Best Verso Books Podcasts (2024)

1
Jason Read, "The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work" (Verso, 2024) 1:12:09

13m ago1:12:09

1:12:09

Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery – working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. People take pride in having a strong work ethic and demonstrate their passionate commitment to optimizing their time and resources on social media platforms like Li…

1
Tad Delay, "Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change" (Verso, 2024) 1:05:45

12d ago1:05:45

1:05:45

The age of denial is over, we are told. Yet emissions continue to rise while gimmicks, graft, and green-washing distract the public from the climate violence suffered by the vulnerable. Tad DeLay's Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change (Verso, 2024) draws on the latest climatology, the first shoots of an energy transition, critical the…

1
Verso Book Club Podcast | Brett Christophers 34:33

16d ago34:33

34:33

In this debut episode of the Verso Book Club Podcast, Brett Christophers sits down with our host, Eleanor Penny, to discuss his new book, The Price is Wrong, which challenges conventional wisdom by proposing a fresh perspective on the intersection of markets and the environment. Christophers argues that the slow progress toward sustainability isn't…

1
Jessica Calarco, "Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net" (Portfolio, 2024) 46:23

3h ago46:23

46:23

How do unequal societies function? In Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), Jesscia Calarco, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examines how America’s DIY society depends on the labour of mothers and excludes the sorts of social supports present in other countries. Thi…

1
Jessica Calarco, "Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net" (Portfolio, 2024) 46:23

17m ago46:23

46:23

How do unequal societies function? In Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), Jesscia Calarco, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examines how America’s DIY society depends on the labour of mothers and excludes the sorts of social supports present in other countries. Thi…

1
Allison J. Pugh, "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World" (Princeton UP, 2024) 31:00

1h ago31:00

31:00

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton UP, 2024) explor…

1
Benjamin Breen, "Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science" (Grand Central, 2024) 58:23

2h ago58:23

58:23

Today I talked to Benjamin Breen about his book Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science (Grand Central, 2024). The generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainst…

1
Gordon C. Chang, "Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) 51:35

38m ago51:35

51:35

Ideas influence people. In particular, extremely well-developed sets of ideas shape individuals, groups, and societies in far-reaching ways. In Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Gordon Chang establishes these “idea systems” as an academic concept. Through three intense episodes of manipul…

1
Tessa Hill and Eric Simons, "At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans" (Columbia UP, 2024) 53:01

37m ago53:01

53:01

At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans (Columbia UP, 2024) takes readers on a journey from California tidepools to Antarctic poles, showcasing myriad efforts to research and protect marine environments. Through insightful interviews, oceanographer Tessa Hill and science journalist Eric Simons offer a compelling exploration of …

1
Nivedita Menon, "Secularism As Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:09:14

2h ago1:09:14

1:09:14

In this episode, we speak to Nivedita Menon about her new book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Duke University Press, 2024; Permanent Black, 2023). Secularism as Misdirection is an ambitious and wide-ranging work, unravelling a term that is perhaps as contentious as it is ubiquitous in discourses of the Global S…

1
Nivedita Menon, "Secularism As Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:09:14

19m ago1:09:14

1:09:14

In this episode, we speak to Nivedita Menon about her new book, Secularism as Misdirection: Critical Thought from the Global South (Duke University Press, 2024; Permanent Black, 2023). Secularism as Misdirection is an ambitious and wide-ranging work, unravelling a term that is perhaps as contentious as it is ubiquitous in discourses of the Global S…

1
More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech 47:14

2h ago47:14

47:14

Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology reinforces inequality, it's not just a glitch—it's a signal that we need to redesign our systems to create a more equitable world. The word “glitch” implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it …

1
Duana Fullwiley, "Tabula Raza: Mapping Race and Human Diversity in American Genome Science" (U California Press, 2024) 1:16:20

2h ago1:16:20

1:16:20

In Tabula Raza: Mapping Race and Human Diversity in American Genome Science (University of California Press, 2024), Duana Fullwiley has penned an intimate chronicle of laboratory life in the genomic age. She presents many of the influential scientists at the forefront of genetics who have redefined how we practice medicine and law and understand an…

1
Abolition Is Now | Leah Cowan & Lola Olufemi 1:11:06

32m ago1:11:06

1:11:06

This week on The Verso Podcast we’re going to be thinking about the relationship between feminism and the carceral system. For a growing number of people the prospect of an abolitionist future - in which police and prisons are obsolete, and are not seen as the answer to all social ills - is an obviously desirable one. But to others, the notion of a…

1
Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:07:01

1h ago1:07:01

1:07:01

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and…

1
Carl Elliott, "The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No" (Norton, 2024) 48:30

3d ago48:30

48:30

The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No (Norton, 2024) is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy…

1
Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:07:01

26m ago1:07:01

1:07:01

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and…

1
What and Why are Political Beliefs? A Conversation with Oliver Traldi 55:48

4d ago55:48

55:48

What are political beliefs and how do we form them? Oliver Traldi, a current John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the James Madison Program, discusses this and more in his recently-published his first book, Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2024), a textbook which aims to explain the reasons behind politica…

