The Verso Podcast

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 institutions that want to make it all about control. You can find Lynne's book, "Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care", here tinyurl.com/mwcapmn7

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/4whkpdxw

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

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

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, and why a one-state solution is the closest approximation to a just conclusion for seventy-five years of occupation. Having been recorded prior to the events that have followed since October 7th, please listen in the awareness that some of the language in the episode may not be reflective of the detailed situation that has developed over the last two weeks. You can find Antony's book "The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World" here: tinyurl.com/mwu7hbed 322697

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: tinyurl.com/yp6rw5j2

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

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

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 Can Do About It" here: https://tinyurl.com/45j87f53

On this week's episode of The Verso Podcast, Helen Hester and Sarah Jaffe join Eleanor Penny to discuss the care crisis, and how we might organise care differently for a more equitable and free future. You can find Helen's book "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time", co-authored with Nick Srnicek, on our website at https://tinyurl.com/cb5st6es

This week on The Verso Podcast, Sian Norris and Edna Bonhomme delve into the tactics and goals of fascist ideologies across the globe. They explore how far right movements organise themselves transnationally with the aim of exerting control over individuals' bodies, rooted in a fundamental suspicion of women and their autonomy. You can find Sian's book, Bodies Under Siege: How the Far–Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, here: https://tinyurl.com/bde3x76 This podcast was produced by Planet B Productions, head over to planetbproductions.co.uk to find out more.

In this fourth episode of the newly relaunched Verso Podcast, Kevin Ochieng Okoth and Robin D.G. Kelley join Eleanor Penny to discuss the radical life and groundbreaking work of Guyanese historian, revolutionary, and guerrilla intellectual, Walter Rodney, who was assassinated 43 years ago this week. You can find a selection of Walter Rodney's books on our website at https://tinyurl.com/4xd5twt6 This podcast was produced by Planet B Productions, head over to planetbproductions.co.uk to find out more.

In this fourth episode of the newly relaunched Verso Podcast, Ben Miller and Amardeep Singh Dhillon join Eleanor Penny for a deep dive on the historical construction and ordering of sexualities into the categories we are familiar with today. You can find Ben's book "Bad Gays: A Homosexual History", co-authored with Huw Lemmey, on our website at tinyurl.com/33655pe7

In this third episode of the newly relaunched Verso Podcast, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Dalia Gebrial join Eleanor Penny to discuss prison abolitionism, racial capitalism, and critical geography. You can find Ruthie's book "Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation" on our website at bit.ly/3OrC5cu

On the second episode of our new season of the Verso Podcast, host Eleanor Penny is joined by writer and film maker Tariq Ali, and academic and author Priyamvada Gopal to discuss the cult of Winston Churchill and the insidious rewriting of the history of the British Empire. You can find Tariq's book "Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes" on our website at https://bit.ly/414MzBk

On the first episode of our new season of the Verso Podcast, host Eleanor Penny is joined by author Raj Patel and human rights advocate Tina Ngata to discuss the historical roots that tie together the exploitation of nature and people, and how those roots continue to impact our world today. You can find Raj's book, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, co-authored with Jason W. Moore on our website at https://bit.ly/3mF0SyB

The response to the inflation surge by the UK government has been disastrous for working people. Pushing up interest rates, attempting to keep pay rises down, and trying to cut pensions and other benefits, has exacerbated the devastating cost-of-living crisis. The true causes of the crisis have nothing to do with workers asking for pay rises. Rapid inflation was sparked by a combination of global economic instability, profound weakness of production, and corporate profiteering. The result is a massive transfer of wealth upwards – from working people to the super rich. It is time for a radical economic alternative. Listen to the audio from the book-launch event for The Cost of Living Crisis (and how to get out of it)by Costas Lapavitsas, James Meadway, and Doug Nicholls https://www.versobooks.com/books/4259-the-cost-of-living-crisis Featuring Costas Lapavitsas, James Meadway, and Laura Smith: Labour Party (personal capacity).

