6

You can also send messages or voice-notes to any of the podcast social media accounts.

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Hannah Zeavin and Helen Charman return to the podcast to discuss the history of technology, media and mothering throughout the 20th century. We discuss the role media and technology play in the labor process of mothering, how media often becomes a site of panic and pathology, and what this all tells us about the relationship between the state and the so-called private household.

Hannah Zeavin is Assistant Professor of the History of Science in the Department of History and the Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. In 2021, she cofounded The Psychosocial Foundation and is Founding Editor of Parapraxis magazine. She is the author of The Distance Cure and more recently Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century (both published by The MIT Press.)

Helen Charman is a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College, University of Cambridge. Her writing has been published in publications such as the Guardian, The White Review, and Another Gaze. 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. Her first book Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood published last August. 

FESTIVAL OF THE OPPRESSED TICKETS: https://revsoc21.uk/festival2025/

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Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Jess Thorne returns to the podcast to discuss workers' self-management – from the Lucas Plan of the 1970s to Yugoslavian workers' councils. She explains how workers have challenged the idea that innovation only happens thanks to top-down management structures and asks what worker autonomy offers in the face of current political problems.

Jess Thorne is a trade union organiser who has spent the last two years assisting health care assistants with a rebanding campaign. She is also a labour historian and has contributed to journals such as European History Quarterly, Labour History Review and History Workshop Journal.

Tickets for Festival of the Oppressed 2025: https://revsoc21.uk/festival2025/

Jess' report on workers' self management: https://autonomy.work/portfolio/worker-led-innovation/ 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

The hosts of Ordinary Unhappiness join the podcast to discuss D. W. Winnicott; one of the most influential figures in the history of psychoanalysis in Britain. They explain how Winnicott's work was shaped by the traumatizing effects of World War 2, debates between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, and the place of mothers in the construction of the British welfare state. We also discuss how this history relates to contemporary struggles over social reproduction and care.

Abby Kluchin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, where she coordinates the Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies program. Abby is a co-founder and Associate Director at Large of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She co-hosts the podcast Ordinary Unhappiness with Patrick.

Patrick Blanchfield is a writer, an Associate Faculty Member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and co-host of Ordinary Unhappiness, a podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. He is also a contributing editor at Parapraxis magazine.

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/

Erik Baker returns to the podcast to demystify the entrepreneurial work ethic – from depression era spiritualism to contemporary pop-psychology via struggles over the meaning of work throughout the twentieth century.

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. 

SUPPORT: www.buymeacoffee.com/redmedicine

Soundtrack by Mark Pilkington

Twitter: @red_medicine__

www.redmedicine.substack.com/