Crosscurrents

Series produced by KALW

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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
Gentrification versus "Jazzification": Birdland nightclub grows vision to spark jazz district
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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How do neighborhoods develop distinct identities? Why was San Francisco’s North Beach an enclave for poetry, for example? Or the Castro a haven for...

  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 07:06
TaskRabbit takes hold in Bay Area divided by income gap
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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The way we make a living is changing. For about a third of Americans, regular hours and benefits are giving way to a patchwork of contracting, temp...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 06:45
  • Purchases: 1
Band of volunteers keeps an eye on SF bond projects
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Bond-funded construction at Dolores Park, Credit: Flickr user torbakhopper
In the most recent election, San Francisco voters approved a $500-million transportation bond for projects like BART escalators, traffic signals, b...

Bought by WABE


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 07:56
  • Purchases: 1
Bay Area schools put race on the syllabus
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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Beginning next fall, all San Francisco public schools will offer a class called Ethnic Studies. It’s a look at American history and culture from th...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 06:16
  • Purchases: 1
Inside Richmond's Immigration Detention Center
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Danielle Gabriel and her daughter stand vigil outside West County Detention Facility., Credit: Photo by Stephen Southern.
Every month, Alex Aldana stands in protest in front of the West County Detention Facility in Richmond. It’s a medium-security jail that holds men a...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 05:27
  • Purchases: 1
Teens digitally detox
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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Hundreds of students at Schools of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco are taking part in a nationwide Tech Timeout, challenging students to unplug f...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 05:22
  • Purchases: 1
In San Francisco, coyotes are your wildest neighbors
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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San Francisco is a biodiversity hotspot. Its vast parks are home to more than 50 types of mammals. Now, the city named after the patron saint of an...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 06:40
  • Purchases: 1
Talking turkey: the uneasy coexistence of people and wild fowl
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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The population of wild turkeys in the United States has been growing steadily throughout the country, and the trend holds true here in California. ...

  • Added: Mar 24, 2015
  • Length: 08:21
The food that grows from concrete
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Philip Stark looks at mallow growing in West Oakland with leaves as big as his hand., Credit: Olivia Cueva
Imagine eating at your favorite restaurant and being told that the salad on your plate was harvested from the cracks in the sidewalk in West Oaklan...

Bought by WESM 91.3 FM, WABE, and KUOW


  • Added: Mar 17, 2015
  • Length: 07:05
  • Purchases: 3
A place in the Tenderloin where sleep is sacred
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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Every morning in the Tenderloin, when people all around San Francisco are starting to wake up, around 30 people gather at St. Boniface Church, wait...

  • Added: Mar 16, 2015
  • Length: 08:07
The tipless restaurant movement
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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At a full-service restaurant you know the drill. You eat your food, you get your bill, and then you calculate the tip. But not at Sous Beurre Kitch...

  • Added: Mar 11, 2015
  • Length: 09:06
Learning how to play on San Francisco’s streets
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Hoot Patooter's Myles Nye, Credit: Marlo McKenzie
Every year, over the course of a weekend, San Francisco’s Civic Center is transformed into a giant playground.

  • Added: Mar 11, 2015
  • Length: 06:59
A performance crafted for you, starring you
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Participant Dare Turner takes a restful moment while on her Odyssey. For her, the experience of looking through the suspended frames was transformative: “I think I saw my future, in a way.”, Credit: Sasha Wizansky
Imagine this for a moment: What if everything about today was curated just for you? Who you meet, what you see, even how you feel?

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 11, 2015
  • Length: 09:13
  • Purchases: 1
"The stuff dreams are made of" - the search for the Maltese Falcon
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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The mystery over what the falcon really is, whether it even existed,and why it has any value has remained so compelling, in fact, that over the yea...

  • Added: Mar 11, 2015
  • Length: 09:15
The Ice Cream Bar: Frozen for years by SF's permitting process
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: The Ice Cream Bar, Credit: Thomas Hawk
Juliet Pries, the owner of the Ice Cream Bar in Cole Valley, talks about the massive red tape she had to deal with to open her business.

  • Added: Mar 11, 2015
  • Length: 04:06
Stanford considering the fate of century-old dam threatening endangered trout
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Searsville Dam, Credit: Wikimedia commons user Gazebo
The Searsville Dam is causing big trouble on the peninsula. The 122-year-old, 65-foot-tall dam is closed to the public, hidden away on 1,200 acres ...

  • Added: Feb 04, 2015
  • Length: 06:41
The problem with "sounding white"
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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We are always adjusting the way we sound. It especially depends on the social situation we are in. Linguists call it "code switching," a term origi...

Bought by New Hampshire Public Radio and PRX Remix


  • Added: Feb 04, 2015
  • Length: 06:19
  • Purchases: 2
Staying in the Gray
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Hannah Young giving her boifriend Clem Breslin a smooch.
Many spaces are designated for either men or women: bathrooms, clothing stores, hair salons. But some people don’t subscribe to being a man or a wo...

Bought by XRAY.fm and PRX Remix


  • Added: Feb 04, 2015
  • Length: 08:01
  • Purchases: 2
Welcome to the future, Sir: At the cusp of virtual reality
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
Caption: Programmers show off their virtual reality experiments.
Cris Miranda believes in the promise of virtual reality. After decades of hype, 2015 may be the year that it breaks into homes around the country.

  • Added: Feb 04, 2015
  • Length: 11:41
Treasure Island High School offers oasis of hope for disconnected youth
From: KALW
Series: Crosscurrents
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There’s a lot of talk in education circles these days about changing to the common core curriculum or changing from books to computers. But at Life...

  • Added: Feb 04, 2015
  • Length: 08:23