Origin Story: Making Contact | 30th Anniversary Capsule
From its birthplace in an Oakland cafe in 1994 to the Battle in Seattle, international reporting projects, and a deep commitment to social justice journalism, Making Contact has been an important part of the media landscape for more than thirty years. Guest host Jessica Partnow guides us through some of the key moments in Making Contact’s history in conversation with founders Peggy Law and Norman Solomon. This episode is part of...
The Problematic History of Gender Testing at the Olympics
The attacks on Imane Khelif’s gender at this year’s 2024 Paris Olympics is not new. In fact, the focus on women’s appearance and gender expression goes back to the founding of the Olympics, the minute women entered elite sports. We talk to Rose Eveleth, host and producer of the podcast Tested about the history of sex testing in the Olympics and why it existed in the first place, why there’s no easy way to...
Disclose! Divest!: Behind the Fight Over College Endowments
As graduation approached this year, students around the country began protests after calls for divestment from Israel were initially ignored by university leadership. The campus encampments were met with physical violence and the mainstream press dismissed the students’ demands as naive and immature. But, it turns out that there’s a lot we should be asking about college endowments. We take a look at what an endowment is...
Behind the Sound: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
Welcome to Behind the Sound, an interview series with the folks who make Making Contact. This month we interviewed Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong, a freelance reporter, producer, and Making Contact’s sound editor. How did you get into this line of work? I got into audio while I was getting an MFA in Creative Writing. I’d been a writer and editor for most of my life, and grew up on NPR (my parents are not native English speakers, so when...
Statement of Palestinian Solidarity
We want to acknowledge that recent events have thrown into sharp relief the violence, displacement, and apartheid that Palestinians in Gaza have lived under for decades. As a media organization, we bear responsibility for telling the truth about the historical context leading us to this current crisis, one founded on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Making Contact staff have joined other solidarity media makers and...
Agitation to a System: Trans Resistance in Louisiana
Hundreds of bills targeting the trans and queer community have been introduced across state legislatures this year – a new record. Louisiana, like many other states, has seen a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ bills this session. But the state is somewhat of an outlier in the South, and activists have been successful in pushing back against these types of bills in the past. Sophie Ziegler joins today’s episode to show us what legislative...
