Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.
Reproductive Justice: The Ongoing Struggle for Bodily Autonomy (Encore)
Today we share excerpts from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary filled with stories that still resonate today as women face new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence. The documentary...
Who’s Afraid of DEI?: Interrogating Gender & Race in the Workplace (Encore)
“There was not a moment that I came into the workplace and thought that I would belong or be treated properly or equally.” Ruchika Tulshyan, a workplace inclusion expert, paraphrases an interview with Ijeoma Oluo, a thought leader on...
The Ethical Dilemma of Geoengineering & Global Warming (Encore)
Geoengineering is defined as some emerging technologies that could manipulate the environment and partially offset some of the impacts of climate change. Seems like the perfect solution for a consumerist society that lives on instant...
The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test
In 1965 Margaret Crane was a young designer creating packaging for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” and so she made it a reality for potentially...
Jenny Odell on Saving Time
On this week’s episode, we take a critical look at productivity culture and the idea that time is money by speaking with Jenny Odell, acclaimed author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock and How to Do Nothing:...
Giving Bayard Rustin His Flowers (Encore)
Today, we continue celebrating Black history and heritage with a special encore episode honoring an often forgotten civil rights leader. We take a look at the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin, a central figure in the and organizer of the...
- Climate Justice
- Criminal Justice
- Immigration
- Indigenous
- Labor & Economics
- Women's Issues
The Ethical Dilemma of Geoengineering & Global Warming (Encore)
Geoengineering is defined as some emerging technologies that could manipulate the environment and partially offset some of the impacts of climate change. Seems like the perfect solution for a consumerist society that lives on instant...
But Next Time Part 4: The Road to Rebuilding and Recovering, Better (Encore)
When communities face the aftermath of catastrophes, what does it take to ensure that the next time will be different? In Houston, it takes a city council member who bicycles in her neighborhood to hear from constituents about what they...
But Next Time Part 3: The Fight for Fair Housing in the Face of Climate Change (Encore)
No matter where we come from, or how much money we make, we all deserve a safe and healthy place to call home. In this episode we meet Jamie, a mom who lives in subsidized housing in Houston, Texas, who joins with other moms to stand up...
But Next Time Part 2: Language Justice and the Road to Recovery After Disaster (Encore)
This week we continue delving into community-rooted disaster relief in California, from wildfires to the pandemic. From building mutual aid networks, to translating emergency messages in common local languages, we see in action the...
Not Just Speed Traps: Alabama Community Fights Back Against For-profit Policing – A 70 Million Story (Encore)
Just 20 minutes north of Birmingham on Interstate 22, Brookside, Alabama is a working-class town with less than 1,300 residents. From 2018 to 2020, income from traffic fines and forfeitures increased 640%, accounting for 49% of the...
70 Million – Highway Robbery: How a Small Town Traffic Trap Became A Legal Black Hole
This week on Making Contact, we bring you a story from our podcast partners, 70 Million titled Highway Robbery: How a Small-Town Traffic Trap Became A Legal Black Hole. About 20 minutes north of Birmingham, Alabama, on Interstate 22, is...
Criminalized Survival
Journalist Natalie Pattillo and filmmaker Daniel A. Nelson created the documentary film And So I Stayed to raise awareness about criminalized survival, the criminal justice system’s long practice of imprisoning survivors of intimate...
70 Million: Grand Juries, the Black Box of Justice Reform?
Grand juries are supposed to safeguard against the government charging people with a crime when it lacks sufficient evidence. But because prosecutors control what happens in grand jury proceedings, they almost always get an indictment....
America’s Black Capital
“America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy” chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism as African Americans pushed back...
7 Shows to Listen to this Women’s History Month
We’re knee deep in Women’s History Month and at Making Contact we’re celebrating the best way we know how: highlighting the stories of women making change and fighting for a better future for ourselves and all those around us...
Who’s Afraid of DEI?: Interrogating Gender & Race in the Workplace (Encore)
“There was not a moment that I came into the workplace and thought that I would belong or be treated properly or equally.” Ruchika Tulshyan, a workplace inclusion expert, paraphrases an interview with Ijeoma Oluo, a thought leader on...
Modern Parenting… The Latino Way
How do you decide what kind of parent you want to be? Our friends at Pulso Podcast, Maribel Quezada Smith and Liz Alarcón, discuss ways they maintain their children’s cultural identity as Latinos. They also touch on what they have...
7 Shows to Listen to this Women’s History Month
We’re knee deep in Women’s History Month and at Making Contact we’re celebrating the best way we know how: highlighting the stories of women making change and fighting for a better future for ourselves and all those around us...
Building Back Black Wall Street
Black Wall Street, or the historically Black neighborhood Greenwood, Oklahoma is the site of a once prosperous, thriving, Black community. It is also the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a violent attack waged by white supremacists,...
Nuclear Colonialism and The Story “Oppenheimer” Didn’t Tell (Encore)
Oppenheimer swept the Golden Globes, reigniting public interest in the Manhattan Project, the WWII-era secret program to develop the atomic bomb and the impacts of nuclear power. But what the film leaves out alters our understanding about...
Denial of the Funk: The Impact of Racism on our Nation’s Health
The problem in America is, America’s been in denial about its problems. And that’s a problem. America doesn’t have a race problem, in reality there’s been catastrophes visited upon Black people. Catastrophes visited on...
America’s Black Capital
“America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy” chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism as African Americans pushed back...
7 Shows to Listen to this Women’s History Month
We’re knee deep in Women’s History Month and at Making Contact we’re celebrating the best way we know how: highlighting the stories of women making change and fighting for a better future for ourselves and all those around us...
Who’s Afraid of DEI?: Interrogating Gender & Race in the Workplace (Encore)
“There was not a moment that I came into the workplace and thought that I would belong or be treated properly or equally.” Ruchika Tulshyan, a workplace inclusion expert, paraphrases an interview with Ijeoma Oluo, a thought leader on...
The Ethical Dilemma of Geoengineering & Global Warming (Encore)
Geoengineering is defined as some emerging technologies that could manipulate the environment and partially offset some of the impacts of climate change. Seems like the perfect solution for a consumerist society that lives on instant...
7 Shows to Listen to this Women’s History Month
We’re knee deep in Women’s History Month and at Making Contact we’re celebrating the best way we know how: highlighting the stories of women making change and fighting for a better future for ourselves and all those around us...
Reproductive Justice: The Ongoing Struggle for Bodily Autonomy (Encore)
Today we share excerpts from “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” a documentary filled with stories that still resonate today as women face new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence. The documentary...
Who’s Afraid of DEI?: Interrogating Gender & Race in the Workplace (Encore)
“There was not a moment that I came into the workplace and thought that I would belong or be treated properly or equally.” Ruchika Tulshyan, a workplace inclusion expert, paraphrases an interview with Ijeoma Oluo, a thought leader on...
The Feminist Birth of the Home Pregnancy Test
In 1965 Margaret Crane was a young designer creating packaging for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” and so she made it a reality for potentially...
