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03rd April 2024

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 98

Presented by Emma Tracey

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EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We have an Easter treat for you this week because the podcast is given over to one very special guest. I mean, you have to be pretty special to get an entire episode to yourself. Have you guessed who it is?

MALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, nobody’s guessed who it is yet. Don’t say too much you, the other side of the room. And let’s get on with the show.

MUSIC-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Theme music.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello, and welcome to Access All, the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s podcast. We are out every week and we talk about disability and mental health. I’m Emma Tracey, coming at you from London. And thank you so much for listening to this very special Easter episode. And you’re welcome in to my interview with my very, very, very special guest. He is an academic, and he’s a researcher, and he’s an artist, and he’s an author, and he’s been around for, like, ever – well not ever, maybe since the ‘80s anyway. It is the incomparable Tom Shakespeare. Hello Tom.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello there, Emma.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’re so welcome to Access All. I can’t believe we’ve not had you on yet. We’re two years in now.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s slightly off-putting being here in the spotlight, but I’ll do my best.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You love the spotlight!

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, you could say that, but I don’t think I do. I prefer to be behind the scenes.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Do you, really?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah I think so. People think I’m full of ego but I don’t think I am.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, well that’s good to know. But you have been involved in so many different conversations about disability. You’ve written many, many academic books and papers, non-fiction. But the reason we’ve got you on just now is because your first novel has just been released.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, it’s just come out. It’s called The Ha-Ha, and it’s really a dream come true. It’s totally thrilling for me. You think I’ve seen everything, I haven’t, and being an author of my own is great.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And what’s the novel about then?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s about, funnily enough, a disabled guy [laughter] in a wheelchair, and he has friends and he has an accessible apartment and an accessible car. And guess what? There are no problems for him, beyond the usual problems of will he find somebody to fall in love with him and will he lead a good life; that’s all that matters to him.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And why did you decide to write about yourself, Tom?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s not me!

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs]

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s really not me. I am in a wheelchair so in that sense it is me, and there’s lots of experiences that I’ve had. It’s a satirical novel. And people are away for a weekend and they say oh yeah, we’d like the papers please, and they’re all non-disabled. And so our hero, Fred, goes down to the shop to get the papers, and I describe how to get into a car if you’re in a wheelchair, that is to say how to stow the wheelchair and how to drive away.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý In a nutshell, what’s the key to getting into a car and driving away?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh my goodness.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Especially if you’re angry, you’re coming out of an argument and you’re like, ‘I’m going, I’m leaving!’

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Take a deep breath, you open the door, you get in the front passenger seat, you wind the seat down, you put on the seatbelt so you don’t fall out, you lean over, you take the wheels off the wheelchair, you put them in the back, you take the chassis over, you wheel up, rotate the seat up to normal, you shut the door, you take off the seatbelt and you transfer across into the driving seat, you put the seatbelt on, and you drive away. And when you get there you have to reverse the process in order to get the wheelchair out and get on the road, or a pavement rather. And I describe what I’ve just described to you: get in the car, driving down, getting out of the car, little kids staring at him, getting the papers, getting back in the car, getting out the car, bringing the papers. And everybody says [bored voice] ‘Oh, thanks very much’.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I kind of hope that’s not all the novel’s about.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It isn’t, but I wanted to describe it in some detail. It’s not really funny but it is what we have to go through. There’s a lot of annoyances and frustrations which make life more, maybe more interesting, but certainly more difficult.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You have achondroplasia, you’re a short person. Well, how do you describe yourself nowadays? Because people describe themselves…

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, I am bald.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý [Laughs] how do you describe your height nowadays?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, I don’t know, I’m a restricted growth. But I have restricted growth or a short stature. Or if I’m in America [American accent] I’m a little person, which makes me sound like an elf.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you don’t really like little person?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No. You can call me what you like. I suppose I would say you might think of me as a dwarf.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I don’t think of you as a dwarf; I think of you as Tom Shakespeare.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No, but a stranger might. They’d say, ‘Oh he’s the short guy’.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, why didn’t you give Fred, your main character, achondroplasia as well?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Because it’s so rare. And maybe there’ll be another character who has. And it would be too like me. I wanted him to be not me, but a common disabled person. He’s broken his back. So, the whole thing about acquiring disability is funny and interesting because of course I had to, kind of, relearn disability when I became paralysed at the age of, I’m going to guess, 42.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Right, so that was a big…you were already, you were used to being…

