Down to the Struts

We’re back in your feeds with an exciting new episode. Qudsiya had the opportunity to sit down with our incredibly talented digital media manager, and the newest member of our team,  Amaranthia Sepia  and her mom,  Claire Jones . Together, Amaranthia and Claire founded  Sista Creatives Rising , a one hundred percent virtual project that centers, showcases, and funds primarily homebound, BIPOC, and...

We’ve reached the end of our arts and media mini series, and we’re excited to leave you with this lovely Episode featuring Kayla Hamilton, founder of the cultural organization, Circle O. Kayla talks about her view of disability as method—The idea that the lived experience of disability is its own form of artistic expression. She explains that the ways in which our disabled bodies and minds move th...

Disability news is everywhere. And, for more than 200 additions, Peter Torres Fremlin’s Disability Debrief  newsletter has brought us that news from around the world, providing a vital lens into the policies, politics, and lived experiences of disability communities from Brazil, to Bangladesh, to Nigeria, and beyond. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Peter about the secret sauc...

July 26th marked the 36th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As we’ve talked about many times on this podcast, the ADA was no doubt, a major milestone for accessibility and the inclusion of disabled people in social, economic, and civic life. But there is still so much work to do, including in the music industry, where the inaccessibility of performance venues and a...

In addition to making media accessible and centering disabled storytelling through podcasting and other creative forms, it is essential that we make visible the views of disabled people on critical issues of the day. In this important conversation with Sara Luterman of the 19th, we discussed Sara’s reporting on a first of its kind poll by Data for Progress about disabled people’s views on abortion...

When Qudsiya spoke with Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid back in Season 4, they were on the precipice of launching a new project with the support of our beloved disabled ancestor, Alice Wong to bring more disabled creatives into the world of podcasting. Since then, Thomas and Cheryl launched  Pod Access , a hub for disabled podcasters, including a  library  of disabled led podcasts, a  skill share  pl...

It’s Disability Pride Month, and we’re continuing our trip down memory lane with a brand new mini series featuring past podcast conversations with leaders who have reshaped arts and media through the lens of disability. The Trump administration continues to threaten the erasure of disabled people from American society, most recently by  calling into question  a decades-old Supreme Court precedent...

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! We have a very special episode on Qudsiya’s first mother’s day as a mom. Down to the Struts collaborated with the ladies of Babies Down, Bottles Up, a podcast about blind parenting featured in our feed last week. Qudsiya, Josselyn, Kisha, and Terrin had a fascinating conversation over their favorite beverages about how the law treats disabled parents,...

We’re back with the final installment of our mini series featuring some fabulous disability podcasts that the team has been enjoying lately. Here at Down to the Struts, we explore disability, design, and intersectionality, including the multitude of identities each of us holds and how they shape—and are shaped by—the world around us. A new identity for Qudsiya showed up when she became a parent wi...

We’re back with the second installment of our mini series featuring a small selection of other must-listen disability podcasts. This week, we’re exploring a new aspect of disability culture from our friends at Proud stutter. Proud Stutter is a podcast about changing how we understand and talk about stuttering. In this episode, host Maya Chupkov chats with Ina Lalich, a San Francisco-raised, multil...

We’re back in your feeds for another mini series. This time, we’ll be featuring three other disability podcasts that are must-listens. First up is Crip Crap. Crip Crap was established in late 2021 as a container for producing and advancing disability media. It was created by Kennedy Healy, a white, fat, queer crip Writer and media maker, and Justin Cooper, a Black visual artist and disability advo...

We’re wrapping up our Immigration Mini Series with some brand new content, brought to you by our friends from Unseen. In January 2026, Qudsiya joined forces once more With Unseen’s impact campaign to conduct a know your rights presentation specifically for disabled immigrants, so they can understand and assert their rights during encounters with ICE. This episode of the Unseen podcast includes vit...

