Connections

What does it take to build common ground?   In the Season 1 finale of Connections, host Ebony Flake speaks with Ace Graham, founder of the Alchemy Running Crew and owner of Alchemy 213, about the power of movement, community, and shared experience in Birmingham. The Alchemy Running Crew brings people together to explore Birmingham on foot, and along the way, strangers become friends, neighborhoods...

What makes a city feel alive?   In this episode, host Ebony Flake speaks with writer, podcast producer, and visual artist Audrey Atkins and Birmingham muralist Micah Briggs about the role art plays in shaping how people experience the city around them. From murals and spoken word readings to walkable neighborhoods, galleries, and public gathering spaces, the conversation explores how art can trans...

Transportation doesn’t always show up the same way for everyone. In this episode, field producer Jehme Pruitt steps forward to tell a story rooted in her own experience—growing up around the work of her mother, Kerri Pruitt, and The Dannon Project, a Birmingham nonprofit focused on helping people rebuild their lives after incarceration. It’s work that often begins with something immediate: getting...

Birmingham’s population is skewing younger—and that’s shaping the city’s economy, its energy, and its future. Mobility plays a big role in whether that shift sticks. But for many of them, Birmingham isn’t the destination—it’s the starting point. But arrival isn’t the same as attachment. Through student voices, the episode shows that life on campus works—it’s walkable, contained, and easy to naviga...

How did you get where you needed to go today? For most people in Birmingham, the answer is simple: by car. And for many, that journey runs through a single thoroughway—U.S. Highway 280. It’s the corridor that connects neighborhoods to downtown, suburbs to the city, and for thousands of residents, it’s the thread that holds their day together. In this episode of Connections, host Ebony Flake speaks...

Before someone decides to move to a city, there’s a quieter question beneath the job offer: Can I actually see a life for myself here? In this episode of Connections, host Ebony Flake speaks with Valerie Collins Thomas, founder of The VAL Group , a Birmingham-based concierge service that curates high-touch experiences for visiting physicians, executives, and business leaders. With only a short win...

There’s a certain energy to a city when movement feels easy, when you can walk to work, bike home past busy patios, or catch a bus without second-guessing it. It’s the kind of energy that comes from proximity, from moving through shared spaces instead of past them. In this episode of Connections, host Ebony Flake walks the Rotary Trail with Jackson Dean, a downtown Birmingham resident whose daily...

In this episode of Connections, host Ebony Flake sits down with Nakisha Adams, a lifelong Birmingham resident whose experience navigating the city is shaped by accessibility at every turn. Nakisha uses a wheelchair and relies on fixed-route buses and paratransit to move through daily life. For her, transportation isn’t just a convenience—it’s a lifeline to work, healthcare, community, and independ...

In this episode of Connections, host Ebony Flake sits down with James Fowler, the City of Birmingham’s Chief of Public Infrastructure, to explore how a city long shaped by the automobile is beginning to think differently about movement. Birmingham is one of the most auto-dependent regions in the country — not because of a single decision, but because of decades of gradual planning choices that pri...

How a city moves shapes more than the commute — it influences access, opportunity, and daily life. In this season preview of Connections, we introduce the vision behind the podcast and the stories you’ll hear throughout the series. Through the voices of Birmingham residents and city leaders — including Angel Holloway, Timothy Miller, and James Fowler of the Birmingham Department of Transportation...