Verso Podcast

In 'Daring to Hope', Sheila Rowbotham looks back at her life as a participant in the women’s liberation movement, left politics and the creative radical culture of a decade in which freedom and equality seemed possible. She reveals the tremendous efforts that were made to transform attitudes and feelings, as well as daily life. In this podcast episode she discusses her latest work with Gary Younge. Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s by Sheila Rowbotham is out now: https://bit.ly/3FC1mZV

Who owns these resources, who builds and controls renewable energy infrastructures and ultimately who will access and benefit from them, are key questions to address if we want to understand what is at stake when we speak about the energy transition.  In this discussion David Hughes, Mika Minio-Paluello and Thea Riofrancos focus on the question of wind and how this endless resource can be appropriated to generate a socially profitable energy transformation.

What could direct action look like in the context of COP26? Our second episode, recorded in Glasgow at COP26, is hosted by Kate Aronoff, staff writer at The New Republic, author of Overheated and co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal. Kate is joined by Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and White Skin, Black Fuel with the Zetkin Collective, and Sabrina Fernandes, Brazilian eco-socialist organiser, communicator and fellow at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Climate Crisis: Time for a New Society: Writers and activists discuss radical ideas to move beyond the doom of climate breakdown. A collaboration between the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels and Verso Books.

How can the left build power in times of crisis? Our first episode, recorded by the beach in Brighton at The World Transformed festival, is hosted by writer and journalist Dalia Gebrial. Dalia is joined by Mathew Lawrence, co-author of Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown, and Harpreet Kaur Paul, human rights lawyer and co-founder of Tipping Point UK. Climate Crisis: Time for a New Society: Writers and activists discuss radical ideas to move beyond the doom of climate breakdown. A collaboration between the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Brussels and Verso Books.

Growing up in the Bronx amongst communists and socialists, Vivian Gornick became a legendary writer for Village Voice, chronicling the emergence of the feminist movement in the 1970s. For nearly fifty years, her essays - written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose - have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. In this podcast episode she discusses her latest work with her Verso editor, Jessie Kindig. Taking A Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time by Vivian Gornick out now: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3770-taking-a-long-look This episode is introduced by Caitlín Doherty, Verso Books. Read a transcript of this interview here: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5034-an-interview-with-vivian-gornick

What is care and who is paying for it? In her new book, The Care Crisis, Emma Dowling charts the multi-faceted nature of care in the modern world, from the mantras of self-care and what they tell us about our anxieties, to the state of the social care system. She examines the relations of power that play profitability and care off in against one another in a myriad of ways, exposing the devastating impact of financialisation and austerity. In this podcast she discusses care in its many forms with Rachel Holmes before a reading from the book by Amelia Horgan. The Care Crisis is out now: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3667-the-care-crisis

Co-organised by the IPR, PoLIS, Verso and Surviving Society Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter speak to co-hosts of the Surviving Society podcast, Chantelle Lewis and Tissot Regis; chaired by Dr Fran Amery.

Sinews of War and Trade: Laleh Khalili speaks to Rafeef Ziadah by Verso Books

In the current race to be Democratic presidential candidate, a socialist is in second place. Meanwhile, in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s left-led Labour Party has revived a political idea many had thought dead. But what, exactly, is socialism? And what would a socialist system look like today? Bhaskar Sunkara is joined by journalist and author Dawn Foster to examine the key ideas behind his new book, The Socialist Manifesto. In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin magazine, argues that socialism offers the means to achieve economic equality, and also to fight other forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to healthcare, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities. The book both explores socialism’s history and presents a realistic vision for its future. A primer on socialism for the twenty-first century, this is a book for anyone seeking an end to the vast inequities

Juno Mac and Molly Smith in conversation with Frankie Mullin about how the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead Do you have to think that prostitution is good to support sex worker rights? How do sex worker rights fit with feminist and anti-capitalist politics? Is criminalising clients progressive—and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.

