The Verso Podcast

Planet B Productions
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Podcasts, readings, lectures and events: big ideas and radical discussion from authors and collaborators with Verso Books

  1. Death in Westminster - who's hiding behind London's empty mansions? (Trailer)

    10 MAR

    Death in Westminster - who's hiding behind London's empty mansions? (Trailer)

    Introducing DEATH IN WESTMINSTER, a new four-part investigation from Novara Media and Planet B Productions. Featuring Nick Bano, author of Against Landlords (Verso Books, 2024). In 2018, a man named Gyula Remes died just metres from the buildings that govern Britain, on a street surrounded by unimaginable wealth and rows of vacant properties. His death should have been impossible. Instead, it was treated as inevitable. How could this happen on Parliament’s doorstep, at the centre of one of the richest cities on the planet? In this podcast, Kojo Koram – author of Uncommon Wealth – traces Gyula’s story, asking how someone could die of homelessness in the shadow of British power, while so many nearby homes stood empty and untouched. But asking that question quickly takes him far beyond Westminster’s pavements. Death in Westminster begins with one life lost but soon spirals outward – from a tube station tragedy to offshore tax havens, from imperial history to modern finance. It’s a story about secrecy, stolen wealth, and how Britain’s imperial afterlife has turned its capital into a global money laundering machine – leaving people like Gyula in its wake. Listen now on novaramedia.com, or search Death in Westminster, wherever you get your podcasts.

    1 min
  2. Overshoot: Navigating a world beyond 1.5°C (trailer)

    01/10/2025

    Overshoot: Navigating a world beyond 1.5°C (trailer)

    Today we're posting a trailer for OVERSHOOT, an exciting new series forthcoming from our friends over at Planet B Productions. OVERSHOOT is hosted by Laurie Laybourn, author of Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown, published by Verso Books. In 2015, the world agreed to limit global heating to 1.5°C. Ten years later, temperatures are spiralling beyond this and climate chaos is wreaking havoc across the globe. In this major four-part series, host Laurie explores how the world ended up here and uncovers the huge misconceptions and the high-tech fantasies that hold us back. And we meet people with the ideas to navigate what comes next, from protesting pensioners to climate negotiators, Pacific islanders to pre-eminent scientists. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For essays and bonus content, sign up at overshootpod.com or follow @overshootpod on social media. Writer and presenter: Laurie Laybourn Researcher: Ben Shread-Hewitt Production coordination: Daniel Norman Script consulting: Daniel Trilling Sound design and mix: Ben Heyderman and James Fox Original music by Haniell With special thanks to Aaron Thierry, Mirte Boot, James Dyke, Henry Throp, Stephen Backhouse

    4 min

  3. 11/12/2024

    Myths about Israel | Ilan Pappé

    In our last episode of The Verso Podcast before the winter break, our host Eleanor Penny is joined by Israeli historian, and activist Ilan Pappé, to discuss the false histories upon which the modern state of Israel is founded. We are of course still working on bringing you more of these in depth discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy this vitally relevant discussion with such an outspoken and incisive Israeli political dissident. At the start of Israel’s current assault on Gaza, the media was rife with misinformation about the nature of Hamas’ incursion, the events immediately leading up to it, the supposed justifications of Israel’s bombardments, and the histories that set the stage for the devastation we are witnessing now. In the 14 months since, Israel has quietly rolled back on some of these claims, whilst continuing to stand by other convenient mythologies. This pattern is nothing new. As Ilan has been highlighting for decades myth and misinformation was always foundational to the modern state of Israel, and its false histories have been used to whitewash, distract from, or justify not just land grabs - but apartheid and an active genocide. Together with Eleanor Penny, Ilan spoke about settler colonialism, liberal zionism, and the role of historians cutting through the media noise - as well as Lord Balfour’s anti-semitism and the pitfalls of the Two State Solution. Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, writer and socialist activist. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, and lastly Ten Myths About Israel, which has recently been reissued and updated by Verso Books (https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/370-ten-myths-about-israel). Don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops! If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

    59 min

  4. 28/11/2024

    AI, Automation, and Algorithms | Matteo Pasquinelli

    This week we have a special episode for you as part of our inter-season programming - an interview with Matteo Pasquinelli. Of course, we’re still working hard to bring you more roundtable discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series of The Verso Podcast, but until then we hope you’ll enjoy the exciting interim episodes we have in store for you. Matteo Pasquinelli is an associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and many other places besides. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence - out now with Verso Books (https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master). Matteo sat down with Richard Hames to explore some of the ideas laid out in his latest text - cutting against popular understandings of artificial intelligence that have come to increasingly dominate our cultural imaginaries, our workplaces, our digital lives, and our visions of the future. Pasquinelli argues that whilst many may claim that artificial intelligence imitates biological intelligence, the reality is that AI does not amount to a digital proxy of the neural pathways of individual human beings. Instead, he advances the opinion that AI imitates the intelligence of labor and social relations - framing it as a social and political creature, whose problems demand social and political responses. In this interview Matteo talks algorithms, IQ tests, and why AI will ultimately lead to us working more, not less. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

