PST with Emily Dreyfuss

San Francisco public schools put an AI reading tutor called Amira in front of every K–5 student without telling parents. Host Emily Dreyfuss only found out when a substitute teacher mentioned it. Until then, she thought Amira was a real person. This week, SF Standard reporter Ezra Wallach joins Emily to explain what Amira is, how it arrived in SFUSD through a larger curriculum purchase, and why ki...

By now you've probably heard of Flock: the license plate cameras that critics say have turned your daily commute into a surveillance network. Dozens of cities, from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, are pushing back – and in SF, two of the people leading that fight are 16-year-old Lowell High School juniors. Emily Dreyfuss talks with Zachary Schwartz and Hugo Zorn, the founder and outreach lead of DeFl...

AI company CEOs – the same people building these products – keep warning that AI could end humanity. This week it boiled over: an Anthropic researcher quit and accused his employer of endangering the world, and a current Anthropic safety lead agreed with him publicly. Host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard tech editor Heather Kelly to explain what's really driving the AI industry's sudden...

A scooter rider in San Francisco is killed on Market Street. A CEO loses his teeth in a bike crash on Arguello. And buried in a 130-year-old newspaper clipping is proof that SF has been failing its cyclists since 1894. On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with two people living San Francisco's bike-vs-car divide from opposite sides. First, Standard reporter Garrett Leahy breaks do...

For years, "bipping" (SF slang for car break-ins) was practically the city's signature crime – so common it inspired rap lyrics and a whole genre of "never leave anything in your car" advice. But new reporting shows car break-ins in San Francisco have plummeted since their 2017 peak . On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard reporter Max Harrison-Caldwell to unpack hi...

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age 80 – and San Francisco is mourning her like family. On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss talks with the people who felt her impact most directly here: Zulema Rubalcava of the SF Department of Early Childhood on the local chapter of Dolly's Imagination Library, which has sent nearly 10,000 SF kids free books since launching last August; Angela Vin...

San Francisco just opened its first brand-new elementary school in decades – Mission Bay School. But nearly 100 neighborhood families couldn't get in. Why? Because in SFUSD, even a brand-new school down the street doesn't guarantee your kid a spot. In this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard reporter Ezra Wallach to break down San Francisco's infamous school lottery, whi...

San Francisco is failing survivors of alleged sexual assault – and the numbers prove it. SFPD cleared just 14% of rape cases last year, which is half the national average and the lowest rate of any major county in California.  SF Standard investigative reporter Anya Schultz joins host Emily Dreyfuss to break down what she found after months of digging into how the city handles rape investigat...

San Francisco is blanketed in AI billboards that make no sense. And most of us have just... stopped reading them. But a few people are fighting back. This week on PST, host Emily Dreyfuss talks to three of them. Harris Alterman and Dave Ross are two New York comedians who've been plastering parody AI ads in the NYC subway ("Payroll, now in pill form." "UnderwAIr. Panties that think.”). Then, there...

A 22-story condo tower proposed on top of a Safeway grocery store in San Francisco’s affluent Marina District has become a flashpoint for the city’s YIMBY vs. NIMBY housing war. And a photo from a recent community meeting there showed exactly who's on which side. SF Standard reporter Kevin Nguyen joins host Emily Dreyfuss to break down the 800-unit project, why neighborhood opposition no longer ha...

After six years and a bureaucratic maze involving PG&E, BART, and the Historic Preservation Commission, Jollibee has officially opened its doors on Market Street in San Francisco. In this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss breaks down the full story, and what it reveals about the real cost of doing business in San Francisco. First, SF Standard food editor Lauren Saria gives a primer on Jollibee:...

Is streaming television broken? Netflix is hemorrhaging second-season viewers, prices keep climbing, and the service that once felt like magic now feels like a monthly bill you forgot to cancel. Host Emily Dreyfuss — who loves television so much she actually has a TV tattoo on her arm — brings in Bloomberg’s media and entertainment editor Lucas Shaw, to diagnose what's wrong with the streaming era...

