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Let's Make a Deal Paul Lamb notes that in this tough economy, bartering for goods and services not only makes sense — it also teaches good habits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Adult Education With so much homework night after night, kids aren't the only ones staying up late figuring out an algebra problem. John Dorrance is one of many parents burning the midnight oil. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Housing for the Rest of Us Developers and politicians give each other awards for below-market housing projects, but Carol Denney argues their calculations leave out the people who most need a better place to live. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sikhing the Truth When her championship high school debate team navigated airport security, Jennie Savage's students and their trophy got through just fine. Except one. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Defensive Indifference When a catcher lets a base runner steal a base, it's called defensive indifference. Because baseball often imitates life, Linda Gebroe says it's a concept that can save a game — or a marriage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forgiveness A tenth college reunion gives Evan Sagerman a chance to apologize for a decision he's come to regret. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Problem in the Mirror Do you think the Legislature should stop asking the electorate to do its job? Richard Friedlander suggests that maybe the electorate should stop voting to make that job nearly impossible. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Bench Has a Closet As President Obama weighs his nominee for the Supreme Court, do you know how many openly gay federal judges there are? Clyde Wadsworth has the surprising answer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Problem in the Mirror Do you think the Legislature should stop asking the electorate to do its job? Richard Friedlander suggests that maybe the electorate should stop voting to make that job nearly impossible. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forgiveness A tenth college reunion gives Evan Sagerman a chance to apologize for a decision he's come to regret. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website School Days For all those parents whose kids aren't hogging the fast lane of the freeway to success, Michael Ellis has a story — his own. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Different World Youth Radio's Asha Richardson is about to graduate from her tiny charter high school where, compared to life at a very big school, she's learned different things differently. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website From Closet to Grave A family friend died of breast cancer. But what shocked everyone was that she'd fought the disease for 14 years — and hadn't told anyone. Craig Weisner looks at a different kind of closet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Batteries Not Included Lewis Heathcote is learning to become a San Franciscan. He's got the don't forget a jacket, eat raw fish and avoid Fisherman's Wharf stuff down. But earthquakes are a work in progress. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Family Library Public libraries have changed over the years, but as Stephanie Rapp has discovered, they still have the power to fire a child's imagination generation after generation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bottleneck From his desk at the Employment Development Department, Ira Eisenberg has a pretty good idea why it isn't easy to get unemployment benefits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mother's Day Peipei Zhou's mother brought her to America and sacrificed her own welfare for her daughter. And yet she worries that she didn't give her more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Burning Questions On the final day of a statewide tour for a group of Spanish wildfire experts, Maria Morales learns that the Spanish approach to wildfires and the Californian approach are oceans apart. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Remind Me Why I Was So Afraid Remember when so many worried about having a black president? Brenda Payton notes how often it is that when we look behind our fears, there's nothing there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stimulated Banks and car companies have gotten all the bailout ink, but Patti Isaacs' family is getting an unexpected and much-needed hand up from her government, too. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gone But Not Forgotten Copia was a failure as a museum of food and wine, but Holly Hubbard Preston says the story of the culinary arts' role in Northern California culture still needs a place where it can be told. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Just a Roll of Paper How many trees could we save by using just one roll of toilet tissue made from recycled paper a year? Joan Reiss' answer might surprise you. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charity Without Borders In tough economic times, international aid organizations are hit especially hard by rising demand and falling budgets. Susan Dix Lyons argues for charity and enlightened self interest that know no borders. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Confidence Man Richard Friedlander argues that confidence distinguishes a national economy from a Ponzi scheme, and a life misspent accumulating things from a life rich in experience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Put Me In, Coach Women play basketball, soccer and many other sports at a high level. But not baseball. How come? Dick Meister says give them a sporting chance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Just a Roll of Paper How many trees could we save by using just one roll of toilet tissue made from recycled paper a year? Joan Reiss' answer might surprise you. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charity Without Borders In tough economic times, international aid organizations are hit especially hard by rising demand and falling budgets. Susan Dix Lyons argues for charity and enlightened self interest that know no borders. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Green Peer Pressure Alison van Diggelen feels the heat everywhere to go green. Does the heat work — and is it too much? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Put Me In, Coach Women play basketball, soccer and many other sports at a high level, but not baseball. How come? Dick Meister says give them a sporting chance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Confidence Man Richard Friedlander argues that confidence distinguishes a national economy from a Ponzi scheme, and a life misspent accumulating things from a life rich in experience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Saving Marriage by Ending It Clyde Wadsworth looks at proposals to solve the gay marriage argument by getting the state out of the marriage business entirely. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Way it Was Pat Torello grew up on the Peninsula before Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley — and before impromptu ball fields became strip malls and apricot orchards became condos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website No Regrets Lewis Heathcote abandoned his comfy rental apartment and bought a house he couldn't afford. He's back in that same comfy rental now, paying a hefty premium on the rent — but free of regrets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hubris to Hope Brent Plater argues that closure of the Sharp Park golf course would correct an architectural and environmental mistake. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Way it Was Pat Torello grew up on the Peninsula before Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley — and before impromptu ball fields became strip malls and apricot orchards became condos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Saving Marriage by Ending It Clyde Wadsworth looks at proposals to solve the gay marriage argument by getting the state out of the marriage business entirely. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Black and Green Earth Days have been largely white affairs, but African-Americans like Youth Radio's Ahmina James are looking to add more color to the environmental movement. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website No Regrets Lewis Heathcote abandoned his comfy rental apartment and bought a house he couldn't afford. He's back in that same comfy rental now, paying a hefty premium on the rent — but free of regrets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Empty, Boring Desert The Mojave desert is a lifeless expanse of nothingness — only if you don't know anything about it. Michael Ellis considers the case of the ubiquitous but humble creosote bush. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Rules As a teacher, Isabella Hill likes rules. She drills them into her students. What do you do when someone comes along who's violated every rule and still become a happy, successful adult? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hello? Hello? Mike Adamick has endured a lifelong case of crippling shyness. Now, he's worried he may be passing it on to his young daughter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Children of Divorce Attorney Katie Burke represents children in divorce proceedings. She's inspired by her clients' courage in bearing unwanted burdens. She wishes they didn't have to. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Citizen Engineers With so many public policy questions rooted in science and technology, Greg Papadopoulos argues that engineers need to be in the public square as well as the lab. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Off the Road When Debbie Duncan's aging father became a danger behind the wheel, she took the difficult step of turning him in to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dark Twins of the American Dream Some immigrants are super-achievers. Recently, others have unleashed mass murder. Sandip Roy believes they have more in common than where they came from. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Welcome to My World With big corporations looking to scrimp and save any way they can, Richard Swerdlow gives a lesson in how teachers have mastered the fine art of scrounging. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Never Leave a Ballgame Early Lifelong Cubs fan Denis Quinlan recalls the night at a Giants game when a baseball lesson his father taught him paid off handsomely. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Purgatory Mike Newland visits an archaeological site in the Sierra foothills where miners moved tons of stones to little purpose and native villagers once believed that souls lived life in reverse. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rules and Maxims Ever since a night in a New York bar, Evan Sagerman has been collecting the rules and maxims of others to forge a working philosophy of life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Model City Naught Youth Radio's King Anyi Howell reflects on a year of stark news for his hometown of Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rules and Maxims Ever since a night in a New York bar, Evan Sagerman has been collecting the rules and maxims of others to forge a working philosophy of life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Model City Naught Youth Radio's King Anyi Howell reflects on a year of stark news for his hometown of Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Outrage Steve Moss knows he's supposed to be outraged by daily tales of grubby greed, but living in America means he's suffering a bad case of outrage fatigue. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Coin Operated Paul Staley believes the only way taxpayers are going to recoup their investment in failures like AIG is to rely on people who like to make money by moving money. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Meat Tastes Good Meat is in, but you'd think environmentalist and self-described climate geek Kevin Fingerman would be a vegetarian. He's not. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Us and Them We think we know who is 'us,' and who are 'them.' But Maxine Henagan argues that a new president and a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis are redefining old divides. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Collision Course In tough economic times there are bargains galore, but cheap transatlantic airfares to visit his London family have taught Lewis Heathcote that a bargain isn't necessarily a good buy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Sip of Water Sharon Talbott believes that water meters and efficiency devices are great, but that the best water conservation tool is knowing the true value of every single drop. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Meat Tastes Good Meat is in, but you'd think environmentalist and self-described climate geek Kevin Fingerman would be a vegetarian. He's not. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mexican American Assimilation Mexican Americans have been coming to America in a long, steady stream — and that makes their assimilation experience markedly different from other ethnic and national groups. Tomas Jimenez comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not My Job Clyde Wadsworth looks at the case of four firefighters who won a sexual harassment lawsuit against the City of San Diego after they were required to participate in a gay pride parade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You've Come a Long Way, Barbie Barbie is turning 50, and despite the leggy legs and wee waist, she's actually led a surprisingly progressive life. Meg Waite Clayton reviews her eventful history. