The Bay

Kelly Johnson’s last days were his final act. He was a Bay Area musician, a dancer, a vaudeville act -- a performer for life. Johnson used the End of Life Option Act that has been legal in California since June 2016. The decision to end one's life has always been controversial. But not for Johnson who choreographed every last little detail to the end. Guest: Arash Malekzadeh, director of "A Dance...

Fire drip torches, dozers, and prevailing winds – just some of the tools firefighters are using to battle the blazes engulfing California. With fires that start earlier in the year, spark up overnight, and are more extreme in their size and speed, firefighters have to adjust to the new conditions. We follow a reporter who embeds with a CalFire strike unit working a corner of the Ranch Fire. It's o...

If California voters approve Prop. 10 in November, the debate over rent control will continue. Read more from Guy Marzorati on that debate in the Bay Area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Waiting at the DMV can be hell, but you gotta go. Over the last year, wait times at Bay Area DMVs increased 48 percent. We take a trip to the DMV (it's more fun than it sounds) and look at what's causing these delays and what's being done to improve them. Bryan Anderson, Sacramento Bee political reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some people in the Bay Area paid hundreds of dollars to see a speech by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new liberal Democratic star from New York. She stumped in the Mission to raise money for her Congressional campaign, and also to rally what some are calling a movement of Democratic Socialists. Guest: Julian Mark, reporter for Mission Local Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adch...

This week, the first black "Peanuts" cartoon character turns 50, marking the first time that Charlie Brown and Franklin met. It all started with a schoolteacher and mother of three who wrote a letter to Charles Schulz. She encouraged him to let black students see themselves in the comic strip. He hesitated at first but then relented. Guest: Cesar Gallegos, former archivist for the Charles M. Schul...

Can big tech companies call themselves progressive? One of Silicon Valley's biggest CEOs says he has identified as progressive. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says he felt conflicted once about whether to charge people to use the company's platform. His answer has something to do with Walt Disney, Bob Dylan and Steve Jobs. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter Learn more about your ad choices....

Do you work in tech? Have you bought a home recently? Use Uber? Postmates? And you live in San Francisco? Well then, you might be part of the so-called Outer Party, one of the four informal "castes" in San Francisco that a Wired writer believes makes up the City by the Bay. It's similar to Orwell's 1984, but the modern-day techie version. Guest: Antonio García Martínez, author of "Chaos Monkeys" L...

No one knows how to run a protest like Bay Area activists. In fact, faith leaders and Black Lives Matter activists from the Bay brought their strategies to the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego to protest family separation at a detention facility for parents who've had their children taken from them. One recent protest highlighted a surprising tactical twist: how to use white people and their priv...

It cost $1.3 billion for the federal government to clean up after the fires that devastated Northern California last October. Through the process, one worker died, others were injured, and many homeowners still have giant holes where their houses used to be. A KQED investigation shows how contractors were encouraged to move quickly and neglected safety. And now, the government needs to create a ne...

Oakland is having a moment on the big screen. This weekend Blindspotting will be released, the third movie this year featuring the city that is drawing national attention. It follows the releases of Black Panther and Sorry to Bother You earlier in 2018. All can be traced back to the legacy and richness of black culture in The Town. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED race and equity reporter. Learn more ab...

A journalist at the East Bay Express wrote about Napa’s BottleRock music festival and criticized it for being by and for white people. Then the paper's publisher took down the stories and used the N-word in a meeting. Today, the story of Express reporter Azucena Rasilla and what led publisher Steve Buel to step down. Guest: Sara Hossaini, KQED reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...

Sam Vogelstein was having as many as 100 seizures a day. His parents tried more than 20 different medications. Then they stumbled on research showing the benefits of a marijuana-based drug. After trying to buy and make the CBD (cannabidiol) drug underground they eventually got into a clinical trial that has stopped Sam’s seizures. Guest: Lesley McClurg, KQED science reporter Learn more about your...

There are no banks in East Palo Alto – a city surrounded by some of the wealthiest communities in the Bay Area. There is one lone ATM, though. We’ll take you there and meet some people who say being ignored by banks is a long-standing problem in this historically black and brown neighborhood, even as it gentrifies. Guest: Tonya Mosley, KQED's Silicon Valley Bureau Chief. Learn more about your ad c...

Learn more about London Breed and how she became the person and politician she is today by reading Jamilah King's article in Mother Jones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A standing room-only crowd of tech workers from the most iconic Silicon Valley companies met last week in the Mission District of San Francisco. They were there to talk about how to organize against the very companies that're paying their paychecks. Tech is known for requiring workers to keep their names out of the press. But now the momentum to organize is growing in the era of the Trump administ...

The Golden State Warriors have not always been the golden team. Oakland fans supported the Warriors through decades of losing seasons and rode the high toward three NBA Championships. Now as the team plans to move across the Bay to The City, some people in The Town feel left behind. Guest: Lukas Brekke-Miesner, writer for the 38Notes blog and associate director of Oakland Kids First Learn more abo...

The original sideshows were pop-up parties -- part car show, part block party. They first bubbled up in mall parking lots of Deep East Oakland in the 1980s. Over time the sideshows began to change and the Oakland Police Department began to take notice. New laws were introduced that criminalized sideshow spectators. That complicated the already tense relationship between police and the community. W...

The lines at La Taqueria in San Francisco’s Mission District are long. Business picked up after getting named the No. 1 burrito in the country back in 2014. But some workers say the company wasn’t properly compensating them even before the taqueria got popular. Now some women have come forward to force back pay and other benefits to all employees. Guest: Jonathan Kauffman, food writer for the San...

Homelessness in Bay Area has become a common sight; one we even try to avoid. When KQED reporter Dan Brekke interviewed one man named Perry Foster, he didn’t think it would lead him on a search for more details about who this person is, his accomplishments, his goals and the barriers he faced. As part of KQED’s SF Homeless Project, we learn today that everyone has a story. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED...

More than a thousand people have evacuated their homes because of the Pawnee Fire in Lake County. The wildfire that started Saturday has destroyed at least 22 buildings. It's a reoccurring nightmare; wildfires have burned through Lake County year after year. Today, we hear from people who have had to flee their burning homes. Guest: Sukey Lewis, KQED criminal justice reporter Subscribe to The Bay:...

The fire that ignited at the Sims Metal Management scrap yard site in January alarmed a lot of people who live in the city of Richmond. It got them thinking: How do residents get told when there's a big fire or other emergency? The city council meets Tuesday to discuss three proposals for how to alert residents in a disaster. Guest: Ted Goldberg, KQED News assignment editor Learn more about your a...

The Trump administration's fight against sanctuary policies is now being litigated in federal court. The first hearing was Wednesday in Sacramento. And the consequences of the court case affects sanctuary policies, which were pioneered first by the city of Berkeley and later San Francisco before spreading to other places around the country. Guest: Katie Orr, KQED politics and government reporter L...

A recent survey showed nearly half of Bay Area residents say they'll likely leave the region in a few years. KQED wanted to know where you're going, why and how you feel about that. These are your answers and phone calls. Guest: Tonya Mosley, Senior Silicon Valley Editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On May 5th, 2017 the power went out at the Valero oil refinery in Benicia. Above the refinery, flares blazed and released thick clouds of black smoke. The surrounding areas were evacuated and nearby schools were ordered to shelter-in-place. In the days and weeks that followed, the flares released more than 80,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide. Tonight, the Benicia City Council will consider whether to...