The Radical Design Podcast

American scholar Daniel Marcus and Memefest curator Oliver Vodeb explore the deep ties between capitalism and addiction from the early 20th century to today. They show how capitalism has not only shaped addiction but has actively relied on it as a strategy for growth.Drawing on their chapter “Capitalism’s Addictions” in the book Radical Intimacies, they explain how addiction became capitalism’s answer to a fundamental contradiction: how to keep selling when people don’t need more stuff. From planned obsolescence during the Great Depression to today’s endless cycle of food, technology, and drugs designed to hook us, they trace how pleasure and dependency became central to capitalist expansion.Design plays a crucial role in this story: born within capitalism, it has often been deployed to exploit our vulnerabilities and create new forms of craving. This conversation unpacks how addiction has been used to colonise intimacy itself — and why the rise of AI might push these logics into even more intimate parts of our lives. The episode closes by asking: can Radical Intimacies offer a way out?There is much more in the original written chapter, and If you want to read the whole chapter in Radical Intimacies, Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, find more about the book: here. PODCAST CREDITS:Hosted by: Oliver Vodeb/ Memefest​. The podcast is a collaboration between Memefest and Intellect publishers.​ Music: Thanks to Bait for their song Property Law. Two best friends meeting seasonally in bucolic surrounds to generate improvised music. Property Law recognises the Indigenous peoples of the world's relationship to land. As in, "we don't own the land. The land owns us." Each of us is only passing through. Empires, Epochs come & go, but the spirit of the land persists.

Why is design not enough? Berlin based designer extra-ordinaire Sandy Kaltenborn and Oliver Vodeb discuss design practices which seeks social and political impact and transformation, in relation to the to the constrictions of professional frameworks. The pressing social and political challenges we face these days cannot be understood—let alone addressed—from within the closed logic of traditional design professions or academic routines. If design is to have real political or social impact, it must engage directly from within actual social struggles. That’s where the questions arise, where contradictions become visible, and where intervention is needed. Design that seeks to be transformative must in this sense understand itself as a practice shaped by conflict—not as a response to self-contained problems, but as a contribution to real-world struggles. Two friends engaged in radical design for decades reflect on the past and investigate what matters in design today.

Aboriginal artist and activist Kristy-Lee Horswood and writer, teacher, and activist Sam Burch join Oliver Vodeb to discuss Aboriginal practices of “Seeing Country” and Radical Design. “Country” for Aboriginal people is a deep spiritual and cultural relationship with the land, waters, skies, and all living things—a source of identity, belonging, law, and responsibility.The conversation centres around the chapter Seeing Country: Decolonization, Timeless Intimacies and an Escape from the Tyranny of the Dead Man’s Vision, which Sam Burch contributed to the Radical Intimacies book. It outlines some of the key ideas behind the practice of Seeing Country. As a practice grounded in lived experience, its radical potential for design lies in its specific relationality with the world—rooted in a deep appreciation of, and respect for, all living things.The discussion touches on cultural positions formed in response to the ongoing colonisation of so-called Australia, offering relational frameworks that are deeply relevant to radical design. We hear about the meaning of “fire,” the spiritual nature of initiation rituals, the still ongoing forced removal of children, and ideas of what it means to be in “proper relationship.”At one point, Oliver asks: “Is everything coming from the West bad?” Of course, it isn’t—but as Sam Burch notes, we need to better understand how different knowledge systems can “talk to each other.” Reflecting on capitalism through an Aboriginal lens, Kristy-Lee remarks that even Marx could have benefited from decolonial thinking.This podcast is a beautiful journey into knowledge and radical relationality through dialogue.Sam Burch and Kristy-Lee Horswood are both engaged in activist and educational work and have collaborated closely and meaningfully with Memefest since 2013.

In this conversation Keely Macarow and Oliver Vodeb touch on intimacy during time of the pandemic. The exceptional events of global pandemics teach us a lot about the limits and the potentials of Intimacy. How can we think about intimacy and even radical intimacy through the lessons learned during Covid lock downs or through looking at the HIV pandemic?

Black community leader from Baltimore Eric Jackson and Oliver Vodeb speak about radical intimacies and Food Apartheid. The racial structuring of food production, distribution, consumption and promotion of food is deeply rooted in capitalist domination and extraction. The conversation gives deep context on Food Apartheid , explains the situation in Baltimore and the work of Black Yield Institute a Pan African power institution.

Australian scholars Alexandra Crosby and Ilaria Vanni are in conversation with Oliver Vodeb about their ideas on Seed Balls as a relational design method. As designers who apply permaculture principles to broader social and cultural issues they have explored and developed potentials of a DIY method to relate with the planty world and with each other in radical ways.Check the Radical Intimacies, Designing Non- Extractive Relationalities book and read the complete chapter "Seed Balls as Method" here: https://www.memefest.org/publishing/radical-Intimacies/The Memefest Radical Intimacies podcast | www.memefest.orgMemefest is an international network engaged in the transformation of social relations through radical design. Our main focus is the decolonisation of knowledge and the public sphere + social and environmental change. We integrate education, publishing, research, and the organization of events, as well as the facilitation and production of various media and interventions in the public sphere. Memefest is independent and operates in collaboration with universities, practitioners and social movements. Our approach counters the management of pedagogy, channels knowledge from different disciplines and connects the university with critical, marginal and counter-cultural positions. We create impossible spaces for deep exchange in the undercurrents.