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Broke If it's not broke, don't fix it. But Mary Sylla argues California prisons are so broke, in more ways than one, that the only choice is to fix it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mexican American Assimilation Mexican Americans have been coming to America in a long, steady stream — and that makes their assimilation experience markedly different from other ethnic and national groups. Tomas Jimenez comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Go to a Museum, Change Your Life A visit to the Genocide Museum in Rwanda left Michael Ellis a changed man, and reminded him of the Bay Area's many stellar museums. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crisis of the Decade The 1920s were The Roaring Twenties. The 1980s were The Me Decade. What are we going to call the 2000s? Todd Adler has a few ideas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crisis of the Decade The 1920s were The Roaring Twenties. The 1980s were The Me Decade. What are we going to call the 2000s? Todd Adler has a few ideas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not Just a Newspaper As the Chronicle teeters on the brink of financial ruin, John McManus considers how a daily newspaper is much more than a paper full of news. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Asparagus and Blood Oranges A forgotten bottle of salad dressing connects Chef Aaron French to a place, a season and the value of a meal made with his own hands. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Curb Cuts and Canonizations It wasn't until he tore up a knee that Jeff Braff realized how much we all owe to an obscure and disabled Berkeley grad who fought for now-ubiquitous curb cuts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Virtual Education At 20 years old and with the economy tanking, Youth Radio's Lauren Silverman figures this is a good time to get a financial education — even if it's of the virtual variety. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Persecution of Barry Bonds Brenda Payton believes the federal prosecution of former Giants slugger Barry Bonds has lost all sense of proportion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Family Marinade Like most people, Paul Lamb never took any classes on how to raise a family. So he follows a simple recipe culled from an old Michael Keaton movie. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Volunteer for a Day Stan Goldberg encounters a woman who takes a bit too much pride in the fact that she volunteered at a homeless shelter — for one day. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Civil Disunion Some believe that same-sex domestic partnerships entail the same rights and responsibilities as marriage. But they can't and don't. Dustin Brown explains why Prop. 8 isn't the only reason he and his foreign-born partner can't marry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Work Rules For Medical Residents Medical residents navigate working conditions long ago outlawed for others whose jobs require alert judgment. Dick Meister says it's time for that to change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get Ready The Big One is coming and Stephanie Rapp is prepared. Are you? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Incredible Story Michael Ellis observes that it's not often in nature that a creature can literally turn itself into something it's not. Meet the caterpillar. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Most Valuable Player Baseball is wrestling with another superstar's steroids scandal. Owen Good worries that the real victims are not the players or even the game, but their youngest fans. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Arts are Stimulating Marc Vogl's job requires that he see lots of art and theater works — and he knows that they stimulate not only his imagination but also the local economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Organic Energy Steven Moss thinks a new approach to solving our energy problems should learn some lessons from the organic food and slow cooking movements. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Sky is Falling With an economy this bad, Chicken Little is sounding like the voice of reason. Like many Americans, Richard Friedlander watches the numbers that should rise fall, and the numbers that should fall rise, and wonders: is it time to sell or not sell? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website K Street Connections Elizabeth Statmore's grandfather owned a restaurant on D.C.'s lobbyist-laden K Street, where she received an education in the value of perks that certain Cabinet nominees appear to have forgotten. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Learning By Example, The Hard Way Youth Radio's Rynesha Snowden is learning lessons about sex and maturity the hard way from an aunt that's younger than her and making dangerous choices. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lost People As an archaeologist, Mike Newland is used to dealing with lost people. But the strangest lost people are alive and kicking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website History Comes Home The new conversation about race in Obama's America has captivated many. But it's a different challenge for John Perry, who has to discuss his Confederate, slave-holding heritage with his multi-racial children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Adjective Wall Richard Swerdlow's device for teaching English to young Chinese immigrants becomes a barometer of their growing strength, and his admiration for their remarkable spirit. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Bottom America is in recovery from the Bush administration, and Dave Dwelley thinks wildly optimistic Americans in the post-inauguration age could learn a cautionary lesson from drug addicts who have hit bottom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website We The People The work of the Obama administration isn't all or even mostly going to get done in Washington. Jamienne Studley comments on the work to be done here at home. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You're So Rude Just contemplating a trip to New York City makes Mike Adamick so angry at rude people that he makes darn sure he tells them about it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Plastic Jesus Rev. Ben Daniel takes his religion seriously. But not that seriously. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When A Business Fails The closure of a popular department store chain takes with it much more than money. John Keane comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I May Be Crazy That motorcyclist driving in the rain just might be Evan Sagerman. He's not crazy. At least he doesn't think he is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Boomerangers After graduating from college, Anna Hartley expected to find a good job at the beginning of a promising career. Today, she's living with her parents and avoiding awkward questions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You Call This Health Insurance? For 25 years, through good times and bad, Pat Torello has had to juggle and scramble to maintain her daughter's vital health insurance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Proud Flag Beverly Hanly was always more comfortable with flag burners than flag wavers. But today, on Inauguration Day, Old Glory proudly graces the porch of her San Francisco home. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Deficit With the most gargantuan federal budget deficits in history on the horizon, Steve Moss suggests a way for us not only to borrow from ourselves, but also to invest in ourselves. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bush the Destroyer, Bush the Creator George W. Bush leaves office eviscerating the Endangered Species Act while also creating the largest ocean preserve in history. Gordy Slack considers the Shiva-like President's environmental exit. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beauty and Ugliness The shooting death of Oscar Grant by a BART policeman prompts Youth Radio's Brandon McFarland to contemplate the pain and pride of his difficult life in Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hands Free The new law barring texting while driving prompts Jolie Kanat to ask, "just what kind of behavior are we trying to control?" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hostage Until the governor and legislature get a budget agreement, state employees like Joan Cardellino are forced to halt work on projects important to Californians. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Girly Dogs President-elect Obama has one more high-profile appointment to make to his White House crew, and Kevin Fisher-Paulson is hoping he changes his mind and names a girly dog. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gays Need Not Apply Dick Meister recalls the days, not so long ago, when even in San Francisco gays and lesbians were excluded from jobs and promotions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bills and Babies When Youth Radio's Mark Anthony Waters entered the job market, he was determined to avoid a life of bills and babies. But his dream is fading with the new economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Up, Up and Away -- Part 1 Brenda Payton is getting ready to go to the inaugural with her father, a member of the historic squad of African-American pilots in World War II known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blockbuster Kevin Smokler says the publishing industry's addiction to the next blockbuster book is a losing strategy in an era of massively dispersed entertainment choices. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Man From Illinois As a new president prepares to take office, Richard Friedlander recalls another man from Illinois from whom no one had to ask for dignity and respect. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 4X4 A photo of Thomas Urquhart's father standing by a trusty Land Rover in the Saudi desert is a reminder that a love of freedom and the means to explore your surroundings is timeless. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gratitude A dying friend reluctantly keeps a gratitude journal that continually reminds Richard Swerdlow of the things that count. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Lives of Others When Colleen Patrick-Goudreau encounters a stray animal, she can't help but help. That's why she's always prepared. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wonder Kathleen Scavone is fascinated by the pageant of life on Earth. That's why she's so excited about the space program. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's Just A Game Paul Staley believes that greed doesn't explain everything that's gone wrong on Wall Street, where winning is just as important as getting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Name That Duck Now that American Ornithological Society settled on its official moniker, the ruddy duck no longer has more names than any bird on the planet. Naturalist Michael Ellis comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Labyrinth Alone and blue at Christmas, Elizabeth Statmore finds a magical San Francisco spot at Grace Cathedral. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faith Stephanie Rapp isn't a believer, but she had her own path to faith. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seeing Red Carol Arnold is a dyed-in-the-voting booth blue stater. But her us-versus-them attitude takes a hit from an encounter in a decidedly red state. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gold Rush Archaeologist Mike Newland finds clues to the meaning of success in the diary of a pair of California miners from Gold Rush days. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lighting a Candle Penny Wallace admits she's a lightweight Jew, but she's discovered that Hanukkah is a time to honor, remember and pass on the traditions of her culture. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website War on Christmas Youth Radio's Nico Savidge has been to the front lines in the War on Christmas — and reports that the French are winning. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Unmatched Sock Sheree Kirby thought that five years after being treated for breast cancer she'd dispose of her fear like an unmatched sock. But it turns out even unmatched socks can be useful. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lessons Learned Joe Epstein's experience from the federal government's rescue of the steel industry in the 1980s leads him to some conclusions about the potential auto industry bailout. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Economic News for Dummies The stock market plunged on news that the economy has been in recession for a year. This comes as no news whatsoever to Stephanie Losee and the people she knows. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gay Aging An aging gay community poses a big challenge — especially to the gay community itself. Clyde Wadsworth comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Civil Transit A lot more of us are taking public transit these days, but Angelie Agarwall says too many act as if they're the only one aboard. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It Could Have Been Me Barack Obama is 48 years old and about to be President of the United States. For middle-aged high achievers like Steve Moss, this is poses a certain problem. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Lucky Stars Naturalist Michael Ellis is back from a long trip overseas with a long list of things to be thankful for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Timmy and the Terrible Thanksgiving Bread Pudding Incident A Thanksgiving tale from Sunil Rao's family lore is a cautionary tale about letting amateurs pitch in to help with the cooking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The People at the Table A curious find reminds archaeologist Mike Newland that it's not the meal that makes Thanksgiving, but the people who made the meal and share it with each other. