Jeff Adachi died suddenly Friday night. While details of how he died are still under investigation, many are remembering Adachi and his tireless efforts as a public defender who provided fair legal representation to the people who needed it most. Adachi was the only elected public defender in the state of California, making his position fighting for and against the system unique. Guest: Scott Shafer, Senior Editor of KQED's Politics and Government Desk. Subscribe and listen to the full Political...
Feb 25, 2019•15 min
It's Day 1 of the Oakland Unified school teacher strike. Teachers, parents and students began picketing Thursday for more pay, support, and smaller class sizes. The strike directly affects thousands of families that must decide whether to send their kids to school or not. And it hurts the district's pocket book every day students are absent. Today, we check in with one school in Oakland to see how families are handling the strike. Guests: Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor, Alejandra Gonzales, Oak...
Feb 22, 2019•2 min
Lots of gig workers earn tips. So, when InstaCart started paying its full-service shoppers and deliverers on a sliding scale based on how many tips they got, the workers were pissed off. They took to Reddit and Facebook to complain and gained the national media's attention. This month, InstaCart changed how it pays its app workers. It's seen as a victory for gig workers that have been trying to get tech companies to be transparent about how they pay so-called contract workers. Guest: Sam Harnett...
Feb 20, 2019•11 min
PG&E is under pressure to not spark a wildfire this summer. A federal judge overseeing the investor-owned utility's probation case is demanding they take prevention measures. This week, PG&E presented its wildfire safety plan to state regulators, which includes cutting back trees, replacing power poles, installing weather stations, and shutting off power when it’s hot, dry and windy. But PG&E says these plans are costly. And, the question of who will pay for it all, lingers as does P...
Feb 15, 2019•2 min
The opioid crisis has dominated the news, but there is growing evidence that methamphetamine has made a return to San Francisco. Overdoses from meth have more than doubled and about half the people admitted to San Francisco General Hospital with a psychiatric emergency are high on meth. Some health experts think the two drug crises could be related. Guest: April Dembosky, health correspondent for KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 13, 2019•2 min
Ten years is a lot of time. For the Bay Area, it's meant more money, new problems, and getting more serious about climate change. Today on the podcast, we apply the #10YearChallenge to the Bay Area and see how the past ten years has treated the politics, economy, arts and environment scenes in the Bay Area. To give us your take on the #10YearChallenge for the Bay Area ... Call us at 415-553-2273 and leave us a voice message. Be sure to tell us your first name and what part of the Bay Area you ar...
Feb 11, 2019•13 min
BART will stop offering its 4 a.m. train service on Feb. 11 in order to retrofit the Transbay Tube to better withstand major earthquakes. Workers will install a new liner in the 3.6-mile underwater structure to prevent flooding after a big quake, a project that's expected to take three and a half years to complete. That leaves 3,000 people who ride BART during its first hour of service looking for another way to get to work -- including our very own early-morning news anchor Brian Watt. Guest: B...
Feb 08, 2019•15 min
East Bay rapper Keak Da Sneak is credited with pioneering the Hyphy style. This Thursday he has to turn himself in to serve a 16-month state prison sentence. Since being shot in 2017, he’s confined to a wheelchair and needs round the clock care. He can’t expect that kind of care in prison. This has started a conversation about accessibility and medical care while serving time. Guest: Nastia Voynovskaya, music editor for KQED Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 06, 2019•16 min
High school freshman Crista Ramos had no idea her mom was living under Temporary Protected Status, a federal humanitarian program that allows about 260,000 immigrants from El Salvador to lawfully live and work in the U.S. But when the Trump administration announced it would end the program, everything changed. Now, Crista’s the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit. Everyday high school worries have been replaced with fighting to keep her family together. Guest: Farida Jhabvala Romero, immigr...