What is technology trying to tell us in an emergency? James Bridle, in conversation with Serpentine Galleries CTO Ben Vickers, discusses 'New Dark Age' and the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime. As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. What is needed is not new technology, but new metaphors: a metalanguage for describing the world that complex systems have wrought. We don’t and cannot understand everything, but we are capable of thinking it. Technology can help us in this thinking: computers are not here to give us answers, but are tools for asking questions. Understanding a technology deeply and systemically allows us to remake metaphors in the service of other ways of thinking – without claiming, or even seeking to fully understand – and to ask the right questions to guide us through this new dark age. The discussion, presented in collaboration with Serpentine Galleries and the Goethe-Institut, also featured a performanc

1968 was one of the most seismic years in recent history -- Vietnam, the Prague spring, Black Power at the Olympics and protests on the streets of Paris and London. This interview is part commemoration, part reassessment. What remains of that turbulent time and where can we discern its features in our political landscape today?

Discussion with author Anna Feigenbaum about Tear Gas, which tells the story of how a chemical weapon went from the battlefield to the streets.

A conversation with writer and professor Ashley Dawson on his latest book, Extreme Cities. Here, he presents a disturbing survey of the necessarily ecological history of global urbanization and industrialization, as well as the unstable futures they are producing. As much a harrowing study as a call to arms Extreme Cities is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world. The book is available for sale at Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2558-extreme-cities

Among activists, journalists, and politicians, the conversation about how to respond to and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Policing is an institution whose primary function is the creation and reproduction of massive inequalities. In "The End of Policing," Alex Vitale reveals the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. The expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety. Law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve. The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing. The End of Policing is 40% off until Sunday, October 15 at 11:59PM PST (US only): https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

Timothy Morton discusses the political idea of the collective, subscendence, solidarity, fighting Nazis, and lots more. Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People, by Timothy Morton, is out now.

In this episode of the Verso podcast, journalist Antony Loewenstein discusses his book, Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe. Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining. What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Antony Loewenstein is an independent Australian journalist, documentary maker and blogger who has written for the BBC, the Nation and the Washington Post. He’s a weekly Guardian columnist and the author of three best-selling books,

Franco “Bifo” Berardi discusses his new book, Futurability, with editor Federico Campagna. Renowned Italian Marxist theorist and activist “Bifo” Berardi talks about political impotence, the tool of humiliation and the victory of Donald Trump, his experience coming of age in '68, and why we are drawn to the concept of populism in the current political moment. Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem incapable of producing the radical change that is so desperately needed. Meanwhile the struggle for dominance over the world is a battlefield with only two protagonists: the forces of neoliberalism on one side, and the new order led by the likes of Trump and Putin on the other. How can we imagine a new emancipatory vision, capable of challenging the deadlock of the present? Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination? Overcoming the temptation to give in to despair or nostalgia, Berardi proposes t

The NYU Department of Sociology Presents: "Internationalism and Democracy after the Eurozone Crisis" Monday, January 30thSince 2008, Europe has been mired in an institutional and political crisis that shows no signs of abating. If the 2008 financial meltdown shook the Eurozone to its foundations, the combination of austerity and the uneven recovery of member-states in its wake has once again brought questions of sovereignty and democracy to the fore. The consequence has been a series of escalating conflicts over Europe's future, exemplified by the tensions that surrounded the imposition of drastic austerity measures on the populations of Greece, Italy, and Spain, and by last summer's "Brexit" vote in the UK. Meanwhile, in many countries, growing hostility to the EU has fueled the rise of xenophobic and Euroskeptic forces on the far right, as parties like the French National Front have managed to gain traction with nationalist appeals that stress opposition to global financial elites, immigrants, and Islam.

In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a Guardian column. Trans, her critically acclaimed memoir, tells us of her life to the present moment: a story of transition and becoming herself through the cruxes of writing, art and identity. Join Juliet Jacques and Nina Power, philosopher, critic and feminist, in conversation at Foyles about Trans, the rapidly changing world of gender politics, self-definition and narrating life. "I believe that there are as many gender identities as there are people; all unique, all constantly being explored in conscious and unconscious ways"—Juliet Jacques