In this bumper edition of the Verso podcast we talk to authors Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke De Noronha about their new book Against Borders: The Case for Abolition. In it we explore what a world without borders might look like and the intricacies of imagining or advocating for that world. We then talk to Zehrah Hasan of JCWI about practical ways we can get involved in building a borderless world for today and tomorrow. Against Borders: The Case for Abolition is out now: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3983-against-borders?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=author-videos

Do family abolitionists want to get rid of your Gran? Do they hate love? Are they all killjoys looking to rip the roots of working class resistance apart? Find out all this and more in this episode of the Verso podcast with author Sophie Lewis in conversation with Ben Smoke. Sophie Lewis is the author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation https://www.versobooks.com/books/4075-abolish-the-family?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=abolish-the-family-videos Ben Smoke is the commissioning editor of Huck Magazine

How did we come to live in a world dominated by big tech and finance? In this video, Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams explore how these forces have shaped the direction of politics and government as well as the neoliberal economy to benefit their own interests. They discuss the concept of hegemony—the importance of passive consent; the complexity of political interests; and the structural force of technology—and why we need an updated theory of power for the twenty-first century. Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams are the authors of Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back) https://www.versobooks.com/books/4015-hegemony-now?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=hegemony-now-videos

Since the 1980s police have been allowed to suppress protests by using aggressive tactics—from batons to horse charges to kettling. New military-style tactics were sanctioned by the Thatcher government, in secret. Over the next forty years those protesting against racism, unfair job losses, draconian laws, or for environmental protection were subject to brutal tactics. As the UK government tries to suppress all forms of dissent, how do the police manage crowds, provoke violence and even break the law? Ben Smoke talks to Matt Foot and Morag Livingstone about their new book Charged: How the Police Try to Suppress Protest. Out 24th May: https://bit.ly/3LxPHy1

What is ecofeminism, and why is it necessary in the fight for climate justice? by Verso Books

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 of our age. This is a recording of an event at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on the 30th of May 2019.

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 performance by artist and writer Erica Scourti and a screening of We Help Each Other Grow (2017) by They Are Here, a collaborative practice steered by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison.

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, My Israel Question, The Blogging Revolution and Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World. He is co-editor of After Zionism and Left Turn and co-writer of For God’s Sake. His website can be found at antonyloewenstein.com and Twitter: @antloewenstein.

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 the notion of ‘futurability’ as a way to remind us that even within the darkness of our current crisis a better world lies dormant.

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 this context, debates over the trajectory of economic and political governance in Europe have taken on a new urgency. This event features of France's leading left-wing social scientists and "public intellectuals" discussing the roots of the present crisis, the response of the social movements, and the implications for democratic politics. Using the experience of post-2008 mobilizations against austerity across Europe - and last spring's Nuit Debout protests in France in particular - they ask what a viable left strategy for dealing with the crisis might look like. To what extent are internationalism and democracy still compatible in the era of European integration? And what does the crisis signify about the future of the national state, at a time when the growing salience of exclusionary nationalism has spurred a steady rise in support for the far right? Speaker Bios: Frédéric Lordon is an economist and philosopher. He is Director of Research at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a researcher at the Center for European Sociology (CSE). He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire (2014), La Malfaçon: Monnaie Européenne et Souveraineté Démocratique (2014), and Imperium - Structures et Affects des Corps Politique (2015). Last year, Lordon was a prominent figure associated with France's Nuit Debout protest movement. He writes a regular column on European politics and the Eurozone crisis for Le Monde Diplomatique. Cédric Durand is an associate professor of economics at the University of Paris 13, a member of the Center for Economy at Paris-Nord, and a researcher with the Center for the Study of Industrialization (CEMI-EHESS). He is on the editorial board of the journal Revue d'Économie Industrielle and the online magazine ContreTemps. He is author of the forthcoming book Fictitious Capital: How Finance is Appropriating Our Future (Verso 2017). English translations of several of his recent writings are available at the Verso Books website, https://www.versobooks.com/authors/2178-cedric-durand

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

John Berger has revolutionised our understanding of art, language, media, society, politics and everyday experience itself since his landmark book and TV series Ways of Seeing over forty years ago. As the internationally influential critic, novelist, film-maker, dramatist and, above all, storyteller enters his ninetieth year, the latest Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop celebrates his life and work. Gareth Evans is joined by Tom Overton, editor of Landscapes: John Berger on Art, Yasmin Gunaratnam, editor of A Jar of Wild Flowers, and Mike Dibb, film-maker and director of Ways of Seeing, to explore Berger's art and politics, the evolution of his own way of seeing, and its enduring relevance. Several books are being published this autumn in tribute to Berger, who is Author of the Month at the London Review Bookshop: - Landscapes: John Berger on Art edited by Tom Overton (Verso), a companion volume to Portraits: John Berger on Artists - A Jar of Wild Flowers edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam with Amarjit Chandan (Zed) collects essays by writers including Ali Smith, Sally Potter, Ram Rahman, Hsiao-Hung Pai and others - Confabulations (Penguin), through Berger's drawings, notes, memories and reflections explores language - John Berger: Collected Poems (Smokestack)collects Berger's poetry in English for the first time - The Long White Thread of Words: Poems for John Berger (Smokestack), edited by Amarjit Chandan, Yasmin Gunaratnam and Gareth Evans - Lapwing & Fox (Collectif), a series of conversations in correspondence sent between Berger and his friend, artist and film-maker John Christie.