    58 min

  5. 13/11/2024

    Overshoot | Andreas Malm & Wim Carton

    On this week’s episode of The Verso Podcast we’re back to our typical format - our host, Eleanor Penny, is joined by Wim Carton and Andreas Malm to discuss their new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (BUY HERE: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3131-overshoot). We’re still working on bringing you more of these roundtable discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series of The Verso Podcast, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation with two of key thinkers on the politics of climate breakdown. And don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for more inter-season programming in the run up to season 4! We’re well into the third decade of the twenty-first century and we have still failed to save the world. Twenty-eight COP conferences on climate change have been and gone - and whilst there’s been plenty of mud wrestling over tipping points and temperatures rises, nothing ever really happens. In fact, the further we creep towards unliveable global temperature rises, the more fossil fuels get burned. In response, an attitude has taken hold in some parts of climate politics that the fight to keep temperature rises below 1.5 degrees is a lost cause. Some people claim that instead of mitigating emissions now, we should instead be looking at strategies to tactically ‘overshoot’ warming targets, before using carbon capture and removal to turn the heat back down again. If you’ve just invested in a new oil pipeline, that attitude might look very appealing. Less so if you are living in parts of the world already burning, starving or drowning in a new age of heatwaves. In this in-depth discussion, Wim Carton and Andreas Malm chart the embrace of this ‘overshoot’ thinking in environmental circles, in business, and in politics - asking what it means for the delicate life systems on this planet, and what we might be able to do about it. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over twenty academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of, among other books, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, and How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire. And don’t forget - be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

    1hr 14min

  6. 29/10/2024

    Fascism, Marxism and Israel | Enzo Traverso

    This week we have a special episode for you as part of our inter-season programming - an interview with Enzo Traverso. Of course, we’re still working hard to bring you more roundtable discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series of The Verso Podcast, but until then we have some exciting interim episodes coming up for you. Enzo Traverso is a writer, political scientist, and professor of humanities at Cornell University. His previous books include Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914 to 1945, The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right, The Origins of Nazi Violence, and The End of Jewish Modernity. He sat down with verso editor Sebastian Budgen to explore his life, his work and his latest book, Revolution: An Intellectual History - released in a new paperback edition earlier this year. The book charts a new history of the revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries - from Alexandra Kollontai’s cries for sexual liberation in Russia, to Louis Auguste Blanqui’s barricades in France, to Ho Chi Minh’s independence proclamation in Vietnam. In drawing these examples together, the book seeks answers to the fundamental question of how to unmake and then remake the world - of what revolution means and what it demands from us. In this interview, Enzo talks about his intellectual beginnings, about the new global far right, the Frankfurt School, left wing melancholia, and Israel's war against Gaza. If you'd like to read more about how people down the ages have tried to change the world - and sometimes even succeeded - then Enzo’s book, Revolution: An Intellectual History is available now from Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution And don’t forget - be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

    1hr 40min

  7. 15/10/2024

    Macrodose: Cyberboss | Craig Gent

    This week we’ve got something a little different for you. Whilst we’re still technically between seasons - and working hard to bring you more roundtable discussions with our wonderful Verso authors in our upcoming fourth series of The Verso Podcast - we wanted to share a great episode we’ve been collaborating on with our friends over at Macrodose. Macrodose is a podcast from Planet B Productions that brings you a weekly briefing on the economy, and takes a look behind the media headlines to work out what’s really going on. You can listen to the podcast and support the show at patreon.com/macrodose In this episode you’ll be hearing from Craig Gent, author of Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work - published recently by Verso Books. As well as being a writer Craig is also a researcher and the North of England Editor at Novara Media. In this bonus show, Craig will be exploring the role of algorithms in the workplace. He’ll be covering the big questions - such as, what’s at stake as algorithms are slowly, quietly integrated into our everyday lives? Is it just an inevitable fact of the long march toward progress? Or does it open a new frontier of class struggle that we need to take seriously and think about strategically? In other words what happens when your boss is a robot, and what do we do about it? You can find Craig's book "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work" here: www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2958-cyberboss Be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

    19 min
  8. [LIVE] The Future of Global Politics w/ Jeremy Corbyn, Laleh Khalili & Daniel Denvir

    05/08/2024

    [LIVE] The Future of Global Politics w/ Jeremy Corbyn, Laleh Khalili & Daniel Denvir

    Today we're publishing part two of our sell-out live event recorded at London's Union Chapel on July 26th. For this discussion we teamed up with our friends over at The Dig for a podcast extravaganza. Eleanor Penny of the Verso Podcast and Dig host Daniel Denvir sat down with writer and academic Laleh Khalili and the freshly re-elected, newly independent, MP Jeremy Corbyn, to talk about the past present and most importantly the future of Internationalism. We talked about Palestine, Congo and Iran, about the Labour Party, the welfare state, the climate crisis and the economics of global trade. The event opened up with a live recording of Macrodose podcast which is already up on your feed if you want to take a dive into that. Thank you so much to everyone who came down sold out the event and brought such an incredible energy to the evening. If you don't already do subscribe to The Dig wherever you get your podcasts, and support them over at patreon.com/thedig

    1hr 28min
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Podcasts, readings, lectures and events: big ideas and radical discussion from authors and collaborators with Verso Books

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