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 t...
Oct 01, 2025•4 min
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 di...
Dec 11, 2024•59 min
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 Heritag...
Nov 28, 2024•58 min
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 ...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 14 min
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 ...
Oct 29, 2024•1 hr 40 min
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...
Oct 15, 2024•19 min
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 Ira...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Today we're publishing part one of our sell-out live event recorded at London's Union Chapel on July 26th. For our first show of the evening we were joined by our friends at MACRODOSE podcast for a recording of their highly-recommended show on the future of global capitalism. This discussion was hosted by writer and academic Dalia Gabriel, and featured political scientist Thea Riofrancos, climate justice activist Asad Rehman and economist James Meadway. Subscribe to MACRODOSE at linktr.ee/macrod...
Aug 05, 2024•49 min
In this second episode of the newly launched Verso Book Club Podcast, Jules Gill-Peterson sits down with our host, Eleanor Penny, to discuss her new book A Short History of Trans Misogyny. In this incisive account of the invention of trans panic, A Short History of Trans Misogyny challenges the notion of transmisogyny as simply an attempt to mock or undermine a trans woman’s femininity - instead situating its origin in the violence of the colonial state, and it’s attempts to consolidate its cont...
Jun 20, 2024•41 min
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 an abolitionist society is not only unworkable, but deeply irresponsible. Leah Cowan and Lola Olufemi sat down with our host, Eleanor Penny, to address...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 11 min
This week on The Verso Podcast Eleanor Penny is joined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Owen Hatherley to look at the unflinching work of writer, urban theorist and historian Mike Davis. Verso x The Dig LIVE Podcast in London with Jeremy Corbyn, Laleh Khalili: tinyurl.com/bj2zx265 You can find Mike Davis' works here: tinyurl.com/3pse83y3
May 30, 2024•1 hr 24 min
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 due to the cost of renewable energy, but rather the lack of profitability in environmental preservation. As renewable technologies become more afford...
May 23, 2024•35 min
On Friday July 26th Jeremy Corbyn MP joins Verso Books and The Dig podcast for a live conversation at London’s Union Chapel. TICKETS: https://unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili As we enter the era of polycrisis, from climate breakdown to deepening global inequality and the daily horrors unfolding in Palestine, Eleanor Penny (host of the Verso Podcast) and Daniel Denvir (host of The Dig) will sit down with former leader of the U.K Labour P...
May 22, 2024•2 min
This week on The Verso Podcast we’re taking a deep dive on the labour theory of value. From David Ricardo, to Adam Smith, to Karl Marx, it's a topic that economists have been fighting over for hundreds of years - and it's high time The Verso Podcast joined the fray. Our host, Eleanor Penny, sat down with Beverley Best and Aaron Benanav to discuss AI, surplus population, and the relationship between the concept of value and commodity fetishism. Grab Aaron's book "Automation and the Future of Work...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 1 min
This week on The Verso Podcast we’re taking a deep dive into the relationship between blackness and modern visual culture in the digital age. Our host, Eleanor Penny, will be joined by Legacy Russell and Fred Moten to delve into complicated relationship between philosophy, music, virality, and critical fabulation - in order to elucidate the fundamental way in which the history of modernity is inextricably bound up with images of blackness. You can find Legacy's new book "Black Meme: A History of...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
This week on The Verso Podcast we’ll be taking a close look at the political economy of climate breakdown. Along with our host, Eleanor Penny, Ann Pettifor and Hamza Hamouchene discuss climate justice, private equity, degrowth, and the false promise of techno-fixes. Grab Ann's Verso releases here: tinyurl.com/3n3nc6jn Sign up to the Verso Book Club to get involved with our new Book Club Podcast: tinyurl.com/fda34bzb. All book club members will receive a regular email with links to submit questio...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 3 min
This week’s episode of The Verso Podcast centres on the gruelling work of making change happen in an often pitiless world - and the mental toll this can take on people. Along with our host, Eleanor Penny, Hannah Proctor and Ajay Singh Chaudhary discuss how revolutionary movements have balanced the grief of political defeat and lost hope, with the imminent needs of organising and continued resistance. Grab a copy of Hannah's book "Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat" here tinyur...
