National Radio Project

The root causes of migration vary widely. Some people migrate and return to their homes depending on the season. While others migrate and never return. Often, people are forced to leave or flee their homes indefinitely because of poverty, extreme environmental events, armed conflict, social strife, political turmoil, and economic hardships.

On this edition of Making Contact, we hear stories from Central American migrants that take on oppressive debts or face challenges in schools in the U.S. We also hear from Cuban migrants stuck in limbo on the route to the U.S.

We often hear from the upper middle class, educated youth of Iran complaining about the dictatorship. But what about the majority of youth, the working class young people who live in South Tehran and similar neighborhoods?

Reese Erlich explores how young people compare President Rouhani’s government with the populist rule of Ahmadinejad. We’ll also hear about how they are responding to conservative hardliners who are tapping into frustrations with high unemployment, and threatening to cancel the nuclear deal.

Thank you to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for granting Reese Erlich funding to produce this piece.

In 1973 the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade established the legal right to abortion in the United States. Since then, state legislative and executive bodies have battled to restrict access to abortions. Federal law banned the use of federal funds for most abortions in 1977, and public funding for abortion remains a contested issue.

One recent study in Texas found that more than 200,000 women performed abortions on themselves because they weren’t able to find clinical services. From restrictive laws to a lack of information to violent attacks, the blocking of abortion access is eroding the reproductive rights of women.

On this edition, we hear from women at the New Orleans Abortion Fund and Ibis Reproductive Health, as well as experiences from a doctor who provides abortions and a woman that sought abortion access in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Among the effects of climate change are more extreme weather events, such as Typhoon Haiyan, Superstorm Sandy, and a severe drought stretching across much of the Western United States. On this edition of Making Contact we’ll take a deeper look at the social and psychological impacts of climate change, and the weight of inaction.