Best Verso Books Podcasts (2025)

1
Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:04:21

9d ago1:04:21

1:04:21

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency of this topic. Today we welcome philosopher Jake Monaghan to discuss his book, Just Policing (Oxford UP, 2023), which applies interdisciplinary insights to examine the morality of policing. T…

1
Polly Jones, "Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin" (Bloombury, 2024) 1:16:44

21d ago1:16:44

1:16:44

Gulag Fiction: Labour Camp Literature from Stalin to Putin (Bloombury, 2024) is a unique exploration of Russian prose fiction about the Soviet labour camp system since the Stalin era compares representations of identity, ethics and memory across the corpus. The Soviet labour camp system, or Gulag, was a highly complex network of different types of …

1
Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024) 46:19

25d ago46:19

46:19

What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But what is the best way forward? In Beyond Policing, distinguished scholar and writer Philip V. McHarris reimagines the world without police to find answers and reveal how we can make police departments o…

1
Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024) 58:36

1M ago58:36

58:36

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poor…

1
Atiya Husain, "No God But Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:09:08

1M ago1:09:08

1:09:08

Atiya Husain’s No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge and Terrorism (Duke University Press, 2025) uses the FBI Most Wanted lists to rethink theoretical relationships between race and Islam in the United States. Husain traces the genealogy of wanted posters and how theories of the “average man” informs the use of photographs and its accompanying descrip…

1
Ieva Jusionyte on American Guns in Mexico: Exit Wounds (EF, JP) 59:35

1M ago59:35

59:35

John and Elizabeth had the chance to talk with Ieva Jusionyte, anthropologist, journalist, emergency medical technician. Her award-winning books include Exit Wounds, which uses anthropological and journalistic methods to follow guns purchased in the United States through organized crime scenes in Mexico, and their legal, social and personal repercu…

1
Rhys Machold, "Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements Across India and Palestine/Israel" (Stanford UP, 2024) 40:47

2M ago40:47

40:47

Homeland security is rarely just a matter of the homeland; it involves the circulation and multiplication of policing practices across borders. Though the term "homeland security" is closely associated with the United States, Israel is credited with first developing this all-encompassing approach to domestic surveillance and territorial control. To…

1
"Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt's Incarcerated" (U California Press, 2025) 1:06:57

2M ago1:06:57

1:06:57

Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated (U California Press, 2025), edited by Collective Antigone, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by political prisoners in Egypt. It offers a unique lens on the global rise of authoritarianism during the last decade. This book contains letters, poetry, and art produced by Egypt’s inc…

1
Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750–1840" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) 1:10:46

2M ago1:10:46

1:10:46

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts to the gallows at home and transportation overseas, with prisons serving primarily as holding spaces for the accused until the case against them was resolved. A major shift began in the late eighteen…

1
Mark Neocleous, "Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police" (Verso, 2025) 1:25:00

2M ago1:25:00

1:25:00

Today I talked to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025). For more than two decades, Neocleous has been a pioneer in the radical critique of policing, security, and warfare. Today we will discuss his newest work on the theory and practice of pacification, which, he argues, is “social warfare…

1
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:05:57

2M ago1:05:57

1:05:57

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) is the first detailed account of Louisiana's unprecedented turn to mass incarceratio…

1
Asim Qureshi and Walaa Quisay, "When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners" (Pluto Press, 2024) 1:00:59

3M ago1:00:59

1:00:59

When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners (Pluto Press, 2024), uncovers the unique experiences of Muslim political prisoners held in Egypt and under US custody at Guantanamo Bay and other detention black sites. This groundbreaking book explores the intricate interplay between their religious beliefs, practices of ritual purity,…

1
Timothy P. R. Weaver, "Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City" (Temple UP, 2025) 29:41

3M ago29:41

29:41

Looking closely at New York City's political development since the 1970s, three "political orders"--conservativism, neoliberalism, and egalitarianism--emerged. In Inequality, Crime, and Resistance in New York City, Timothy Weaver argues that the intercurrent impact of these orders has created a constant battle for power. Weaver brings these clashes…

1
Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024) 56:46

3M ago56:46

56:46

The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In nations where the rule of law is unevenly applied, interpreting the people involved in its enforcement allows for contextualized understanding about why that unevenness occurs and is perpetuated. Joshua…

1
Michael Rembis, "Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum" (Oxford UP, 2025) 49:10

3M ago49:10

49:10

The asylum--at once a place of refuge, incarceration, and abuse--touched the lives of many Americans living between 1830 and 1950. What began as a few scattered institutions in the mid-eighteenth century grew to 579 public and private asylums by the 1940s. About one out of every 280 Americans was an inmate in an asylum at an annual cost to taxpayer…

1
Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024) 1:16:12

3M ago1:16:12

1:16:12

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction (Rutgers UP, 2024) tells h…

