Crosscurrents

Online scams have proliferated and are even trickier to detect now… thanks to the use of new AI tools. These scams have become so widespread that this month, San Francisco became the first city in the country to launch a coordinated response to AI-enhanced scams.  This action includes multilingual scam alerts, and financial counseling for people who’ve been defrauded as a result. KALW's NeEddra Ja...

Earlier this month, we lost a Bay Area storytelling icon — Oakland’s Diane Ferlatte. She was an award winning, grammy nominated teller of African American stories. For Crosscurrents host Hana Baba, Ms. Diane was than a storyteller. She became a friend, and a mentor. Ms. Diane advised Hana when she was thinking about telling her own cultural tales. What now the podcast Folktales from Sudan . In 202...

The way we raise our children is once again changing. Today, the latest science and understanding behind fatherhood. Then, we tag along on the thousand mile journey one musician took to help butterflies migrate. And we are jumping back into Women’s Sports with a new season of Bounce.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about why it is so difficult to raise families in this country. And the question of starting families is one of the unique and few spaces where the experience of women has been studied more than men. And while motherhood has attracted well-deserved attention, fatherhood has been relatively overlooked and often misunderstood. One of the researchers that has been...

Right now the butterflies are north of us and inland for the summer, but in a month, they’ll begin heading west to make it back to the California coast before winter. Millions of these butterflies used to make the thousand mile trek. But climate change, industrialized agriculture, and ever-expanding suburbs have made this migration harder. Because the monarch caterpillars only eat one thing: milkw...

Last year, our podcast Bounce followed the first season of San Francisco’s newest WNBA team, the Valkyries. They did not disappoint, and gave the fans a historic run to the play-offs. And this season they haven’t backed down, currently holding one of the best team records in the WNBA. So we decided, we wouldn’t back down either. We are bringing back Bounce for a third season. Here’s Bounce host Er...

A legendary venue in Oakland reopens after two decades of closure. Then we go into KALW's live event venue to hear from the artists that transformed it into a living gallery.

A legendary venue in Oakland reopens after two decades of closure. 

We hear from the artists that transformed KALW's live event space into a living gallery.

Today, Berkeley poet Beth Patote brings us back to the water with her poem.

Today, the deep and personal history of Queer media in the Bay Area with the pioneers who made their voices heard. 

We're kicking off season five of Uncuffed by going back in time to the defining childhood experiences of Uncuffed producers inside three California Prisons. 

Today, the transformative power of cold water and the people who jump right in. Then, we meet a club that has been swimming in frigid water for more than a century in the Bay. And the World Championship for Dog Surfing comes to Pacifica. 

Chris Ballard is the author of “ The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, An Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water.” Chris jumped into some frigid water himself to research the effects and benefits of cold exposure on the human body.

People that swim in cold waters often do it in community. And one crew of ocean swimmers has been carrying on a local legacy that began more than a century ago.

This August crowds will be gathering at Lindemar Beach in Pacifica to answer one question. Which dog is the greatest surfer in the world?

For many new immigrants, learning English is an important goal. Sometimes at the expense of their mother tongue. Today, how growing up straddling two languages can have lasting impacts on family and identity. Then, we’ll head to San Quentin to hear the power of an R&B Slow Jam. And, we hear from an All-American track star on growing up in 1960s San Francisco.

For many immigrants, crossing the border is the first step on an often complicated, exhausting path of figuring out life in America. Author Reyna Grande experienced that first hand. As a child she migrated to the US with her parents, and has spent her writing career capturing the raw reality of life across borders. Her newest memoir is “Migrant Heart.” It interrogates how living between two nation...

The Uncuffed My Mixtape is a selection of our producers' favorite songs. Uncuffed producer Ryan Pagan interviewed Louis Sale about a song that reminds him of a complicated time in his life. This piece was created by student producers in the Uncuffed audio storytelling training program, in partnership with journalists at KALW Public Media. Our work in prisons is supported by the California Arts Cou...

Have you ever had a relative that you enjoyed sitting by during family functions because they always had good stories to tell? Ben Tucker is that kind of guy. He’s known for his storytelling performances as part of the Oakland based Stagebridge, where he tells stories about his ‘storied’ life. His family was part of the Great Migration of African-Americans to the West- he grew up in SF’s Bayview n...

Today, we’re bringing you the episode of Uncuffed that won first place for Narrative/Produced Program at the 2026 Public Media Journalism Awards. First, we hear an honest conversation between the UnCuffed host and his mom, that they hope can be healing. Then, we’ll hear from women in prison about what it’s like to be a caregiver from the inside.

The SAT’s are back in the conversation around college admissions. Today, two perspectives on if we should or shouldn’t bring back standardized testing. Then, an Oakland film tackles the challenges parents face when caring for kids with disabilities. And, San Francisco is full of living history, and a lot of it is delicious. We visit the oldest SF ice cream makers.

For decades, standardized tests like the SAT and ACT were a central part of college admissions. In 2020, the University of California system became one of the nation's highest profile university networks to eliminate them, citing concerns about fairness and equity.  Now, that decision is being revisited as hundreds of UC faculty recently signed an open letter in favor of reinstating the admissions...

For parents with children who are disabled, there can be a haunting question - “Who is going to take care of my child when I die?” In the award-winning film “Paper Bag Plan” a father faces that possibility when he learns he’s diagnosed with colon cancer. His 25-year-old son lives with Cerebral Palsy. And he attempts to make his son more independent by training him to be a bagger at a grocery store...

It’s summertime! And with the high heat of Midsummer comes: National Ice Cream Month. So today, we’re bringing you one of our favorite ice cream stories. On a block at the edge of Noe Valley, there’s a three-story beige apartment building that almost always has a crowd in front of it – even on a cold day. It’s Mitchell’s Ice Cream, San Francisco’s oldest known family owned ice-cream maker. It’s be...