KPFA - Making Contact

The military exposed thousands of servicemen to radioactivity when it called them to participate in nuclear weapons tests, including Operation Teapot in 1955. One was Eldridge Jones, who later deployed to exercises in the Bay Area to try to clean up radioactive substances, directed by the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory.

In episode 2 of “Exposed,” from our friends at San Francisco Public Press, we explore a little-known chapter in San Francisco’s nuclear era: human experiments carried out to assess the health effects of radiation. Scientists from the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, located at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, designed and executed at least 24 experiments that involved gathering data from humans — in some cases, injecting test subjects with radioisotopes or having them ingest fluids laced with trace amounts of radioactive materials. Even football players from the San Francisco 49ers were enrolled as test subjects in these so-called tracer studies.

We hear from military veterans who were sent on a mysterious mission to spread radioactive substances onto rooftops at an Army base near Pittsburg, California, for an experiment the radiation lab played a role in designing. Some recount experiences of witnessing nuclear bomb blasts in the Nevada desert. We also examine a national pattern of human radiation experiments revealed by Eileen Welsome, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, who shined a light on similar practices conducted by government facilities, hospitals, and other institutions.

Featuring:

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This episode comes to us from the podcast at SF Public Press.

“Exposed” opens a window into the little-known history of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The sprawling abandoned naval base, in San Francisco’s southeast waterfront Bayview neighborhood, is currently the site of the city’s largest real estate development project. The base played a key role in the Cold War nuclear era, when it housed a research institution known as the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, which studied the human health effects of radiation.

In part one, we trace the radioactive contamination found in the shipyard soil today back to its origins, with nuclear bomb testing in the Marshall Islands. We also hear from environmental justice advocates, including one who led a health biomonitoring survey revealing that nearby residents have toxic elements stored in body tissues that match the hazardous chemicals of concern identified at the shipyard.

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Today we head back to Indianapolis with the podcast Urban Roots.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ms. Jean Spears was a young mother and burgeoning preservationist. She saved antiques from houses about to be demolished; she bought a home in a white slum and renovated it; later on, she did the same with a historic home in the black neighborhood near Indiana Avenue. In the eighties, she and some neighbors started digging into this black neighborhood’s history, uncovering the names of Black doctors, civic leaders, and other professionals who had lived there — many of whom had worked for Madam C.J. Walker. She helped rename the neighborhood to Ransom Place, in honor of Freeman Ransom: Madam Walker’s prodigious lawyer. And in 1991, they succeeded in getting the Ransom Place Historic District included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Thanks in no small part to the connection to Madam C.J. Walker, Jean Spears was able to save this pocket of Black history, in an area that — as we explained last episode — the city of Indianapolis had almost erased from memory. But black Indy history is about more than Madam Walker; other stories and places in the city need protection, too. In this episode, we’ll introduce you to three Black women who are carrying on what Ms. Jean Spears started — safeguarding these little-known stories of the past and guiding Indianapolis toward a brighter future.

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The post Reclaiming Indianapolis’s Black History from Urban Roots appeared first on KPFA.

Madam C.J. Walker was a brilliant entrepreneur who built a haircare empire and became the first African-American woman millionaire. You might have heard about her, but not many people know that her headquarters used to be located in Indianapolis, along a once vibrant Black corridor called Indiana Avenue, a place that today is known for parking lots, high-speed traffic, and uninspiring university buildings.

Why do so few people know this story? Because, over decades, government planners and private developers slowly and systematically erased Indiana Avenue’s history. Luckily, however, some Black Hoosiers are working to uncover, and reclaim, what almost disappeared without a trace. In this episode, we tell their, and the Avenue’s, story.

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The post Urban Roots: Madam Walker and the Rise & Fall of Indiana Avenue appeared first on KPFA.

On today’s show, we look at how art can highlight the struggles of incarcerated women, build solidarity with them across prison walls, and fight against the erasure and censorship inherent to incarceration.

First, we’ll hear about a dance performance called “If I Give You My Sorrows” that’s built around the complex ways incarcerated women relate to their beds. Then, we’ll learn about an art exhibition, The Only Door I Can Open, that’s curated and created by incarcerated artists, writers, and poets inside Central California Women’s Facility.

GUESTS:

The post Art from the Inside: Why We Need More Art By And About Incarcerated Women (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza? And what happens when borders cross living land and communities?

We’ll dig into these questions in this week’s episode with the help of Heba Gowayed, sociology professor at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center. And then we’ll hear a story brought to us by In Confianza, with Pulso about one time when the natural boundary between two countries changed,  and what happened to the people caught on the other side.

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The post Dividing Lines: What Are Borders and Why Do We Have Them? (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

On this week’s episode, we speak with Jenny Odell, author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, about how the ways we think about time shapes our lives. We take a critical look at productivity culture and the idea that time is money. Then we hear how to begin to disentangle our daily concept of time from its capitalistic and colonialist roots in order to liberate and expand our relationship to time.

The post Jenny Odell on Saving Time (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

On today’s show, we look at how art can highlight the struggles of incarcerated women, build solidarity with them across prison walls, and fight against the erasure and censorship inherent to incarceration.

First, we’ll hear about a dance performance called “If I Give You My Sorrows” that’s built around the complex ways incarcerated women relate to their beds. Then, we’ll learn about an art exhibition, The Only Door I Can Open, that’s curated and created by incarcerated artists, writers, and poets inside Central California Women’s Facility.

GUESTS:

The post Art from the Inside: Why We Need More Art By And About Incarcerated Women (encore) appeared first on KPFA.

On today’s show, we look at how art can highlight the struggles of incarcerated women, build solidarity with them across prison walls, and fight against the erasure and censorship inherent to incarceration.

First, we’ll hear about a dance performance called “If I Give You My Sorrows” that’s built around the complex ways incarcerated women relate to their beds. Then, we’ll learn about an art exhibition, The Only Door I Can Open, that’s curated and created by incarcerated artists, writers, and poets inside Central California Women’s Facility.

GUESTS:

The post Art from the Inside: Why We Need More Art By And About Incarcerated Women appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s episodes of Making Contact and Pushing Limits are preempted by special programming for KPFA’s 2024 Holiday Fund Drive.

To support our mission, please donate here or call (800) 439-5732.

The post Special Holiday Fund Drive Programming appeared first on KPFA.