Meet our new podcast: The Future is Sick

Each month, we share stories and dialogue that imagine better futures of care, access, and survival. The trailer’s out now — listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast Transcript

Host (Charlie Moses): Hey everyone – thank you for tuning in. You found Sick Futures Collective.  We are a space led by and for sick and disabled people, and here we are working to change the systems and structures we live in to shape the kind of futures we want. I’m Charlie, and this is our very first episode. It is our trailer and it’s gonna give you a sense of kind of what we’re building together and what you can expect from the podcast.

Our slogan is “The future is sick.” And we mean that literally, politically, and playfully. Because sick and disabled people have always been futurists — we are adapting, re‑imagining, refusing, and surviving.

Here, you’ll hear stories, experiments, and conversations that explore how sick and disabled knowledge shapes the world we’re building.

We’re gonna talk about things like:

• Mutual aid and care networks that actually work,

• We’ll talk about how systems-change and policy-change can work in our favor and not erase us,

• We’re gonna talk about the many ways we’re reimagining things like access, rest, recovery, labor, creativity,

• And we’re gonna talk about what it means to build futures where we’re doing more than just surviving.

We’re really trying to make this space an action-oriented space – using the ol’ 70/30 rule where we spend 70% of this time reimagining, constructing, and brainstorming all of the many different ways the future can look to support and bolster sick and disabled lives, and then 30% of the time critiquing the very gnarly systems and structures we currently live in. 

Some weeks it’ll be me with friends or experts or authors and thinkers having real conversations. And then other times, you’ll hear short stories, maybe audio essays, or little field recordings and poems. We’re really gonna make this a little charcuterie board – little bits of everything, ya know? 

Um so if you’re new here in the sick and disabled space — welcome. If you’ve been doing this work for years — welcome back. You all belong here - we’re excited to have y’all here.

And that’s it for today!

Follow Sick Futures Collective wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more at sickfuturescollective.org and on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And you can find the written transcript of the podcast on our website. 

We’d love for you to get involved. Submit your stories, your art, music, creative audio, zines, poems — whatever you want to share. Submission guidelines are on our website as well. Everything we build grows from community, and we are so grateful for it and so grateful for you. 

So stick around. The future is sick, and we’re gonna build it together.