In this episode of The Good Robot, Eleanor Drage speaks with Cassandra Hartblay, anthropologist, writer, playwright, and author of Access Vernaculars: Disability and Accessible Design in Contemporary Russia.

They explore disability, accessibility, technology, and inclusive design in contemporary Russia, examining how the unique political context shapes coping mechanisms for disabled people living in inaccessible and poorly maintained cities.

We also discuss the Sochi 2014 Olympics and Paralympics, disability advocacy, and the relationship between war and disability. Through stories of wheelchair users, activists, architects, and everyday experiences of inaccessible environments, the episode asks what it really means to create technology and design that enables people to move, participate, and live with greater freedom.

Reading List:

• Access Vernaculars: Disability and Accessible Design in Contemporary Russia
• Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice by Xenia Cherkaev
• Unmaking Russia's Abortion Culture: Family Planning and the Struggle for a Liberal Biopolitics by Michele Rivkin-Fish
• Keywords for Ethnography and Design, Cultural Anthropology website
• The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning by Tanya Titchkosky
• Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Edited by: Meibel Dabodabo

What does it mean to care for people and worlds that cannot simply be “fixed”? In Part 2 of this conversation, Eleanor Drage speaks with Kelly Fritsch and Anne McGuire, authors of Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival, about disability justice, collective care, maintenance, palliation, reproductive technology, and risk.

They explore how mutual aid and disability culture offer alternatives to social abandonment, why palliation can help us live with loss and uncertainty, and how ideas about genetic and psychiatric risk can reinforce ableism and eugenic thinking. The episode asks how we can move beyond “fixing” individual bodies toward building more accessible, supportive, and just worlds.

Reading List:

• Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival by Kelly Fritsch & Anne McGuire
• “Crip Technoscience Manifesto” by Aimi Hamraie & Kelly Fritsch
• “Crip Technoscience” by Kelly Fritsch and Suze Berkhout
• War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence by Anne McGuire
• Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada edited by Kelly Fritsch and colleagues

Edited by: Meibel Dabodabo

What does it mean to live in a world that is already broken, and what can disability justice teach us about creating more livable futures? In this episode of The Good Robot, Eleanor Drage speaks with Kelly Fritsch and Anne McGuire, authors of Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival, about disability, technology, accessibility, care, maintenance, and collective survival.

They explore how technologies from ramps to genetic medicine are shaped by social, political, and economic systems. The conversation takes us from why mainstream tech innovation can distract us from maintenance and repair, how "brokenness" is experienced unevenly, and what AI means for accessibility and disability justice. At its heart, this episode asks a powerful question: What are we maintaining, what are we repairing, for whom, and toward what kind of world?

Reading List:

• Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival by Kelly Fritsch & Anne McGuire
• “Crip Technoscience Manifesto” by Aimi Hamraie & Kelly Fritsch
• “Crip Technoscience” by Kelly Fritsch and Suze Berkhout
• War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence by Anne McGuire
• Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada edited by Kelly Fritsch and colleagues

Edited by: Meibel Dabodabo