Crosscurrents

San Francisco is a pretty small city. Despite those 48 hills, it’s a fun place to walk. But it’s not always safe. In 2024 pedestrian fatalities hit a 10-year high. Now advocates are pushing for change. 

Old movies bring together gay San Franciscan's in Christopher Tradowsky's "Midnight at the Cinema Palace." Tradowsky pulls from his own experience of 90s San Francisco to tell the story of three friends.

On Tuesday evening the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers announced that their corpse flower, named Chanel, was beginning its bloom. KALW’s Wren Farrell took a look at the program last year when the Academy’s corpse flower ‘Mirage’ had its own bloom. Here's that story.

Getting out of prison is often called 'going home.' But when people have been away from it for so long, the idea of home can be complicated. In this episode host Greg Eskridge shares three stories from Uncuffed producers about finding home in unexpected places.

Today, one man's hope for the future after 25 years in prison. And jokes bring joy to the men at San Quentin. Then, a Pixar animator takes on her inner critic. 

Mandrell Knight spent more years of his life incarcerated than free. Now, he's rewriting his story to prove his past doesn't define his future.

Uncuffed producer Matt Sheppard is also a comedian. He shares some jokes from a memorable stand-up performance at the prison. 

Have you ever tried to do something really important, but you hear that annoying, negative voice inside that tears you down? Award-winning filmmaker Masha Ellsworth captures that feeling of struggling with a tormenting, inner critic in her animated-short "Little t.”

Today, we meet a local mandolin ensemble. Then, the Supreme Court’s history of resistance to Black progress. And, we’ll hear some readings from local fiction writers.

Mandolin orchestras were everywhere during the early 20th Century. It turns out that the Bay Area is the birthplace of a mandolin super-group founded by a man who doesn’t even play the instrument. He wanted to honor the memory of a Jewish mandolin ensemble whose members perished in the Holocaust.