Making Contact

June 2019 marks ten years since then President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted in a military coup. In this program, Dr. Dana Frank, author of the Long Honduran Night, examines the long term impact of the coup in Honduras, and the evolution of resistance movements in its aftermath.

I Am Because I Am, explores the expansion of gender identity and presumed roles in our society. A look beyond the socially constructed ideas of what is male, female, masculine or feminine. Especially considering Trump’s administration attempts to redefine gender to be solely based on a person’s genitalia at birth. Thus potentially threatening Transgender, Intersex and Non-Binary Identity.

We think of enhanced interrogation as being a new invention - a kind of torture in use only since 9/11. But Rebecca Gordon disagrees. In this episode she joins us to talk about the United State's long history of using torture domestically and abroad, and its connection to power and race.

In this episode, we honor the life and legacy of civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs through the lens of the documentary film, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS. Produced and directed by Grace Lee. 

People with disabilities or disabled people?   “Disability: Our Culture Ourselves”— in this episode we discuss disability, culture and identity from the perspective of disability communities themselves.  

In this episode we explore racial disparities in end-of-life care: How mistrust keeps many African Americans away from hospice. And later we examine particular challenges and cultural barriers faced by Asians and Latinos at the end of life. 

We think of Artificial Intelligence as being the stuff of science fiction movies, set far in the future. But it's already having an impact on our lives. We look at a kind of decision made by artificial intelligence called a risk assessment and how it impacts the poor and people of color and we talk about ways to fight back.

Jails in Miami-Dade County double as de facto mental health facilities. But Miami-Dade’s Criminal Mental Health Project has become a national model for negotiating the interplay between mental illness and criminal justice.

President Donald Trump’s tax plan may exacerbate wealth inequity in the US. Chuck Collins, Director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies addresses the complex history of the wealth gap. Also, producers from the Upstream podcast ask: is it time for Universal Basic Income?

Lewis Wallace was a reporter at Marketplace. You may have heard his voice on the Marketplace Morning Report with David Brancaccio. That was until he publicly questioned the role of objectivity in a Medium post. We need to let go of idea that objectivity is dying. A more useful framework is that objectivity is a mythology that we're urgently debunking to figure out what can stand in its place. That doesn't lessen our pursuit of truth, it just reveals the complexity that was always there, which is that subjectivity that informs that pursuit. This line of questioning ultimately got him fired from Marketplace. Dive into one journalist's reckoning with truth.