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I was used to being disabled; I’d been short since I was born. But suddenly I was in a wheelchair. Suddenly I had all sorts of access barriers which I hadn’t dreamt of. But I’ll tell you one thing, people stopped staring at me. Because they tend to stare at people who look odd, but they’re kind of used to people in wheelchairs so they let you get on with it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, do you look more like a regular height person when you’re in a wheelchair then?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think so. You become invisible, it’s quite interesting. Anybody who’s got a very visible impairment who suddenly ends up in a wheelchair may also share that experience of becoming almost invisible. And I think that’s the problem, people just go, ‘Oh god, it’s another person in a wheelchair’. They don’t think of the person, they think of the wheelchair. I’ve been on trains and buses and planes where people say, ‘Oh there’s a wheelchair coming’. I’m not a f-ing wheelchair. I’m Tom. Don’t call me The Wheelchair.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you had new things to be annoyed about?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Oh, lots of things to be annoyed about; mainly other people’s idiocy. We’ve all been places where people are dying to help you and think you’re incapable, or think that suddenly all that matters is your wheelchair, why you’re in a wheelchair. Whereas you’re just an average person and you have all the same needs as everybody else, you just happen to be in a wheelchair.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Shocking, Tom Shakespeare, shocking.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. Happens to us all. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done and where you’ve been, if you are in a wheelchair or you’re disabled you are suddenly that bloke or that woman.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And this is your first fiction book. You’ve written a lot of non-fiction. Why did you change from writing these academic texts and non-fiction books to fiction?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, you can say it’s a challenge. You’ve got to try and take on something new. But also the fact is that my academic books most people don’t read them, whereas you hope to sell 1,000, 10,000 copies of a novel, so why wouldn’t you go for that? And the thing is you can still get your point across but you have to bury it. It’s a story, it’s a love story, but buried at the heart of it is this idea that disability need not make a difference. You can be included.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’ve written a lot of books about disability. What is the one that keeps coming back to you that people keep talking you about again and again?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think people keep talking about Disability Rights and Wrongs, because it was a book which said, look, disability is complicated, the social model back in the day in the ‘70s was part of the story but it’s not the whole story, and we need to understand the lives of disabled people in a much more rich way.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, the social model is where the barriers are barriers society puts up or that are made by society, rather than the impairment itself, right. Am I describing that accurately?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s right. And I think it went too far, it over-egged the pudding, because I think most disabled people say yes, barriers are important, attitudes are important, but also most impairments, not all, are a bit of a nuisance and they may be psychologically or physically difficult to cope with. Not all the time, but on a bad day it’s the last thing you want.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, you don’t think social model covers it fully?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I don’t think it does. I think we are disabled by society, but we’re also disabled by our bodies and minds, they’re also difficult in some contexts. Now, of course I am completely at one with everybody who says we need to remove barriers, we need to be included, we need human rights, all those things, of course I am.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. But people weren’t that pleased with you for that, were they?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý No.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý For dissing the social model [laughs].