Feb 04, 2019•15 min
Chico is bursting at the seams right now. The ripples of displacement from the Camp Fire, which killed at least 86 people and destroyed about 14,000 homes, are far from over as people cram into Chico to stay living close to family, jobs and schools. But the city's vacancy rate is nearly zero, and some people are being evicted to make room. Guest: Sonja Hutson, covers wildfires, emergency preparedness and politics for KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 01, 2019•11 min
School closures. Teacher strike. Budget cuts. It hasn’t been a great week for Oakland Unified. The school board voted to close Roots International Academy and will be deciding soon whether to merge two other schools. Plus, teachers – who want more money and better working conditions – are voting by Friday whether to authorize a strike. This week feels like the district’s woes have hit an apex. Guest: Vanessa Rancaño, KQED education reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...
Jan 30, 2019•17 min
If you're a fan of The Bay, you can thank Vinnee Tong. She helped launch the podcast last year and has helped shape the shows from choosing what we cover and how we talk about it, especially around race, identity and class. Vinnee starts her new role as KQED’s new managing editor, which begins Jan. 28. Today, Erika and Devin sit down with Vinnee for her totally, unofficial exit interview. Guest: Vinnee Tong, KQED’s managing editor (forever Bay member) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...
Jan 28, 2019•15 min
Kamala Harris announced this week she’s running for president. She's certainly not the first Californian to be groomed by Bay Area politics for the national stage. Harris has had to walk a line between left-leaning politics and her status as a former prosecutor. On Sunday she'll hold a rally in Oakland, the city where she was born. Guest: Marisa Lagos, KQED politics reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 25, 2019•15 min
What if we looked at solving the Bay Area's housing crisis from a regional lens? Could we come up with solutions that actually work? It's often said that solving the housing crisis requires a regional approach but no one has tried to define what that looks like, until now. A proposal on its way to the state legislature could give the Bay Area its own regional housing agency with the ability to set goals and taxes. Guest: Guy Marzorati, KQED politics reporter The Bay wants to get to know you bett...
Jan 23, 2019•14 min
The debate over whether gig workers are employees or contractors has been a slow, messy conversation. Now, California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, is trying to help broker a deal between the two sides. But some drivers aren’t happy about where they think it's going. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter The Bay wants to get to know you better. Take our survey and share your opinion about the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 18, 2019•12 min
PG&E says it has no choice but to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and that it's going to file papers around Jan. 29. A lot of things led to this: from deregulation in the 1990's, to the fatal San Bruno explosion in 2010 that put the utility on probation to the 2017 and 2018 deadly wildfires in Northern California. And it brings up the question of who should ultimately be responsible for the cost. Guests: Lisa Pickoff-White, KQED data journalist, and Marisa Lagos, KQED senior politics ...
Jan 16, 2019•18 min
Valero spent $200,000 in last year's Benicia city council election to help elect two candidates who were less critical of the company than others. That's created tension between the oil refiner and the city, leading people to question how much influence Valero should have in local politics. On Tuesday Benicia will discuss the possibility of new campaign finance laws that could limit corporate influence in its small town. Guest: Ted Goldberg, KQED News Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...
Jan 14, 2019•14 min
About 40 percent of students in the Salinas City Elementary School District are considered homeless. This can mean living in a shelter or living in an overcrowded home, like multiple families co-existing in a single place. It's a problem that hurts schoolchildren and their ability to learn and retain information. And it stems from high and growing housing prices. Guest: Vanessa Rancaño, KQED education reporter To see more of Vanessa's reporting on Monterey County tap here. Learn more about your ...
Jan 11, 2019•16 min
The San Mateo County district attorney is looking to reopen an investigation against a fired Burlingame police officer. The cop was accused by three women of asking them for sex in exchange for help with their alleged crimes. The case was made public this week after Bay Area reporters received police records under a new transparency law that went into effect on Jan. 1. Guest: Thomas Peele, investigative reporter with the Bay Area News Group Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...
Jan 09, 2019•13 min
Food says a lot about who we are. It can identify where we come from and what we like. In some cases, it may even let us know when we’re being racist. In a way, that’s a starting point for the San Francisco Chronicle's new restaurant critic Soleil Ho. The host of the podcast Racist Sandwich, Soleil tells The Bay about how food is a conduit for way more than what’s on our plates. ... Also, she likes the “gross” stuff, too. Guest: Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle’s new restaurant critic, cohost ...
