Ross McKenzie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but after 15 years on Lithium, he wasn’t getting any better. He decided to take matters into his own hands, get off the drug, and find out why so many people are being told they have mental illnesses.This week on Making Contact, we bring you an abridged version of the film Bipolarized; Rethinking Mental Illness, chronicling McKenzie’s journey.
Nationally, American prisons release more than 650,000 people into society every year. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Memphis or Boston. On this edition, producer Aaron Mendelson followed ex-prisoner Kevin Tindall on his journey out of prison. Special thanks to Claire Schoen and the University of California Berkeley, School of Journalism. Featuring: Gordon Brown, ex-prisoner Monta Kevin Tindall, ex-prisoner Jerry Elster, ex-prisoner Tom Gorham, Program Director Options Recovery Se...
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Southern Gulf Coast. Drawn by reconstruction work, the number of Latino immigrants has nearly doubled. Reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina drew thousands of people from India, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, and other Latin American countries. Workers were charged with pulling dead bodies from abandoned homes and rebuilding New Orleans. But the influx of migrant workers also increased immigration crackdowns. Making Contact’s Jasmin Lopez follo...
It’s something many of us take for granted: access to clean drinking water. But for many Americans it’s not something they can rely on. From chemical spills in West Virginia to ecoli in the water on the Texas-Mexico border, to contamination from farming in California. On this edition, we hear what happens when there’s not a drop to drink. Featuring: Angela Walker, Charleston resident Neena Satija, environment reporter Texas Tribune Daisy Gonzalez and Vicente Lara, Environmental Justice Coalition...
It’s election season! But since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, many states have pushed changes to voter laws that raise disturbing connections to the past. On this week’s show, we’ll hear about hard fought battles for voting rights and the implications of new laws. Featuring: Reverend Tyrone Edwards, civil rights historian in Plaquemines Parish Louisiana Tyrone Brooks, Georgia State Representative Clifford Kuhn, Professor of History at Georgia State University JT Johnson...
During the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 millions of people lost their jobs and hustled to survive. Since then, the economy has regained more than 8 million jobs. Still wage growth remains low and many simply can’t find a full time work. On this edition of Making Contact we’ll hear from a panel of labor experts on the state of labor market especially for part-time and low-wage workers. The Panelists include former New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, Ann Boger, Director of Govern...
This is a special encore edition. Renowned biologist Sandra Steingraber has made fighting environmentally induced cancers her lifes work. Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream, has been turned into a movie chronicling a year in her life trying to create a world free of cancer causing toxics. On this edition, we hear excerpts of the documentary film, Living Downstream. Special thanks to The People’s Picture Company for allowing us to excerpt the film ‘Living Downstream’....
From unpaid bills to entire governments facing bankruptcy, debt is never far from our minds or the news. It’s deeply embedded in our lives: our language, culture, even major religions. It’s also at the heart of many of our most pressing political debates. But have you ever thought about where debt comes from? On this edition of Making Contact we hear from Anthropologist David Graeber, author of “Debt: The First 5,000 Years.” Graeber traces the history of debt and asks what might we learn from ho...
The female body as medium, and as message. How can a woman determine how she is perceived by the world, and even by herself? On this edition, we hear stories of women who are using their bodies for political protest, and as tools of self-empowerment…forcing everyone to reevaluate their perspectives on the female form. Featuring: Neda Topaloski & Xenia Chernyshova, Femen members Galia Ackerman, author of the book “Femen” Catherine King, Executive Producer, Global Fund for Women Yolando Y'Nett...
When journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates set out to write about police killings he went to visit Mable Jones. Back in 2000, Jones son, a friend of Coates from their time at Howard University, was shot and killed by police in Virginia. He was twenty five years old. Written in the form of a letter to his own teenage son, Coates' book "Between the World and Me" puts police shootings in a wider context. Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke as part of the Lannan Foundation's Pursuit of Cultural Freedom Series....
