Making Contact

What is it like to be a student who has fought in a war? Producers at The Stanford Storytelling Project’s podcast, State of the Human asked six Stanford students and recent alumni, all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to tell their stories about “Returning Home.”

Featuring:

• Dustin Barfield, Chris Clark, Josh Francis, Annie Hsieh, Russ Toll, and William Treseder, military veterans
• Heidi Toll, wife of veterana

More Information

• Returning Home from the Stanford Storytelling Project (full episode)
• Veterans for Peace
• Student Veterans of America
• Complexity of Student Vets
• Ten Things You Should Know About Today's Student Veteran

On this week's show we’re exploring how some women have been dehumanized to the point of indifference.

We’ll learn how one community is undoing the silence around the violence women of color face. We’ll also hear about how serial killers were able to hunt down mostly Black women for three decades in South Los Angeles. Then we’ll take you to the Yucatan where pregnant indigenous women struggle under a health care system failing to provide proper medical care.

Black Lives Matter.

This simple phrase has become the motto of a growing movement calling for true justice and equality for black people. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, first typed out those three words back in 2013.

In March of 2015, Alicia Garza visited the University of Southern Maine to tell the story of how Black Lives Matter came to be, and express her hopes for where it’s headed. We hear her speech.

Special thanks to E.B.Leonard with Maine X Change.

Featuring:

• Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter co-founder
• Cephus Johnson, uncle of Oscar Grant
• Grace Anderson, protestor

Imprisonment, oppressive laws, and harassment of journalists - these are just a few means of censorship around the world. The use of these repressive tactics threaten freedom of expression and the public’s right to information.

On this edition, we hear from journalists in Ecuador and Mexico, and learn about the most censored countries from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Featuring:

• William Morocho, Page Designer with Diario HOY
• Jaime Mantilla, Director of Diario HOY newspaper
• Carlos Ochoa Hernandez, head of Supercom
• Rosental Alves, Director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas in Austin
• Romel Jurado, Consultant for Supercom
• Gustavo Ruiz, Independent Photographer
• Edwin Canché Pech, Journalist
• Adrián López Ortiz, director of Northwestern newspaper
• Marcela Zendejas, Associate Officer on Alternative Media and Gender Issues at Article 19 MEXICO
• Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director with the Committee to Protect Journalists

Making Contact partnered with the 2014 National Poetry Slam in Oakland, CA to produce this special open mic highlighting the power of thoughtful, truth telling, community focused poetry.

• Chris Cuadrado
• Lindsay Stone
• Jared Paul
• Caitlin Clark
• Queen T

Five years after the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico, not everyone is “back to normal”.

On this edition, we follow BP’s trail from the Bayous of Louisiana to the fine art galleries of London.

Featuring:

• Antonia Juhasz, investigative Journalist
• Monique Verdin & Beau Verdin, Houma tribe members
• David Gauthe, community organizer
• Thomas DarDar, United Houma Nation Chief
• Mark Miller, Southern Utah University History professor
• Mel Evans, author of Artwash: Big Oil and the Arts

Climate change is here affecting weather conditions and sea levels. In India it's also having a more surprising influence on the country's tigers. On this edition of Making Contact, reporter Daniel Grossman takes us to India in Heat of the Moment: Sea Level Rise.

Heat of the Moment was originally produced for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and WBUR.

Featuring:

• Pranabes Sanyal, former park director for the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve
• Amit Mallick, Sundarbans resident and man attacked by tiger
• Tushar Kanjilal, secretary of the Tagore Society for Rural Development
• Mohammed Sheikh Gafur, Sundarbans resident and tea shop owner
• Sugata Hazra, an oceanographer at Calcutta’s Jadavapur University
• Ainun Nishat representative to the International Union for Conservation of Nature
• Shafiqul Islam, director of a small college and founder of the Pani Committee
• Sheikh Nural Ala, chief engineer for this region of the Water Development Board
• Atiq Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies
• Daniel Grossman, journalist

Officially opening in 1914, the Panama Canal connected the Atlantic and Pacific creating a short-cut for ships. It was the biggest infrastructure project of its time. But originally the United States wanted to build the canal in Nicaragua. The plans shifted largely after French engineer Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla convinced U.S. lawmakers otherwise.

Well now the Nicaragua canal plans are back on the table. Nicaragua plans to build a $50 billion canal to connect the Caribbean and Pacific. Supporters argue it will create more than 250,000 jobs. But small farmers and environmentalists say the project will destroy Lake Nicaragua.

On this edition, we’ll take a look at the economic, political and environmental controversies surrounding the Nicaragua canal. Reporter Reese Erlich has the story.

• Maria Mercelin, fisherman’s wife
• Michael Healey, head of an agribusiness association
• Monica Lopez, anti-canal activist and lawyer
• Lionel Teller, former Nicaraguan ambassador to the EU
• Rosibel Lope, owner of snack bar on OmetepeIsland
• Jairo Carrilon, anti-canal coalition leader
• David Quintana, spokesperson for Foundation for Nicaraguan Sustainable Development
• Benjamin Lanzas, member of the canal’s governing body
• Juana Juarez, resident of Ometepe Island
• Osvaldo Navas, Ometepe Island leader
• Antonio Granados, land owner whose property lies directly along the canal route.

It’s the second most-traded commodity in the world after oil but how much do you think about your cup of coffee?

From coffee farmers in Colombia to the trash produced by your single-cup coffee machine, Making Contact andGreen Grid Radio team up to count the costs of your morning cup o’joe.

• Jairo Martinez, Mariana Cruz, Suzana Angarita, coffee farmers
• Jeff Goldman, former executive director FairtradeResource Network
• Jeff Chean, Principal and Chief Coffee GuyGroundworks Roasters
• John Hazen, single-cup coffee machine owner
• Rebecca Jewell, recycling program manager for Davis Street Transfer Station

On last week’s show we brought you to Idaho and Montana, where hundreds of trucks were routed to haul gigantic mining equipment to the Tar Sands oil fields of Alberta Canada, but an alliance of citizens and community groups was able to block the transport through environmentally sensitive land.

This week we continue the saga of the megaloads heading to the Tar Sands through the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies. We also follow two more tendrils of the Tar Sands project stretching from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia.

This is the second of a two part special, on the growing resistance to the tar sands, produced by Barbara Bernstein.

Listen the the first part here.

Featuring:

• Kevin Lewis, Idaho Rivers United conservation director
• Linwood Laughy, writer & historian
• Borg Hendrickson, Clearwater Country co-author
• Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent author
• Bob Skinner, Canada School of Energy and the Environment interim director
• Annick Smith, A River Runs Through It co-producer
• Bob Gentry, environmental attorney
• Steven Hawley, Recovering a Lost River author
• David James Duncan, The Heart of the Monster co-author
• Zack Porter, All Against The Haul executive director
• Steve Seninger, University of Montana economist
• Spider McKnight, All Against the Haul communications specialist