Transcripts
As of December 20, 2025, Death Panel is supported by 1,991 paid Patreon members. Our goal is to reach 2500 patrons—at which point we can reliably publish full transcripts for every main feed episode as a standard part of the show.
Right now, transcripts are available for select episodes. We are steadily working through the back and current catalog of releases, but our capacity to make the show fully accessible is shaped by material conditions—not a lack of interest or commitment.
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Covid Year Five (12/23/24)
We present our 2024 year in review, taking a look back at the last year in the ongoing social and political consequences of normalizing the covid pandemic and rushing to bring the federal covid response to a close.
Extended Teaser - Covid Year Five (12/23/24)
We present our 2024 year in review, taking a look back at the last year in the ongoing social and political consequences of normalizing the covid pandemic and rushing to bring the federal covid response to a close.
The Promise and Perils of Wastewater Data w/ Betsy Ladyzhets (08/29/24)
Death Panel podcast host Beatrice Adler-Bolton, speaks with Betsy Ladyzhets of The Sick Times about what wastewater surveillance does—and doesn’t—tell us about the level of covid spread and how the rise of covid wastewater monitoring fits inside the larger picture of the privatization of both covid risk and covid data.
The Rise of Mask Bans (06/20/24)
Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant and Phil Rocco 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.
On NPR’s “Wrestling with my husband's fear of getting COVID again” (03/18/24)
Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant and Jules Gill-Peterson discuss a recent piece in NPR, “Wrestling with my husband's fear of getting COVID again,” which presents avoiding covid both as the product of unreasonable “anxiety” and as something immunocompromised people should let go of lest their loved ones consider abandoning them.
“Unmasking Mobs and Criminals” (05/23/24)
Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant and Jules Gill-Peterson 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 fight for Palestinian liberation.
Policy-Based Evidence Making w/ Jane Thomason (03/14/24)
Death Panel podcast host Beatrice Adler-Bolton speaks with Jane Thomason of National Nurses United (NNU) about the CDC’s recent abrupt decision to drop its 5-day covid isolation guidance and the latest developments in the campaign to stop the CDC from dramatically weakening infection control practices in healthcare settings.
CDC Says: Back to Work (02/15/24)
Death Panel podcast hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant and Abby Cartus discuss this week’s news that the CDC is planning to drop its covid isolation guidelines, and how the proposed change is emblematic of the Biden administration’s long running practice of undoing pandemic policies as a form of labor disciple.
#N95s4UCSF w/ Alice Wong (02/01/24)
Death Panel podcast host Beatrice Adler-Bolton speaks with Alice Wong about Alice's campaign to reinstate a mask mandate at UCSF, a hospital system home to a number of physicians who have played an outsized, deleterious, role in advocating for a premature end to covid protections.
Unmaking the Pandemic Welfare State (01/18/24)
Death Panel podcast co-hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Phil Rocco discuss how recent claims that Biden has tried to bring about “the largest expansion of the welfare state in a half century” ignore his track record of ending every last pandemic welfare program.
Covid Year Four (12/12/23)
Death Panel podcast co-hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Phil Rocco, Jules Gill-Peterson and Abby Cartus present their 2023 year in review, taking a look back at the last year of major social and political developments that worked to normalize covid in 2023.
Economic Endemicity Blue (12/07/23)
As we prepare to record "Covid Year Four," Death Panel podcast co-hosts Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Abby Cartus discuss what is left of national covid data following the end of the public health emergency, how what's left has become so thoroughly abstracted, and how the CDC prioritizes representing deaths as an abstract percentage even as the official death count has been over 1,000 a week since August.
DP x S23: How Capitalism Kills: Social Murder and Covid-19 (Session 2)
Death Panel podcast collaborated with the organizers of the Socialism Conference to put together five sessions at this year’s conference on the political economy of health and disability. In this session, "How Capitalism Kills: Social Murder and Covid-19," Death Panel podcast co-hosts, Artie Vierkant and Abby Cartus, are joined by friend of the panel and historian, Nate Holdren, to discuss Friedrich Engels’ concept of “social murder,” the structural forces within capitalism that abandon populations to injury, debility, and premature death, and how social murder is a key component of capitalism, not merely a side effect.
How the CDC Could Further Weaken Infection Control w/ Jane Thomason (08/17/23)
Death Panel Podcast co-host Beatrice Adler-Bolton speaks with Jane Thomason of National Nurses United (NNU) about troubling new guidance changes the CDC is considering implementing that would further weaken infection control guidance and put healthcare workers and patients at risk.
"The Sociological Production of the End of the Pandemic" (02/04/21)
With the public health emergency declaration ending today, May 11th, we turn back the clock to early 2021, mere days into the Biden presidency, and the moment it became clear the US was going to "end the pandemic" not by stopping covid, but by re-narrating its social and political meaning.
Social Determinants of Health (Unlocked)
The Panel, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Phil Rocco and Abby Cartus, discuss the meaning and history of "the social determinants of health"—all of the social and political factors that impact individual and population health beyond what healthcare traditionally focuses on—and what becomes possible when we recognize that health is political. This episode was originally a patron exclusive.
Who Has the Tools? w/ Justin Feldman (08/18/22)
Justin Feldman joins the Panel, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Phil Rocco, to talk through the latest downgrade to the CDC's covid guidelines and Ashish Jha's statement this week that the Biden administration is aiming for covid vaccines and therapeutics to be kicked to the private market starting in the fall.
Outdoor Transmission w/ Dr. Theresa Chapple
Beatrice Adler-Bolton speaks with epidemiologist Dr. Theresa Chapple about how seemingly everyone became convinced that you can't catch covid outdoors, common misconceptions about the pandemic driven by an overwhelming focus on individual risk assessment, and lessons from her work in the field during the first two years of COVID.
Covid Year Two (12/13/2021)
Death Panel co-hosts, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Phil Rocco, review the year 2021 in the U.S. covid response, and the profound miscalculations on the part of the government and the media that have played a direct role in keeping this crisis ongoing. While this episode is retrospective, we have covered the pandemic quite closely day in day out since March 2020. If you’d like to listen to some of shows we released reacting in real time to some of the events described in Covid Year Two; start with our episodes “Meaning Production at 500,000 Dead” from February, “A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” from July, “Operation Enduring Virus” from September, or “Bracing for the Wave” from December. Suffice it to say it has been a terrible year.
This episode was originally a patron exclusive posted December 13th. If you enjoy this episode and want to help us work towards our goal of being able to offer transcripts for more of our episodes, consider supporting the show at patreon.com/deathpanelpod!