The Levellers, revolutionaries that grew out of the explosive tumult of the 1640s and the battlefields of the Civil War, are central figures in the history of democracy. In this thrilling narrative, John Rees brings to life the men—including John Lilburne, Richard Overton, Thomas Rainsborough—and women who ensured victory at war, and brought England to the edge of radical republicanism. From the raucous streets of London and the clattering printers’ workshops that stoked the uprising, to the rank and file of the New Model Army and the furious Putney debates where the levellers argued with Oliver Cromwell for the future of English democracy, this story reasserts the revolutionary nature of the 1642–48 wars, and the role of ordinary people in this pivotal moment in history. The legacy of the Levellers can be seen in the modern struggles for freedom and democracy across the world. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2129-the-leveller-revolution

From the tyranny of exercise to the crisis of policing, via the sexualization of childhood (and everything else), Mark Greif’s Against Everything is an essential guide to the vicissitudes of everyday life under twenty-first-century capitalism and a vital scrutiny of the contradictions arising between our desires and the excuses we make. In a wide-ranging conversation for the latest Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop, Mark Greif and Brian Dillon discuss modes of critique and cultural forms, and the role of the intellectual in stripping away the veil of everyday life. Against Everything: On Dishonest Times by Mark Greif is available now: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2256-against-everything Mark Greif is a founder and editor of n+1 magazine. Brian Dillon is a writer and critic. He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches critical writing at the Royal College of Art.

The Storyteller (Verso, 2016) gathers the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee. Howard Caygill Professor Of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University and author of the forthcoming Kafka: In the Light of the Accident (Bloomsbury, 2017), Sara Salih, Professor of English at the University of Toronto, and Matthew Charles, Lecturer in English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster, join The Storyteller’s editors and translators, Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski, for a special event to launch Walter Benjamin’s fiction collected in English translation for the first time.

Writers and artists are grappling with social and political effects of our warming planet by telling stories of fear and dread, of warning and disaster, of encouragement and hope. Written by Bulgarian-German novelist and renowned travel writer Ilija Trojanow, The Lamentations of Zeno is a “topical polemic about global warming and climate change,” an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe. It tells the story of Zeno Hintermeier, an idealistic glaciologist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he plans a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world. In this conversation with Ilija Trojanow, he speaks about his research trips to Antarctica, his thoughts on the emerging genre of climate fiction, and the origin of his despairing main character. Recording and interview by Ethan Cohen. To read an extract from The Lamentations of Zeno, visit the Verso blog: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2647-a-novel-of-existential-dread-an-extract-from-the-lamentations-of-zeno

The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness gathers for the first time the fiction of Walter Benjamin, edited and translated by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold of dreamworlds, celebrate the ludic, and delve into fortune-telling. Taken together, the novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection illuminate the themes that defined Benjamin’s work. In the latest Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop, Esther Leslie, Marina Warner and Michael Rosen join Gareth Evans to discuss his experimentation with form and the themes that run throughout Benjamin’s creative and critical writing, his concepts of storytelling, pedagogy, and the communicability of experience. To read the editors' introduction to The Storyteller & to WIN FREE BOOKS, visit the Verso blog: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2675-walter-benjamin-the-storyteller-the-verso-podcast-in-collaboration-with-the-london-review-bookshop Reading: Flossie Draper

Originally published in 1967, Valerie Solanas' incendiary SCUM Manifesto called for a Society for Cutting Up Men and declared war on capitalism and patriarchy. Today, the controversial tract has a complex relationship with contemporary landscapes of feminism and gender politics. Juliet Jacques and Ray Filar join Sophie Mayer to discuss the treatise from critical and contemporary perspectives. Taking a historical view on its problematic elements, they discuss the violence and gender essentialism of the text, as well as Solanas' visions of work and automation and why the text still thrills today. Juliet Jacques is the author of Trans: A Memoir and a phd student in Creative and Critical Writing at University of Sussex. Ray Filar is a writer, editor and performance artist. They tweet @RayFilar. Sophie Mayer is author of Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, poet and a member of queer feminist curators Club des Femmes. She tweets @tr0ublemayer. SCUM Manifesto voice: Sam McBean, academic and feminist and queer critic. She tweets @s_mcbean

