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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by political cartoonists extraordinaire Eli Valley and our resident artist Matt Lubchansky to talk all things comics, from Matt’s new book and Eli’s ode to Andrew Cuomo to Roqayah’s Panel Pulp project on Twitter and the cultural politics of superheroes. 

Matt is associate editor of the left-wing comics emporium The Nib as well as the writer and illustrator of the long-running webcomic Please Listen To Me, and you can find their work in VICE, Eater, The Intercept, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, Brooklyn Magazine, and many more. Eli is a writer and artist, he’s the author of Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel and his work has been published in The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Nation, and The Nib, among other outlets. The gang also checks in on Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign, Star Wars, the Godzilla-Kong Monsterverse, and aliens. 

You can follow Eli on twitter @elivalley, pick up Diaspora Boy via OR Books and find more of his work at elivalley.com. Find Matt on Twitter at Lubchansky, find their work on The Nib and you can pick up The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook at your local comic shop or direct from Silver Sprocket. 

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined today by Mark Maher, a staff attorney with Reprieve US. Mark currently works as counsel to six men detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and works on Reprieve US’ death penalty casework. 

During this episode Mark goes in-depth discussing the history behind the horrific abuse and internment of some 800 men and boys in the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention camp and how this grave injustice has impacted not only his clients but their families by stripping away their humanity—from reducing them to a number, to keeping them locked away from the outside world for decades without the ability to touch or hold their loved ones.

We also discuss the case of Ahmed Rabbani, endearingly referred to as Badr by those close to him, who has been on hunger strike since 2013 and Mark's role in his case as well as how Reprieve works to fight for Rabbani and other men still locked away inside Guantánamo Bay.

You can follow Mark on Twitter @mahermark123. You can also follow Reprieve @ReprieveUS and keep updated on their cases by visiting their website.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined from the top of the show by Amanda Yee, an independent analyst and writer in New York City with a specialty in medical anthropology, and Ian Goodrum, a Beijing-based commentator and senior digital editor for China’s premier English language newspaper China Daily. In Amanda’s first appearance on the show in March 2020, she talked about the rising tide of anti-Asian racism and the demonization of China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. 

This time, she and Ian go in-depth discussing the implications of anti-China policy and rhetoric in the context of China’s increasingly formidable role as a global anti-imperialist leader. The gang examines the spike in racist violence against people of Asian descent in the US over the past year and hammers out some of the kinks in the discourse around white supremacy in the wake of the Atlanta massage parlor shootings. 

You can follow Amanda on Twitter @catcontentonly and Ian @isgoodrum. You can also follow Ian’s work over at China Daily.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!