A new podcast skewers the stigma of disability with satire

The podcast Basic Able takes an irreverent look at art, culture and political issues important to the disability community.

When Reid Davenport was denied a place in a study-abroad program due to the fact that he uses a wheelchair, he found a way to go explore Europe anyway — and in the process, documented Europe’s lack of accessibility for people with disabilities. The resulting award-winning film Wheelchair Diaries: One Step Up launched Davenport’s career as a documentary filmmaker.

Since then, Davenport, a TED Fellow, has continued creating documentaries about people with disabilities, telling stories from their perspectives and countering the usual storytelling tropes used by mainstream media — whether as passive subjects, victims or inspirational figures. He also started Through My Lens, an organization that teaches students with disabilities the art of filmmaking, part of his overall mission to encourage and amplify the voices and narratives of disabled people.

Reid Davenport in 2017. Photo: Bret Hartman/TED

This year, Davenport also branched out into podcasting. Titled Basic Able, the podcast includes incisive, irreverent and often hilarious interviews with prominent folks in the disability community — including former president of the Disability History Association Catherine Kudlick, stand-up comedian Nina G, and communications director for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Lawrence Carter Long.

“The cycle between gross media portrayal of disability and society’s ableism is nauseating,” says Davenport. “Basic Able is about distracting people from the fact that they’re gaining insight by coating it with sarcasm, spoof commercials and the occasional fart joke. Kinda like what that Jon Stewart character did with politics.”

With this week’s episode, Basic Able wraps up its first season — with another to follow in September. Here, we catch up with Davenport about how and why he’s put down his camera to get behind the mic.

You’re known as a documentary filmmaker — what made you want to do a podcast?

I’d never thought about doing a podcast but, inspired by some of the TED Fellows who produce them, I decided I liked the idea of an episodic format that could cover multiple issues. As a filmmaker, you can really only dive into a limited number of subjects per film. Being able to focus on something different every episode appealed to me. So I applied for a grant from the Ford Foundation, and got it. We started producing Basic Able in early 2018, and we’ve just released the last of the six episodes in the first series.

Basic Able Episode 1: Sexy Disability Models. Cathy Kudlick—professor of history and director of the Paul K Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University—joins Reid to talk about disability models, her new book and ableist noodle soup.

Though you cover a lot of serious topics, these podcasts also show off a wicked sense of humor. I found myself laughing out loud — especially at your irreverence towards Oprah! That made me realize we’re not used to being “allowed” to laugh at anything surrounding disability. Why is the show’s sense of humor important?

It’s definitely satire. I try to introduce the topics we cover with jokes. Sometimes I have a brief monologue, start out asking the guest some goofy questions and then we dive into the real crux of the interview.

Podcasts have been exploding for some time, and we needed some way to stand out. People have options to listen to so many shows that you really need to carve out your own space. At the very least, I want Basic Able to be known as the disability podcast that has a corny sense of humor.

But we don’t really make fun of disability — we make fun of society’s reaction to disability. For me, it’s hard to miss.

Basic Able Episode 2: Breaking News — the News Is Broken. Communications director for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Lawrence Carter Long joins Reid to talk about the news media, Stephen Hawking and unicorns.

Are there many podcasts by and for the disabled community? Where does Basic Able fit into that landscape?

There are a lot of great podcasts about disability out there, so there is some overlap in topics. I try to find subjects that aren’t necessarily covered within the disability community, or I cover them in a way that’s different. For example, Lawrence Carter Long is a giant in the community and does interviews about the media all the time, but I doubt he has ever played a game where had to pick out the real cliché disability-themed headline from the two fake ones! He went one-for-three.

I also try to make Basic Able accessible to people outside of the disability community — for example those with an interest in disability and social justice, but who don’t have a view from inside the community or the experience of being disabled. I’m trying to bridge the gap to make the show interesting to all.

As a documentary filmmaker, is it odd to suddenly work primarily with audio rather than with a camera?

We do video the conversations so that we can caption Basic Able for D/deaf and hard-of-hearing people. So we’re dealing with at least two cameras in my studio — and if we’re interviewing guests who aren’t local, we send a crew with two more cameras wherever they are. Having said that, there’s very little action on screen, though in one episode I couldn’t find a book I wanted to show, so you can see me scrambling around the studio, which is kind of funny.

Basic Able Episode 3: The Judy Heumann Episode. Reid talks to legendary disability rights activist Judy Heumann about the past five decades of the movement.

Any favorite highlights from Season 1 of Basic Able?

Our big one this season was Judy Heumann, the mother of the disability rights movement. We talked about past four or five decades that she’s been in the movement, and where it’s going. We also talked about how the current political climate has affected the disability community.

We’ve also had actors, poets, the subjects of documentaries, filmmakers, someone with a PhD in linguistics. We interviewed Jim LeBrecht, who did the sound design for TED Fellow Jen Brea’s film about ME, Unrest, and who is currently at work on a documentary called Crip Camp, about Camp Jened, a summer camp for teens with disabilities that started in the 1960s and its influence on a generation of the disability community. For all intents and purposes, I think it’s going to reshape how we view disability history in the United States.

So we’re really running the gamut of people and topics. This season we have only one token non-disabled guest — speech scientist Rupal Patel, who’s pioneering synthetic speech technology. I’m really proud of that.

Basic Able Episode 4: Documentaries. Reid talks to filmmaker Jim LeBrecht about his upcoming documentary Crip Camp, and to actor AJ Murray about his appearance on Speechless.

What kind of reach has Basic Able had, and where would you like to see it go?

The podcast has been well received by the disability community, which was a priority from the get-go. No matter how big a reach the podcast has, if people in the community were turned off by it, I wouldn’t feel very good about the show. While I understand I am not so much a representative of the community and my voice is only one of countless others, I’m featuring people on my show who have bigger followings or important, pioneering ideas that need to be conveyed in the most accessible way possible.

A considerable number of Basic Able’s listeners, viewers and readers are both in the disability community and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I see a potential for us to expand in both respects, while also staying dedicated to tackling relevant topics and bucking the norm as extravagantly as possible — even if it means more Oprah jokes.

Basic Able Episode 5: Speech – Can You Understand Me? Reid talks about speech “impediments” with stand-up comedian Nina G, poet Lateef McCleod and synthetic speech innovator Rupal Patel.

Find Basic Able on Spotify, iTunes, GooglePlay and Stitcher, as well as closed-captioned videos on Vimeo.

The TED Fellows program supports emerging innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.