Untold: A CT Mirror Podcast

Transgender children have been put in the middle of a political battle they never asked for, as lawmakers across the country introduce bills that roll back protections, and even criminalize medical care. 

This episode we hear from one Connecticut family about navigating the education system for their transgender son. And we’ll invite Ace Ricker into the studio – he gives us an insight into what it’s like to grow up trans in Connect...

The state of Connecticut has a progressive reputation, but its record on voting access is actually pretty atrocious. We’re one of just four states that doesn’t allow early voting, and until the pandemic, absentee ballots were hard to get. This episode we’ll find out how one Black church is getting out the vote – and what the parishioners think of their access to the ballot. 

And we’ll invite Steven Lance from the NAACP Legal Defens...

Despite its progressive image on reproductive rights, Connecticut doesn’t require public schools to teach sex education. This episode we speak with two teenagers who have stepped in to help educate their peers on this most intimate of topics  – and we find out what questions they get asked the most. We also hear from Laura Garcia, an undocumented woman who shares her story of attempting to get care during her pregnancy.

Throughout ...

The planet’s getting warmer, but we’re not all feeling the effects in the same way. This episode we go inside Resilient Connecticut, one of the state’s biggest climate adaptation efforts to find out how our towns are preparing for a hotter future. And we meet Kat Morris to learn how the climate crisis intersects with environmental racism, health inequities, global migration and reproductive justice.

Throughout this season we’re loo...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

246 years since those words were first written in the Declaration of Independence, what truths do we all still hold to be self-evident? In just a few weeks many of us will go to the polls for the 2022 midterm elections. 

In the midterm elections of 2014, just 15 percent of people aged 18-29 in Connecticut turned out to cast a vote. Four years later, in 2018, that number had doubled to 30...

Whose recovery is this anyway? The pandemic shutdowns threw tens of thousands of people out of work in Connecticut. Businesses had to close their doors. Essential workers risked their health for low wages and non-existent benefits. Two years later, house prices have surged, businesses are back open, and there seem to be plenty of jobs – so we should be feeling pretty good, right? But the inequalities that existed in Connectic...

If you had to think about a key area of life where the pandemic truly exposed the enormous divisions that already existed in this state – education would be pretty close to the top of the list. We were already the state with the largest achievement gap in the nation. A state where half-a-million people owe more than a billion dollars in student loans. And then, in March of 2020  — teachers, students, everyone, was ...

The opioid epidemic that has been devastating many communities in Connecticut for the last several years was only exacerbated by the stress and isolation of the pandemic. And that’s on top of the influx of fentanyl that has truly led to an epidemic of overdose deaths. But the pandemic has also shown us all the importance of prioritizing recovery and mental health. Are we turning the corner on the stigma of drug use?

This epis...

Leaving prison and trying to re-establish life in the community comes with an incredible set of challenges – housing, employment, family relationships – and under it all, recovering from the trauma of incarceration itself. Thousands of people were released from prison in Connecticut in 2020 as the Department of Corrections tried to stem a tide of COVID in its facilities. 

This episode we go inside the Hartford Re-e...