Jan 07, 2019•17 min
Getting access to police records has never been easy. Especially when the records involve allegations of police wrongdoing. A new California law - SB 1421 - introduced by a Bay Area state senator, is supposed to give the public access to documents related to police misconduct and accountability. But law enforcement is fighting to keep documents from the past, private. This week a judge rejected an attempt to block the law from going into effect, and KQED journalists are involved. Guests: Sukey L...
Jan 04, 2019•16 min
See ya, 2018. What up, 2019! We’ve produced almost 150 episodes of The Bay covering all kinds of local news from e-scooters, to housing policies and #GrillingWhileBlack. Today, we want to pause a moment to say thanks for hanging with us. And to give you a sense of how we’re approaching the new year (hint: Erika is optimistic; Devin is pessimistic). Guests: Yours Truly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 02, 2019•11 min
Ten years ago, in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Bart police officer, Johannes Mehserle. This was one of the first police shootings caught on cell phone video and spread around the world. It began a decade of witnessing police violence in a new way that has sparked a national conversation around police accountability and racism. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED race and equity reporter Check out KQED's Forum special on Oscar Grant's legacy. And KQED Arts ...
Dec 31, 2018•21 min
We jump into a stranger's car and take a ride over the Bay Bridge in the "casual carpool lane" to talk about higher bridge tolls. Our carpool driver and rider join in on a discussion about Regional Measure 3, which 55 percent of voters approved in the June 5 election that increased tolls on seven state bridges in the Bay Area. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 28, 2018•14 min
#WhileBlack was a popular hashtag in 2018. This year we watched several videos on social media that included white people harassing black people doing just about everything. Oakland had a couple of racist moments at Lake Merritt this year, including one woman who became known as BBQ Becky. The city had its own response too. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED race and equity reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 26, 2018•13 min
This was a big year for people of color in lead movie roles — especially for culture, language and accents that are not English or American. One of those films was Crazy Rich Asians, which resonated with the Bay Area, and our host Devin Katayama and our editor Vinnee Tong, as we discuss Asian American identity. Guest: Ricky Yean, writer of Asian-Americans Are Cultural Orphans (aka I hope Crazy Rich Asians isn’t a flop) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 24, 2018•14 min
What happens when the people most invested in trying to make the Bay Area a better place decide to LEAVE entirely? Gabriel Metcalf is the outgoing president of the Bay Area think tank SPUR, and he's moving to take a similar job in Sydney, Australia. Metcalf says the Bay Area is one of the world's centers of wealth creation, but has struggled to meet some of the most basic needs. For instance, housing. Guest: Gabriel Metcalf, outgoing CEO and president of SPUR Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
Dec 21, 2018•13 min
In December 2016, Lindsay McCollum and Eddie “Tennessee” Tate were shot and killed in San Francisco’s Mission District. The two were homeless and living together. Lindsay's mother, Carrie McCollum, reached out to a KQED reporter one year after he went searching for answers himself. The case remains unresolved, but Carrie doesn’t want her daughter to be forgotten. Guest: Peter Arcuni, KQED reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 19, 2018•16 min
Mention electric scooters and people usually react with an eye roll. It's associated with the newness of the tech culture of the Bay Area. Some see scooters as a "micro-transit" tool; others simply see them as a nuisance. The city of San Jose thinks it's got the answer to managing them: geofencing. Guest: KQED Silicon Valley Senior Editor Tonya Mosley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 17, 2018•12 min
Oakland is considering closing 24 schools. Most of these schools are likely in East Oakland, where many of the poorest students live. A group of parents is demanding that if Oakland Unified closes their kids' schools that they be given first dibs of any other school in the district. This includes charter schools, which have been part of the reason why some of the district-run schools have experienced a drop in enrollment. Guest: Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor Learn more about your ad choices. ...
Dec 14, 2018•12 min
