Death Panel

Beatrice and Jules mark the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with a discussion of just how limited the law is compared with how it's portrayed, how to understand the ADA as part of the broader story of welfare state retrenchment in the 1980s and 1990s, and the broader story of how it got this way. Transcript: https://www.deathpanel.net/transcripts/the-ada-as-welfare-reform...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/108630596 Beatrice, Artie and Phil discuss Biden’s decision to step down, break down last week’s Republican National Convention, and how fitting it is that the last straw in Biden’s reelection campaign was a covid infection. Get Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-com...

Bea, Artie and Jules discuss pundit speculation about Biden’s age and cognitive ability and the history of the relationship between bodily capacity and definitions of the “body politic.” This episode was originally released for Death Panel patrons on February 26th, 2024. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Transcript f...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/108202947 Beatrice, Artie and Jules discuss the Trump assassination attempt before diving into the weeks-long discourse on whether Biden should step down and the many assumptions and conjectures being made about Biden’s health and capacity. Find the earlier episode referenced at the top of t...

We tell the story of Section 504, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation for disabled people in the US. In Part One, we look at the politics leading up to the 504 sit-in and how the implementation of Section 504 very nearly didn't happen because of concerns that it would be "too expensive." In Part Two, our story continues with a look at the sit-in action itself—the longest occupation of a f...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/107751168 Beatrice speaks with Sunaura Taylor about how industrial pollution and systemic abandonment produce networks of disability among people, animals, and what she calls “injured landscapes;” how one community in Arizona organized against longstanding environmental pollution from arms m...

This episode was originally released for Death Panel patrons on October 23rd, 2023. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice speaks with Brian Nam-Sonenstein about two recent briefs he wrote for Prison Policy Initiative focused on a few key intersections of housing, disability, incarceration, and the administrative...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/107278315 Beatrice and Jules are joined by Charlie Markbreiter to discuss how liberals dismiss protest as merely “performative”—youthful, “inauthentic,” or “virtue signaling”—and how allegations of performativity turn the act of politics into a problem of optics and manners. Get Health Commu...

Beatrice speaks with Maryam Jamshidi about a number of new laws, and amendments to existing laws enacted at the onset of the war on terror, that Congress is currently drafting in order to crack down on actions in support of Palestinian liberation. We talk through what these laws do, how they target actions like the solidarity encampments seen at Universities this spring, and how they reveal the tr...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/106825394 Beatrice, Artie and Abby discuss a recent piece by Freddie deBoer in New York Magazine that attempts to present a "left" case for supporting involuntary commitment policies and the expansion of the carceral state—claiming that “the disability activist community and their enablers i...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/106371913 Beatrice, Artie and Abby discuss the recent resurgence of debates over social distancing guidance in 2020 and 2021 brought on by former NIH Director Anthony Fauci’s comment to Congress that six feet of social distancing “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” We talk th...

Beatrice, Artie and Phil discuss New York Democrats’ plan to ban masks on the subway and beyond, and take a close look at the latest updates on North Carolina’s anti-mask bill HB237, “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” which state lawmakers managed to make significantly worse since we last talked about it on the show at the end of May. Transcript: www.deathpanel.net/transcripts/rise-of-mask-bans Find...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105955239 Beatrice and Jules are joined by Sophie Lewis to discuss how last month NYU disciplined students involved in Palestine solidarity encampments by compelling them to write confessional “reflection papers” and complete so-called “Integrity Modules,” a series of exercises designed by “...

This episode was originally released for Death Panel patrons on April 22nd. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice speaks with Micah Khater about her award winning article on the intersection of race, disability, and incarceration in the southern US in the early 20th century, and her work documenting the history...

Beatrice, Abby and Phil discuss a recent article by The Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood that went viral for its assertion that, in the context of the genocide in Palestine, “it is possible to kill children legally.” We take a close look at the piece and how the rest of the surrounding argument uses a veneer of data “objectivity” to mask its underlying idea: that Palestinian death statistics cann...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105522184 Beatrice and Phil speak with Melissa Gira Grant about how it came to be that abortion politics are spoken of as the hinge point of the 2024 election—with some pundits confidently predicting the outcome will come down to Biden’s promise to “restore Roe”—and yet at the same time the...

This episode was originally released for Death Panel patrons on March 18th 2024, and quickly became one of our most widely requested unlocks. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice, Artie and Jules discuss a recent piece in NPR, “Wrestling with my husband's fear of getting COVID again,” which presents avoiding co...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105055097 Beatrice and Abby discuss last night’s horrific assault on Rafah, liberal handwringing that the bombings may have been somehow “justified”—or that, in the words of one Atlantic writer, in these circumstances “it is possible to kill children legally”—and how events like this have la...

Beatrice, Artie and Jules discuss the recent push by state and local governments to criminalize masking in public space, in some cases introducing new legislation to make existing anti-mask laws more severe, and take a close look at HB237, “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals,” a bill currently being debated in North Carolina that perfectly illustrates the links between covid activism, abolition, and the...

Every Monday we release an extra full episode just for patrons; this week we've chosen to make today's patron episode public in hopes that it encourages people to donate to Gaza Muni (link below). Death Panel is entirely listener supported, so to support our work and get a second episode every week and our entire back catalogue, go to https://www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice and Abby discuss...

Beatrice and Jules speak with historian Jiya Pandya about how the Bhopal gas leak—often described as the worst industrial disaster in living memory—continues to be an unchecked crisis 40 years later, what it teaches us about how to respond to more recent crises, and how organizers here in the US can get in touch with Bhopal survivor activists who will be coming to the US later this fall. Transcrip...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104189586 Beatrice, Artie, Phil and Abby discuss how, as of May 1st, hospitals in the US are no longer required to report covid hospitalization data to the federal government, the enormous information gap that leaves in an already opaque covid data landscape, and the set of questions the pan...

Beatrice speaks with Tracy Rosenthal about the pending Supreme Court ruling that could dramatically strip the rights of unhoused people in the US, how politicians frequently invoke a rhetoric of “care” to promote expansions of the carceral system, and how the laws at the center of this Supreme Court case are the same being used to police and sweep solidarity encampments across the US. Transcript:...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103758145 Beatrice and Phil speak with legal scholars Karen Tani and Katie Eyer about how the Supreme Court used cases related to disability and deinstitutionalization in the 1970s and 1980s as an opportunity to remake and expand its own powers, the role that these cases had in securing cons...

Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103298391 Beatrice, Jules and Artie discuss the findings, impact, and fallout of “The Cass Review,” the recently released 388 page NHS-commissioned report that has led media figures across the political spectrum to proclaim that the evidence supporting transition for young people is flawed....