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I had people saying, ‘Oh, you’re not so bad, are you?’ and they obviously thought I was some terrible person for daring to question it. But the point is the social model was devised by disabled people in the 1970s. We’re now in the ‘20s of the new century, surely we need to develop it and understand a richer account of what it is to be human. And remember the social model was developed by UPIAS, the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation. They were mainly wheelchair users. There weren’t many people with neurodivergent conditions. There weren’t even many women, and there was a lot of sexism in the early days of the disability movement. So, talking about all the different things that matter to us I think is important.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And do you think more people now are thinking quite similarly to you? I mean, when did that book come out, Disability Rights and Wrongs, was that in the 2000s?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It came out in 2006. So, I’d been saying and other people have been saying this since the turn of the century. I think the danger is that we see the social model is the answer to being a progressive disabled person. And I want to say actually there are lots of different ways of being disabled, there are lots of different ways to identify, let 100 flowers, 1,000 flowers bloom. I mean, now we have lots of people with hidden impairments, with neurodivergent conditions, lots of people who develop impairments through ageing. They all identify slightly different, and that’s fine, and we’re allowed to.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The social model is a useful tool.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Of course it is.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We talk about it all the time, and you don’t deny that at all. It’s just it needs to be, in your opinion, fleshed out a bit more and more, sort of, thought around it not being the be all and end all.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah. And we are disabled by society, of course we are. We’re also disabled by our bodies and minds, many of us, much of the time. And that’s okay. We’re still valued human beings, we’re still like everybody else. Because, you know what, everybody is limited to some extent by their bodies or minds; it’s not just us.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I mean, it’s not the only time you got into some trouble with disability activists though. You also have spoken out quite a lot about women’s right to choose to abort a foetus if the child might be disabled. You’ve spoken out very candidly about your thoughts on assisted dying, you know. Liz Carr has one take on assisted dying, that’s it a slippery slope, the laws around it, and that disabled people are in trouble if they start bringing in laws around that to make it legal. How do you deal with the backlash from other disabled people? Is it less horrible when it’s non-disabled people?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, Liz and I are great friends, so I don’t think it means you can’t be friends with people you disagree with. And I don’t think it means that all disabled people think the same thing. After all, the majority of disabled people probably support some form of assisted dying legislation. So, maybe the disability activists are out of tune with other disabled people. There are as many disabled people have come up and said, ‘Thanks for saying what you said’ or, ‘I really identified’ or, ‘Your book was the first time I saw myself’ or whatever it might be; and they are disabled people, not non-disabled people.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, for listeners who haven’t been following Tom Shakespeare as closely as I have over the years, what are your views on assisted dying?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You know that makes you sound like a stalker, and I know you’re not [laughs].

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I’m not but I have been in disability a long time [laughs].

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You have, we both have. So, I think that for people who are terminally ill, only terminally ill, then it is part of what should be available. So, you should have the right to die within British legislation, just as you do within Oregon and Washington and California and Montana and lots of American states. What I do not like is what happens in Canada and what happens in Belgium and what happens in the Netherlands where the criterion is suffering. Because yes, we all suffer from time to time; that shouldn’t be the reason we have the right to assistance with dying. But if we are terminally ill I don’t see how it diminishes the rights of disabled people to allow access to assisted dying.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý But what about people who’d say that they’re called a burden, they’re called this and that on society as soon as they’re even ill that this might be brought to them and suggested to them? Because, you know, lots of disabled people live with terminal diagnoses, they live with life-limiting conditions.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, they do live with life-limiting conditions, but they’re not going to die in six months. And those are the criteria that are normally put forward for medical assistance in dying. And I don’t think it means that you are less worthy or you’re not part of society or whatever else. It’s about your rights. We have rights to independent living. Surely we should have rights to end of life as well, not just disabled people, all people. And if we restrict it to people where death is reasonably foreseen, we’re not providing death where it wouldn’t exist, we’re saying, you’re going to die of, say, motor neurone disease or cancer, and we’re enabling you to have the power over how you die, that’s all.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Is there anything major around disability that you’ve changed your mind on over the years?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, of course there is.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That you’ve been really public about and then changed your mind on?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, absolutely. So, for example I was against embryonic stem cell research, I thought it was wrong. And I had, if you like, the yuk reaction that many people do. And I thought, well that’s not consistent because I’m not against abortion, I don’t believe that life it starts at conception, I don’t believe that up to 14 days this collection of cells is a person. So, therefore I shouldn’t oppose embryonic stem cell research, and so I changed my view.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay. Let’s move on to much safer territory. Climate change [laughs], you’ve talked a lot, I mean, disability and the environment I’ve been doing quite a lot of work around this as well and how disabled people are treated in disaster situations. And you’ve even found that climate change can cause disability.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, yeah. As we know lots of disabled people don’t get the news about disasters. Many disabled people are disadvantaged when they become refugees, and they’re disadvantaged by informal settlements and trying to get water and trying to get medicine and trying to get out. And of course lots of disabled people in high income countries are seen as a contributory to climate change because they have single-use plastics or plastic straws or whatever else. But that isn’t the problem. We are not the problem. We need to live in a world which understands the world and it’s changing and contribute less to it. And we can have both: we can have just sustainability where disabled people and others are also respected alongside a more sustainable lifestyle.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, so bring back straws?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The vast majority of waste plastic is packaging. Let’s start with packaging and let’s minimise that. And if disabled people need single-use plastic for straws or catheters or anything else that’s not the problem. The problem is the mass use of plastic.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Tell me a bit about your current work?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I work at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which is a title I say very fast. And I work in the International Centre for Evidence on Disability where, with my colleague Hannah Cooper and about two dozen other researchers, we’re trying to find out if, for example, interventions to improve the lives of disabled people in low and middle income countries actually work. We’re trying to work out what gets them into school, what improves their income, what gets them health coverage. We’re trying to train health workers in Uganda and other places to be more inclusive with disabled people. We’re trying to provide peer support projects for people with psychosis. All sorts of projects.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What I found most interesting I think was that many, many disabled people are surviving, are doing well, are successful despite all the odds. There’s lots of reasons, lots of attitudes and lots of barriers which are making life difficult, but disabled people are resourceful and they have self-belief and they get it right. And it’s surprising the amount of the time they’re not ground down, which is very welcome, and makes them great partners when people in the west, like me, want to have local partners to do it properly in low and middle income countries.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, the key is making sure you have disabled partners in those countries?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think it’s really important. One of the things we’re trying to do is to get more disabled people as researchers, which means supporting them to do PhDs, and to be our colleagues on grants.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Now, listen, we could have talked all day because there are so many things that you know so much about, and there are so many things that you’re interested in. We haven’t even gone near stand-up, art, dance, anything like that. Why do you do so many different things?