Over 6,000 migrant deaths were recorded on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico between 1998 and 2013. The true number of deaths is likely higher, and thousands of families never hear from their loved ones again. This documentary travels to the desert ranch lands of Brooks County and the border town of Reynosa, Tamaulipas to introduce us to the human cost of “prevention through deterrence,” a border enforcement strategy introduced during the Clinton administration.
This show takes a look at issues within the foster care system in the U.S. from the high rate of teen pregnancy to the alarming use of psychiatric medications in California’s foster care system. Featuring: Nicole Rocke, former foster youth Kyle Lafferty, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy Linda Bryant, Clinical Professor at New York University’s School of Social Work Benita Miller, Deputy Commissioner of Family Permanency Services at the Administration of Children’s Se...
What do our voices say about us? On this edition we explore voice and identity. We'll hear from someone who nearly lost their voice, the challenges that come with ordering a pizza with a speech generating device, and and how voice contributes to trans women's sense of safety and of self. Featuring: Mya Byrne, singer-songwriter Kathe Perez, creator of EVA app Samuel Sennott, assistant professor of special education at Portland University Bob Segalman, author “Against the Current, My Life with Cer...
We go back to the night in June 1969 at the New York City Stonewall Inn that sparked the LGBT rights movement. On today’s show we’ll hear about the day that galvanized a generation and the continued fight for LGBT civil rights. The first Pride parades took place in June 1970 marking the 1st anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Michael Schirker and David Isay bring us an oral history Remembering Stonewall: The Birth of a Movement. Editor at large of the Huffington Posts’ Gay Voices Michelangelo...
We bring you to Alaska s Tongass Forest, where the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act turned tribes into corporations and sparked a lengthy logging frenzy. In this radio adaptation of the documentary film, Walking in Two Worlds, we meet a Tlingit brother and sister, who are trying to heal both the forest and their native community. Special thanks to Specialty Studios. Featuring: Wanda Culp & Bob Loescher, Tlinget brother & Sister Peter Coyote, narrator Mike Jackson, Tlingit tribal histo...
What is it like to be a student who has fought in a war? Producers at The Stanford Storytelling Project’s podcast, State of the Human asked six Stanford students and recent alumni, all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to tell their stories about “Returning Home.” Featuring: Dustin Barfield, Chris Clark, Josh Francis, Annie Hsieh, Russ Toll, and William Treseder, military veterans Heidi Toll, wife of veterana More Information Returning Home from the Stanford Storytelling Project (ful...
On this week's show we’re exploring how some women have been dehumanized to the point of indifference. We’ll learn how one community is undoing the silence around the violence women of color face. We’ll also hear about how serial killers were able to hunt down mostly Black women for three decades in South Los Angeles. Then we’ll take you to the Yucatan where pregnant indigenous women struggle under a health care system failing to provide proper medical care.
Black Lives Matter. This simple phrase has become the motto of a growing movement calling for true justice and equality for black people. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, first typed out those three words back in 2013. In March of 2015, Alicia Garza visited the University of Southern Maine to tell the story of how Black Lives Matter came to be, and express her hopes for where it’s headed. We hear her speech. Special thanks to E.B.Leonard with Maine X Change. Featuring: Alicia Garz...
Imprisonment, oppressive laws, and harassment of journalists - these are just a few means of censorship around the world. The use of these repressive tactics threaten freedom of expression and the public’s right to information. On this edition, we hear from journalists in Ecuador and Mexico, and learn about the most censored countries from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Featuring: William Morocho, Page Designer with Diario HOY Jaime Mantilla, Director of Diario HOY newspaper Carlos Ochoa ...
