
Some People Need Killing
A Memoir of Murder in My Country
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Narrated by:
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Patricia Evangelista
About this listen
TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Patricia Evangelista’s searing account is not only the definitive chronicle of a reign of terror in the Philippines, but a warning to the rest of the world about the true dangers of despotism—its nightmarish consequences and its terrible human cost.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain
“Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated
“A journalistic masterpiece”—David Remnick, The New Yorker
For six years, journalist Patricia Evangelista documented killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of then president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs—a crusade that led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of terror created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.
The book takes its title from the words of a vigilante, which demonstrated the psychological accommodation many across the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”
A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist.
WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE AND THE MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, The Mary Sue
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Critic reviews
“A journalistic masterpiece . . . One of the most remarkable pieces of narrative nonfiction I have read in a long, long time.”—David Remnick, The New Yorker
“Evangelista makes us feel the fear and grief that she felt as she chronicled what Duterte was doing to her country. But appealing to our emotions is only part of it; what makes this book so striking is that she wants us to think about what happened, too. She pays close attention to language, and not only because she is a writer. Language can be used to communicate, to deny, to threaten, to cajole. Duterte’s language is coarse and degrading. Evangelista’s is evocative and exacting.”—The New York Times
“Riveting . . . Evangelista’s book is an extraordinary testament to half a decade of state-sanctioned terror. It’s also a timely warning for the state of democracy.”—The Atlantic
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Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
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How to Say Babylon
- A Memoir
- By: Safiya Sinclair
- Narrated by: Safiya Sinclair
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.
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The ability of Safia to both tell a gut wrenching story while making beautiful art with her words.
- By Grandchampion on 07-21-24
By: Safiya Sinclair
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Private Revolutions
- Four Women Face China's New Social Order
- By: Yuan Yang
- Narrated by: Crystal Yu, Gabby Wong, Kae Alexander, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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While serving as the deputy Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, Chinese-British journalist Yuan Yang began to notice common threads in the lives of her Chinese peers—women born during China’s turn toward capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s, who, despite the country's enormous economic gains during their lifetimes, were coming up against deeply entrenched barriers as they sought to achieve financial stability. This transporting and indelible book traces the journey of four such women as they try to make better lives for themselves and their families in the new Chinese economy.
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Insightful window
- By Shauna on 04-07-25
By: Yuan Yang
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Toxic Exposure
- The True Story Behind the Monsanto Trials and the Search for Justice
- By: Chadi Nabhan MD MBA FACP
- Narrated by: Chadi Nabhan MD MBA FACP
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, Monsanto declared that their product Roundup, the world’s most widely used weed killer, was safe. But that all changed in 2015, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) analyzed data from scientific studies and concluded that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was probably carcinogenic. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disagreed, other regulatory agencies got involved, and scientists clamored to understand the link between glyphosate and cancer.
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What an amazing story
- By Adam Bachan on 07-20-23
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By the Fire We Carry
- The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
- By: Rebecca Nagle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Nagle
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation’s earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later.
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So great to see the full story after This Land pod
- By S. Armor on 04-12-25
By: Rebecca Nagle
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Fire Weather
- A True Story from a Hotter World
- By: John Vaillant
- Narrated by: Alan Carlson
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.
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Fire and Brimstone
- By Barbara J Williams on 01-06-24
By: John Vaillant
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Judgment at Tokyo
- World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
- By: Gary J. Bass
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 31 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march.
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Biased revisionist history
- By Amazon Customer on 12-31-23
By: Gary J. Bass
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Tokyo Vice
- An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
- By: Jake Adelstein
- Narrated by: Jake Adelstein
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.
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Memoir, crime story and travelogue in one package
- By Steven on 02-07-10
By: Jake Adelstein
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The Woman They Could Not Silence
- One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Kate Moore
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of 21 years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
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Everyone should read this!
- By Lana S on 12-22-21
By: Kate Moore
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Code Dependent
- Living in the Shadow of AI
- By: Madhumita Murgia
- Narrated by: Madhumita Murgia
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.