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Romance of Science Even if science reduces love to a cascade of biochemicals, Alex Liu finds both science and love irresistibly romantic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tears to Remember Forty years ago, Stephanie Rapp watched as her mother cried over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Last week, her own daughter watched as she cried a different kind of tears over the election of Barack Obama. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Upper Room Neha Singh Gohil, a Sikh American, remembers how a Christian publication taught her so much about America and Americans. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Don't Feed the Animals Encounters with wildlife are common here, but it's not necessarily wise to give the creatures what they want. Sarah Sweedler discusses how to keep the wild in wildlife. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dear Mr. President Jocelyn Wiener's class of young children tell the new president their hopes for the coming administration. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pride in Voting While mail-in voting makes utilitarian sense, Debbie Broeker believes going to the polls on Election Day offers something its practical alternatives just can't touch. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Taking CARE A PG&E program subsidizes the energy costs of low-income Californians, but Steven Moss argues there's a better way to include poorer communities in the green revolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Graveyards Fake cemetery paraphernalia are a Halloween tradition, but archaeologist Michael Newland can tell you the creepiest graveyards are the real ones. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pin the Tail on the Initiative Bradley Kreit considers himself an informed voter, but he hasn't a clue whether the many initiatives he's voting on are good governance or bad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website America in Rehab With America on the verge of financial collapse, David Henry Sterry is taken back to his days at Chippendales for a roadmap to rehab. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Madagascar Naturalist Michael Ellis is back from the island of Madagascar where among its many wonders he discovered the California Academy of Sciences. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Duck and Cover What will you do in that moment when the next big earthquake hits? Erik Vance has been thinking about just that. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Just Sign It While signing a routine pile of documents to purchase a home, Korean-American Alison Park confronts a moment no white home-buyer could understand. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Right to Know Assisted suicide is still illegal in California, but Stewart Florsheim welcomes a new law that requires terminally ill patients to be informed of their rights. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crazy Ranald Bruce has a friend with serious depression and no health insurance. What she proposes to do about it may seem insane — but who and what is really crazy? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Selling of America While presidential candidates talk of rebuilding America's infrastructure, some state and local governments are considering selling pieces of it to private enterprise. Joe Epstein comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hard Work For Youth Radio's Denise Tejada and her hard-working family of immigrants, the financial crisis threatens to destroy their American Dream. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In My Lifetime African-Americans like Brenda Payton have had a harder time imagining a black president than many whites. But as the election approaches, she's adjusting to a possibility more real than she'd ever imagined. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not So Special Needs Laura Shoemaker's autistic son may have special needs, but he also has all the ordinary ones that every parent has to deal with. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 300 Dollars It takes trust to loan someone money, and as trust deserts the credit markets that depend on it, Debbie Findling finds it alive and well at her corner market. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Two-Sided Coin While we all think that "my money" is distinct from "your money," Paul Staley believes that our current financial crisis teaches that all money is part of the same whole. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A House Divided It's possible for someone with whom you disagree on important things to be smart and funny and likeable. Isn't it? Jill Hunting comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In Remembrance of a Camera Ben Daniel has replaced his old camera with a snazzy digital model, but nothing can replace the way he used to see the world through his old viewfinder. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Talk To Me Talking heads who shout and lie dominate television "news," but after Alison van Diggelen gets a taste of civil discourse at a local debate, she sees politics as it should be. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Remembering Del Martin Kate Kendall looks at the life of lesbian activist and icon of the same-sex marriage movement, Del Martin. She died recently at age 87. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Clean Up Your Mess Wall Street seems to have forgotten a basic lesson we're all taught as children: clean up your mess. Holly Hubbard Preston comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Facebook Friend Jocelyn Weiner was feeling great about all the Facebook friends she was piling up, until she accidentally ran into one at the airport. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Honeybee For every father who ever sacrificed for his kids, Ruthann Spike has a story about a car, a honeybee and a terrific dad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Giving, Made Simple When it came to putting money in outstretched hands, Bonnie Smetts used to have a calculus to determine how deserving they might be. No more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stratocaster Dawn Yun always wanted to play the electric guitar, but never did. Now, she's rocking out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Long View Gordy Slack takes hints for longterm survival from one of the oldest and most conservative Americans ? the desert tortoise. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More Debbie Duncan's youngest daughter is graduating high school this week, but you won't hear any laments from her about empty nests and the passage of time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Baseball Cheats Baseball is trying to get steroids out of the game, but Dick Meister says that cheating at the national pastime is as American as, well, baseball. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Woodworking and Iraq If only President Bush had been a woodworker. He might have avoided many of his mistakes in running a war. Andy Wiener knows them well. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Happy Anniversary It's Paul Staley's 30th wedding anniversary, and while love got his marriage started, it's like that got it this far. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Summer of Love This June, gays and lesbians of the marrying sort will be marching to city halls across the state in their own historic Summer of Love. Kevin Fisher-Paulson comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website More Than a Building A 100th birthday celebration for the school where Richard Swerdlow works teaches him something about what a school really is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Can Say It Now For years, Janet Ellman has had to hide her genetic 'defect', even from some doctors. But that is changing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Catch Them While They're Young Youth Radio's Pendarvis Harshaw is excited about casting his first vote in the fall. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Vacation in the Dentist's Chair Most people don't look forward to a relaxing visit to the dentist, but Mike Adamick is a stay-at-home dad and he'll take his time off where he can find it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Don't Want It Everyone, from shoppers in the grocery line to executives at major corporations, is beginning to rethink how we use plastics. Holly Hubbard Preston comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Who Would You Choose? Nancy Wolfe has a tough job every year: deciding which extremely deserving students will get scholarships and which extremely deserving students won't. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Water Snooping Brenda Payton is conscious about conserving water in her East Bay home, but she's not crazy about plans to have neighbors report water wasters to local authorities. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Investment in Your Dog More wonderful dogs would be adopted into loving homes if their original owners had taken the time to socialize them properly. Laura Persons tells the story of one such dog, a shepherd mix named Prince. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Worth Fighting For Isobel White was pregnant when she and her same-sex partner were married four years ago in San Francisco City Hall. Now, the California Supreme Court has given her and her family something worth fighting for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Left Behind Thirty-six years ago in Mobile, Alabama, Kimberly Kwok learned the true story of war on the home front. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Letter from the White House An international adoption prompts a letter from The White House to new mother Jennifer Greene Ringgold that reminds her what citizenship in America is supposed to be about. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Good with Animals Some people are just good with animals. Evan Sagerman wasn't one of those people until an encounter with an empathetic cat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Can of Tuna An old woman in the supermarket checkout line can't afford a can of tuna. And Richard Swerdlow can't get her out of his mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Being There These days, no experience is complete without some digital device to record it. Something's gained but something's lost — and Jessica Hilberman suggests we try just being there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Collapse If it seems that everything from our politics to our planet is falling apart, it's because of decisions we've made. Steven Moss says we can fix our problems if we make better choices. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ruling the Roost The name on the deed says "Michael Ellis," but as the naturalist found out, a lot of his neighbors couldn't care less. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beloved Susan Dix Lyons thought she was witnessing a heart operation. But what she really saw was devotion discovered at the edge of peril. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Merit Pay Teacher Matt McDonell warns that merit pay proposals popular on the presidential campaign trail could make the problems of under-performing public schools worse, not better. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sprinklers With water systems under such stress, Holly Hubbard Preston wonders whether running through sprinklers on a hot day will become a yesteryear story she tells her grandchildren. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Olympics of Politics Keeping politics out of our greatest spectacle of sport is a popular refrain, but to Dick Meister the Olympics are inherently political from start to finish. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Watch Where You're Going Dirt biker Liz McGloughlin knows that to avoid a troublesome rut you look at where you want to go, not at the rut. Life's a lot like that. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Horror and Gratitude A trip to the former Nazi death camp at Buchenwald introduces high school junior Meredith Johnston to the powerful emotions evoked by the Holocaust. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dropping Out With cuts in community college budgets and student fee increases looming, Youth Radio's Denise Tejada may have to end the dream of parents who brought her here from El Salvador. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gay Divorce If you thought it was hard for gays and lesbians to get married, getting divorced is even more difficult. Clyde Wadsworth comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Very Rich Man Erik King doesn't make a lot of money, but he lives better than kings of old and most anyone alive today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Success Story Every child should receive the great education Holly Tabor's autistic child has received, thanks to a team of dedicated teachers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Let's Dance He's no Baryshnikov, but Larry Connolly manages to find a dance class that's just right for him. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tender is the Night David Triebwasser is part of a crew of the lost and bewildered, and tender against all odds at a Richmond detox center. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Death Sentence Darryl Stallworth had no problem with the death penalty, until he prosecuted a high-profile East Bay murder case that changed his perspective. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Baby Frog It's not easy being replaced in the eyes of a child especially by an electronic frog. Mike Adamick tries to come to terms with his green nemesis. