Ep. 242 Lurching from Disaster to Disaster with Steven W. Thrasher
The Stacks
Traci Thomas
4.8 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2022
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journalist and academic Steven W. Thrasher joins the show to discuss his eye-opening new book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. Steven explains the idea of the viral underclass - those most societally vulnerable to disease transmission - and the criminalization of the sick. We also discuss his comparison of COVID-19 and HIV responses throughout the book and his positionally as a Black and queer writer discussing disease.
The Stacks Book Club selection for November is Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law. We will discuss the book on November 30th with Mariame Kaba.
You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website: https://thestackspodcast.com/2022/11/23/ep-242-steven-w-thrasher
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you know what sucks really bad? |
| 0:02.3 | Missing out on tickets to the biggest tour of the year. |
| 0:06.8 | Not Taylor Swift, not Beyonce, but the live in the stacks tour. |
| 0:13.3 | We have only three stops left, so you need to grab your tickets now before you have major |
| 0:20.1 | FOMO for the rest of your life. |
| 0:22.7 | I will be in Washington, D.C. with Jason Reynolds on Sunday, September 24th. |
| 0:28.0 | I will be in New York City with KSA layman on Monday, September 25th, and you can find |
| 0:32.9 | me for the last stop of the tour on Wednesday, October 18th, with a few special guests which |
| 0:39.3 | we will announce real, real soon. |
| 0:42.2 | I promise you a night of big laps, hot takes, and more bookish conversation than you could |
| 0:47.6 | possibly imagine. |
| 0:49.8 | Tickets are selling fast, so head to the stackspodcast.com slash tour and get them before they're gone. |
| 0:57.5 | And I can't wait to see you live in the stacks. |
| 1:10.2 | Welcome to the stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. |
| 1:13.1 | I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today we are joined by Dr. Steven Thrasher. |
| 1:17.1 | Steven is an author, professor, and journalist who's written for publications ranging from |
| 1:21.3 | the village voice to the New York Times, from the Atlantic to Scientific American and |
| 1:25.7 | the Guardian, and many, many other publications. |
| 1:28.8 | Dr. Thrasher's new book is his first, it's called the viral underclass, the human toll |
| 1:33.4 | when inequality and disease collide, and it exposes the vast inequalities between those |
| 1:37.9 | who typically contract and survive viruses and those whom viruses more easily target and |
| 1:43.4 | kill. |
... |
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