Exposed Part 2: the Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point from SF Public Press
Release Date: 02/12/2025
Seeing Signs from Queens Memory Podcast (Encore)
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...
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The Healing Project: An Abolitionist Story (Encore)
Making Contact
Composer, pianist, and vocalist Samora Pinderhughes tells us about The Healing Project. The Healing Project, a fundamentally abolitionist project, explores the structures of systemic racism and the prison industrial complex. The Healing Project takes action towards abolition with forms such as musical songs, films, an exhibition, community gatherings, live performances, and a digital library of audio interviews. At the center of the project are the intergenerational voices of people across the country, including folks incarcerated in prisons and detention centers. Their stories, experiences,...
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Radical Therapy from Re:Work
Making Contact
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 Making Contact Team Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang Executive Director: Jina Chung Engineer: [Jeff Emtman](http://www.jeffemtman.com/) ...
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The Promise and Peril of Geoengineering (Encore)
Making Contact
For Earth Day, we bring back a special environmental episode from our archives! As we head into an ever warming world, some experts and politicians are embracing a possible solution to climate change called geoengineering. Theoretically geoengineering could slow down climate change, stop it, and maybe even remove carbon from the air. It sounds like the perfect answer for a global political system that just can’t stop burning fossil fuels even if it kills us all. But it might not be the easy fix we’re hoping for. We talk to scientists and activists about what geoengineering is and why...
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The Calling
Making Contact
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 Making Contact Team Episode host and producer: Lucy Kang Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang Executive Director: Jina Chung Engineer: Digital Media Marketing:...
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The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition (Encore)
Making Contact
What is caste? According to author Thenmozhi Soundararajan, “caste is suffering. That one’s worth and fate are determined at the moment of birth. Forced to exist in a caste apartheid of segregated ghettos." On this week's episode, we talk to Thenmozhi Soundararajan the author of The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition. Examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective , Thenmozhi lays bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed. This is an encore...
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Karinda Dobbins: Black and Blue (Encore)
Making Contact
On this week's episode, we speak with Bay Area based comedian Karinda Dobbins about the release of her debut comedy album, Black & Blue. In Black & Blue, Karinda shares personal stories - finding humor in the most ordinary moments of her daily life - including her girlfriend’s arbitrary policy on household pests, the changes hipsters have brought to Oakland, and a Black woman’s unique packing list for hiking. This is an encore presentation of a show that first aired August 14, 2024. Featuring: Karinda Dobbins, standup comedian, writer, and actor Making Contact...
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The Supreme Court Under Trump
Making Contact
During his first term, Trump stacked the Supreme Court with hard right judges creating a 6-3 split that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a stunning ruling in which a human right which was previously granted by law was taken away from the public. This time Trump faces even less resistance and could remake the Supreme Court once again. Ellie Mystal, justice correspondent and columnist for The Nation magazine, joins us to talk about the Supreme Court: what the democrats could have done under Biden to fix the third branch of government so that we wouldn't now be in such a...
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Flemmie Kittrell and the Preschool Experiment from Lost Women of Science
Making Contact
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...
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How The First Home Pregnancy Test Was Born (Encore) Description
Making Contact
In 1965 Margaret Crane was a young designer creating packaging for a pharmaceutical company. Looking at the rows of pregnancy tests she thought, “Well, women could do that at home!” and so she made it a reality for potentially pregnant people to be able to know about and take control of their own lives and bodies. But while the design of the prototype was simple, Crane faced the issues we continue to fight when it comes to reproductive rights and the health and autonomy of people who give birth: an uphill battle to convince the pharmaceutical companies, the medical community and...
info_outlineIn episode two of “Exposed” from our friends at the San Francisco Public Press, we explore a little-known chapter in San Francisco’s nuclear era: human experiments carried out to assess the health effects of radiation. Scientists from the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, located at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, designed and executed at least 24 experiments that involved gathering data from humans — in some cases, injecting test subjects with radioisotopes or having them ingest fluids laced with trace amounts of radioactive materials. Even football players from the San Francisco 49ers were enrolled as test subjects in these so-called tracer studies.
We hear from military veterans who were sent on a mysterious mission to spread radioactive substances onto rooftops at an Army base near Pittsburg, Calif., for an experiment the radiation lab played a role in designing. Some recount experiences of witnessing nuclear bomb blasts in the Nevada desert. We also examine a national pattern of human radiation experiments revealed by Eileen Welsome, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, who shined a light on similar practices conducted by government facilities, hospitals and other institutions.
Featuring:
- Eldridge Jones, who served in the military and was part of Operation Stoneman
- Merle Votaw, a Navy veteran who participated in Operation Stoneman II
- Eileen Welsome, author of "Plutonium Files"
- Holly Barker, Anthropologist and professor at the University of Washington who studied the Marshall Islands
Credits:
San Francisco Public Press:
Reporting: Rebecca Bowe and Chris Roberts
Editing: Michael Stoll and Liz Enochs
Research Editing: Ambika Kandasamy
Web Design: John Angelico
Copy Editing: Kurt Aguilar, Michele Anderson and Richard Knee
Archival Research and Illustration: Stacey Carter
Audio Editing: Liana Wilcox, Mel Baker and Megan Maurer
Sound Gathering: Justin Benttinen
Photography: Sharon Wickham, Yesica Prado and Guillermo Hernandez
Graphic Design: Reid Brown
Fact Checking: Dani Solakian and Ali Hanks
Proofreading: Lila LaHood, Noah Arroyo, Zhe Wu and Sylvie Sturm
Special thanks to Alastair Gee and Danielle Renwick at The Guardian and Ben Trefny at KALW Public Radio, and to Laura Wenus and Amy Pyle
Making Contact:
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 Media Marketing: Anubhuti Kumar
Music Credits:
Midday, by the Blue Dot Sessions
Sweet Leilani, by Bing Crosby
Learn More:
Exposed on the San Francisco Public Press
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.