Making Contact partnered with the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, CA to produce this special open mic highlighting the power of thoughtful, truth telling, community focused poetry. Featuring Poets: Chris Cuadrado Lindsay Stone Jared Paul Caitlin Clark Queen T
Five years after the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico, not everyone is “back to normal”. On this edition, we follow BP’s trail from the Bayous of Louisiana to the fine art galleries of London. Featuring: Antonia Juhasz, investigative Journalist Monique Verdin & Beau Verdin, Houma tribe members David Gauthe, community organizer Thomas DarDar, United Houma Nation Chief Mark Miller, Southern Utah University History professor Mel Evans, author of Artwash: Big Oil and the Arts...
Climate change is here affecting weather conditions and sea levels. In India it's also having a more surprising influence on the country's tigers. On this edition of Making Contact, reporter Daniel Grossman takes us to India in Heat of the Moment: Sea Level Rise. Heat of the Moment was originally produced for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and WBUR. Featuring: Pranabes Sanyal, former park director for the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve Amit Mallick, Sundarbans resident and man attacked by tig...
Officially opening in 1914, the Panama Canal connected the Atlantic and Pacific creating a short-cut for ships. It was the biggest infrastructure project of its time. But originally the United States wanted to build the canal in Nicaragua. The plans shifted largely after French engineer Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla convinced U.S. lawmakers otherwise. Well now the Nicaragua canal plans are back on the table. Nicaragua plans to build a $50 billion canal to connect the Caribbean and Pacific. Support...
It’s the second most-traded commodity in the world after oil but how much do you think about your cup of coffee? From coffee farmers in Colombia to the trash produced by your single-cup coffee machine, Making Contact and Green Grid Radio team up to count the costs of your morning cup o’joe. Featuring: Jairo Martinez, Mariana Cruz, Suzana Angarita, coffee farmers Jeff Goldman, former executive director FairtradeResource Network Jeff Chean, Principal and Chief Coffee GuyGroundworks Roasters John H...
On last week’s show we brought you to Idaho and Montana, where hundreds of trucks were routed to haul gigantic mining equipment to the Tar Sands oil fields of Alberta Canada, but an alliance of citizens and community groups was able to block the transport through environmentally sensitive land. This week we continue the saga of the megaloads heading to the Tar Sands through the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies. We also follow two more tendrils of the Tar Sands project stretching from Alber...
The Canadian Tar Sands is the largest industrial project on earth. And the potential environmental consequences have brought together citizens from across borders, to fight its rippling effects. This is the first of a two part special, on the growing resistance to the tar sands, produced by Barbara Bernstein. Featuring: Kevin Lewis, Idaho Rivers United conservation director Linwood Laughy, writer & historian Borg Hendrickson, Clearwater Country co-author Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oi...
We follow Dr. Ann Aurelia Lopez as she shows us the reality of farm workers' lives in the United States and Mexico. Dr. Lopez founded the Center for Farmworker Families in Watsonville, California. Featuring: Dr. Ann Aurelia Lopez, founder and director of the Center for Farmworker Families Women farmworkers
Robert Neuwirth, author of "Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World", estimates that more than a billion people--thats 1 in 7--are squatters. This week, we visit squats in Venezuela and the Philippines, and find out why squatters aren’t just tolerated...they are crucial to the growth of major cities and national economies. Featuring: Robert Neuwirth, author of "Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World" Filomena Cinco, Barangay captain of Estero de San Miguel Luz Sudues...
Why are so many of those killed by police young people of color? A recent ProPublica investigation found that a young black male is at twenty one times greater risk of being shot dead by police than his white counterparts. On this edition of Making Contact we'll hear from one of the reporters who analyzed the data on police killings to come up with that startling conclusion, as well as stories of family and community members who say the justice system itself needs to be put on trial....
Some call it a new civil rights movement. Others simply call it “black lives matter”. But its yet to be seen if the momentum for justice will result in systemic change. And to get there, what kind of strategies are needed? On this weeks edition, a conversation about waging non-violence between civil rights movement veteran David Hartsough and Ferguson activist Reverand. Osagyefo Uhuru.Sekou. Featuring: David Hartsough, civil rights activist and author of “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lif...