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Health Insurance Games What your health insurance will pay for and how much shouldn't be a game where the skilled win and the rest of us lose. But, as Ran Bruce found out, it is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Milk Richard Swerdlow is cast as an extra in a new movie that returns him to headier days of gay liberation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Fixed Point When Mike Newland works an archaeological dig, he's just as connected to a satellite as he is to an artifact. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Make Your Rebate Green Tom Turner argues that if enough taxpayers spend their $600 rebate checks on something green, they can stimulate the future as well as the economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Dollar Bill has Two Sides Susan Dix Lyons and her husband have very different attitudes about money -- and the tension between the two helps define who they are. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Downward Dog Everyone returned Steve Moss' calls in his heady days on the career fast track. But those times have changed -- and that's good. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Einstein and Newton on a Saturday Night Karen Topakian's parents only looked like they were getting ready to go out every Saturday night. Actually, they were deploying the laws of Einstein and Newton. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Living with My Grandmother Youth Radio's Leslye Salinas faced a life-changing decision at an early age. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Father's Farm While flying over the Sierras, Anna Erickson can pick out the light from her father's farm -- a tiny dot in a shrinking patch of open space. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Are You Writing For? All writers struggle for attention and a paycheck to validate their words, but Jesse Loesberg is reminded where the real joy of writing resides. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Playing Ball As a young man Dick Meister played semi-pro baseball, where he learned about a lot more than playing baseball. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website California's Marine Heritage California has a long history of protecting its mountains, forests and deserts, but marine environments haven't been so lucky. Michael Ellis discusses an important upcoming decision on what will be protected -- and what won't. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Financial Literacy Americans' grasp of basic financial concepts and skills is appalling -- and the place to address it, says Michael Stahl, is in our school curricula. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Way it Was Five years into the war, Rev. Ben Daniel remembers how hard it was to protest the war before it became unpopular. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Patriot Bernadette Austin-Bower is a product of America's special history, but it may not be the kind of history you were taught. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Switching Sides Julia Jayne used to be a prosecutor -- now she's a criminal defense lawyer. It turns out that what you see depends on where you sit. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pass the Chardonnay Five years into the Iraq War, and still nothing has been asked of all but a very few Americans. Greg Unangst comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Owe You Paul Staley argues that the credit crisis spawned by the mortgage meltdown shows that it really isn't money that makes the world go around -- it's debt. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Faux Principal Milton Chen spends a day as a principal at a school in Chinatown where he learns a lot about the state of education in California. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Unwanted Lessons Sometimes life teaches things you need to know the hard way. Jolie Kanat has done her homework. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stuck in the Middle Susan Dix Lyons stands up for the much-maligned middle child. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Made You Smile Today? A potential suitor from an online dating service reminds Joyce Schriebman that it's okay to be happy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fran's Wig It might have screamed "chemotherapy," but Fran's wig turned out to have something entirely different to say. Mary Ford tells the story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website As Happy as a Dane It turns out that the happiest people in the world live in Denmark. Luke Pease looks at what they seem to be doing right. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wire With the final episode of the HBO series "The Wire" looming, Youth Radio's Orlando Campbell explains why the celebrated program has meant so much to him. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dying Newspapers Journalists like Brenda Payton are feeling a bit like wagonmakers in the late 19th century. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Was Not One of Those People Rachael Berman thought she did everything right to raise and care for her dogs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Moment in the Sun Phil Letts' sister is developmentally disabled -- and her chances to shine are as special as they are rare. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cattle What do venture capitalists and Maasai herdsmen have in common? Naturalist Michael Ellis has the answer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gun Safety Attorney Brian Dinday has seen the consequences of basic gun safety illiteracy, and he wants parents to do something about it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Just Say No Tired of polls that tell you how you're going to vote and why? Dick Meister has a solution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I Won't Be Fasting for Lent Adia Colar has found the secret to being comfortable in her own body -- and it isn't dieting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shelter from the Storm The home mortgage crisis reminds Holly Hubbard Preston of the real value of a roof and four walls. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What's It Like to Kill? The experience of shooting a wild animal is complicated. Just ask Evan Sagerman. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Proximity Without Intimacy A neighbor dies, alone, on the other side of her apartment wall. Amy Butcher considers the fabric of life woven with people we know, but not well. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Even a Broken Watch... Richard Friedlander looks at the latest Berkeley City Council-induced controversy and sees confusion about the difference between issues and ideology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Day as a Threat We're wired to respond to cues that protect us from threats. But sometimes they tell us things that just aren't true. Actor Tony Jonick found that out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's My Lane, Too Bicyclist Linda Atkins explains why she not only has a right to be in your lane, it's safer for her to be there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Showing Up A day as a Super Tuesday election official and a chance encounter with a string quartet convince Elizabeth Statmore that the first principle of a working democracy is just showing up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's About Time To Steven Moss, at the heart of many of the problems that plague us is a distorted notion of time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mommy Wars Karen Kiyo Huster is a single, working mother who depends heavily on stay-at-home moms. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ashes to Ashes When Jeff Braff dies, his body will help train young doctors in the skills they need to save lives. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Emergency When Anjie Reynolds' daughter was in the hospital with a mysterious medical emergency she got excellent care, thanks to her government. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Postcards from Vietnam Richard Swerdlow's friend plans an exciting vacation to a Vietnam far different from the war-torn nation of his memory. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Are You Looking At? Where Youth Radio's Orlando Campbell lives, his movements are watched by cameras and some of his friends are no longer allowed to associate with each other. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Time Capsules Marijke Rijsberman tries to untangle the irony of a throwaway society that goes to great lengths to preserve its garbage in near pristine condition. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dungeons and Demons The discovery of a long-forgotten dungeon at San Quentin, built by prison labor, unearths Jonah Raskin's thoughts on prisons and prisoners. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hold the Wheatgrass Sally Bryson got so obsessed with eating 'right' that she forgot how to enjoy a meal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mind the Gap For many young people taking a year off from school -- a gap year -- is a terrific way to build a better student. Nancy LeCourt comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anybody There? Getting a few phone calls from political campaigns lately? Debbie Duncan might be dialing your number. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dangerous Skies Dick Meister looks at Federal Aviation Administration policies that have made highly stressed commercial aviation less safe and less friendly. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Endangered Species Maxine Henagan looks at one definition of an endangered species and concludes that young African American men are at risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bats Some people find them creepy. Some find them lovable. But one out of every five mammals on Earth is some kind of bat. Naturalist Michael Ellis takes a look at this fascinating creature. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Barrio As the election season pumps up the immigration debate, Ben Daniel would like to invite the candidates to his East San Jose neighborhood for a taste of life in the barrio. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Survivor The primary season bears a chilling resemblance to a certain reality TV show. Paul Staley recaps the script so far. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Presidential Streets of San Francisco The names of mostly undistinguished Presidents line the streets of San Francisco. Peter Taback looks for a clue to our next chief executive on the city map. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Meaning A church service phrase. A backwards bicyclist. An email about cross-stitching. Barbara Simmons puts them together to find meaning for a new year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Year Resolutions for Oakland Brenda Payton has some ideas about a few New Year resolutions for the City of Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Grout Traveling between languages can be perilous for immigrants. For Marijke Rijsberman, it can spell the difference between inclusion and isolation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Get A Cab It can be hard to get a taxi in San Francisco, but cab driver Kieran Farr says a proposal to put more taxis on the streets is not the answer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Xerxes Blue and Friends The Golden Gate National Recreation Area has more endangered species than any other national park in North America. Brent Plater wants to do something about that. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Education Is Power Mills College undergraduate Paula Tejeda knows the meaning of a good education -- economic power. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gratitude When a friend dies of AIDS, he leaves Richard Swerdlow a great gift. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Old Is The New Young Tweens are the new teens and 60 is the new 50, but Risa Nye is happy to simply act her age. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Right to Bear Teeth Open wide. Sunil Rao wants to examine America's obsession with perfectly white, perfectly straight, perfectly perfect teeth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chewy Vuitton v. Louis Vuitton A cleverly named dog toy is a skirmish in the war over trademark infringement and intellectual property. Attorney Todd Adler explains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Festival of the Kalends Michael Ellis looks at an ancient Roman festival with a modern message for the Christmas season. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charity Begins At Home If charity truly does begin at home, Susan Dix Lyons believes, perhaps we need to expand our definition of home. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All That Shines At Christmas To Alison van Diggelen the inflatable Santas, plastic reindeer and sparkling illumnation may be environmentally incorrect, but they light the light in some very important places. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Tribute to Grandpa Haplo M343 Paul Lamb shells out a hundred bucks for a DNA test that's supposed to detail his family's genetic heritage. The results are a little more basic than the hoped for Irish kings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kwanzaa Kevin Fisher-Paulson's family celebrates Kwanzaa, a holiday for all families. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Military Intelligence Clyde Wadsworth is astounded that while the military looks for new ways to justify admit ex-cons to meet recruitment targets, it continues to force out able gay soldiers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sauce for the Gander Everywhere he goes, stay-at-home dad Mike Adamick finds a cheering section that stay-at-home moms never do. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website We Can Do Better John Racanelli argues for an independent commission of outside experts to examine the response to the Cosco Busan oil spill. What went wrong, what went right and what we can do better? