Q'ed Up: Recent Episodes
KQED
A weekly podcast that delivers the best Bay Area news stories from KQED News directly to your ears. There’s a lot of news happening, and it can be easy to tune out or miss what’s going on outside of Washington D.C. Make sure you don’t miss the voices and stories that are important to your community. New episodes every weekend.
Baseball season might be getting all the press, but the San Jose Sharks aren't ready for hockey to end quite yet.
There are a lot of ways that wealthier, more in-the-know parents have a leg up on getting their kids into the city's top schools.
How do you cope when at least 50 people were gunned down for sharing your faith? Support from people outside the community helps.
Switching to daylight saving time doesn't just cost us an hour of sleep. It has real physiological consequences, according to researchers.
When the Black Panthers needed a funk band to help galvanize the masses, The Lumpen didn't miss a beat.
'If we’re gonna take the animal’s life, I believe we have the moral obligation to utilize the animal as much as possible. First, it’s good business; but it’s good morals.'
How do you teach when nearly half of your students don't have a stable home to go to at the end of the day?
Why you should cook crickets, boil roly-polies and beware of red, yellow and black bugs.
Separated for weeks by fire, a couple comes together to look through what's left of their home.
Robert Spencer's biological mom and siblings died at Jonestown. His search for family will lead him to a life-changing discovery.
The mass suicide at Jonestown is one of the most infamous events in U.S. history. Would you want to know if you were related to the man at the heart of the tragedy?
Election is just two days away and Q'ed Up is zooming in on important local measures across the Bay Area. Q'ed Up host Ryan Levi talked with KQED reporters Guy Marzorati, Farida Jhabvala Romero and Sonja Hutson to get the lowdown on a range of local ballot measures ranging from taxes on businesses and vacant properties, as well as, an affordable housing bond in Santa Rosa.
The ghosts that haunt the Point Sur Lighthouse don't do it because they’re souls can’t rest. They do it because the lighthouse is in such a gorgeous spot on the California coast.
What happens when a tiny community radio station becomes an essential source for nonstop wildfire information?
At 18, California ballerina Miko Fogarty landed her dream job with a top company in the United Kingdom. A year later, she walked away from the ballet world.
What's it like to live through a year-round wildfire season when your husband is gone for weeks at a time fighting fires?
Lake Merritt is a witness to many of the hardest battles and greatest celebrations in Oakland.
Almost 10 years ago, someone dug a 60 foot deep hole in the side of California's highest volcano. One video store clerk went on a mission to find out why.
There's a lot of baseball history in Oakland. For the latest episode of Q'ed Up, KQED columnist Pendarvis Harshaw talks about the most notable baseball players from Oakland, what they've meant for the sport and the city's African American community.
While some teachers don't last one semester, LuPaulette Taylor has been changing students' lives in West Oakland for nearly 50 years.
You can trace the first FDA-approved, cannabis-derived prescription drug back to one family in Berkeley.
Since leaving her Santa Rosa home last year, Danielle Bryant has struggled with many symptoms of trauma, a common experience for people after a life-threatening event.
A 19-year-old spoken word artist reflects on family separation at the border and in his own life.
Experts say it’s possible to avoid catastrophic harm to human and forest health by setting planned burns before human error, lightning or arson choose when fires start. But it's easier said than done.
Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947. But that was far from the only color barrier in professional baseball.
From the silver screen to the New York Times Best Sellers list, this is the summer of Oakland.
In 1987, Perry Foster led his high school football team in Michigan to a state championship. In 2018, he died on the streets of San Francisco.
Transgender kids as young as three are changing their public gender expression, but there's no consensus on whether that's a good idea.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Uber and their latest concept design for a flying taxi.
Long before he was a cable news star, Sean Hannity was making waves on Santa Barbara community radio.
It's like a home pregnancy test for fentanyl. It could save lives and just maybe help convince people to stop using all together.
Long before Roe v. Wade, Inez Burns performed 50,000 illegal abortions in San Francisco.
In a small cemetery on the way to the Point Reyes Lighthouse rests the story of four men who risked their lives to save others. Plus other stories you might've missed this week.
The death of Stephon Clark is bringing long-simmering issues to the forefront in Sacramento. Plus other stories you might've missed.
Why some of California's best high school students are leaving the state for college and may never come back. Plus more stories you may have missed.
Students in Oakland have been dealing with gun violence for years, but no one has walked out for them. Plus more news you might've missed.
What happened on the first night of the deadly Northern California fires? Plus the land beneath our feet is sinking and more news you might've missed.
How cab drivers are dealing with the death of their industry, 'Lady Bird' love in Sacramento, a return to drought and more stories you might've missed.
The indelible bond between Oakland and the Black Panther. Plus weird California politics and a car burglar's tips on how to avoid a car break-in.
How racist policies continue to affect our communities, the potential dangers of youth football, talking to the dead and more news stories you might've missed.
In California's Tulare County ag and oil often go hand in hand, and environmentalism can be a dirty word. People are proud of the fact that they make the things other people need here. This is where they make the food and energy that fuels the state, and the country. What they don't make, is a fuss. So what happens when a soft spoken farmer discovers an oil company is polluting one of the wells he uses for his crops?
