Making Contact

For AAPI Heritage Month, we bring you an encore of our 2023 episode "Seeing Signs." With help from the Queens Memory Podcast, we'll learn about "Little Manila," a Filipino neighborhood dating back to the 1970s that still struggles to find its political footing. We also hear from Filipino care workers about their experiences battling COVID 19. This episode first aired on Making Contact in May 2023.

Featuring:

- Potri Ranka Manis: Nurse, Activist and Artist

- Joey Golja: Community Member

- Mary Jane de Leon: Community Member

- John Bahia: Community Member

- Steven Raga: Assemblymember for District 30, Queens, NY

- Jaclyn Reyes: Artist, Designer, and Cultural Organizer

- Gemma Balagtas: Community Member, Nurse

- Zenaida (Ida) Castillo: Community Member and Owner of PhilAm Food Mart

Credits:

Making Contact

• Episode host and producer: Amy Gastelum
• Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Queens Memory Podcast Team

• Producers: Rosalind Tordesillas, Melody Cao, Anna Williams, and Natalie Milbrodt
• Mixing and editing by Cory Choy
• Music composed by Elias Ravin
• Voiceover work by Arianne Arreglado

Learn More:

Making Contact homepage: https://focmedia.org/

Listen to Season 3 of the Queens Memory Podcast:

• https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826
• https://open.spotify.com/show/2cnAhpl3RDOQTC0HXOQnPd
• https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/queens-memory-our-major-minor-voices/id1617641711

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.

Activists in the Latinx immigrant community of Los Angeles share what they do to take care of their mental health. The issues these activists work on often impact their personal lives, and people who work in the service of others are particularly at risk of burnout and compassion fatigue. Self-care becomes a "selfless act" when it allows activists to stay healthy and do their work in a sustainable way. This show first aired in August 2020.

Featuring:

**Paulina Velasco's** reporting on Self Care as Selfless Act: Mental Health at the Root of Activism was undertaken as a USC Center for Health Journalism 2020 California Fellow.

Credits:

• Writer, Producer, Host: Paulina Velasco
• Editor: Monica Lopez
• Voice Over Actor: Mariana Carstens
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Transcription Volunteer: Mickey Ellinger
• Special thanks to USC Senior Fellow, Catherine Stifter.

Music

• " Elmore Heights", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " Kid Kodi", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " The Yards", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " Copley Beat", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " Greylock", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " Boston Landing", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle
• " Pedalrider", Blue Dot Sessions – 2018 – Skittle

Learn More:

• AltaMed Behavioral Health Services
• Plascencia Consulting
• Power California – Organize, Vote, Lead
• Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California
• Central American Resource Center Los Angeles

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 honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we bring you a story at the intersection of therapy, healing and social justice. We'll hear about one therapist's work to bring the lens of radical therapy and community care into her practice. This piece was produced by the podcast Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center.

Featuring:

Claudia Morales, therapist at Social Justice Healing

Credits:

Making Contact

• Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang
• Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Music credit: "Documentary" by Coma-Media via Pixabay

Re:Work Episode "Radical Therapy" Credits:

• Hosted and produced by Veena Hampapur and Saba Waheed
• Sound design and editing by Veena Hampapur
• Mixing by Aaron Dalton

Learn More:

• Making Contact homepage: https://focmedia.org
• Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center: https://reworkradio.labor.ucla.edu

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 some parts of the world, traditional herbal remedies are the norm. When we think of natural remedies we tend to think of older generations living in remote areas, in far away countries, with little access to modern healthcare. We rarely think about the ancient medicinal plants that might exist in our very own cities. On today's episode we look at plant and herb medicines through the lens of Michele Elizabeth Lee the author of Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African-American Healing.

Featuring:

• Michele Elizabeth Lee, Traditional Healing Practitioner, Educator, Visual Artist and the Author of Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing
• Brandi Mack, Holistic Health Educator, Therapeutic Massage Therapist, Trauma-Informed Youth developer, Powerful Presenter, and Permaculture Designer
• Estrella Davina, Holistic Practitioner

Making Contact Team:

• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Staff Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum and Lucy Kang
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Music Credits:

• Blue Dot Session - Bedroll
• Blue Dot Session - 3rd Chair
• Lobo Loco - Alright in Louisiana
• Lobo Loco - Inside Your Body
• Audiobinger - The Garden State

Learn More:

• Working The Roots Instagram
• Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing
• Brandi Mack
• LA Times: Black Herbalist
• Black Women Herbalists
• Black Healers
• NY Times: Some Lessons from Herbalists
• Mojo Workin'
• African American Slave Medicine
• Sticks Stones Roots Bones

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.

Almost half of Puerto Rico's doctors have fled the island over the past decade, leading to a lack of specialists and treatment and incredibly long wait times. And this isn't just an inconvenience. People are dying from lack of care. Why is Puerto Rico's health care system collapsing, and why are doctors fleeing the island?

We take a look at its deeply dysfunctional private medical system and why attempts to fix it, and create a universal health care plan on the island, are being hindered by Puerto Rico's status as a US colony. Its massive unpayable debt, held by investors in the US, means that it cannot make its own economic decisions, even when it affects the livelihood of poor Puerto Ricans living there. But there might be a fix, getting rid of Puerto Rico's debt and rethinking its colonial relationship to the US. This episode first aired in October 2024.

