Making Contact

As we head into an ever warming world, some experts and politicians are embracing a possible solution to climate change called geoengineering. Theoretically geoengineering could slow down climate change, stop it, and maybe even remove carbon from the air. It sounds like the perfect answer for a global political system that just can't stop burning fossil fuels even if it kills us all. But it might not be the easy fix we're hoping for.

We talk to scientists and activists about what geoengineering is and why it could actually be a dangerous way to tackle climate change. We also dive into the moral and ethical questions of testing geoengineering technology on Indigenous lands. This episode first aired in 2023.

Featuring:

• Basav Sen, Climate Justice Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies
• Dr. Steven Zornetzer, Vice-Chair, Governing Board of Arctic Ice Project
• Panganga Pungowiyi, organizer for the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network in Alaska

Making Contact Team

• Episode hosts: Salima Hamirani and Jessica Partnow
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music Credits

• Chris Zabriskie – Air Hockey Salon
• Bio Unit – Industrial Zone
• Chris Zabriskie – Take Off and Shoot a Zero
• Doctor Turtle – Leap Second
• Monplaisir – Ridiculous
• Monplaisir – Juan Garcia Madero

Learn More:

• Indigenous Environmental Network
• Arctic Ice Project
• Institute for Policy Studies

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.

On this week's Making Contact, we feature an extended interview with Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, a queer Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning documentary Powerlands.

Powerlands traces how multinational energy corporations extract resources and profits while displacing and harming Indigenous communities around the world. The film follows Indigenous activists in Navajo Nation, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines who are fighting back against corporations like Peabody Energy, Glencore and BHP.

This show first aired in June 2023.

Featuring:

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, an award-winning queer Diné filmmaker and director of Powerlands

Music:

Documentary by Music\_Unlimited

Credits

• Host: Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

This episode includes excerpts from the documentary film Powerlands.

Learn More:

Powerlands Documentary website:

www.powerlands.org

Dive into the history of Point Reyes National Seashore, one of the most iconic parks in northern California, with us. Known for rugged sweeping beaches and the famous tule elk, we'll recount the waves of colonization that violently upended the lives of the Coast Miwok peoples who lived there – and one Indigenous woman's struggle to preserve her family history.

The story of Point Reyes is a story about how the forces of colonialism continue to shape the fate of public lands in the United States, and the campaigns waged to fight back and protect Indigenous land.

Featuring:

Theresa Harlan (Kewa Pueblo/Jemez Pueblo), adopted daughter of Elizabeth Campigli Harlan (Coast Miwok), founder and executive director of The Alliance for Felix Cove

Credits:

• Host: Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• "Whose Point Reyes?: A Battle for the Future of Public Lands" Parts 1 and 2 Credits:
• Reporter and producer: Sam Anderson
• Editor: Lucy Kang
• First aired on KPFA

Learn More:

• Whose Point Reyes on Apple Podcasts
• Alliance for Felix Cove
• Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin

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.

There's an idea in Mexico that racism doesn't exist, that all Mexicans are "mestizo" – a homogenous blend of Spanish and indigenous. But cultural worker José Antonio Aguilar says racism is lived by Black and brown Mexicans in many ways. He founded Racismo MX, an organization which seeks to dismantle racism, after coming to terms with his own racial reality as a "prieto" – a brown man. We also hear from anthropologist Ismael Rivera and Aztec expert Camilla Townsend as they unravel lies the Spanish colonizers told about ancient Aztecs that still feed racist tropes today. This episode first aired in 2023.

Featuring

• José Antonio Aguilar – Racismo MX, Founder and Director
• Ismael Rivera – Anthropologist, Historian, Cultural Guide
• Dr. Camilla Townsend, P.h.D. – Rutgers University, Professor

Making Contact

• Host: Amy Gastelum
• Freelance Producer: Anthony Wallace
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music

• Nahuales Negros – Chinampa, Cempasúchil, Barcos A Lo Lejos, Mixquic, Teponaztli, Danza A Pakal

Learn More

• Racismo MX
  • FB: https://www.facebook.com/raciclasismomx
  • IG: racismomx
  • X: @Racismo_MX

• Ismael Rivera Tours
  • FB: https://www.facebook.com/riveratrips

• Rutgers University
  • FB: https://www.facebook.com/RutgersU
  • X: @RutgersU
  • IG: rutgersu

• Anthony Wallace
  • X: @anthonyjwallace

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.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into Indigenous resistance against extractivism and the forces behind climate change. We'll look at an underreported story in California about the Amah Mutsun Ohlone's fight to save their most sacred site — a place called Juristac. Contributors Robert Raymond and Della Duncan explore the horrific injustices wrought upon California Indians since the time of the Spanish Missions up to the present and focus on how the Amah Mutsun are working to regenerate their culture, language, and land.

_Special thanks to The Satterberg Foundation & Upstream Podcast._

Featuring:

- **Valentin Lopez,** Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

- **Eleanor Castro,** Amah Mutsun Elder

Credits:

Episode Producers: Della Duncan and Robert Raymond

The Making Contact Team

• Host: Monica Lopez
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Music Credits:

Chris Zabriski, BRONCHO, Xlyo Ziko, Inaequalis, Meydan

Learn More:

• Protect Juristac Campaign
• County Of Santa Clara, Dept. of Planning and Development
• Sargent Quarry
• Ahmah Mutsun Land Trust

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.

