Radicals in Conversation

The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy

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' against the teaching of histories of slavery and colonialism; the counterinsurgent capture and institutionalisation of antiracism, Indigeneity and decoloniality in the service of Zionism and settler colonialism; and how the 'war on antisemitism' re-forms white supremacism at an acute time of genocide.

The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy is out now from Pluto Press. Use the coupon 'PODCAST' for 40% off the book on plutobooks.com.

Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking up Migrants

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 billions of extra dollars for ICE, and immigration and border law enforcement more broadly. 

Without the facilities to house these detainees, thousands now face the imminent possibility of being removed to Guantanamo, or else held in new ‘soft-sided facilities’ where the already inadequate guidelines for detainee welfare will be watered down further, in order to expedite their creation.

We are joined on the show by Nancy Hiemstra and Deirdre Conlon, authors of Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking up Migrants. We discuss the ways immigration detention generates huge profits for some, while those detained are starved, sickened, and exploited as a matter of routine. We also talk about how immigration detention has expanded in 2025 under Trump, and the ways in which it can be resisted and dismantled.

Democratic Living in Times of Fascism

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, ungovernability and democratic living. We also touch on the work of Cedric Robinson, and what we can learn from Black abolition feminist praxis.

Become Ungovernable: An Abolition Feminist Ethic for Democratic Living is out now. Podcast listeners can get 40% off the book on plutobooks.com using the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

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H. L. T. Quan is a political theorist and an award-winning filmmaker. She is an Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Quan is the author of Growth Against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World and editor of Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance.

Dylan Rodríguez is a teacher, scholar, organizer and collaborator based at the University of California-Riverside, where he works in the Department of Black Study as well as the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. He is the author of a number of books including White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Tenant Unions Fighting the Housing Crisis

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 the injustices experienced by renters and those in temporary accommodation. We also talk about the new wave of tenant unions, and the ways in which their tactical and strategic orientations overlap and diverge, as a result of the context in which they’re organising.

Listeners of Radicals in Conversation can get 40% off the book on plutobooks.com. Enter the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

Billionaires and Guillotines: The Board Game

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 designer, for a conversation about its origins, development and gameplay. We also discuss the ways in which board games can play an important role in political education, and provide a much-needed space for connection and conviviality.

Back the project on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plutopress/billionaires-and-guillotines

Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

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 as an anti-Zionist Jew in the current moment, and how we can find new anticolonial ways of seeing that reject the drone’s-eye-view of ‘white sight’. We also discuss the evolving visual politics of Palestine solidarity, from watermelon emojis and AI-generated images, to the torn canvas of a portrait of Arthur Balfour.

Podcast listeners can get 40% off the book on plutobooks.com, using the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

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Among the founders of visual culture as a field, Nicholas Mirzoeff has also written extensively on Jewishness and Palestine. His books include How To See The World, The Right to Look and The Appearance of Black Lives Matter. He has written for the Guardian, Hyperallergic and The Nation. He lives in New York City.

Eros and Alienation: Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities

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 social policy has shifted, balancing the constraint and unleashing of desire, and forged hegemonic, heteronormative (and homonormative) gender regimes. We also look at nature and ecology, and what science fiction can offer us as we think through more revolutionary possibilities and practices around gender and sexuality.

Podcast listeners can get 40% off the book on plutobooks.com, using the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

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Alan Sears is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has been writing about queer Marxism for activist and scholarly audiences since the mid-1980s. He is an activist and author of several books including The Next New Left: A History of the Future. Alan resides in Toronto, Ontario.

Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds

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 with and work through complicity and friction within our movements.

Podcast listeners can get 40% off the book on plutobooks.com, using the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

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Nat Raha is a poet and Lecturer at Glasgow School of Art. She contributed to the collection Transgender Marxism. She has authored books of poetry, journal articles, and her writing has been translated into eight languages. She edits Radical Transfeminism zine.

Mijke van der Drift is Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. Mijke's work on ethics has appeared in various formats in journals, performances, and sound pieces. Mijke edits Radical Transfeminism zine.

Radicals in Conversation: 2024 Curated Highlights

Our 2024 roundup features curated highlights from episodes released throughout the year:

We speak to John Pring, about the British government’s Department for Work and Pensions, and its horrific work capability assessment. We speak to Robert Chapman, about why the neurodiversity movement emerged when it did, its successes, and the limitations of a liberal orientation under neoliberal capitalism. We speak to Rafeef Ziadah, Riya Al'Sanah and Katy Fox-Hoddess about international labour solidarity with Palestine, and the need to try and organise with workers inside the factories that are producing weapons bound for Israel. We also speak to Kalonji Jama Changa and Joy James about 'Cop Cities', and why the militarisation of policing necessitates a cognitive and strategic shift within our movements.

All the books featured on the show in 2024 are 40% off through plutobooks.com until the end of the year - use the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

You can browse the full list of eligible books at: plutobooks.com/podcastreading.

Beyond the Ballot Box: Pacification and Intergenerational Memory in Social Movements

With Peter Gelderloos and Vicky Osterweil.

Whether it is in the fight against police violence, ecological destruction, or any other manifestation of patriarchal white supremacy, time and again, the hard-earned lessons of past struggles seem to get forgotten. Our social movements are capable of generating significant momentum, moments of far-reaching revolt, but we suffer from a kind of amnesia - an inability to pass on lessons learned from one generation to the next. And so each new wave of activism starts from scratch, disconnected from the strategies, successes, and failures of those that came before.

In this episode, we discuss the strategic imposition of nonviolence and other pacification techniques used by the state. We talk about revolutionary imagination, mutual aid, and what gets left out of official histories of struggle, from the Civil Rights era to the George Floyd uprisings. We discuss the need to make space for both joy and grief in our movements, and the importance of physical place to building collective memory.

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Peter Gelderloos is a writer and social movement participant. He is the author of They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us: Forcing Nonviolence on Forgetful Movements, The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below, How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Non-Violence, and Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation.

Vicky Osterweil is a writer, worker and agitator based in Philadelphia. She is the author of In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action (Bold Type Books) and an upcoming book about Intellectual Property and the corporate domination of culture, The Extended Universe, which is due to be published by Haymarket in 2025.