Apr 04, 2024•1 hr 18 min
This week on The Verso Podcast we’re putting landlordism under the microscope - how it turns peoples’ homes into poker chips, and the housing market into a casino. Nick Bano and Beth Stratford join our host, Eleanor Penny to discuss the depth and breadth of the housing crisis. Grab a copy of Nick's new book "Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis" here tinyurl.com/yc5au7nz
Mar 21, 2024•1 hr 9 min
On this episode of The Verso Podcast we’re going on a deep dive into the work of the psychiatrist, political theorist, and philosopher Frantz Fanon. Our wonderful host, Eleanor Penny, sat down with Matthew Beaumont and Annie Olaloku-Teriba to discuss Fanon’s expansive legacy - touching on everything from night walkers and revolutionaries, to radical humanism and afropessimism, to decolonial psychiatry and the spatial politics of urban life. Grab a copy of Matthew's new book "How We Walk: Frantz ...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Welcome back to the third season of The Verso Podcast! To kick off this run of shiny new episodes we’re taking a bit of a detour into the past, to have a closer look at the protestant reformation. This was a turbulent time in history - of tyrants, merchants, popes, peasants and roving priests - when early capitalist forms of power were just beginning to unsettle the old order. Together with our host, Eleanor Penny, Andrew Drummond and Eleanor Janega paint a detailed picture of the social and pol...
Feb 22, 2024•1 hr 23 min
In this bonus episode of the Verso Podcast, authors Anton Jäger and Vincent Bevins reflect on the previous decade, the mass political movements that took place, and the ultimate failure of these movements to produce meaningful political change. They consider the lessons that can be taken from the 2010s and discuss what will be required of current and future movements in order to achieve a more just and democratic world. Grab a copy of Anton's book "The Populist Moment: The Left After the Great R...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 10 min
On the last episode The Verso Podcast before the new year, Eleanor Penny is joined by Lynne Segal and Loree Erickson to discuss the myth of total independence, disability as a social construct, and the politics of care. In a conversation that ranges from the gendering, racialisation, and devaluation of caring labour, to abolitionism and disability activism, Loree and Lynne unpack the deep connections between autonomy and dependence, whilst suggesting ways to reimagine care outside of institution...
Dec 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min
This week on The Verso Podcast Eleanor Penny is joined by McKenzie Wark and Toshio Meronek to talk trans narratives, the politics of desire, and queer family. Together they take a critical look at the medical model of transition, its relationship to transmisogyny, and tactics of resistance. You can find McKenzie's book, "Love and Money, Sex and Death: A Memoir", here tinyurl.com/ycyvkam8 And Toshio's book, "Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary", here tinyurl.com/4whk...
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr 9 min
This week on The Verso Podcast we’re bringing you a deep dive on how Britain’s institutions, infrastructure, and social fabric are faring - and the prognosis doesn’t look good. For this episode Chantelle Lewis and Danny Dorling join our host, Eleanor Penny, to talk public wealth, regional division and failed states. You can find Danny's book "Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of A Failing State" here: tinyurl.com/y97c3v2a
Nov 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min
On this week’s episode of The Verso Podcast we’ll be taking a close look at the history of tokens across time, and the cultures that have grown up around them in the digital age. Rachel O’Dwyer and Edward Ongweso join our host, Eleanor Penny, to talk Bored Apes, art markets, Ponzi schemes and butter tokens. You can find Rachel's book "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" here: tinyurl.com/4jk9zk69
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 14 min
This week we were planning to bring you an episode about money in the digital age, but with everything that is currently unfolding in occupied Palestine we felt that this conversation between two leading thinkers on the subject was an important contribution to current discourse. In this episode, recorded on October 6th, Ghada Karmi and Antony Loewenstein sat down with our host, Eleanor Penny, to discuss the Israeli state’s military-industrial complex, its relationship with the global far right, ...
Oct 19, 2023•1 hr 18 min
After a short end-of-summer break we’re happy to bring you season two of the newly relaunched Verso Podcast. This week Brett St Louis and Arun Kundnani join our host Eleanor Penny to discuss the near foundational figure in the domains of decolonial, marxist, and pan-african thought - C. L. R. James. You can find Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts' graphic novel adaptation of a C. L. R. James play here: tinyurl.com/32hvfftu And Arun's book "What Is Antiracism?: And Why It Means Anticapitalism" here: t...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 5 min
In this bonus episode of The Verso Podcast, Esther Leslie and Stuart Jeffries discuss the life and legacy of Walter Benjamin. Join them for this fascinating and wide-ranging discussion of one of Western Marxism's most important philosophers. The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness by Walter Benjamin is out now: https://tinyurl.com/2p9bta5w
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 4 min
In this bonus episode of The Verso Podcast, Benjamin Kunkel and Lola Seaton delve into debates on how to decarbonise the world economy and build a brighter future. Who Will Build the Ark, edited by Benjamin Kunkel and Lola Seaton is out now: https://tinyurl.com/bdzc56ww
Aug 17, 2023•34 min
In the latest episode of The Verso Podcast, Nancy Fraser & Gargi Bhattacharyya join our host Eleanor Penny to discuss exploitation, expropriation, and racial capitalism. Together they probe the very edges of capitalism - examining what lies beyond, what's holding it all up, and reflecting on it is a system that constantly undermines the conditions of its own existence. You can find Nancy's book "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Ca...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr 12 min