Credits:

Making Contact:

• 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
• Digital Marketing Manager: Lissa Deonarain

Music Credits:

• Daniel Birch – Indigo Strokes
• Axletree – Goldfinch- Flight to the North
• Mindseye – Spores
• Soft and Furious – So What

Learn More:

• Boricuas Unidos en la Diaspora
• The Nation Magazine
• Puerto Rico's Unnatural Disaster

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.

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.

Featuring:

• Kay Riley- college student and Mom to baby Wisdom, Motherful Member
• Rugi Ngaide - Ohio supreme court translator, Mom, Motherful member
• Lisa Woodrow - Co-Founder and Co-Director of Motherful, Mom
• Heidi Howes - Co-Founder and Co-Director of Motherful, Mom
• Rebecca Piazza: Senior Advisor for Delivery, Food and Nutrition Service, Mom

Making Contact Team

• Host: Amy Gastelum
• Staff Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Music

• HoliznaCC0, Sky Scraper

Learn More:

• Motherful
• Changes to WIC

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.

For Black Maternal Health Week, we celebrate the important work that Black midwives do in their communities. In this week's show, we'll hear a conversation about how one woman followed her calling to midwifery in a story brought to us by the podcast _Re:Work_ from the UCLA Labor Center.

Featuring:

Kimberly Durdin, licensed midwife and co-founder of Kindred Space LA and the Birthing People Foundation

Credits:

Making Contact

Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang

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

Executive Director: Jina Chung

Engineer: Jeff Emtman

Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music credit: "Documentary" by The_Mountain via Pixabay

Re:Work Episode "The Calling" Credits:

Hosted and produced by Veena Hampapur and Saba Waheed

Learn More:

Making Contact homepage: www.focmedia.org

Re:Work from the UCLA Labor Center: https://reworkradio.labor.ucla.edu

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 the late 1990s, psychologist Dr. Joseph Gone, a professor and member of the Aaniiih Gros Ventre tribe, returned home during his doctoral training to the Fort Belknap Reservation in north central Montana. There, he set aside Eurocentric concepts of psychology he was learning in school and instead asked tribal members how mental illness is addressed using traditional Indigenous practices. What he learned changed the trajectory of his career. Listen to find out how he helped bring precolonial cultural and spiritual practices into substance use disorder treatment in contemporary Indigenous settings. This show first aired in July 2024.

Featuring:

Dr. Joseph Gone, psychologist and interdisciplinary social scientist at Harvard University and member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana

Credits:

Making Contact:

• Episode Host: Amy Gastelum
• Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music credits:

• Songs: The Horses are Coming, The Gift, Song of Honor
• Album: The Return of the Buffalo Horses
• Artists: Darrell Norman and Ramon Kramer https://www.blackfeetculturecamp.com/d-norman/

Learn More:

• Dr. Joseph Gone
• American Indian Health and Family Services, Detroit, MI

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 today's program we honor the life and legacy of civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs (27 June 1915-5 October 2015).

Through the lens of the documentary film _American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs_ we present a close and personal view of Boggs' activism. The film plunges us into Boggs' lifetime of vital thinking and action, traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century; from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements and beyond.

Boggs' constantly evolving strategy—her willingness to re-evaluate and change tactics in relation to the world shifting around her—drives the story forward. Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs' late husband James and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the 1967 rebellions, and nonlinear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself to transform the world.

Special thanks to Grace Lee (no relation), producer and director of _American Revolutionary_, and to raptivist Invincible_. _

Featuring:

• Grace Lee Boggs
• Grace Lee, Contributing Producer and Filmmaker

Credits:

• Host: Anita Johnson
• Contributing Producer: Grace Lee
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain

Music:

• Bontex, Creeping
• Blue Dot Sessions, Grand Caravan
• Invincible + Waajeed, Detroit Summer
• Audio Banger, the Garden State

Learn More:

• American Revolutionary Film
• Americans Who Tell The Truth
• Grace Lee Boggs Detroit Activist Dies At 100
• Invincible
• Emergence Media

Dr. Flemmie Kittrell was a Black home economist whose research in the field of early childhood education shaped the way we think about child development today. She became the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition and contributed immensely to programs like Head Start – even though her name is often left out of the history. We'll hear more about her life and work in a story from the podcast _Lost Women of Science_,_ _hosted by Carol Sutton Lewis and Danya AbdelHameid.

Featuring:

• Dolores Caffey-Fleming, Program director of Project STRIDE, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science
• Allison Horrocks, Public historian
• Lauren Bauer, fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution

Credits:

Making Contact

• Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang
• Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang
• Executive Director: Jina Chung
• Engineer: Jeff Emtman
• Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain
• Music Credit: "Science Documentary" by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay

Lost Women of Science: "Flemmie Kittrell and the Preschool Experiment" Credits

• Hosted by Danya AbdelHameid and Carol Sutton Lewis
• Written and produced by Danya AbdelHameid with senior producer Elah Feder
• Music composed by Lizzie Younan
• Episode sound designed and mastered by Alex Sugiura
• Executive producers: Amy Scharf and Katie Hafner
• Chief multimedia editor at our publishing partner, Scientific American: Jeff Delviscio

Listen to the full episode from Lost Women of Science: https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/podcast-episodes/flemmie-kittrell-and-the-preschool-experiment

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.