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very left wing
- By Terry lillo on 10-21-24
By: Madhumita Murgia
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The Maniac
- By: Benjamin Labatut
- Narrated by: Gergo Danka, Eva Magyar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
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Gergo Danka and Eva Magyar are excellent narrators
- By Barbara S on 11-04-23
By: Benjamin Labatut
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The Vaster Wilds
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
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Slow torture written too hastily
- By Jennifer on 09-23-23
By: Lauren Groff
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I Shouldn't Be Telling You This
- (But I'm Going to Anyway)
- By: Chelsea Devantez
- Narrated by: Chelsea Devantez
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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There are things Chelsea Devantez probably shouldn’t be telling you. Many of them are in this book: some are embarrassing (like when she tried to break her three year spell of celibacy using a guide of seduction tips). Some are confessional (getting sentenced to the “hell hill” at Mormon church camp). Some are TMI (a series of outrageous doctor visits that ended with one doctor misdiagnosing her as “pregnant.” Woopsies!).
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A large missing piece
- By F. Pryne on 06-18-24
By: Chelsea Devantez
What listeners say about Some People Need Killing
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- JoeGato57
- 11-27-24
Brilliant!
Fascinatingly eerie, unbelievably palpable, brilliantly written and wonderfully narrated by author - Patricia Evangelista! And it’s all true. Thank you Ms. Evangelista for writing a magnificent book honoring the people who were killed, for consoling and mourning and at the same time giving a voice and celebrating the lives of the families, friends and bystanders who witnessed the atrocities under the rule of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
If anything, I hope we learn from your book to choose our future leaders a lot wiser.
The best book I’ve read in years.
Unforgettable!
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- Brecht
- 05-28-24
Great book
Interesting subject matter, well written. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about that era in the Philipines.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-06-24
A very brave and informative story
I highly recommend as a read especially to the younger Filipino generation. This is very enlightening
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- Elmer
- 10-07-24
What I hope stays in the past.
Excellent account of the drug wars in the Philippines before, during, and after the Duterte years as president (2016-2022). He created a local form of crime-stopping as Mayor of Davao City, later, as president, expanded it nationally, and later, belatedly, spawned a corrupt police force acting in his spirit but without his endorsement.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-03-24
Moving and Informative
Evangelista explains the political system in the Philippines both historically and contemporarily as well as the societal structures that shape the people and players of that system. She intertwines individual lives and emotions of those impacted by the politics in the Philippines quite powerfully.
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- keysi
- 07-07-24
Insight into the cost of fixing a big problem...
and the moral quandrum that one must face in its execution. As I have listened to this book I've looked up YouTube articles about Duterte and the Philippines. People there still largely love the man for what he did. It's crazy to think that over reach and abuse of power is still more tolerable than the rot and decay drug and drug dealers bring to a society.
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- Connor
- 07-14-24
A Modern Tale of Government Endorsed Violence
Now I had long heard of the Phillipines’ Rodrigo Duterte, but only really known him as a “Trump-esque” type of political figure. One of the political leaders who likes to play off of machismo and the “peoples president” calling card where they shoot from the hip and give down to earth, strongman rebuttals in lieu of the typical milquetoast, cookie cutter political comments. However, this book shook me to the core to what this man really had transpire in his country, under his leadership. Ms. Evangelista tells a chilling tale of the lawless vigilantism encouraged under President Duterte, targeted at drug users and sellers. While I won’t argue that the use of illicit drugs shouldn’t have consequences, but extrajudicial executions by slack jaw beat cops and even posses of pissed of locals does not appear to be the answer to an addiction crisis. The gusto in which an acting, elected, head of state in the year 2016 calls for blood letting of his own people just seems so fictitious, but it actually happened! I really would recommend this book to just about anyone.
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- Lucille Thomas Menard
- 02-19-25
Her lilting voice and way she reads
What an amazing story told through a multitude of people about how easy it is to lose one’s humanity so quickly especially with a mildly charismatic leader. Evil man that Duderte was
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- Joseph Pangilinan
- 10-20-24
Courageus Patricia
Deserves a Palanca, no, a Pullitzwer prize. What a courageous journalist. May her teibe exist.
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- MOL
- 12-15-24
This book continues to haunt me.
Like any transplant living in another country, I have viewed the goings-on in the Philippines from a distance. I heard bits of news, from news media, comments from friends and relatives, acquaintances. Every so often, I read entire articles in some international news publication.
I thought I’d try to understand more why an ill-prepared unqualified autocrat would win to run a country. After all, we’re about to enter into yet repeat of one over here. The author had her answers, her rationale. And, as in anywhere in the earth, people vote the candidates into office for the most naive, inane, arbitrary, unrealistic reasons. Or sometimes, for no particular reason. And so, the country gets the leader it deserves.
But then, there’s the amplification of falsehoods, the steering of the conversation to favor carefully crafted narratives that tug at the heartstrings. So effective that one wonders why the better team does not adapt.
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