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Mile In Another?s Shoes When Elisa Della-Piana shows up at a firehouse door not looking her best, she experiences the scorn endured routinely by people living on the street. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 50th Birthday Richard Swerdlow was born in the boomingest year of the baby boom. And today he turns 50. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's a Cruel World What kind of a world do we live in? Steve Moss looks at living in worlds of our own creation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shivering Pharmacists When Lani Silver noticed that pharmacists in her Safeway all wore coats and gloves, she discovered it was not at all easy to do something about it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Amazing For My Life to End Up Here Ellen Westberg was a speaking-in-tongues Christian with "neo-Nazi" politics. Now, all her best friends are lesbians. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Postal Angel Laura Shumaker tells the story of a postal worker who answered the prayers of a little girl. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oyster Wars Naturalist Michael Ellis discusses the National Parks Service decision to close the Johnson Oyster Farm in Pt. Reyes National Seashore. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Happy Thanksgiving English transplant Charmian Cohen explains why the American Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cheese When nine-year olds can discourse on the difference between French and domestic cheese, how does a parent limit their child's sense of entitlement? Susan Dix Lyons wrestles with the question. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tires On a bike ride to the Berkeley marina to check out damage from the oil spill, Paula Coil encounters evidence of environmental insults to the Bay we accept as routine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Book of Remembering Jill Hunting returns to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington to bear witness to the nameless victims of war. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It Was a Glorious Day World War II veteran Leo Lopez recalls the horror and the joy of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Everybody?s War World War II changed everybody's life because it was everybody's war. Thelma Peck was 19 and enlisted in the Marines. She was never the same. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Injustice at Port Chicago The massive explosion at Port Chicago killed hundreds of African American servicemen in a continuing story of injustice and discrimination. Rev. Diana McDaniel's uncle Irvin was there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website War Destroys the Living Too Ann Wasserman lost both her brothers within a single month of the war in Europe. 63 years later she still has not recovered from the devastating telegrams. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Making a Difference Dean Woo was among American soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camp at Dachau. He and his daughter Evelyn tell the story of what he saw and what he did. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science of Naps Regular naps reduce the risk of heart attacks, and Melanie Johnston has a surefire method for taking them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not So Climate Smart Steve Greenwald says a PG&E program that lets customers buy climate neutral status without actually doing anything is a bad deal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I'm So Sick Another slew of racial insults. Another slew of swooning outrage and half-hearted apologies. The same cast of characters charging before the cameras. Brenda Payton is sick of it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tender Is The Night David Triebwasser is part of a crew of the lost and bewildered, and tender against all odds, at a Richmond detox center. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Belt Tightening John Perry is just a guy trying to save a buck in uncertain times, but economists tell him his penny-pinching ways could hurt the economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Unhappy Trails Susan Ives tells the story of Edith Ann, a National Park Service horse who outlives her usefulness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mean Girls When parents exclude a teenage girl from a party, and then ask her parents not to make their own daughters feel bad about it, Julie Turjoman knows where mean girls come from. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Inside Out Kevin Fingerman has been part of social and political protests. But, when he's part of a conference that is the object of a protest, he has some soul-searching to do. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website He's My Brother Barbara Brewer recognizes every emaciated, troubled homeless person. It's her brother. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The San Jose Process Open-space activist Brian Schmidt questions San Jose's practice of requiring developers to hire the consultants who prepare important environmental reports. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The San Jose Process Open-space activist Brian Schmidt questions San Jose's practice of requiring developers to hire the consultants who prepare important environmental reports. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website From San Francisco to Cape Town It's a long way from San Francisco to Cape Town, South Africa, but Michael Ellis finds the similarities are remarkable. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Your Personal Iraq Paul Staley takes a look at whether the same mistakes that got us into, and keep us in, Iraq are the kind of miscalculations we all make. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Retail Biography Richard Swerdlow holds a garage sale and realizes that the junk he's getting rid of isn't really junk at all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Praying the Gay Away Clyde Wadsworth comments on the latest attempt to lay a scientific foundation to the notion that gays can be 'cured.' Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Vanishing Thank You Note Laura Shumaker receives a thank you note for a small gift. What a surprise. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Aid and Comfort Steven Moss believes that charity begins outside the home. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Maybe I Was Wrong When the Republican mayor of San Diego changes his mind about same-sex marriage, Linda Gebroe decides she can change her mind about at least one Republican. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Refusing to Fight Following an under-reported story about the Iraq War, Youth Radio's Reina Gonzales traveled to Canada to meet two young Iraq War deserters. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hair! Cynthia Weissbein promised her children she would not cut her hair until the war in Iraq was over. It is now very, very long. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rubber Dodo The Endangered Species Act was a milestone in natural history. However, Gordy Slack notes that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has set a record by not adding a single new species to the protected list. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Indian Summer of Love Simon Firth and his generation missed out on flower power and '60s culture -- and he's glad they did. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website "Psst. Make More Money" gets some unsolicited advice that is disturbing, but not in the obvious way. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Open Space Is Not Just Space When her family's summer lodge is threatened by a new 600-home development, Susan Dix Lyons is reminded that open space is filled with precious and fragile things. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Just One? Karen Stephen has endured the humiliations of dining alone and fantasizes a world where the tables are turned. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Drawing the Line in Animal Research David Meyer comments on a lawsuit recently filed against UC, San Francisco alleging cruel and abusive treatment of animals used for research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Weeds of Late Summer A dry winter means fewer wildflowers, but Michael Ellis is finding floral displays in the most unlikely places. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get Off Your iPod Paul Lamb laments that while you're listening to your iPod, there's a whole world going on out there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The 14th Floor A sense of community is elusive for contemporary Americans, but Jeff Braff has found it in his San Francisco highrise. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website December is the Hottest Month Richard Swerdlow's mother finds romance at the senior center. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Quo Vadis, America? The Roman Republic's path to Empire was lit by the unprincipled pursuit of power and wealth. Richard Friedlander has a cautionary tale for our times. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Guts The heart is supposed to be the seat of human emotion, but Toby Morris has a different and interesting piece of our anatomy in mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Either/Or To Klaus Uebelacker, the pendulum of public discourse in America swings from one either/or extreme to another without stopping at the both/and position in the middle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Peaches of Brentwood Pen Perez' parents used to take her to orchards in Brentwood to eat peaches. Will those peaches still be there for her children and grandchildren? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Losing Isn't Everything Why do so many fans of losing teams endure defeat and remain loyal? Giants' fan Linda Gebroe tries to explain how. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Murder of Chauncey Bailey Chauncey Bailey wrote about inconvenient truths and paid for it with his life. Brenda Payton is reminded that journalism can be a dangerous profession. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Music to Her Ears A high school choral competition reminds Nancy LeCourt of the best in our teenagers and the schools that educate them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weasel When he was a child, Craig Weisner had a nasty nickname. So his grandfather gave him some advice and now he'd like to share it with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Young Immigrant's Vow Uprooted from her native land and all she knew, a teenage immigrant promises to make her mark in America. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's Child's Play New research suggests that not only do all parents not play with their kids, but also that it's just fine. Stephanie Losee couldn't be more relieved. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tribute Our soldiers have been to hell and back. To Holly Hubbard Preston, no matter what her politics, they deserve far more than our indifference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Those Rascally Raccoons At first, Dick Meister encouraged the cute masked critters with free food. Then things went horribly wrong. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Grass Eaters Many animals subsist on grass, says naturalist Michael Ellis. But no one eats as much grass as human beings do. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bridge To Nowhere They keep jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It's our bridge, and Brenda Elwood says we're responsible for those who use it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Roadblock on the Green Highway Omari N'Kose tries to buy a car that doesn't run on gasoline and discovers just how hard it can be to drive green. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Passive-Aggressive More and more, says Steven Moss, shameless self-promotion is rewarded and quiet excellence is ignored. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pet Sitter Richard Swerdlow enjoys taking care of neighborhood cats and dogs, despite the fringe benefits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Both Sides Now Paul Staley has worked in San Francisco's financial district and in poor East Bay neighborhoods. What he's learned is that they have much in common. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gay Flamingoes Think gay parenting is unnatural? Clyde Wadsworth looks at the story of Carlos and Fernando, a gay flamingo couple with a powerful parenting instinct. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website We Can?t Stop Them Scott Rickman's up close and personal experience with immigration tells him that when people are willing to risk their lives to work here, we can't stop them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website You Bet Your Life Erik Vance is a rational man. But American-style health insurance has him betting his life on a game of 'disease roulette.' Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Roadblock on the Green Highway Omari N'Kose tries to buy a car that doesn't run on gasoline and discovers just how hard it can be to drive green. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Reality Check Brenda Payton says Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' tenure is off to a rocky start, as his vision runs into the reality of running a city. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website H.J. Snyder's Garbage A surprising tidbit from our local history of garbage reminds Marijke Rijsberman that if you can't imagine a future different from our present, study the past. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In Wilderness Is the Preservation of You Brent Plater doesn't mind that he can't ride his mountain bike in protected wilderness. He's much more than his bike. