I have thought about trying out podcasting for a while as there are so many that I find interesting which have opened up my thinking into new areas but I have finally taken the plunge. Over the next couple of months I will be putting out a podcast episode every Friday (hopefully) which will feature interviews with people I think are doing interesting research and have insightful things to say. The theme of the podcast is Digital Health/Digital Capitalism. There is a bit more about why I chose this theme on my podcast page but mostly it has spun out of a conference I organised last year and as an excuse to talk to some interesting people.

This is the first podcast in the series and I am speaking to Nick Fox about his work on personal medical devices and his analysis of digital health and digital capitalism more generally. I think this discussion works pretty well as a broad introduction to the themes of the series as Nick really clearly lays out some useful ways of approaching these things. He also offers some suggestions of how things might develop in the future and some propositions for how we can challenge some of the more damaging aspects of the digital health and capitalism. Can we reshape digital technologies to have more positive and collective affects? Can networked health devices enable solidarity and collective action?

During the discussion I mention Nick’s book The Body which I think is a really good introduction and elaboration of the notoriously tricky work of Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. Nick also discussed a new book he has written with Pam Alldred which is on New Materialist theory called Sociology and the New Materialism and there is also an extract from it available to read online. They have also written an article on Sociological Research Online addressing some similar issues. Near the end of the interview we talk about an article Nick published in the journal Health in which is suggests how “personal health technologies” could be “reverse engineered” for more collective ends which I think offers some really interesting theoretical and practical proposals. An interesting example of the intersection between digital health and digital capitalism which Nick mentioned is Vida which pairs users with various health professionals (personal trainers, nurses, therapists), connects with digital health data and works uses Uber style employment practices.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, TuneIn and Stitcher by following these links or by searching Digital Health/Digital Capitalism in your podcast app.