Crosscurrents

Series produced by KALW

Series image

Context, culture and connection from around the Bay Area.

KALW's Crosscurrents is the Bay Area's public radio news magazine. Winner of three awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and voted "Best Local News Program" by SF Weekly, Crosscurrents brings you context, culture and connection from around the Bay Area.


356 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
The quest to be Oakland’s next Youth Poet Laureate
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Oakland's Youth Poet Laureate hopefuls gather on stage, Credit: Holly J. McDede
Poet laureates reign across the country, representing different cities and states like kings and queens of the written word. Often, they’re college...

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: Sep 18, 2015
  • Length: 06:33
  • Purchases: 1
Nurse Family Partnership brings first-time moms and nurses together
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Jasmine Jurado (left) and Nurse Lopez, with baby Anais., Credit: Liz Mak
Nurse Family Partnership, or NFP, found that limited access to good parenting information, or role models, can present an even greater challenge to...

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 05:33
  • Purchases: 1
The U.N. of Native American Fellowship
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Group photo in front of the meeting hall mural, Credit: Intertribal Friendship House, Oakland
The words “Native American Reservation” might conjure an image of an expansive Southwestern landscape, or maybe a Casino. But for the 45,000 Native...

  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 05:46
Becoming a doula for those who may need one most
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Client of doula Traver Riggins, 7 months pregnant., Credit: Leila Day
A doula is a woman who helps another woman through the process of childbirth. Traver Riggins says when she learned about how a doula could help, sh...

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio and PRX Remix


  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 06:13
  • Purchases: 2
A visit to San Quentin Museum
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Lt. Robinson points out the warden who died at his desk, Credit: Chris Hambrick
They had me at homemade shiv wall. “Shiv” is a slang term for an improvised weapon. I heard the San Quentin Museum has enough shivs to make an enti...

  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 07:27
When parents are in prison, kids pay the price
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Arvaughn Williams: "Because of his incarceration, I have to show the world that I won't fall into this system and this cycle that traps so many people, black men like myself.", Credit: Catherine Girardeau
When someone is imprisoned, it doesn’t just affect the incarcerated. It affects the people left behind. Young people. Nearly three million children...

  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 07:33
The reality of subletting in San Francisco
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
San Francisco is a renter’s worst nightmare. It might seem obvious. You know, your mum knows, your friends know, but me? I did not know. It is hard...

  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 09:39
Affordable by design: the fight to save one of Silicon Valley’s last mobile home parks
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Erika Escalante stands in front of her home at Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, Credit: Angela Johnston
Buena Vista is a diverse community, made up of seniors, families, people with disabilities. The majority of residents are low income, and Latino. P...

  • Added: Sep 15, 2015
  • Length: 08:08
After life: a grassroots foundation supports families after police violence
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Mesha Irizarry at a protest outside Mission police station, Credit: KEVIN JONES
This isn’t the story of another police shooting. It’s the story of what happens after a police shooting. Especially one in particular. “The night ...

Bought by WAMC Northeast Public Radio


  • Added: Jul 30, 2015
  • Length: 09:34
  • Purchases: 1
Fine tuning: the art of guitar making
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
It used to be that if you wanted to learn how to make a guitar, you had to apprentice with a luthier. You’d find them in Europe, and you had almost...

  • Added: Jul 30, 2015
  • Length: 06:23
Did Robert Louis Stevenson have the world's weirdest honeymoon?
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: A stone tablet honors author Robert Louis Stevenson
Most people who visit Calistoga -- a town in the Napa Valley -- come for the wine and the spa treatments; few come for the literary history. But th...

  • Added: Jul 30, 2015
  • Length: 10:19
"Scurrilous and scandalous": subversive humor at the SF Public Library
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Poster for this year's Schmulowitz exhibit
Sometimes the things we write can cause controversy, and even end up being deadly. Early this year two gunmen opened fire in the office of the Fren...

  • Added: Jul 21, 2015
  • Length: 06:34
The first look inside San Francisco's radical attempt to end homelessness
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
March 29 was the last night Delilah Soto slept on the street. She’s a recovering heroin addict who’s been living in a tent in San Francisco’s Missi...

  • Added: Jul 21, 2015
  • Length: 09:47
Maximum Rocknroll: Punk magazine, radio show, record label, and vinyl archive since 1977
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Lydia Athanasopoulou, Eli Wald, and Grace Ambrose, Credit: COLIN PEDEN
I’m inside what looks like it could be a college library or a research institute. People sit quietly working at desks and tables, surrounded by she...

  • Added: Jul 21, 2015
  • Length: 10:05
Frogs in danger of croaking: fighting a fungal epidemic
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Dr. Vance Vredenburg swabs frogs to test for chytrid., Credit: DR. VANCE VREDENBURG SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
I’m in a room stacked with rows of 50 gallon fish tanks, surrounded by gurgling water pumps. But this isn’t a fish store. I’m with conservation bio...

Bought by WABE


  • Added: Jul 21, 2015
  • Length: 06:28
  • Purchases: 1
How activists are reviving a historic waterway in Bayview-Hunters Point
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Bo Barnes, president of Kayaks Unlimited., Credit: TASIN SABIR
The sun is beating down on Islais Creek, a small marine channel in Hunters Point that opens out into the Bay. Homeless camps, graffiti, and factori...

  • Added: Jul 20, 2015
  • Length: 06:44
The world’s fair that changed San Francisco
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
Imagine a tower more than 40 stories high, sparkling as the sun catches a hundred thousand pieces of colorful cut glass. Imagine this tower at nigh...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Jul 20, 2015
  • Length: 10:44
  • Purchases: 1
What it really takes to make your chicken dinner
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
I killed my first deer in the backwoods of Wisconsin when I was 13 years old. This was the first time I really understood the existential price of ...

  • Added: Jul 20, 2015
  • Length: 11:58
Monarch butterflies and the Mona Lisa
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
“There's one on the ground there. Are there two? No way! Are they mating?” I turn to ask longtime monarch sanctuary volunteer, Barb Thomas. We hove...

Bought by WABE


  • Added: Jul 20, 2015
  • Length: 08:22
  • Purchases: 1
Navigating the sex industry in the Bay Area
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Piece image
In this three-part episode of "Crosscurrents" KALW's Liza Veale looks into the Bay Area’s sex industry: it's advantages, it's complications, and it...

  • Added: Jul 17, 2015
  • Length: 22:46