In telling ourselves the history of the atomic bomb, we can too often think they were only dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But there were other bombs that fell -- they just weren’t dropped on people. Not directly. They were dropped on Islands.
For the new year we bring you a story about how the thing you think makes you strong, may actually be your crutch. And about how letting go can make you stronger than you ever knew you could be.
This year, the headlines were grim. Natural disasters, from fires to hurricanes, and terrorist attacks from Las Vegas to New York. For many, 2017 felt like we were living on the edge of apocalypse.
KQED’s storytelling podcast Q’ed Up brings you this story about, among other things, police and SWAT team training, moulage artists, fake news, and how to prepare for the worst things in the world.
It’s an audio essay on violence, and the slippery slope between the real and the imagined.
How a death on a downtown pier in San Francisco became a national political lightning rod.
For a long time, race and racism have surrounded and shaped marijuana policy. First racist stereotypes were used to demonize the drug, then the drug was used to demonize -- and lock up -- people of color. As the state of California anticipates ganja going legit we ask: Is there a possibility for pot reparations?
In this episode, stories from the front lines of the fires that devastated California's wine country.
President Donald J. Trump rose to power on a wave of anti-immigrant, nationalist sentiment. He wove a narrative of "bad" Mexicans, immigrants flooding over the border, bringing with them drugs and guns. And he used the case of Kate Steinle -- a 32-year-old white woman shot and killed on a San Francisco pier by a Mexican National -- to help sell the story. As the Kate Steinle murder trial begins in San Francisco, KQED reporters unpack the facts and falsehoods surrounding her tragic death.
A woman goes to Guatemala to help unwanted children. Then she is accused of child trafficking.
KQED’s Alex Emslie embedded with rescuers from California as they searched flooded areas in Texas after Hurricane Harvey. He met men and women who dropped everything to head across the country and into the flood.
KQED reporters take you into the mostly peaceful protests in late summer in Berkeley to ask what is free speech? And what happens when the line between speech and violence become blurred beyond recognition?
When Michael Essien became an administrator at Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Middle School in San Francisco he saw right away that he needed to help teachers get behavior issues under control. If students acted out in class, teachers were sending them to an in-school detention, where they waited for disciplinary action. Pretty soon, any kid who struggled with a lesson was trying to get sent to detention, just to avoid challenging work that might be embarrassing. Essien was seeing too many kids not learning in this dysfunctional system.
Then Essien has an “ah ha” moment, and things start to get interesting. Q'ed Up presents the first episode of the MindShift podcast’s new season, where we find out how Essien and his staff hit upon a way to support teachers in the classroom, so kids can actually learn.
In every city, there are a handful of committees that are essential to the way government functions. Committees made up of average, unpaid citizens. It's the people part of that "for the people, by the people" thing in our constitution.
So just who wants to be on one of these committees? From our friends at The Specialist producer Raja Shah went to find out.
The story of one family fighting to hold on to their home in one of America's toughest housing markets.
What happens when you're poor and struggling, trying to go to college in one of America's most expensive cities? Sometimes you end up living out of your car. That's what happened to Ebony Ortega. She works at Starbucks and has a full course load at San Francisco State. What she doesn't have is a home.
James is like a modern day Jay Gatsby, born to a poor family, but striving for greatness. He’s on a mission to transform himself. But the new identities he's creating - sometimes James himself can't keep track.
Parole in California changed in 2008, and lifers started to get released. But not Marvin Mutch. He needed help from the attorney behind that change, the prosecutor who convicted him and Cassie Riley's family.
The 1997 arrest of a couple later sentenced to death for a string of abductions, sexual assaults and one murder leads to an alternate theory about Cassie Riley's killer.
Marvin Mutch was 19 years old when he went to prison in 1975, just before a punitive 'tough-on-crime' climate began to spread from California to the rest of the country.
Headed for trial in early 1975, Marvin Mutch was confident he'd be found not guilty for the murder of Cassie Riley. But neither he, nor his sister Valerie, knew the prosecution's plans for both of them.
In and out of foster care for most of their childhoods, Marvin Mutch and his sister Valerie grew to depend on themselves and each other. But a phone call put them both on a collision course with Cassie Riley's murder and the California criminal justice system.
Marvin Mutch is released from prison after 41 years and meets up with some friends who also spent a lifetime behind bars. Back in 1974, Cassie Riley's father discovers her body on the bank of a shallow creek.
As an environmentalist, Heather Matteson was pretty sure she was against nuclear power. It’s how she was raised to think. But when she starts working in the bowels of a nuclear reactor, she begins questioning what she knows and where her allegiances lie. Heather is heading deep into a decades-old conflict but one where old battle lines are changing. The reason is climate change. Environmentalists are being forced to reconsider it, after decades of protesting against it. And the flashpoint for this is the last nuclear power plant running in California, which could soon be shut down. It’s also where Heather works.
