The first cut on this record has been cross-format focused for airplay success.

The men beat on their drums. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. You know what I'm going to be. Hello and welcome to another episode of Politics Theory Other, a podcast from Tribune magazine.

My name is Alex Doherty and my guest today is Leia Ipie. We talked about her new book,

Free, Coming of Age at the End of History, which tells Leia's story of growing up in Stalinist

Albania, the end of Communist Party rule in 1990, and the country slide into violent chaos in 1997.

We talked about Albania's isolation during the Cold War,

after schisms with first the Soviet Union and then with China, and how the regime made sense of

Albania's place in the world. We also talked about Leah's childhood and her reaction to learning

that her parents were not the communist true believers she'd thought them to be.

And finally, we discussed Leah's views on what liberalisation meant for the country,

and why her experience of the post-communist transition left her profoundly sceptical about liberal notions of what constitutes a truly free society.

Today's show is brought to you by PTO's supporters on Patreon and also by Verso Books,

who have lots of great titles that may be of interest to PTO listeners.

One that you might like to check out is The Anthropocene Unconscious by Mark Bold.

Today's movies, television and novels are pregnant with catastrophe, extreme weather, rising waters,

and climate weirdness. From the novel, Ducks Newberry Report, to zombie movies and the fast and

furious franchise, the Anthropocene is to be found bubbling away everywhere. It has become

Mark Bold argues the central subject of our collective unconscious.

Described by China Myeville as a scintillating work of boisterous melancholy, the Anthropocene

Unconscious Climate Catastrophe Culture by Mark Bold is out now from Verso Books and is one of their

selected reads for the Verso Book Club.

And now to today's interview.

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