Radicals in Conversation

With Linda Pentz Gunter.  Unmitigated climate chaos and nuclear war are perhaps the two most catastrophic threats we might face as a species - and they are connected. One single major obstacle sits at the heart of both issues: the nuclear power industry. In this episode, Linda Pentz Gunter joins us for a conversation about all things nuclear. Linda unpacks why, contrary to popular belief, nuclear...

With Eric Shonkwiler.  Amidst intensifying climate change, the re-emergence of fascism, and the approach of economic and environmental collapse, 'prepping' has truly emerged from the margins into the mainstream. For the political right, prepping often begins and ends at home – with buckets of freeze-dried food and a wall of guns. But what about for those of us on the left? As Eric Shonkwiler argue...

With Russell Warfield.  The election of Zack Polanski to the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales in 2025 caused a political earthquake. Polanski's first year of leadership transcended the wildest expectations of his supporters: quadrupling the party membership, doubling its polling, winning its first ever parliamentary by-election to return a fifth MP, and delivering the Greens' str...

Over the last three years Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza's healthcare, education and agricultural infrastructure. It has deliberately targeted medical workers, journalists, academics and children, in its effort to erase the past, and destroy the future of the Palestinian people. Israel's genocide in Gaza could have been prevented, but our political leaders chose to participate instead. T...

With Lara Sheehi.  This month, we are joined on the podcast by Lara Sheehi, author of From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures . As Sophie Lewis writes, “this book embodies a despecialized psychoanalytic praxis of revolutionary anticolonialism that is genuinely worthy of the name ‘Fanon.’ ... Lara Sheehi lays her finger directly on the myriad ‘intrusions’ designed t...

With Julio Linares.  To change the world, we need a money revolution. Yet the debate over money has been dominated by two perspectives: those free-market capitalists who want money to rule everything, and those who want to use the state to harness money's power.  In his new book, Decolonizing Money: The Promise of Abolishing the US Dollar , Julio Linares presents a bold, democratic theory of money...

With Rayelle Davis.  If the United States is in a state of decline, then at the thin end of the wedge sits Appalachia, one of the country’s most deprived regions, mythologized by outsiders and misunderstood the world over. Embedded as a therapist within this community, Rayelle Davis frames the addiction, suicide, and “diseases of despair” that plague the region as a consequence of cultural trauma,...

With Adam Johnson.   As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But mainstream media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick “war on terror” framework. We're joined on show this month by A...

Economic inequality is rampant, the climate crisis is at its tipping point. Fascists are poised to take power, or already hold it. It feels like the amount of work needed to overcome these injustices is too much to handle. But what if there is a way to lower the threshold to action? We are joined on the show by Nani Jansen Reventlow, author of Radical Justice: Building the World We Need , who argu...

Growing up, journalist Shahed Ezaydi was often asked how she could call herself a feminist and still practise her faith. It’s a question that reveals a deeper issue that Muslim women often face: being ignored in feminist spaces entirely, or cast as passive victims in need of being saved. Shahed joins us on the show for a conversation about her new book The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms M...

With Dr Sohail Jannesari. In this episode we look at the intersecting worlds of sanctuary-seeking and mental health. We consider how refugees, asylum seekers and other people on the move don’t just survive displacement, but rather build strength, community, and new ways of coping that challenge everything we know about mental health.  We talk about the global apartheid of borders, how histories of...

With Jessica den Outer.  For centuries, our legal systems have treated nature as something to be owned and exploited, for human gain. In recent decades, the tenor of conversation may have shifted towards conservation and protection, but nature remains an object. The environmental laws, treaties and international agreements we enact have little impact; ecosystems continue to collapse, global temper...

With Christopher Zeichmann.   In his new book, Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings , Christopher Zeichmann takes us on a unique journey in search of anarchy, statelessness, and social experimentation in the Graeco-Roman world. We meet communities of escaped slaves, pirates, and religious sects—all of whom sought a more egalitarian way of life that avoi...

With Kai Heron, Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell.  Capitalism has created a world of bullsh*t abundance and artificial scarcity, where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do. The system’s pursuit of profits has put us on a collision course with social and ecological limits that can no longer be ignored. It’s clear we need an alternative, and liberal visions of green cap...

With Laura C. Forster and Joel White. What draws people into political movements? And what sustains us, in the face of defeat, infiltration and state repression? For the authors of Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everyday Solidarities , friendship is an undertheorised, but vital piece of the puzzle, and full of revolutionary potential.  In this episode we are joined by Laura C. Forster a...

With Paul Lashmar and Luke Daniels. In this episode we talk about the new book Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery , and the growing international movement for reparations. Paul Lashmar and Luke Daniels discuss the journalistic investigation into the Drax family’s extensive landholdings and wealth, in Britain and Barbados; the economic, polit...

With Stewart Home.  Legend of counterculture, Stewart Home, joins us on the podcast to talk about his new book, Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness . Stewart is in conversation with Pluto's Patrick Hughes. Patrick is a veteran of the book trade who helped establish AK Press in the United States in the early 1990s. He has published and engaged with...

With Alana Lentin. In this episode we discuss the ways in which racial capitalism reproduces itself. Beyond the distracting framings of culture wars and moral panics, Alana Lentin shows how, from Australia to the USA, the attacks on Black, Indigenous and anticolonial thought and praxis reveal the processes through which racial colonial rule is ideologically resecured.  We discuss the 'whitelash' a...

With Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon. The USA locks up more migrants in its immigration detention facilities than any other country in the world. Already operating over capacity, the Trump administration has ramped up its campaign of immigration raids, allegedly instructing ICE to hit quotas of 3,000 arrests a day. The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ will, if approved by the Senate, appropriate tens of...

With H. L. T. Quan and Dylan Rodríguez. This is the final installment of our three-part mini series, 'Beyond the Ballot Box', which explores some of the major political currents in US politics today. Chris Browne and James Kelly are joined by H. L. T. Quan and Dylan Rodríguez for a conversation about life in times of fascism. We explore concepts such as state addiction, anti-democracy, ungovernabi...

With Jacob Stringer. We are joined on the show by Jacob Stringer, a housing and social movements researcher and organiser, and the author of Renters Unite: How Tenant Unions Are Fighting the Housing Crisis . We discuss the many local and international dimensions to housing crisis in countries across the Global North. We talk about why simply building more houses isn’t enough, and explore some of t...

With Max Haiven. In this special episode of Radicals in Conversation, we take a first look at the new board game, Billionaires & Guillotines, in which players take on the role of 2-5 rival plutocrats vying to grab the wealth of the world before their actions trigger a revolution where they all lose … a lot more than their assets. Chris Browne is joined on the show by Max Haiven, the game's des...

With Nicholas Mirzoeff.  Content Warning: Sexual abuse In this episode we discuss the new book, To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7. Nicholas Mirzoeff shares how experiences of domestic, political and sexual violence - in both his family history and his own childhood - have shaped his understanding of events since October 7th. He talks about what it means to identify...

With Alan Sears. In this episode we discuss the new book, Eros and Alienation: Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities. Alan Sears lays out his expansive understanding of key ideas like labour, alienation, social reproduction, and eroticism. We discuss 'erotic enclosure' in 19th century industrial capitalism, bodily discipline and identity formation at work and in school; how state socia...

With Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift. In our first episode of 2025, we discuss the themes of the new book, Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds . We talk about what is entailed by trans and femme practices, the value of critical theory, and how trans liberation moves beyond the liberal call for rights. We discuss solidarity, abolitionism, and why it’s vital to sit wit...