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Climbing the Family Tree Like many Americans, the internet has whetted Elizabeth Statmore's interest in her family's geneaology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Puppy Love Youth Radio's Bill Lewis, Jr. thought his high school romance would last forever. Instead, he discovered that what happens in high school, stays in high school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fact or Fiction Does Anna Karenina or the Encyclopedia Britannica teach you more about history? Richard Friedlander ponders facts versus fiction. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Right to Irreverence The Supreme Court's ruling against an Alaska student's banner that read "Bongs Hits 4 Jesus" has Eric Schellhorn wondering what the justices were smoking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jupiter Naturalist Michael Ellis has an introduction to Jupiter, the impossibly mammoth leviathan at the center of our solar system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Good News for the California Coast Fish and plant life in California's coastal oceans have been in decline for decades, but diver and underwater photographer Marc Shargel says a new string of coastal refuges provide hope for recovery. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Health Literacy Dr. Rahul Parikh says that if you and your doctor aren't speaking the same language, it can be bad for your health and your pocketbook. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Still Howling Fifty years ago this summer Alan Ginsberg's famed poem, "Howl," went on trial for indecency. Dick Meister was there as a cub reporter and remembers an important day in free speech history. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Family Stuart Gaffney and his parents have something in common. His same-sex marriage and their interracial marriage have been declared void by the law. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website She's Back Lorrie Goldin was sad to launch her daughter off to college Now she's back for the summer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Preserving The Beauty of The Wood Richard Swerdlow's grandmother loved her kitchen floor and spent a lifetime preserving its beauty. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Tyranny of a Positive Attitude Rebecca Bogatchek battles episodes of sarcoma cancer, but she'd prefer that the standard references to "courage" and a "positive attitude" be left out of her obituary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Drifters Fifth graders commonly attach themselves to one group or another, but Cassandra Alter has learned a lot by moving between them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cheeseburgers and the Future of the World Jamais Cascio has added up the greenhouse gases it takes to put that cheeseburger on your plate. The results might surprise you. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Take It. It's Free. Please Steven Moss has tried to give away lots of cool free stuff, but most people doubt there are no strings attached. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get Your Crack Here Rona Renner watches the street in front of a childcare center in the Tenderloin, and what she sees she doesn't like. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Caught in the Maze Paul Staley thinks the MacArthur Maze is more a puzzle than a maze, but on the other hand life's a lot like that. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Babyquitter Youth Radio's Lauren Silverman's career as a babysitter has shaped her ideas about motherhood in ways you might not expect. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Et Tu, Yoshi's? Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland has always promoted African-American jazz musicians, so its failure to include any on a new CD has left many, including Brenda Payton, scratching their heads. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Heaven Help Jane Doe The era of Google and MySpace has added a new dimension to the problem of choosing a child's name. Simon Firth comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Guns vs. Talk Fifth grader James Evans has noticed that adolescent boys love to fight with real and imagined weapons, while girls mostly like to talk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Body Image Dorothy O'Donnell struggles to avoid passing her body image issues on to her young daughter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mistakes Have Been Made Carol Arnold is going to scream if she hears another politician who has just been nailed for some act of official wrongdoing say, "Mistakes have been made." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Police Transparency Attorney Tony West argues for a State Senate bill that would restore public access to certain police disciplinary records closed by a recent state Supreme Court ruling. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bay-to-Breakers In The Buff Catherine Gacad has run the quintessential San Francisco race in the nude. But she isn't an exhibitionist. She's a recovering anorexic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Health and the Gay Community Shane Snowden discusses why HIV/AIDS is not the only serious health issue for gay people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Women At Work The value of a homemaker's work has been put at $166,000 per year. Stephanie Losee says the figure hides the fact that working mothers don't earn enough on the job either. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mother's Day Peipei Zhou's mother brought her to America and sacrificed her own welfare for her daughter. And yet she worries that she didn't give her more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cheerleader When her daughter announced her intention to become a cheerleader, Julie Turjoman cringed. Now she's cheering on her cheerleader. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forked Tongue Winston Churchill once said that America and Britain are two nations divided by a common language. Charmian Cohen has feet on both sides of the "tomato"/"tomahto" divide. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blowing Smoke UC-Davis researcher Thomas Jue argues that a proposed ban on accepting research funds from tobacco companies violates academic freedom and suppresses new science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website One Bathroom, Indivisible Judy Einzig and a line of fed-up women liberate a single-toilet, men-only bathroom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bad News John McManus argues that MediaNews'impending ownership of every Bay Area daily newspaper except The Chronicle is bad news. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Virginia Tech, In Slow Motion Virginia Tech was a horror, but Youth Radio's Ayesha Walker sees young people shot to death routinely on the streets of the city where she lives: Richmond. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hip-Hop Hope Declining sales suggest to Brenda Payton that young African Americans are becoming weary of hip-hop misogyny. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Assisted Suicide and Choice Laura Hershey is significantly disabled. From where she sits, proposals to allow people to choose an assisted suicide offer only the illusion of choice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Slave Bracelet Steven Moss buys a slave bracelet as a souvenir, but discovers he's purchased much more than he bargained for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Sack of Monterey Claire Britton-Warren tells the story of the 19th-century pirate Hipolito Bouchard, who sacked the town of Monterey after history's only bombardment of the California coast. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Handshake Few gestures communicate as much as a simple handshake. Holly Hubbard Preston explores their vocabulary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shortchanging Teachers Every career that requires a college degree pays more than teaching. Dick Meister says that current trends will take teacher pay below the wages of the average American worker. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Code Red When Caren McCormack was a schoolchild, the big threat was a nuclear weapon launched from distant shores. Now her daughter is drilled to manage angry men with guns. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Disarming Beauty Bryan Kono knows the world is full of hate and the weapons to deliver it. And yet he still hopes that beauty has the power to disarm. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mosses Naturalist Michael Ellis extols the Rodney Dangerfield of the plant world -- mosses. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Isn't (S)he Cute? John Perry and his partner never thought twice about dressing their young daughter in "boy's" clothes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eat Your Vegetables Despite Mom's standard mealtime instruction, we're eating fewer vegetables than ever. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau suggests some ways to reverse the trend. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Johnny, I Hardly Knew You Richard Swerdlow admired the young, eager student-teacher but never spoke to him. Then he was gone -- off to war. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Silence Is Golden When her son briefly goes missing, Laura Shumaker learns the dangerous power of rumors. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tax Cheats, By Law Adrienne DeAngelo discovers tax time highlights the odd nether world of not-really-married same-sex couples with children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Human Garbage A human being ends up in the Sunnyvale garbage plant. What haunts Marijke Rijsberman are the photos of the victim as a child. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oakland, The New San Francisco Jesse Loesberg says that the artists and writers who built San Francisco's reputation as a haven for creativity are finding what they need elsewhere now -- in Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Can I Help? When Daniel Magid's mother was fighting breast cancer she heard the question all the time. Now he has some advice. Don't ask, just do it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get The Lead Out California condors are dying from lead-contaminated carrion, and the California Fish and Game Commission is considering outlawing the lead bullets responsible. Daniel Levitis comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sleepless in Junior Year Youth Radio's Pavithra Mohan is finding that her junior year in high school is filled with many things -- but sufficient sleep isn't one of them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Flying High Brenda Payton attends a ceremony honoring her father and other surviving members of World War II's famed Tuskegee Airmen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Who's On First? It's Opening Day, and Giants fans Debbie Duncan and daughter Mollie take a look at the lineup for this year's edition of the orange and black. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website That Bike Anjie Reynolds' young son grows up on a bike. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Compassionate Care As director of an animal shelter, Ken White makes end-of-life decisions routinely. But the law forbids him from extending the same compassion to his own mother. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wisdom To Know The Difference Science has vastly expanded the choices we have to change things. But Gordy Slack asks if we have the wisdom to accept what we can't change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website High School Is Destiny Lisa Busby's eighth graders get a strong dose of competition and self-promotion -- they've applied for coveted admissions to San Francisco high schools. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Going Nowhere Sunil Rao takes a satirical look at joggers in San Francisco. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cervical Cancer Vaccine Joan Reiss urges caution before pre-puberty girls opt for the new HPV vaccine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Church and State Rev. Ben Daniel argues that pastors and churches should be allowed to endorse candidates for political office. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Transbay Powerline Steven Moss thinks a proposed cross-bay energy project deserves a hard look. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Lamest Duck Wilma Friesema and George W. Bush have something in common: They're both lame ducks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Life With the Nigh Boors Pat Tompkins has done everything she can to avoid bad neighbors, but resistance is futile. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Poison Ted Heinz argues that the United States is spreading the poison of terrorism -- the killing of innocents. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The HPV Vaccine Youth Radio's Alana Germany considers whether to vaccinate herself against cervical cancer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When Editors Don't Edit The flap over a racist commentary in AsianWeek has Brenda Payton criticizing editors who don't edit and praising leaders who lead. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charter Debate Charter schools are frequently the object of wrath from liberal critics, but John Perry finds none of their alleged evils at his child's charter school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Discrimination Racial stereotyping is a vast web of assumptions masquerading as fact. Paul Staley has seen it in his own business. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website On Trial Having a serious medical condition is difficult enough. Having physicians who don't listen is worse. Dawn Yun comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When Editors Don't Edit The flap over a racist commentary in AsianWeek has Brenda Payton criticizing editors who don't edit and praising leaders who lead. