Radio Pacific

San Francisco has long been associated with psychedelics, but when it comes to mind-altering substances, no other drug may be as closely tied to the Bay Area as MDMA, often known as "ecstasy" or "molly." ​MDMA was basically unheard of until 1977, when Bay Area chemist Sasha Shulgin gave therapist Leo Zeff a homemade batch. Zeff found the drug nothing short revelatory and spent...

Homelessness may be California’s most intractable problem. Over the past decades, encampments have begun to feel like a permanent part of the California landscape. To many housed Californians, they are eyesores, but these communities provide their residents very tangible benefits: watchful neighbors, mutual aid networks, and a sense of belonging. This month on Radio Pacific, we have three differen...

Los Angeles has always been an ecological impossibility. Perched on the edge of the continent, the city is vulnerable to every conceivable catastrophe: earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, and of course, fire. Fifty years ago, Joan Didion wrote that “The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself.” This year, in the dead of winter, that horror was realized yet again. On January 7, five dif...

President Trump returned to power on the promise to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” The campaign has already deported thousands, sent waves of terror throughout immigrant communities, and even pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. In our first episode, California legal scholar Kevin R. Johnson puts the first months of Trump’s administration...

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