1
Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:07:01

35m ago1:07:01

1:07:01

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and…

1
Adam Berg, "The Olympics that Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth" (U Texas Press, 2023) 44:50

35m ago44:50

44:50

If you don't recall the 1976 Denver Olympic Games, it's because they never happened. The Mile-High City won the right to host the winter games and then was forced by Colorado citizens to back away from its successful Olympic bid through a statewide ballot initiative. In The Olympics that Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth (Univer…

1
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020) 1:03:24

4d ago1:03:24

1:03:24

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (The New Press, 2020), Laura Gómez, a leading expert on race, law, and society, illuminates the fascinating r…

1
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020) 1:03:24

2h ago1:03:24

1:03:24

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (The New Press, 2020), Laura Gómez, a leading expert on race, law, and society, illuminates the fascinating r…

1
Stephanie Ternullo, "How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024) 54:18

1h ago54:18

54:18

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue to red. Cities that were once part of the traditional Democratic New Deal coalition began to vote Republican, providing crucial support for the electoral victories of Republican presidents from Reagan to…

1
Mark Stoll, "Profit: An Environmental History" (Polity Press, 2022) 1:15:40

1h ago1:15:40

1:15:40

Profit ― getting more out of something than you put into it ― is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we found more and more ways of extracting surplus value from the earth, often deploying brutally effective methods to disci…

1
Elisa Camiscioli, "Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:08:24

7m ago1:08:24

1:08:24

Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge UP, 2024) is an illuminating account of the cultural, social, and economic history of the sale of 'French sex'. It explores the discourses and experiences surrounding the early twentieth century debate on sex trafficking, which mobilized various international reform mov…

1
Jason Read, "The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work" (Verso, 2024) 1:12:09

33m ago1:12:09

1:12:09

Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery – working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. People take pride in having a strong work ethic and demonstrate their passionate commitment to optimizing their time and resources on social media platforms like Li…

1
Michele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020) 1:04:10

3d ago1:04:10

1:04:10

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, pregnancy, abortion, birth, and motherhood in the United States. In her extensively researched monograph, Michele Goodwin recounts the horrific contempora…

1
Jason Read, "The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work" (Verso, 2024) 1:12:09

4d ago1:12:09

1:12:09

Even as the rewards of work decline and its demands on us increase, many people double-down on their commitment to wage slavery – working harder, doing overtime, and learning to hustle. People take pride in having a strong work ethic and demonstrate their passionate commitment to optimizing their time and resources on social media platforms like Li…

1
Asaf Elia-Shalev, "Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth" (U California Press, 2024) 1:03:18

8d ago1:03:18

1:03:18

Asaf Elia-Shalev's book Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth (U California Press, 2024) tells the story of the young and impoverished Moroccan Israeli Jews who challenged their country's political status quo and rebelled against the ethnic hierarchy of Israeli life in the 1970s. Inspired by the American group…

1
Manisha Anantharaman, "Recycling Class: The Contradictions of Inclusion in Urban Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2024) 40:28

10h ago40:28

40:28

What types of coalitions can deliver social justice within sustainability initiatives? And how can we avoid reproducing unjust distributions of risk and responsibility in urban sustainability efforts? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Arve Hansen, and Manisha Anantharaman discuss these questions by engaging with Anantharaman’s new book Recycling…

1
Aaron Eddens, "Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa" (U California Press, 2024) 53:49

1d ago53:49

53:49

In Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past—and future—of global agriculture. Dr. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that intr…

1
Aaron Eddens, "Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa" (U California Press, 2024) 53:49

1d ago53:49

53:49

In Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past—and future—of global agriculture. Dr. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that intr…

1
Matthew D. Morrison, "Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States" (U California Press, 2024) 1:17:56

2d ago1:17:56

1:17:56

Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (U California Press, 2024) explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncov…

1
Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024) 1:05:42

2d ago1:05:42

1:05:42

In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how profes…

1
Mark Robert Rank, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us" (U California Press, 2024) 37:14

3d ago37:14

37:14

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profo…

1
We Should Not Take the UN For Granted: A Discussion with Abiodun Williams 33:54

9d ago33:54

33:54

In times where conflicts around the globe are an everyday topic, the place of the United Nations in resolving these conflicts is constantly being questioned. In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey discusses this issue with Professor Abiodun Williams, Professor of the Practice of International Politics at Tufts Universit…

1
Mark Robert Rank, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us" (U California Press, 2024) 37:14

4d ago37:14

37:14

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profo…

1
Emma Heaney, "Feminism Against Cisness" (Duke UP, 2024) 46:56

12d ago46:56

46:56

The contributors to Feminism Against Cisness (Duke UP, 2024) showcase the future of feminist historical, theoretical, and political thought freed from the conceptual strictures of cisness: the fallacy that assigned sex determines sexed experience. The essays demonstrate that this fallacy hinges on the enforcement of white and bourgeois standards of…

1
Mark Robert Rank, "The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us" (U California Press, 2024) 37:14

11d ago37:14

37:14

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profo…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Verso Books Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide