In this episode of Making Contact, we sit down with Kev Choice, a classically trained pianist, rapper, composer, and educator, who has reshaped the Bay Area music scene. Raised in Oakland with San Francisco roots, Kev blends hip-hop, jazz, soul, and classical music into a unique sound. His latest EP, All My Love, explores themes of love, vulnerability, and human connection, with soulful melodies and reflective lyrics capturing the complexities of relationships. Through music and mentorship, Kev uses his platform to inspire change and elevate consciousness.

Kev Choice is a pianist, rapper, composer, and educator from Oakland, California, known for blending hip-hop with classical, jazz, and funk influences. His music is celebrated for its thought-provoking lyrics, intricate musical arrangements, and powerful live performances. Kev’s versatility as both a trained musician (with a degree in Piano Performance) and a hip-hop artist allows him to create a unique sound that transcends genre boundaries.

Episode Credits:

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

Music:

• Kev Choice "All This Love"
• Kev Choice "Congratulations"
• Kev Choice "Searching for a Feeling
• Kev Choice "Fresh Fade"
• Kev Choice "International Blvd"
• Kev Choice "God"
• Kev Choice "Feel What I Feel

Learn More: 

• https://kevchoice.wordpress.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/kevchoice/?hl=en
• https://westcoaststyles.com/interviews/2024/04/kev-choice-love-liberation/
• https://www.oaklandsymphony.org/artist/kev-choice/

Because of the fall of Roe v. Wade, we're hearing a lot more about adoption as an alternative for women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. And even before, media portrayals of adoption have always painted it as an easy ethical conclusion to a difficult circumstance. But the real, lived experiences of birth parents who give up their children for adoption have never been part of the conversation. Do birth parents really see adoption as an alternative to abortion? Are they happy with their decision to relinquish their children? It turns out that for the most part, they're not. 

We talk to Samantha Gonzalez, a birth mother, and Gretchen Sisson, author of the book "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood." 

Making Contact Team:

• 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:

• Axletree - The Silent Grove
• Axletree - Goldfinch- Flight to the North
• Blear Moon - Learning from Kids
• Doctor Turtle - Leap Second
• Hinterheim - Prior Restraint

Learn More: 

• Reproductive Justice in Adoption
• Considering Adoption Planned Parenthood
• Relinquished Book Page
• Gretchen Sisson

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.

We're in the homestretch to Election Day 2024, and you know what that means: 24/7 coverage of the political horse race through tv, radio and social media. But voters are also getting exposed to false information. In today's show, we'll dig into election mis- and disinformation and why so much of it is targeting immigrants this year.

Amber Boydstun, professor and co-chair of the political science department at University of California, Davis

Jaime Longoria, manager of research and training for the Disinfo Defense League

Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center

Making Contact Team:

• Episode Host: Lucy Kang
• 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:

• "Road to Sunset" by Sergii Pavkin from Pixabay 
• "Clear Ideas (This Comedy Funny) by AlexGrohl from Pixabay
• "Drums" by Andrew Faid from Pixabay
• "Radio.wav" sound effect by davidou from Pixabay

Learn More: 

• Making Contact: www.focmedia.org
• Disinfo Defense League: https://www.disinfodefenseleague.org
• California Immigrant Policy Center: https://caimmigrant.org/

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program committed to investigative journalism and in-depth critical analysis that goes beyond the breaking news. On the web at www.focmedia.org.

On the eve of a Presidential election being decided by a handful of swing states, we sat down with two women in Indiana to talk about what it takes to make progress in a place that is largely neglected by the national Democratic Party Machine. Dayna Colbert, Executive Director of the Hoosier Democratic Party, talks about their growing foothold, led by women. And, political podcaster Dana Black talks about how to maintain an authentic voice while working alongside the official Democratic Party. 

Featuring:

• Dayna Colbert, Executive Director of Indiana Democratic Party
• Dana Black, Political podcaster and public speaker

Making Contact Staff:

• 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 Marketing Manager: Lissa Deonarain

Music:

• Jahzzar, Flutter
• HoliznaCC0 - Whatever

Learn More: 

• Indiana Democratic Party
• Indiana's Own Dana Black
• Hoosier Women Forward

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. 

Featuring:

• Carolina (pseudonym for privacy)
• Coral del Mar Murphy Marcos-  journalist. Author of an article on PR's health care crisis.
• Paola (pseudonym for privacy)
• Alberto Medina- Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora

Making Contact Staff:

• 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.

On this week's episode, we speak with Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar about his latest book, America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy.  America’s Black Capital chronicles how a center of Black excellence emerged amid virulent expressions of white nationalism, as African Americans pushed back against Confederate ideology to create an extraordinary locus of achievement. We examine the methods in which Black Atlanteans pushed for social, economic, and political upliftment through the development of Black collegiate systems, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement.  

Dr. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar the author of America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy.

**Episode Credits:**

• Host: Anita Johnson
• 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:**

• Andy G. Cohen - Our Young Guts 
• Blue Dot Sessions– Paving Stones

Learn More: 

Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar - 

Atlanta Race Massacre - 

Atlanta Race Massacre - 

Hoke Smith - 

Clarke Howell - 

Tom Watson -  

America's Black Capital - 

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.

It's been one year since October 7th, 2023 and the start of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. On today's show, we hear from journalist Rami Almeghari and other Palestinians about their experiences living through the war. Then, we dive into a conversation with Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine, about what mainstream coverage of the war is leaving out.

Featuring:

• Rami Almeghari, Palestinian journalist in Gaza
• Norman Solomon, activist and author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine
• Tarneem, Ahmad and Hamza Jaber, Palestinian siblings from Gaza

 Special thanks to Mohammed Naeem Imad, for reporting and fact-checking support

Audio excerpts featuring Tarneem, Ahmad and Hamza Jaber are from the series Great Love: The Gaza Monologues from ASHTAR Theatre Revisited on The Heart podcast, created and hosted by Kaitlin Prest

Making Contact Staff:

• Episode Host: Lucy Kang
• 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:

"Documentary Piano Ambient" by Bohdan Kuzmin (BoDleasons) via [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/users/28047609/)

Learn More: 

The Jaber siblings featured in this episode are fundraising for their living costs and to continue their education in Cairo. You can find their campaign here:

Journalist Rami Almeghari is currently in Gaza, and he is fundraising to support his family during this time. You can find his campaign here:  

ASHTAR Theatre, which created The Gaza Monologues: 

[Great Love: The Gaza Monologues from ASHTAR Theatre Revisited](https://play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_25_025f9e65-6631-4120-a9e0-a20b80edc5aa&uf=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.theheartradio.org%2FTheHeartRadio) _on _The Heart_ podcast

Making Contact is a 29-minute weekly program contextualizing the narratives that shape our culture. On the web at www.focmedia.org.

We catch up with journalist and IPV survivor Natalie Pattillo to talk about the folks fighting for justice for criminalized survivors of intimate partner violence. Listen to find out the story behind Oklahoma activists that led the state to adopt a new law based on NY's Domestic Violence Survivor's Justice Act, and how you can get involved. And finally, Standford's Regilla Project just published a groundbreaking study revealing the scope of the IPV to prison pipeline. 

**Natalie Pattillo,** journalist and co-producer of the film And So I Stayed

**Alexandra Bailey,** Senior Campaign Strategist for The Sentencing Project

**Amanda Ross**, activist and niece of April Wilkens, the first person to use the Oklahoma Survivors' Act to apply for a retroactive sentence reduction

**Debbie Mukamal,** Executive Director of Stanford Criminal Justice Center

**Andrea Cimino,** Director of Research for the Regilla Project

**Making Contact Staff:**

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](http://www.jeffemtman.com/) 

Digital Marketing Manager: Lissa Deonarain

**Music Credits:**

_Podington Bear_

Tracks: _Arboles, Delphi, Poise _

From the album _Encouraging_

Licensed under [CC BY-NC](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)

and available online here:

Learn More: 

**The Sentencing Project **

**Free April Wilkens **

**We Stand With Nikki**

**The Regilla Project **

**And So I Stayed Film **

**Survivor's Justice Project**

**Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice **

In this week's show, we take a look at the health, environmental and financial costs of coal that fall to people living nearby. With the help of our partner podcast Crosswinds, we meet three impacted communities along a railroad connecting coal mines in West Virginia to ports on the East Coast. And we'll hear how that rail infrastructure was built on the forced labor of incarcerated African Americans.

Featuring:

Adrian Wood, multimedia producer with the Repair Lab at the University of Virginia and producer of Crosswinds 

Making Contact Staff:

• Episode Host: Lucy Kang
• 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:

• "A Documentary" by AKTASOK (Valentin Iakovlev) via Pixabay

Credits for Crosswinds Episode 3: "Cost"

• Written, produced mixed and mastered by Adrian Wood
• Editing by Oluwakemi Aladesuyi of Rough Cut Collective
• Scoring by Torrin Purkett and Adrian Wood
• Produced through the Repair Lab at the University of Virginia 

Learn More:

• Making Contact homepage: www.focmedia.org
• Listen to the entire Crosswinds series:
  • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ey0DQiOzuvJehEyCjGJYv
  • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-repair-lab/id1633699454
• Coal Dust Kills: www.coaldustkills.com
• The Repair Lab: repairlab.virginia.edu 

On today’s Making Contact, our friends from the podcast, Kerning Cultures, bring us “Black Panthers in Algeria.” It’s the story of when Elaine Mokhtefi landed in newly independent Algeria in the early 1960s and quickly found herself at the center of a special period in the country’s history, at a time when Algiers welcomed liberation groups from across the world – earning a reputation as the “Mecca of revolution." In this unlikely setting, Elaine moved in the same circles as world famous radicals, ragtag political parties, spies and military leaders. And she became an unlikely sidekick to one of the most iconic liberation groups of our time, just as it was beginning to fall apart. 

Credits - Kerning Cultures: This episode was produced by Deena Sabry and Alex Atack, and edited by Dana Ballout. Fact checking by Eman Alsharif, sound design by Mohamad Khreizat, Paul Alouf and Alex Atack. Our team also includes Zeina Dowidar, Nadeen Shaker and Finbar Anderson. Making Contact Team:

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

Learn More: 

• Algiers: Third World Capital [https://bookshop.org/a/84225/9781788730006]
• Revolution or Death: The Life of Eldridge Cleaver [https://bookshop.org/a/84225/9781613739112]
• Kerning Cultures [https://kerningcultures.com/]

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 classify the natural, biological variation that exists in human beings and why we might want to consider new ways of organizing athletes that is less sexist, racist and more accepting of genders outside of a simple binary.  

Featuring:

Rose Eveleth, host and producer of the podcast Tested 

Episode Credits: Host: Salima Hamirani Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang Executive Director: Jina Chung Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong Engineer: Jeff Emtman Music: Alpha Hydrae - Friends Soft and Furious - So What Axletree- The Silent Grove Blear Moon - Further Discovery Crowander - Opening Lines.  

Learn More: 

Tested on NPR Tested on CBC