1
Blessin Adams, "Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain" (HarperCollins, 2025) 32:24

3M ago32:24

32:24

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning female poisoning lacing the supper with deadly substances; of child killers and spiteful witches, stories of women wholly and unnaturally wicked. These were printed or sung, tacked the walls of alehouses, …

1
Blackstone, Neoliberalism, and the Housing Crisis 28:51

4M ago28:51

28:51

David Harvey examines the relationship between wage repression, rising housing costs, and homelessness, presenting a stark critique of capitalist systems that prioritize speculative profits over meeting basic housing needs. He explores how inflation in housing markets, driven by financial speculation and companies like Blackstone, exacerbates econo…

1
Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 43:34

4M ago43:34

43:34

In Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), Robin Bernstein tells the story of an Afro-Native teenager named William Freeman who was convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn’s prison. Incensed at being forced to work w…

1
Valentina N. Glajar, "The Secret Police Dossier of Herta Müller: A "File Story" of Cold War Surveillance" (Camden House, 2023) 1:40:18

4M ago1:40:18

1:40:18

"Herta Müller should share her Nobel with the Securitate." This comment by a former officer in the Romanian secret police, or Securitate, was in reaction to hearing that Müller, a German writer originally from Romania, had won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Communist Romania's infamous secret police was indeed a protagonist in Müller's work, …

1
David Lyon, "Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024) 59:41

4M ago59:41

59:41

Surveillance is everywhere today, generating data about our purchasing, political, and personal preferences. Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024) shows how surveillance makes people visible and affects their lives, considers the technologies involved and how it grew to its present size and prevalence, and explores…

1
Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021) 1:02:13

4M ago1:02:13

1:02:13

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made movements like Black Lives Matter possible. Adam Elliott-Cooper analyses racism beyond prejudice and the interpersonal - arguing that black resistance confronts a global system of racial classification,…

1
Trumpism vs. Wage Justice 22:07

4M ago22:07

22:07

David Harvey reflects on the challenges of addressing inflation and wage repression in the U.S., especially for the 50% of the population struggling to live on $30,000–$40,000 a year. He critiques the Democratic Party's failure to focus on the economic needs of this group, emphasizing that inflation, despite slowing, continues to affect them due to…

1
Benjamin T. Smith, "The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade" (W. W. Norton, 2021) 46:39

4M ago46:39

46:39

For over a century Mexico has been embroiled in a drug war dictated by the demands of their neighbor to the north. In The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade (W. W. Norton, 2021), Benjamin T. Smith offers a history of the trade and its effects upon the people of Mexico. As he reveals, at the start of the 20th century drugs such as mari…

1
Sara Lodge, "The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective" (Yale UP, 2024) 45:44

5M ago45:44

45:44

In The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective (Yale UP, 2024), Sara Lodge tells stories of women who brought 19th century criminals to justice, in real life and popular culture, as unacknowledged crime-fighters and feminist icons. On stage and in fiction, women detectives were sensational figures who fascinated the public with cross-dres…

1
Radha Kumar, "Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900–1975" (Cornell UP, 2021) 1:08:27

5M ago1:08:27

1:08:27

Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900–1975 (Cornell UP, 2021) moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined nature of police and caste in the Tamil countryside. Radha Kumar argues that the colonial police deployed rigid notions of caste in their everyday tasks, refashioning rural identities in a process that …

1
Scott Huver, "Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210" (Post Hill Press, 2024) 52:30

5M ago52:30

52:30

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin, & Scandal in 90210 (Post Hill Press, 2024) explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210. Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime storie…

1
Leila Ullrich, "Victims and the Labour of Justice at the International Criminal Court: The Blame Cascade" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:03:20

5M ago1:03:20

1:03:20

Victim participation at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has routinely been viewed as an empty promise of justice or mere spectacle for audiences in the Global North, providing little benefit for victims. Why, then, do people in Kenya and Uganda engage in justice processes that offer so little, so late? How and why do they become the court’s …

1
Sandhya Fuchs, "Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:47:33

5M ago1:47:33

1:47:33

Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India (Stanford University Press, 2024). Against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter movement, debates around the social impact of hate crime legislation have come to the political fore. In 2019, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice urgently asked how legal systems can…

1
Myths about Israel | Ilan Pappé 58:30

5M ago58:30

58:30

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 u…

1
Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024) 56:09

5M ago56:09

56:09

In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called “excited delirium syndrome.” Soon, medical examiners began using the syndrome regularly to describe the deaths of Black men and women during interactions with police. Police and medical examiners claimed …

