Amuse-Bouche: Meanderings, Margins & Algorithms - The Podcast

The Infrastructure of Denial

HIV prevention fails when we soften reality to protect institutions rather than people. Description Pakistan has documented four major HIV outbreaks since 2018. Public health continues to count visibility instead of risk, blame "low awareness" instead of broken systems, and design interventions for an imaginary compliant subject. This episode argues for an HIV self-testing chatbot as the rare intervention that actually accepts the terrain. Content note This episode contains explicit clinical content on sexual practices, drug use, and chemsex; personal disclosure of mental illness and psychotic episodes; and discussion of criminalization, stigma, and violence directed at queer people in Pakistan. The language is direct because the public health argument requires it. Listener discretion advised. Resources mentioned in the episode Free HIV self-testing in Pakistan Confidential delivery of HIV self-testing kits across Pakistan, free of cost: https://quickres.org/0920 [https://quickres.org/0920] Free HIV testing and PrEP in Pakistan (WHO-collated) WHO-collated resource list for HIV testing and PrEP access across Pakistan: https://www.emro.who.int/asd/hiv-testing-centres/hiv-testing-centres-pakistan.html [https://www.emro.who.int/asd/hiv-testing-centres/hiv-testing-centres-pakistan.html] Free Crisis Support: https://taskeen.org/seek-help/ [https://taskeen.org/seek-help/] Written and narrated by Dr. Omer Bangash. Cover Art: Zhayedan Hasan Ibn Abdul Lat by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Read the full written version with references: https://obangash.substack.com/p/designing-hiv-prevention-for-a-world [https://obangash.substack.com/p/designing-hiv-prevention-for-a-world] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit obangash.substack.com [https://obangash.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Part II/VII: A Regime

The WHO framework treats sexuality as a variable: a demographic characteristic to be counted alongside age and disability. This episode argues it is something else entirely. A regime is a historically constructed system that operates simultaneously across governance, law, economic policy, cultural norms, and knowledge production. It does not sit in one box of the framework. It conditions all the boxes. Drawing on Foucault, Butler, and West & Zimmerman, Part II makes the central theoretical move of the series: the distinction between a variable and a regime, and why that distinction changes everything about what an adequate analysis of queer health inequities requires. Part II of VII. Written and narrated by Dr. Omer Bangash. Read the full written version with references: https://obangash.substack.com/p/regime-beneath-the-regime-sexuality-9f5 [https://obangash.substack.com/p/regime-beneath-the-regime-sexuality-9f5] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit obangash.substack.com [https://obangash.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Part I/VII: Seventeen Years of Silence

The WHO's social determinants of health framework maps how governance, education, employment, healthcare, and cultural norms produce health inequalities. It has been refined over seventeen years by hundreds of researchers across dozens of countries. It has never structurally incorporated sexuality. This episode asks why — and finds that the answer is not neglect but a structural limitation. Sexuality doesn't fit the framework the way the framework expects its variables to fit. It cannot sit in one box. It organizes all the boxes. Part I of a seven-part series. Written and narrated by Omer Bangash. Read the full written version with references: https://obangash.substack.com/p/regime-beneath-the-regime-sexuality [https://obangash.substack.com/p/regime-beneath-the-regime-sexuality] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit obangash.substack.com [https://obangash.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]