George Arthur joined the Marines back in the 1980s hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps. But he flunked out of basic training. Living in Chicago, George got married...then had a son who died just a few days after birth. George came west. To escape. But in San Francisco his marriage fell apart and he got deeper into drugs—weed, meth, cocaine... There were fights, a bad motorcycle accident.... it got so dark he found himself hanging by his fingertips from the Golden Gate Bridge. Reporter Michael Montgomery met George randomly on another assignment, got to know him, and here follows his remarkable quest to find a home.
Henry Ma's views on life in Marin County changed after he had two girls. He moved to the county from New York with his wife six years ago, and started to notice something about where he lived when he realized his daughters were the only two Asians at their school.
Henry eventually started taking note of this in his everyday life. Anytime he saw another Asian in his neighborhood, he would do a double take. It made him wonder: if the Bay Area is one of the most diverse places in the country, why is Marin County so white? The answer to that question was important for Henry, who wondered how growing up in this environment would shape his daughter's views of themselves -- and the world around them. KQED's Ericka Cruz Guevarra looks into how one of the whitest counties in the Bay Area got that way. Her story first aired on KQED's Bay Curious podcast. Subscribe on iTunes.
Natalie Dunnage lives in San Francisco, a place where you think it would be easy to find a therapist. But when she needed one, she couldn't find any who took her insurance. Insurance companies say there is a shortage of therapists. What the heck is going on here? KQED's April Dembosky does her own search across the state to find out if therapy is becoming a hobby for the wealthy, rather than a necessity for the mentally ill.
Not all residents of our town of Antioch welcome our examination of race in their suburb. Reporters Sandhya Dirks and Devin Katayama share reaction from Antioch and update us on what's taken place in the lives of some of the people we've met in the series. And the reporters bring us their favorite outtakes.
A school counselor and local pastor arranges a middle school graduation celebration for African American students, but protests against the ceremony lead to racist graffiti on the pastor's church door.
Nowhere are the changing demographics of suburbs like Antioch clearer than in the city's classrooms. But while the population of students is shifting, many of the educators still remain the same, and black students are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school. How do young people learn to claim Antioch? And how does the city embrace the new class in town?
It can be hard to get back on your feet when you’re starting from scratch -- even when opportunity falls in your lap. We meet Kevin Kunze, who was living on the streets until Doug Stewart decided to do something unusual: He took Kevin home with him to live with the Stewart family. It's a test for the family, but an even harder one for Kevin.
Antioch residents are finding it hard to ignore the increasing number of destitute people living on the streets. Last year, the number of people living unsheltered grew by 30 percent in the far eastern Contra Costa suburbs-- the rest of the county saw declines. In this chapter Devin joins a group of drifters who’ve set up camp in an abandoned field on the edge of town. They’re honing their survival techniques and dodging authorities… trying to create their own version of suburban life.
More African Americans are now living in suburbs than anywhere else. And some of the country’s most recent controversial police shootings of unarmed black men took place in the suburbs outside St. Louis, St. Paul and Orlando.
In suburban Antioch, police chief Allan Cantando is trying to bridge divides with the new community. To do that, he meets with a class of college students and asks them to role play as cops. Meanwhile, a budding group of community activists who say they’ve faced police brutality are learning how to organize. The challenges of policing and protesting in suburbia, in this episode of American Suburb.
Iris Archuleta is the daughter of a Black Panther who grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. She and her husband were part of the first wave of upper middle class African-Americans who moved to Antioch 20 years ago. This is the story of an unlikely alliance between Iris and the Antioch police. Both reject the single narrative here of “poor blacks” and the “inner city” moving out to Antioch. For them, Antioch is actually doing things right, if only their work wasn’t getting lost in a larger negative narrative about the town.
Note:
Correction: This story incorrectly stated where Iris Archuleta went to college. She attended San Francisco City College, Cal State East Bay, and John F. Kennedy University College of Law.
A small group of Muslim families were meeting out of garages before they purchased an old dentist office for their new mosque. After the Islamic Center of the East Bay was torched in 2007, the group must decide whether to rebuild in Antioch or leave the city.
When African-Americans priced out of Bay Area cities like San Francisco, Fremont and Oakland move to suburban Antioch looking for better schools, more affordable homes and safer streets, they find a mixed blessing.
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When church is a refuge, it means either commuting on Sunday morning back to the cities they left behind, or creating new church in Antioch. This is the story of a migration to a new home, and three men's search for sanctuary once they arrive.
Najee Harris is the country’s No. 1 high school football recruit. Principal Louie Rocha and the Antioch High School football team haven’t had it this good since 1978. It was a nearly all-white team then. It’s not that way anymore. And there have been racial tensions since the city started to change. Now, Rocha has a chance to change that. But only if he can bring the older generation back to cheer for a team that doesn’t look like them ... on and off the field.
A police chief in Antioch leads a team to investigate citizen complaints. But some say the complaints mostly target newer black residents. Across town, a lawyer is determined to bring down the Antioch Police Department, accusing them of ethnic cleansing. In between, neighbors are fighting neighbors over who can call this place home.
Welcome to American Suburb, the first season of KQED’s new podcast, Q’ed up.
Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?
KQED’s Devin Katayama and Sandhya Dirks explore that question, taking us into the ordinary spaces of suburban life to find extraordinary stories about race, poverty and belonging.