Last week, we visited a community in California's Central Valley called East Orosi, which has been fighting for clean water for over 20 years. This week we turn our attention to their sewage system, which is also falling apart. Why has it been so difficult for East Orosi to get clean drinking water and fix its sewage problems? To answer that question, we take a look at the community utility districts that run sewage and water in unincorporated towns all across California. We'll discuss their problems as well as ways to save them. This show first aired in August 2024.

Featuring:

Credits:

**Episode Credits:**

- Episode Host: Salima Hamirani

- Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang

- Executive Director: Jina Chung

- Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong

- Engineer: [Jeff Emtman](http://www.jeffemtman.com/)

- Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Voiceovers

- Ana Portnoy Brimmer

- Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong

Music Credits

- Komiko – Blue

- PC III – Ocean Tapping

- Alpha Hydrae – Friends and Apples

- Hicham Chahidi – Gouttes

- Ben von Wildenhaus – Week Twenty-five

- Ketsa – No Light Without Darkness

- The Custodian of Records – Thunderstorm

Learn More:

• Making Contact: https://focmedia.org/
• Community Water Center: https://www.communitywatercenter.org/
• Self-Help Enterprises: https://www.selfhelpenterprises.org/

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.

In 2012, the state of California declared water a human right. Yet nearly 400 water systems don't meet the state's drinking water standards. In the Central Valley, the community of East Orosi hasn't had safe tap water in over 20 years. The water is full of harmful nitrates and other runoff from industrial agriculture. We visit East Orosi and talk to Berta Diaz Ochoa and others about what it's like living without access to clean drinking water and how the community has taken action to find a solution. This episode originally aired in July 2024.

Credits:

**Making Contact Credits**

Episode host and producer: Salima Hamirani

Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang

Executive Director: Jina Chung

Engineer: [Jeff Emtman](http://www.jeffemtman.com/)

Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Voiceovers

- Amy Gastelum

- Bobbi James

- Ana Portnoy Brimmer

- Alex Corey

Music Credits:

- Komiku – Blue

- Monet's Water Lilies

- Dark Rainy Day

- Water Drops, Sad Slow Piano Background

- Mother Womb piano

- Guracha Sonidera Cumbia Loops De Bateria Series II

Learn More:

Making Contact homepage: www.focmedia.org

Community Water Center

Self Help Enterprises

State Water Resources Control Board

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.

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, and 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.

Featuring:

Claudia Polley, Urban Legacy Lands Initiative | Kaila Austin, artist and historian | Judith Thomas, Deputy Mayor of Neighborhood Engagement for the City of Indianapolis | Paula Brooks, the Environmental Justice Program Manager at the Hoosier Environment Council

Credits:

Urban Roots Podcast:

Urban Roots unearths little-known stories from urban history, especially histories of women and people of color that are in danger of being forgotten. Our mission is to elevate underrepresented voices and help preserve the places significant to them.

Hosts and Executive Producers: Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Maria Quirk

Editor and Executive Producer: Connor Lynch

Mixer: Andrew Callaway.

Music/Composer: Adaam James Levin-Areddy.

Making Contact Credits

Episode Host: Salima Hamirani

Executive Director: Jina Chung

Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong

Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

**Music Credits**

Roman- Galaxy (inspired up melody)

Will Bangs - I'm so glad you exist

Learn More:

Part 1: Madam Walker & the Rise and Fall of Indiana Avenue | Urbanist Media

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.

To celebrate Pride Month, we have a special show featuring stories from the Making Contact archives. We'll revisit the Stonewall Uprising with the 1989 audio documentary _Remembering Stonewall_, and then head to the gay rodeo with producer Vanessa Rancaño in a story from 2014.

Credits:

Making Contact Credits

Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang

Executive Director: Jina Chung

Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music credit: "Minimal Documentary" by penguinmusic via Pixabay

Bleep sound effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

Remembering Stonewall: The birth of a movement (1989)

Narrated by Michael Schirker

Produced by David Isay

Distributed by Pacifica Radio Archives

"All Around Cowboy: Inside the world of queer rodeo" Credits

Story producer and host: Vanessa Rancaño

This show was part of a partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Special thanks to Claire Schoen

Learn More:

Making Contact homepage: http://ww.focmedia.org

Remembering Stonewall on Pacifica Radio Archives: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/pz0146

Making Contact episode "All Around Cowboy: Inside the world of queer rodeo"

https://focmedia.org/2014/06/all-around-cowboy-inside-the-world-of-queer-rodeo/

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.

In this special guest episode from the podcast In the Meanwhile, co-hosts Marcus Harrison Green and Nora Kenworthy sit down with author and activist Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race; Mediocre: the Dangerous Legacy of White Male America; Be a Revolution) for a searching conversation about movement work, harm, belonging, and the radical choice to stay. Together, they explore the personal cost of speaking truth, the wounds movements can inflict on their own, and what it means to build the world we long for now—not after revolution, but through the way we live, love, and struggle every day. It's a deeply honest conversation about survival, accountability, joy, and choosing community even when it hurts.

Featuring:

Ijeoma Oluo

Credits:

Making Contact Team

Episode host and producer: Jessica Partnow

Executive Director: Jina Chung

Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

In the Meanwhile

Co-hosts: Marcus Harrison Green, Nora Kenworthy

Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé.

Logo by Nikki Barron.

Producer: Jessica Partnow

Learn More:

If You Decide To Stay | Behind the Book | Be a Revolution | So You Want to Talk About Race | Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America | In the Meanwhile Podcast |

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.