Making Contact

On today's show, we'll travel to Seattle to hear indigenous voices and Coast Salish languages, and to reflect on the importance of the Salish Sea and connecting waters, by immersing ourselves in an audio experience called  “Saltwater Soundwalk.” 

A new philosophy steeped in the ideas of Artificial Intelligence, space colonization, and the long-term survival of the human species is gaining ground among the wealthy.  However, there are reasons to question its goals and its ethics. Longtermists believe that not only could we colonize space and create simulated humans in giant servers around stars, but that we must. Anything short of a trillion-year multi-planetary existence for our species would be a moral failing. They also believe that all of our ethical actions should focus on the countless lives that may exist in that dim future, instead of on the people alive today. Is this the kind of ethics we should all accept, however? Philosopher and historian Emile P Torres joins us to discuss Longtermism and its dangerous pitfalls.

While wages have flatlined for most working class people, rents have reached new highs, leaving most people struggling. But it’s not just in the US. The rising cost of living is affected the entire world. Samuel Stein’s new book, Capital City and the Real Estate State, highlights the growing influence of investment capital into land as the driving force behind gentrification and the power developers have over city and local governments. We talk to Samuel about the rise of the global real estate market and we look at how radical city planning, rent control and socialized land projects can help fight gentrification. 

On this episode, we turn our focus to how journalists and historians today are covering the Tulsa Race Massacre. KalaLea, producer and host of the podcast series Blindspot: Tulsa Burning, talks about how she led coverage of the brutal 1921 attack on a prosperous Black Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma known as Black Wall Street. And, we'll hear from members of Tulsa's Tri-City Collective who continue to investigate the history there. 

To mark the three year anniversary of the official start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we'll be looking at two alternative supply chains for masks that emerged in the fallout of the Trump administration's failure to prepare.

On today's show, we hear a story from our podcast partner 70 Million about the relationship between students with special needs and school resource officers and the changes some would like to see in an edited version of  “Why Policing Our Schools Backfires." 

We talk to Raj Patel and Rupa Marya about their book "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice." 

In this episode, long-time producers Anita Johnson and Salima Hamirani introduce the newest members of the Making Contact team, recap highlights from the past year, and preview what to expect from the show in 2023.  

On today's show, we bring you a special encore episode from our archives to honor Black history and heritage. We take a look at the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin, one of the most central figures in the African American struggle for civil rights and freedom. Rustin was a pacifist, a gay man, and a practitioner of nonviolence who dedicated his life to racial equality, economic justice and ending warfare. This program first aired on Making Contact in 2021.

This week on Making Contact we bring you to "The Healing Project," a multimedia installation that shares stories from incarcerated people about how the trauma of imprisonment has impacted their lives and families.

On the face of it, the legal arguments at the Supreme Court over the Indian Child Welfare Act seem to be a custody battle over Native children and the right to adopt them by white parents. But, the funding behind the court case hints at something deeper and could dismantle indigenous sovereignty as we know it.

Joshua Potash, a New York City-based anti-capitalist abolitionist discusses the history and theory behind mutual aid with our partners at The Response Podcast.

On today's show we learn about worker cooperatives: what are they and can they offer an alternative to the dominant capitalist mindset? Our partner podcast Upstream brings us to a bike and skate shop in Richmond, CA that's providing a much-needed service to its community, while also empowering its own workers, in this story that first aired in 2018.

This week on Making Contact we continue with our look at a community of unhoused people in Echo Park in Los Angeles, California and how they were forcibly evicted by police despite an enormous show of support from protesters. Thanks to our podcast partners at 70 Million we bring you part two of “Punished and Persecuted for Being Unhoused.”

Thousands of social justice leaders in communities all over the world passed away this year. We're closing out the year, as we usually do, with inspiring words from some of the Fallen Heroes of 2022.

In the midst of our stress and trauma dealing with the sometimes harsh realities of life, its hard to imagine what stories we will ultimately tell our children and grandchildren. This week's Making Contact is about two strong women who survived historic trauma, and the stories they later told their families.

This week, we explore an often-overlooked issue in the Arab world; racism towards Black Arabs. In this episode, Kerning Culture reporter Ahmed Twaij looks at racism in his own community, taking us from his Iraqi roots, through to modern day slurs still commonly used in many Arab communities around the world.  

In this special mini-episode, producer Amy Gastelum sits down with Rebecca Piazza to learn more about WIC, and what the program is doing to try and increase its low participation rates.

Federal food programs, like WIC, face big changes coming out of the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. Meanwhile, a single moms collective in Ohio holds it down for the single pregnant and parenting people in their community. Motherful's resource pantry serves their 325-strong membership out of a garage three times a week.  We talk to members and founders to learn what's it's like to participate, how it all started and where food justice is headed for them now and in their wildest dreams.