Is a liberal arts education still worth it in the age of AI? Or is college about to become obsolete? Host Emily Dreyfuss is saving up to send her two kids to a liberal arts school like Wesleyan University, where she and her husband met. But as AI promises to replace everything from coding to essay writing, she's starting to wonder: do liberal arts schools still make sense to attend? This week, Emi...

Cindy Cohn spent decades at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) fighting for digital rights, including taking on the NSA's mass surveillance program. Now, as AI reshapes the internet, she's sounding the alarm again. In this episode, Cohn joins host Emily Dreyfuss to talk about why the copyright lawsuits against AI companies are the wrong fight, why privacy harms are the real threat but are mu...

What does it actually take to build a humanoid robot in America – and why can't we do it yet? Host Emily Dreyfuss's 79-year-old mother has been joking for years that she wants a robot companion, inspired by viral humanoid robot videos and Korean dramas. So Emily welcomes robotics reporter Kylie Robison to find out if that's even possible. Kylie is a host and writer at Core Memory who recently wrot...

Rupert Murdoch's empire made three major moves into California this year: launching the California Post tabloid, backing former Fox News host Steve Hilton's run for governor, and agreeing to buy San Jose-based streaming platform Roku for $22 billion. Coincidence? Or a coordinated push to reshape the most populous state in America?  Host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with CNN chief media analyst Brian S...

Voting day is around the corner, and a hell of a lot of money is changing hands. The words "unprecedented" and "billionaire bonanza" come to mind. On this episode of PST, we follow the money across the races defining California's political future: the wide-open governor's race, the battle to succeed Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, and the ballot measure that's unleashed a flood of fury from the ult...

Student journalist Theo Baker made a name for himself in 2023 when, at the age of 18, his reporting at Stanford led to the resignation of the university’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Yes, Baker got the president of his university fired… as a freshman. Now, Baker is out with his debut book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, which pulls back the curtain on...

Tech layoffs are back — and this time, AI is reshaping the rules. Meta is expected to lay off another 8,000 employees next week, roughly 10% of its remaining staff, after first announcing the cuts last month. Those impacted will join the more than 100,000 tech workers who've received layoff notices since January from companies like Oracle, Coinbase, and Snap. Some tech leaders blame the rise and c...

San Francisco is a trashy city. We're not talking about the vibes – we’re talking about the state of our sidewalks. Anyone who lives here knows the feeling of walking down the street with something to throw away… and absolutely nowhere to put it. Because SF has shockingly few public trash cans. How has one of the wealthiest cities in the world ended up so short on such a basic need? And what would...

We all know San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the world – but did you know that the average renter here spends about 34% of their salary on housing alone? So, after that rent check clears, what’s left? To help us answer these questions, we talk to San Francisco’s Chief Economist, Ted Egan, to make sense of SF’s unique rental market, as well as André Lucas, a recent SF transplant...

The WNBA's hottest team - the Golden State Valkyries - is on the cusp of a brand new season. After a blockbuster debut last year that saw sold-out crowds of 18,000 fans, the Valks are sure to bring the heat both on and off the court again this summer - and with that, new supporters, like our very own Emily Dreyfuss! To get us up to speed with this Bay Area franchise, we chat with the Standard's sp...

Ronan Farrow spent 18 months investigating Sam Altman for The New Yorker. This week, he joined us to talk about what he found. Farrow and co-author Andrew Marantz spoke to over 100 people in Altman's orbit for their 16,000-word piece, "Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?" The story landed just days before a Molotov cocktail was thrown at Altman's San Francisco home, amid a natio...

Freelance journalist Jasmine Sun calls the SF-DC-AI axis "the most important story in the world" — so we brought her to Manny's in the Mission to break it down live. We get into the AI partisan divide, how Washington is thinking about jobs, and then spend 20 hilarious minutes grilling her on her 2026 cultural predictions. Spoiler: Graza olive oil is still out; cultured butter is in. For more infor...

BART is considering cutting 70% of its service. Muni could eliminate 20 lines. Stations might close permanently. And after 9 p.m.? You're on your own. San Francisco's public transit system is facing the worst financial crisis in its history — a slow-motion collapse years in the making, accelerated by the pandemic and the rise of remote work. This week, we explain how we got here, what's on the bal...