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charter Debate Charter schools are frequently the object of wrath from liberal critics, but John Perry finds none of their alleged evils at his child's charter school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charter Debate Charter schools are frequently the object of wrath from liberal critics, but John Perry finds none of their alleged evils at his child's charter school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charter Debate Charter schools are frequently the object of wrath from liberal critics, but John Perry finds none of their alleged evils at his child's charter school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charter Debate Charter schools are frequently the object of wrath from liberal critics, but John Perry finds none of their alleged evils at his child's charter school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How the Cookie Crumbles Heather Donnell's favorite treat becomes Muni roadkill, but what happens next is far sweeter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bad Rap Thanks to an undeserved reputation, unadoptable pit bulls are crowding East Bay animal shelters. Rachel Long comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website C.L. Dellums Dick Meister honors a pioneer labor and civil rights leader, and uncle of Oakland's new mayor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Letters from the Holocaust For Elizabeth Statmore, the publication of letters by Anne Frank's father, Otto, sparks childhood memories of grainy, black-and-white Holocaust newsreels. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Free Box Barbara Brewer argues that since a mandate to teach ethic American literature was abandoned, students have been deprived of important lessons in American liberty and equality. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Galapagos Michael Ellis returns to one of the world's most dazzling spectacles of the natural world -- the Galapagos Islands. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Deja Vu, All Over Again Greg Unangst recalls the lament of a soldier in Vietnam and its disturbing echo today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When Is Too Much Enough? Joe Epstein comments on out-of-control executive pay packages. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Meat and Global Warming Dan Brook argues that if you want to do something about global warming, stop eating meat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Letting Go Lorrie Goldin's daughter is college bound. How did her own mother bear this trial? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Wealth of Baby Boomers Like many baby boomers, Geri Spieler just can't recognize herself in those ads picturing retirement to beachfront homes and exotic vacations. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Protesters Susan Cosio often has to run a gauntlet of pro-life demonstrators picketing the hospital where she works as a chaplain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Two Sides of Philanthropy Jaime Cortez has been on both the receiving and the giving end of philanthropy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lost Chorus Tarn Wilson mourns the loss of a shared musical experience thanks to ubiquitous iPods and ear buds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Exxon's Climate Policy Richard Simon argues that action on global warming will not be coming from an administration marinated in oil. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When I Grow Up Youth Radio's Monica Magnana reflects on her relationship to an unlikely childhood role model. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Talking About Race From Michael Richards to Joe Biden, talking about race is a attention-getting. It's too bad, says Brenda Payton, that we can't really talk about race. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dancing Fool At a certain age, Karen Leland takes pole dancing lessons. The results are not pretty. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Performance Review For the Self-Employed Paul Staley has discovered that the self-employed have all kinds of issues with their employee. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Serenity Prayers The Serenity Prayer offers three pieces of wise advice. Anne-Christine Strugnell figures getting two out of three of them isn't bad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Let Me Die Stephanie Losee's father is dying, and he'd prefer it now rather than later. But without an assisted suicide law, he will just have to suffer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I'm Flying Jonah Raskin gets in a small plane for a completely different perspective on Northern California. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Consequences A visit to a young friend at San Quentin reminds Paul Lamb that terrible choices can have terrible consequences. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Crosses To Bear When his daughter receives a toy cross from a gumball machine, Steve Moss questions the bombardment of symbols and messages everywhere, all the time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yankee, No Work! If more Iraqis had jobs, they would have less inclined to mayhem. Richard Friedlander asks hard questions of contractors who stole huge sums of reconstruction dollars intended to create those jobs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Men Needing Other Men When Michael Ellis' life was at a low point, he formed a men's support group. Twenty years later, it's still going strong. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Baby It's Cold Outside British transplant Charmian Cohen used to stare in amazement at Bay Area residents shivering in our not-so-wintry cold. That was then. This is now. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Power of a Moment A lifetime is a string of moments pregnant with hope or tragedy, beauty or fear, change or inertia. Bryan Kono comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Defending the Despised Apparently, the administration official who labeled law firms defending accused enemy combatants unpatriotic and threatened them with retaliation never heard of John Adams, the Boston Massacre and core principles of American justice. Attorney Tony West offers a short history lesson. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Extinction If you'd planned on a trip to China to see the rare Baiji river dolphin, you're too late. Brent Plater comments on the choices Californians face in shaping their own biologic future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hormones and Breast Cancer Debbie Duncan comments on the apparent link between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer rates. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Joy of Cooking Rosie Sorenson pulls out her old, yellowing copy of "The Joy of Cooking" for a recipe to cheer up an ailing friend. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Are You? Margaret Russell is the daughter of an African-American man and a Japanese woman. Her husband is Causcasian and their daughter is, well, what exactly? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Health Care Dollars and Sense Dr. Rahul Parikh argues that patients must do their homework and understand the costs of their choices to bring down the costs of health care. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Artist's Life Parents often see themselves in their children. And in the artistic talents of Jessica O'Dwyer's young daughter, she sees her own dreams to dance and write that didn't work out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ron Dellums and Youth Culture Youth Radio's King Anyi Howell says Ron Dellums embrace of youth and youth culture is a hopeful sign for a new Oakland. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A New Day in Oakland Brenda Payton says Ron Dellums has inspired hope that Oakland's tough problems can be solved. But can the new mayor deliver? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Help and Opportunity Brandon Moore's life was going nowhere, until caring adults taught him a skill and the means to use it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website For Kids Only Like eating baby food to convince your toddler it's edible, there are some things Mike Adamick swore he'd never do when he became a father. Then he became a father. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Letter From the Future A discovered letter reminds stressed-out wife and mother Laura-Lynne Powell to live and love today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Something's Happening Here Vintners like David Mahaffey see increasing signs of global warming affecting the delicate process of growing wine grapes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Government of the People Legislatures don't run solely on money and inside dealing. Joan Reiss tells how some dogged birdwatchers changed Sacramento for good. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Breath Or Two Ben Daniel contemplates what a few moments of the treasure being spent in Iraq could do at his daughter's East San Jose school. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forgiveness Michael Ellis used to let the failings of others drive him crazy. Thenhe found the cure. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sunrise, Sunset Paul Staley has been to a number of weddings and funerals lately and finds they have more in common that you'd think. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Payback Organized labor was a key to the success of Democrats in November. Dick Meister says they'll expect some long-sought rewards in the coming Congress. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sorry, Ladies With every gay sex scandal, lesbians are tarred by the bad behavior of ex-straights. Clyde Wadsworth thinks its time they got an apology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gratitude Richard Swerdlow counts his blessings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cockeyed Christmas Tree Sunil Rao's Hindu father is obsessed with Christmas trees, but they rarely end up looking department store perfect. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website I'm From Berkeley When John Cook travels and he's asked "Where are you from?" he often has to tighten his seat belt. He's from Berkeley. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Racial Identification When the media tells you police are looking for a six-foot, heavy-set Latino, what are they telling you? Kevin McCormack looks at racial stereotyping. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tiny Dancers While working as a techie at a local Nutcracker performance, Don McCullough watches his daughters transform themselves with a single leap. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Break Up Adrienne D'Angelo had a great thing going with a local cafe. Then it became "successful." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website War on Christmas Youth Radio's Nico Savage goes shopping for a Christmas ornament and becomes a foot soldier in the War on Christmas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pens Steve Moss tries to spread goodwill by giving away pens in a poor country where he works. But the results are unexpected. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Checks, and More Checks Xenia Gutowski never ceases to be amazed by the generosity she sees while processing checks at a food bank. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Little Off The Ears, Please Luke Pease sits for a haircut and has an encounter with mortality. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Road to Recovery To restore the health of wildland ecosystems, should man get out of the way or get more involved? Forester Fred Euphrat shares his view. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Urban Jungle Claudine Zap discovers that even in overbuilt San Francisco, nature has a way of reasserting itself. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's A Wonderful Life Every holiday season, Sara Marcellino gets back in touch with what matters most in life by watching her favorite American movie classic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website No Laughing Matter Will Michael Richards' comedy club meltdown start a national conversation on race? Brenda Payton comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When Homework Fails The Test High school senior Elizabeth Moore has tons of homework. Is it helping or hurting her education? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sweet Smell of Exhaust After years of choking on car exhaust, bicyclist Chris Leavell is salivating over the tailpipe feast served up in the dawning age of biodiesel. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website To Nobody's Credit In Richard Friedlander's view, our economy floats on a pile of assumptions that have little to do with reality. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stop the Madness Goodie bags, a once-charming party custom, have become a kind of suburban arms race. Sarah Glover says it's time to de-escalate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thanksgiving Dinner For Sandhya Somashekhar's family, the big Thanksgiving meal is a bit more complicated than it is for other families. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thankful Michael Ellis shares his reflections on thankfulness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Big Game The Tree dances and the Golden Bear growls as Stanford and Cal prepare for this weekend's Big Game. Sunil Rao takes a non-partisan look at this century-old football rivalry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Small Choice Laura Shumaker's decision to go out of her way to spend time with her mother pays a lifetime of emotional dividends. