"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A "Radical Caucus" formed within the psychiatric professi ... Show More
Nov 23
Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)
Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Afr ... Show More
39m 40s
Nov 23
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 22
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowe ... Show More
44m 53s
Jan 2021
Lucas Richert - Psychiatry and the Counterculture
<p><span class="dropcap dropcap2">L</span>ucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, t ... Show More
34m 25s
Jan 2023
Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its proponents developed environmental explanations of mental health, arguing that socioeconomic problems such as poverty, inequality, ... Show More
43m 12s
Mar 2023
Psychedelic therapy: Will it be a game changer for mental health treatment? with Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD
In just a few years, psychedelics have gone from being a symbol of the 1960s counterculture to being touted as highly promising mental health treatments. Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University, talks about whether the research backs up the hype; the state of ps ... Show More
39m 15s
Dec 2020
Turn on, tune in: One of Lynne Malcolm's favourite programs
Turn on, tune in and drop out … that was the catch cry of U.S. psychologist Timothy Leary in the 1960s. By 1966 psychedelics were demonised and banned, but now—in controlled scientific settings—there's a psychedelic 'renaissance' in mental health therapy. Early research on the us ... Show More
29m 5s
Sep 2021
Psychedelics for Treating Mental Disorders | Dr. Matthew Johnson
This episode I discuss medical research on psychedelic compounds with Dr. Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. We discuss the biology and medical clinical-trial uses of psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca, DMT, and L ... Show More
2h 49m
Jun 2024
how psychiatry lost its way: bad science, bad medicine and the mistreatment of the mentally ill with robert whitaker
<p>Join me for a crucial conversation with Robert Whitaker, the fearless journalist and author whose investigations have profoundly challenged our understanding of mental health care. Robert's seminal works, including <em>Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Endurin ... Show More
1h 17m