The targeting and exclusion of disabled immigrants in the U.S. is not new. It is a centuries old system rooted in ableism, racism, xenophobia, and eugenics. In honor of disability pride month during July of 2025, we broadcast this powerful audio essay by disability activist and blind educator, Conchita Hernandez Legorreta, about how disability and immigration affected her and her family’s lives. M...

In this fourth installment of our Immigration Mini Series, we’re revisiting Qudsiya’s conversation with Set Hernandez, creator of the award winning documentary film "unseen," and the film’s protagonist, Pedro. Despite the headlines about mass deportation and ICE’s draconian enforcement practices, and the many conversations among advocates and policymakers about the need to reform our bro...

This week, our immigration mini series takes a slightly different angle on the relationship between disability and immigration. We as a country have  spent the last year grappling with the Trump administration’s hateful and xenophobic rhetoric about immigrants, who have been framed as dangerous criminals and burdens on American society. But it’s important to remember that immigrants have been, and...

In the next installment of our immigration mini series, we’re rebroadcasting the episode, “Empowering disabled refugees,” with Mustafa Rfat from Season 6. Since coming into office, the Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement, strangled the asylum process, set the lowest refugee admissions cap ever, issued travel bans for immigrants coming from dozens of countries, and eliminated vi...

As the Trump administration Continues to unleash Immigration officers into our communities from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, to murder and terrorize undocumented people and citizens alike, we wanted to highlight the specific dangers that disabled immigrants face, and the disabling impacts of ICE enforcement and detention in this very special mini series on the intersection of immigration and disabi...

After Alice's passing late last week, we wanted to reshare Qudsiya's conversation with her. Alice Wong was a disabled activist, author and podcaster behind “Disability Visibility,” and the first person Qudsiya reached out to for advice on podcasting. In their conversation, Alice tells Qudsiya what she’s learned about the visibility of the disabled experience in media and culture, and her d...

To wrap up our 10th season, we’re delighted to share the second part of Qudsiya’s conversation with Blind Birder extraordinaire, Jerry Berrier. In the second half of their chat, Jerry introduced Qudsiya to the vast diversity of birdsong, including particular birds he enjoys listening to in his local area in Massachusetts, plus lots of fun facts about birds and their behavior. He also shared severa...

This Disability Pride Month isn’t just about celebrating the disability community: it marks a season of resistance. Our very existence is under threat, from drastic cuts to the social safety net, to vile attacks on the autistic community, a full-on assault on transgender lives, and the terrorizing of immigrants. But this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that those who face oppressio...

We have a few more surprises in store for you this season, including this very special, two-part bonus episode. Qudsiya sat down with Jerry Berrier. Jerry is a member of  Birdability.org , an organization dedicated to making birding accessible to all. He is also a member of the Bay State Council of the Blind. Jerry and Qudsiya explored the world of blind birding, chatted about Jerry’s work to deve...

For our season finale, we'll travel across continents for Qudsiya’s conversation with Priti Salian, a journalist, media consultant, and trainer based in Bengaluru, India. Priti’s work focuses on gender equality, disability, and inclusion through the lens of human rights and solutions based journalism. She is the creator of the acclaimed newsletter  Reframing Disability . Priti and Qudsiya disc...

Over the last few episodes, we've talked about disability rights, history, the law, and intersectional movement building. Today we're going to dive into another important aspect of the disability experience—disability culture. We'll listen in on Qudsiya’s conversation with Dagny Brown and Mika Weissbuch, two of the three co-directors of the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center, or...

This episode explores how disability justice relates to the ongoing pursuit of justice for transgender communities, who are increasingly under threat in the US and many other countries. We'll listen in on Qudsiya’s conversation with Ericka Dixon and Sebastian Margaret of the Transgender Law Center's  Disability Project . They discuss how we can build cross movement solidarity between trans...

This week, Qudsiya speaks with Professor Jamelia Morgan, an award-winning and acclaimed scholar and teacher at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she also directs the  Center for Racial and Disability Justice . Professor Morgan's work focuses on the intersection of race, gender, disability, and criminal law and punishment. Qudsiya and Jamelia talked about her personal path to study...