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Land of Opportunity Vanitha Sankaran believes Americans can bicker over their differences or choose to make the most of a land of opportunity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Duty to Serve Utilities used to have a "duty to serve" customers. Now, says Steve Moss, it's the customers' duty to serve an environmentally sound energy future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The New 50 At age fifty-eleven, Rosie Sorenson has never felt better about her life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stay In the Booth Youth Radio's Quincy Mosby has some advice for today's rappers -- stay in the recording booth and off the silver screen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In The Wrong Place With the Wrong Hair Comedian Richard Stockton's spiky hair gets him mistakenly arrested for armed robbery. It's no laughing matter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Immigration For Lunch Most people think about immigration with their heads or hearts. Erik Vance thinks about immigration with his stomach. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dear Pastor Ted Disgraced Rev. Ted Haggard is in need of pastoring and healing. If Rev. Ben Daniel were asked, here's what he'd say. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Independent Judiciary We've sacrificed judicial review in the name of catching terrorists. But that only affects terrorists, right? Clyde Wadsworth has his answer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Day of Remembrance With Veterans Day approaching, Matt Mitchell visits a World War I memorial in Sacramento and ponders the lessons of the war that was going to end all wars. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pay to Vote The titanic voter guide and bedsheet ballot were bad enough. But Brenda Payton complains that if you voted absentee it cost you 63 cents to boot. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website We Choose There's something about Election Day at her neighborhood polling place that absentee voter Wendy Stancer misses. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website If It Was A Choice Linda Gebroe never made a choice to be gay, but if she had a choice she'd still be gay. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get Out Your Vote We don't work for democracy. Democracy works for us. Marc Vogl comments on getting your vote to the polls. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Are Your Papers in Order, Mummy? The arrest of a local storeowner is evidence of the stress that even legal immigrants are living with in America today. Sarah Henry tells the story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Divided A trip to Korea reminds Holly Hubbard Preston that a simple journey to see your relatives is nothing to take for granted. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Grandmother's Halloween On Halloween, Jasmin Darznik's Iranian grandmother would join the neighborhood children to make the rounds of trick or treat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Spite Voting Scott Kirsner wants to vote for something, but there are some things he feels compelled to vote against. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Cascading Effect of Social Flakiness Jennifer Lee complains that an inability to make and keep appointments is wreaking havoc on Bay Area social life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website American Dream Bryan Kono asks, "Where does the American dream reside?" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Learning on the Job The Mark Foley scandal reminds Youth Radio's Ashley Stewart of some lessons learned during her own recent internship. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nortenos vs. Surenos Young Mexican immigrants need help to navigate many difficult social conflicts. Jaime Cortez comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Ballot Box Electronic voting machines have a poor reputation these days, but Kathleen Poling says that for some citizens they are welcome portals to civic participation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Ballot Box Electronic voting machines have a poor reputation these days, but Kathleen Poling says that for some citizens they are welcome portals to civic participation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website E.T. Through New Eyes Esther Gulli was fascinated by Steven Spielberg's E.T. when she was a child. But now she sees the saga of the left-behind alien through adult eyes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Corruption, Oakland-Style Brenda Payton says there are some nervous denizens of Oakland city hall these days, as the FBI looks into a possible bribery scandal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website It's So Not the Gay Thing The Mark Foley scandal is about many things, mostly power. The one thing it's not about, says Kate Kendell, is the disgraced Congressman's sexual orientation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Price Health Care Dr. Rahul Parikh says that expensive drugs offering limited benefits are partly responsible for health care rationing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Slipping Into Autumn Autumn can be a confusing time in the Bay Area. Nancy Davis Kho is never sure what to wear. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ms. Bea, The New Teacher At Richard Swerdlow's school, a newly minted but not exactly young teacher brings new energy to the job. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Order An American Sandwich When JD Samant came to America, mastering the art of ordering a sandwich tested his ability to become truly American. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Safe Haven Rosie Sorenson knows that a library can be much more than rooms full of books. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Place-Based Family Steven Moss finds that the closer friends are to our homes, they more they resemble family. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Death and Community When a close friend dies, Michael Ellis' community celebrates life and death the way it used to, the way it can again. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Long Memory of a Short Life The death of a childhood friend has shaped Holly Hubbard Preston's life for more than 30 years. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Silence = Consent Fifteen percent of the state's adults decide our elections. So much for the theory that democracy rests on the consent of the governed. John McManus comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Their Speck of Dirt With the arrival of cars that parallel park themselves, Sarah Glover mourns the departure of one more essential life experience for young people: failure. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dressed For Success? When female foreign correspondents change from chadors to tee shirts are they getting a story or becoming part of it? Holly Brady looks at the question. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dances With Babies Rosh Hashanah is a time of reflection on life and the spirit. Jolie Kanat finds plenty of both with a baby in her arms. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Get Tested Youth Radio's Ashley Jones used to think that only promiscuous girls need to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Darkness Enlightens Light pollution in the Bay Area cuts the number of stars we can see by two-thirds. Alison Fromme discusses what has been lost and whether we can get it back. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Truly Blessed Chris Malcomb tells the story of a San Quentin inmate who knows the meaning of being truly blessed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Planets For Pluto Venus and her fellow planets aren't happy that their distant cousin, Pluto, has been expelled from the family. Saeeda Hafiz tells why. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pot Clubs and Unintended Consequences Fiona McGregor voted for the medical marijuana initiative. But living with its unintended consequences has not been easy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Teach Your Children Well Rev. Ben Daniel fields his childrens' questions at a same-sex wedding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Murder Rate With the murder rate rising in Oakland and urban communities across America, Brenda Payton looks for answers to the question, "Why?" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pot Clubs and Unintended Consequences Fiona McGregor voted for the medical marijuana initiative. But living with its unintended consequences has not been easy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thank You It's a blizzard of "Thank you's" out there, and Debbie Duncan wonders whatever happened to the humble "You're welcome." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Let Them Breathe Admissions counselor Nancy Donehower has some time-tested advice for parents trying to guide their children through the college admissions process. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brown With Envy Green evokes cool, lush images, but brown is California's color. Carol Arnold comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How We Eat What We Eat Jenny Andrews is a vegan. Her husband is an omnivore. But what he eats is less important than how he eats it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Biomonitoring As the California legislature wrestles with the issue, Dr. Richard Jackson looks at the promise of biomonitoring. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Abroad Randy Hibbitts didn't really know what it meant to be an American until he landed in a Chinese jail. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eminent Domain The Supreme Court has sparked a vigorous debate about eminent domain. Joe Epstein says that debate -- and eminent domain -- need to get back to basics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website License Plate Politics The "Choose Life" license plates in Florida prompt Stephanie Losee to wonder whether state governments have gotten into the bumper sticker business. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Squidoo, Xanga and Diigo Where do these web sites come up with these names? Paul Lamb longs for something more practical. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oxymorganic When an organic tomato takes residence in a mega-grocery store, JD Samant suffers a serious cause of cognitive dissonance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website My Name Is Katrina Since the killer hurricane hit the Gulf Coast a year ago, Katrina Howell's name has been no joke. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Name Game No one dreads the first day of school quite like immigrant children with strange names. Dr. Rahul Parikh knows all about the dreaded roll call. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Galls Naturalist Michael Ellis comments on recent findings by Bay Area genetic engineers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Job Hunt Youth Radio's Latifah Muhammad says that despite her best efforts, her post-college search for a writing job isn't turning out quite as she had hoped. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Age of the Pirate Pueng Vongs believes we live in a new age of pirates -- dark heroes and ambiguous enemies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website To Tell The Truth Different people can look at the same facts and draw entirely different conclusions. To Steve Moss, they're all telling the truth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Air We Breathe Joan Reinhardt Reiss says you don't have to be a smoker to get lung cancer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Generations of Americans Kristen Hanley Cardozo is at the end of a long line of immigrants who embraced the country that despised them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Quintessential American Choice Michelle Gonzalez's immigrant husband did a lot to become an American. But the day he voted for the first time was special. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Euro Trip After a recent trip to Europe, Brenda Payton wonders why the U.S. still lags behind in technology and education. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Neighborhood That Isn't When Sriram Ragunathan moved into his neighborhood, he thought his neighbors would be neighborly. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Driver's Test Debbie Duncan was happy to see her daughter pass her driver's test. Now the hard part begins. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ghosts of War For years, Holly Hubbard Preston shared her Oceanside vacation with local Marines. But this year, something was sadly different. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ravenous Ravens With the help of human beings, ravens are proliferating and pushing out other bird species. Christine Colasurdo comments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nature Run To stay in shape, Alison van Diggelen will take a run in the sun over a sweaty, noisy gym any day. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website America the Imperfect Christopher Ho was raised to believe in America. That's why he become a civil rights lawyer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alternative Energy Rivals California thinks of itself as a leader in alternative energy, but Peter Asmus says one of its chief rivals is -- surprise -- Texas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yahoo! Goes to China If your business is providing access to information, doing business in China is more than problematic. Rahul Parikh looks at the dilemma Yahoo! faces in China. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fruitophiles and Vegetites Sunil Rao has nothing in common with the fruit and vegetable connoisseurs who flock to Northern California farmers' markets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full c