The Verso Podcast

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 Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and many other places besides. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence - out now with Verso Books (https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master). Matteo sat down with Richard Hames to explore some of the ideas laid out in his latest text - cutting against popular understandings of artificial intelligence that have come to increasingly dominate our cultural imaginaries, our workplaces, our digital lives, and our visions of the future. Pasquinelli argues that whilst many may claim that artificial intelligence imitates biological intelligence, the reality is that AI does not amount to a digital proxy of the neural pathways of individual human beings. Instead, he advances the opinion that AI imitates the intelligence of labor and social relations - framing it as a social and political creature, whose problems demand social and political responses. In this interview Matteo talks algorithms, IQ tests, and why AI will ultimately lead to us working more, not less. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

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 fascinating conversation with two of key thinkers on the politics of climate breakdown. And don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for more inter-season programming in the run up to season 4! We’re well into the third decade of the twenty-first century and we have still failed to save the world. Twenty-eight COP conferences on climate change have been and gone - and whilst there’s been plenty of mud wrestling over tipping points and temperatures rises, nothing ever really happens. In fact, the further we creep towards unliveable global temperature rises, the more fossil fuels get burned. In response, an attitude has taken hold in some parts of climate politics that the fight to keep temperature rises below 1.5 degrees is a lost cause. Some people claim that instead of mitigating emissions now, we should instead be looking at strategies to tactically ‘overshoot’ warming targets, before using carbon capture and removal to turn the heat back down again. If you’ve just invested in a new oil pipeline, that attitude might look very appealing. Less so if you are living in parts of the world already burning, starving or drowning in a new age of heatwaves. In this in-depth discussion, Wim Carton and Andreas Malm chart the embrace of this ‘overshoot’ thinking in environmental circles, in business, and in politics - asking what it means for the delicate life systems on this planet, and what we might be able to do about it. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over twenty academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. Andreas Malm teaches human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of, among other books, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, and How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire. And don’t forget - be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

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 European Civil War, 1914 to 1945, The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right, The Origins of Nazi Violence, and The End of Jewish Modernity. He sat down with verso editor Sebastian Budgen to explore his life, his work and his latest book, Revolution: An Intellectual History - released in a new paperback edition earlier this year. The book charts a new history of the revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries - from Alexandra Kollontai’s cries for sexual liberation in Russia, to Louis Auguste Blanqui’s barricades in France, to Ho Chi Minh’s independence proclamation in Vietnam. In drawing these examples together, the book seeks answers to the fundamental question of how to unmake and then remake the world - of what revolution means and what it demands from us. In this interview, Enzo talks about his intellectual beginnings, about the new global far right, the Frankfurt School, left wing melancholia, and Israel's war against Gaza. If you'd like to read more about how people down the ages have tried to change the world - and sometimes even succeeded - then Enzo’s book, Revolution: An Intellectual History is available now from Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution And don’t forget - be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!

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 out what’s really going on. You can listen to the podcast and support the show at patreon.com/macrodose In this episode you’ll be hearing from Craig Gent, author of Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work - published recently by Verso Books. As well as being a writer Craig is also a researcher and the North of England Editor at Novara Media. In this bonus show, Craig will be exploring the role of algorithms in the workplace. He’ll be covering the big questions - such as, what’s at stake as algorithms are slowly, quietly integrated into our everyday lives? Is it just an inevitable fact of the long march toward progress? Or does it open a new frontier of class struggle that we need to take seriously and think about strategically? In other words what happens when your boss is a robot, and what do we do about it? You can find Craig's book "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work" here: www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2958-cyberboss Be sure to subscribe to the show so you can be the first to know when season four drops - and so that you don’t miss any of the bonus content coming your way between now and then. If you enjoy The Verso Podcast please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts - it really helps us out!