1
AI, Automation, and Algorithms | Matteo Pasquinelli 58:29

6M ago58:29

58:29

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 episode…

1
Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) 52:26

6M ago52:26

52:26

How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million dollars? In America, your liberty--or even your life--may be forfeit not simply because of what you do, but where you do it. If the same man had run off with a lobster roll from a lunch counter in Ma…

1
Risk 20:00

6M ago20:00

20:00

In this episode of High Theory, Faye Raquel Gleisser tells us about Risk. A calculable danger in economics, athletics, sociology, or healthcare, risk has become a socially constructed danger that changes who we are and how we move through the world. Faye asks us to think about how risk management and risk literacy shaped the conceptual and performa…

1
Overshoot | Andreas Malm & Wim Carton 1:14:15

6M ago1:14:15

1:14:15

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 r…

1
Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 58:03

6M ago58:03

58:03

The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and disproportionately affects the poor and racial minorities. Yet the U.S. has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. This disjuncture between the treatment of street …

1
Revolt and Recession: The Global Crisis of Higher Education and Work 29:20

6M ago29:20

29:20

[S6 E04] Revolt and Recession: The Global Crisis of Higher Education and Work David Harvey reflects on recent protests in Bangladesh as a "canary in the coal mine" for growing global discontent over unequal job opportunities and socioeconomic divides. He explores parallels between the unrest in Bangladesh, Iran, and student movements of the 1960s, …

1
Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023) 54:26

6M ago54:26

54:26

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditions and substance use by considering the intersections between drug markets, sidewalks, households, and prisons in Baltimore. Sanaullah Khan argues that while housing, medicalization, and incarceration…

1
Fascism, Marxism and Israel | Enzo Traverso 1:40:08

7M ago1:40:08

1:40:08

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 y…

1
Macrodose: Cyberboss | Craig Gent 19:05

7M ago19:05

19:05

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. …

1
Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024) 39:39

8M ago39:39

39:39

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds of local jails. But this is nothing new: the federal government has been detaining migrants in city and county jails for more than 100 years. In The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mas…

1
Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman, "The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:12:11

8M ago1:12:11

1:12:11

The image of the sheriff is deeply embedded in American culture – from pacifist Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again and gun averse Roy Scheider in Jaws to those more comfortable wielding power like Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men, and Gary Cooper in High Noon. In the United States, more than 3,000 sheriffs occu…

1
Police First Responders Interacting with Domestic Violence Victims 33:56

8M ago33:56

33:56

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Kate Steel, Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of the West of England, in Bristol, UK. Tazin and Kate discuss discursive management in the context of police first responders and domestic violence victims, focusing on Kate’s research in her 2024 paper ‘“Can I …

1
Felia Allum, "Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra" (Cornell UP, 2024) 53:20

8M ago53:20

53:20

Women of the Mafia: Power and Influence in the Neapolitan Camorra (Cornell UP, 2024) by Dr. Felia Allum dives into the Neapolitan criminal underworld of the Camorra as seen and lived by the women who inhabit it. It tells their life stories and unpacks the gender dynamics by examining their participation as active agents in the organisation as leade…

1
Michael David-Fox, "The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) 56:18

8M ago56:18

56:18

The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023) compiles an array of recent scholarship that draws on newly available archival evidence. This interview with the book's editor, Dr. Michael David-Fox, summarizes what these new findings add up to, and highlights specific arguments made by the collection'…

1
Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020) 42:37

8M ago42:37

42:37

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels looked to influence the human psyche through form, or elicit desired behaviors with environmental incentives, implementing what Joy Knoblauch calls “psychological functio…

1
Michael L. Walker, "Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail" (Oxford UP, 2022) 37:09

8M ago37:09

37:09

Jails are the principal people-processing machines of the criminal justice system. Mostly they hold persons awaiting trial who cannot afford or have been denied bail. Although jail sentences max out at a year, some spend years awaiting trial in jail-especially in counties where courts are jammed with cases. City and county jails, detention centers,…

1
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:00:22

8M ago1:00:22

1:00:22

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions and early twentieth-century eugenicist ideology, demonstrating how the legacy of those ideas continues to shape incarceration and detention today. Whatcott focuses on California, examining re…

1
The Politics of Clans and Castes 42:48

8M ago42:48

42:48

[S6 E04] The Politics of Clans and Castes David Harvey explores Marx's theory of the capitalist mode of production, emphasizing the importance of understanding both the inner structure and external dynamics of this system. Harvey highlights the contradiction inherent in commodities, where use value and exchange value often clash. He discusses how t…

1
Judge Frederic Block, "A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It" (The New Press, 2024) 27:43

8M ago27:43

27:43

The police officer who brutalized Abner Louima. A purveyor of child pornography. These are some of the defendants to have come before U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block to ask for reductions in their prison sentences. All of them have been found guilty and have already served decades in prison, but under the 2018 First Step Act they are entit…

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