Crosscurrents

Here’s a question for you- if you have something around your house that needs fixing- an appliance, a device… What do you do? Fix it or ditch it? If you do want to get something fixed, but you're not a do-it-yourselfer or you're just too intimidated to try fixing things yourself – then what? Well, reporter Mary Catherine O'Connor looked for answers - at a Fixit Clinic at a library in San Mateo.  A...

New Arrivals is KALW's pocket sized book tour of Bay Area Authors. Mike Huguenor lives in San Jose. His book, " Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records ," came out on May 19th, 2026. It’s about the first 30 years of one of the most important record labels to come out of the south Bay.

The closure of San Francisco’s immigration courts has had big ramifications. Today, we get an update on how immigrants are navigating an increasingly difficult system. Then, we roll out the royal carpet for the first king of BART prom. The prom held under the Rockridge tracks.

On May first, the Trump administration closed its main immigration court in San Francisco's Financial District. That follows months of clashes outside the building between ICE and local activists opposing the crackdown on immigrants. Those cases have now been moved to another Bay Area court in Concord.  The move has resulted in "mega" immigration dockets, with dozens — and sometimes more than a hu...

Recently BART held their first ever… prom! More than twelve hundred people attended (and danced at!) the sold-out Under the sea/’80s-themed party under the Rockridge Station tracks. And the party of course included the traditional crowning of a Prom King and Queen.   We're so proud of KALW Immigration reporter Wendy Reyes and “Sights + Sounds” Producer Porfirio Rangel… BART’s first Prom queen and...

It’s a brand new season of BOUNCE! Today, KALW's Anna Casalme is taking us out to the ball game, where every kid on the field is a girl. Plus, an update on how the Golden State Valkyries are playing in their second season. 

AI scams are getting incredibly sophisticated. But protecting yourself doesn’t have to be. And, we honor the Oakland storytelling icon, Diane Ferlatte.

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...