In 2011, an elite group of US Navy Seals stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden. The news did much to boost President Obama's first term and played a major part in his re-election victory the following year. Four years on, Seymour Hersh published a controversial series of essays in the London Review of Books, arguing that the story of that night, was incomplete, or worse, a lie. How realistic is it that Pakistani authorities didn't know bin Laden was living in a compound next to a military academy or have any knowledge of the US military operation? In his book, The Killing of Osama bin Laden, Seymour Hersh presents an electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. In this podcast he discusses the case with his editor at the London Review of Books, Christian Lorentzen.

Dan Hancox talks to Amina Gichinga and Linda Bellos about what it means to live in London and how, given the various challenges the city faces, it can be changed for the better. Dan is the author of The Village Against The World, and ebooks including Kettled Youth and Fight Back! Dan tweets at @danhancox. Linda Bellos is an activist and former leader of Lambeth Borough Council 1986-88 and chair of the Greater London Council's Women's Committee. She was the second black woman to become leader of a British local authority. She tweets @BellosLinda Amina Gichinga is a musician and a City & East London Assembly candidate for Take Back the City. Amina tweets at @Aminaminky

This focus panel on race and racism was recorded at Foyles, Charing Cross Rd, 23rd March 2016 at the second in the Our London event series in collaboration with Compass and co-hosted by Novara Media. One of the greatest aspects of living in London is its diversity, but at the same time the city is striated by racial politics. In London, as throughout the UK, people from BAME groups have been historically much more likely to be in poverty than white British people, as well as suffer from housing deprivation, homelessness and inferior access to healthcare and education. Meanwhile, racist violence is on the rise, with state racisms against ‘Muslimness’, an institutionally racist police and the ‘extreme centre’ of the British political elite enforcing tensions between race, class and nation in a context of increasing immigration and numerous global crises. In response to all of this, Novara Media, Verso and Compass will be co-hosting a panel that focuses on living in London and some of the intersecting oppressions that increasingly define it. Novara Media's Aaron Bastani chairs the panel and is joined by Jumanah Younis of Sisters Uncut, Ash Sarkar, also from Novara Media, Liz Fekete, Director of the Institute of Race Relations and author of the forthcoming Fault Lines (Verso, 2017)and activist and academic Adam Elliott-Cooper. We remember those who died in police custody and ask: What does it mean to call London a multicultural – or even a post-racial – city in the context of neoliberalism? What is the relationship between race and class in the city in 2016 and how should mayoral candidates be responding to these issues?

Kate Evans joins writer and editor Sophie Mayer to examine the radical origins of International Women's Day, Rosa Luxemburg's revolutionary life and work in the international socialist movement, and her enduring legacy. This March, the London Review Bookshop is celebrating women graphic novelists in honour of Women's History Month. As part of their spotlight on Kate Evans, the creator of the cult hit Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, we present the inaugural Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop and a giveaway competition where you can win a limited edition Rosa Luxemburg tote bags containing a copy of Red Rosa, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg and The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. To win a goody bag, you must listen to the podcast to answer the questions here: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2534-the-verso-podcast-red-rosa-in-collaboration-with-the-london-review-bookshop

What happened to the future? Owen Hatherley and Douglas Murphy explode the distortions of history that obscure our present and future in their new respective books The Ministry of Nostalgia and Last Futures. Excavating the lost archeology of the present day, Douglas Murphy’s Last Futures is a fascinating, mind-bending cultural history of the last avant-garde. Through a cast of architects, dreamers, thinkers, hippies and designers, Murphy diagnoses the source of our current situation and steers us towards powerful alternative futures. In a sharp, witty polemic, Owen Hatherley skewers the contemporary nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed. Why, in an age of austerity, have we adopted the gospel of luxurious poverty, from ubiquitous 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters to the ‘artisinal’? The Ministry of Nostalgia reaches across a depleted cultural landscape to demand more for our society—after all, Hatherley argues, why should we have to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'? Chaired by Shumi Bose, architectural writer, historian, editor and teacher at Central St Martins responsible for coordinating Contextual Studies for BA Architecture: Spaces and Objects, covering architectural history, theory and broader cultural issues.