Summer is coming to an end, so we're taking a journey back in time to remember two amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of Bay Area residents: Idora Park in Oakland and San Francisco's Playland at the Beach. This story originally aired in September of 2022, but we're bringing it back to celebrate the end of summer.

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This story was reported by Christopher Beale. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.

The Bay Area is a biodiversity hotspot, home to species found nowhere else on Earth. But decades of urbanization have pushed many of these animals — and the ecosystems they depend on — to the edge. Can science bring them back? In this episode, we examine the remarkable comeback of the southern sea otter and an ongoing effort to resurrect the long lost Xerces blue butterfly.

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Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts

This story was reported by Gabriela Glueck. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.

Seagulls are everywhere in the Bay Area — flocking to Giant's games in San Francisco and crowding South Bay salt ponds. But are they actually native? Once seasonal visitors from Mono Lake, they've recently become year-round residents. We get to the bottom of this gull invasion.

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This story was reported by Pauline Bartolone. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.

Over the past 40 years, Afghans have steadily immigrated to the East Bay town of Fremont, hoping to start new lives close to others who share their language and culture. We trace four waves of immigration and check in with Afghans who've chosen to settle in Fremont.

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This story was reported by Asal Ehsanipour. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsay and everyone on Team KQED.

Julia Morgan, the pioneering female architect, was born in San Francisco, raised in Oakland and educated at UC Berkeley and the the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She designed over 700 buildings, many of them in the Bay Area, and had a huge impact on the field of architecture. We dig into her life and legacy.

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Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts

This story was produced by Brandi Howell. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad and everyone on Team KQED.

Nearly one in three Daly City residents identify as Filipino, according to 2019 Census data. Bay Curious listener Ricky Tjandra wondered what makes this town just south of San Francisco such an international hub of Filipino life. We dig into more than a hundred years of history between the U.S and the Philippines and talk to current residents of Daly City.

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This story was reported by Amanda Stupi. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsay and everyone on Team KQED.

Alameda is the second most populous county in the Bay Area, after Santa Clara. Oakland is the biggest city, but the county stretches all the way out to Livermore in the east and Fremont in the south. It’s a big swath of land and about half of it is unincorporated, including two areas known as Cherryland and Ashland. Bay Curious listener Sam Hopkins wondered what it means for an area to be unincorporated and the history of these two communities.

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This story was reported by Brian Krans. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsay and everyone on Team KQED.

Train travel isn't as common as it used to be, but there's one Amtrak route that train enthusiasts love because it's so beautiful -- the California Zephyr. The route starts in Emeryville, runs through the California delta, stops in Sacramento and then heads and over the Sierra Nevada mountains, eventually terminating in Chicago. This ride is on a lot of people's bucket list for good reason. But the California railroads also played an important role in the food history of the state and in the Civil Rights Movement.

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This story was reported by Lisa Morehouse. It was edited by Victoria Mauleon and produced by Suzie Racho, Brendan Willard and Sasha Khokha. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad and everyone on Team KQED.

The island of Alameda has produced some great baseball players. Hall of Fame hitter Willie Stargell even has a street named after him! Some of those ballplayers were Japanese American. In the years between World War I and World War II, the Alameda Taiiku-Kai thrived with great players like Sai Tawata leading the team and the community. Bay Curious listener Sam Hopkins saw a plaque commemorating the team's home plate and wanted to learn more about the team's history.

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Special thanks to the Japanese American National Museum for use of the Topaz prison camp clip. That documentary was a gift of Dave Tatsuno, in Memory of Walter Honderich.

This story was reported by Brian Watt. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan and everyone on Team KQED.

The Transamerica Pyramid, located in downtown San Francisco, is a skyline staple. But when it was proposed, people hated the idea of a towering symbol of capitalism so close to neighborhoods like North Beach and Chinatown. Turns out the block where the pyramid stands has a long and storied history. We dig into all that, as well as how public perception of the pyramid's place in the skyline has changed over the past 50 years.

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Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts

This story was reported by Carly Severn. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan and everyone on Team KQED.