Making Contact

Guns: An American Tradition

Love em or hate em, they’re an ever present part of American culture. And they’re not going away anytime soon. On this edition, we talk guns…from the shooting range, to the black panthers, to red state America. The people behind the trigger are probably not who you’d assume. Featuring: Matt Knox, gun owner; Ed & … Continued


Mark Crispin Miller of NYU discusses some of the recent additions to his Forbidden Bookshelf series, which seeks out important out-of-print political works and republishes them as e-books; Miller explains the insidious ways the books were first “disappeared.” Next, Peter Hart with the National Coalition Against Censorship speaks about this year’s Banned Books Week, and … Continued


We celebrate Malcolm Margolin, founder of HeyDay Books and publisher of the voices of Native Americans and native nature.  He has just announced his retirement (sorta!) after over 40 years.  PLUS:  A new film celebrates comedy in S.F., with a focus on three legendary comics.  One of them is satirist Will Durst, who joins us … Continued


What the ugly history of a 1906 Bronx Zoo exhibit tells us about ourselves today. With Pamela Newkirk, author of Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. Newkirk is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism at New York University. And Nathan Ward, author of The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett. Ward was an editor at American Heritage, and … Continued


Legendary Patti Smith on Her New Memoir “M Train” & National Book Award Winner “Just Kids”; Patti Smith on Closing Guantanamo, Remembering Rachel Corrie and Feeling Frustrated with Obama; Patti Smith on 19th Century Poet William Blake and on Creating Political Art “Unapologetically”; “People Have the Power”: Patti Smith on Pope Francis and Her Performances … Continued