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, people do lots of different things. And also there are so many things, it’s a great time to be disabled, in the sense that there are many, many things to be done. And you can look around, you can see and hear all sorts of people doing good things. And that’s right. Disabled people have something to say, something to offer. Even though there are lots of problems, there are lots of things that go right for a lot of disabled people. And I was lucky to be here at the right place at the right time.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Tom Shakespeare thank you so much for visiting me for a chat.

TOM-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you for having me.Ìý

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Do you know that it’s our 100th episode coming up, and we have been asking all of our guests a specific question that I would also like to ask you, the listener. What is the best advice that another disabled person has given you? Let me know by email accessall@bbc.co.uk. You can send me a message on WhatsApp, either a voice or text, just pop the word Access before the message. You can send it to 0330 123 9480. We’re on X and on Instagram @´óÏó´«Ã½AccessAll. We can’t wait to hear from you and play some of your answers in on our 100th episode in a couple of weeks’ time.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s it for this episode of Access All. I hope you enjoyed our Easter treat with Tom Shakespeare. He’s certainly good for an old debate. Please subscribe to us on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts from. Click that little subscribe button and we will be down onto your device every single week. Chat to you next time. Bye bye.

[Trailer for Americast]

JUSTIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, Sarah, we’ve been asked to put together a trailer for Americast. What do you think we should put in?

SARAH-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well is it too obvious to just say we’ll be covering all the bigger stories that are coming out of America?

MALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý There’s a phrase which has been bouncing around since the Trump presidency, which is LOL, Nothing Matters. And the things that would matter don’t seem to matter anymore.

JUSTIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think that works but it’s, well it’s not just that, is it? We need to talk as well about the undercover voters investigation, what’s happening online, what everyone’s getting in their social media feeds.

FEMALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý What they allow us to see is what someone who has a specific set of views or is from a specific demographic or a specific place might be seeing on their feeds.

SARAH-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And of course we’ve also got to mention all the amazing guests and experts that we have on the show helping us understand the stories.

FEMALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý This is a great talking point for him in the court of public opinion, but it is not going to go very far in a court of law.

JUSTIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And Americast of course isn’t just about politics and news, is it? Can we get something in about the more cultural, the social stuff too?

FEMALE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It kind of is in keeping with the conversations that we’re having in this country about race and colonialism and the legacy of those things.

SARAH-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, as long as you include that I think that about covers what we do.

JUSTIN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And then all I need to say at the end is: Americast is a podcast from ´óÏó´«Ã½ News, and you can find it on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sounds.

SARAH-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, well you have just said that.

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