Vaccine apartheid part 2 + Asian accent game

Hello from the AAPI Oscars!

This week, we begin with a guessing game from George Mason University’s “Speech Accent Archive” (thanks, listener Jai Kang!). Join us and guess along as we make horribly essentialist assumptions about Asian accents (h/t danyo and sansmouton!).

In our main segment, we dig into the murderous policy of global vaccine apartheid. We first discussed this topic back in November, and things have only gotten worse, with India being the most visible site of a world-historical crisis.

To guide our conversation, we rely primarily on a recent piece by Alexander Zaitchik at The New Republic that explains how Bill Gates, the Gates Foundation, Big Pharma, and global intellectual-property rules have brought us to this point. How should we understand this moment in the context of the last 30 years? Can ordinary people defeat supra-state oligarchs?

Links:

* Contrary to what Gates has said, there are, in fact, many capable vaccine factories around the world waiting to be mobilized (thanks, listener Stephen Buranyi).

* The WTO is debating a temporary waiver to the IP regime known as TRIPS. Will the Biden administration listen to the will of the people?

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