The Bay

A federal judge in Florida ruled on Monday that the federal mask mandate was unlawful. Hours later, the Transportation Security Administration lifted mask rules inside airports, airplanes and on public transportation.

Transportation agencies around the Bay soon followed suit, raising concerns among disability rights and medically vulnerable communities.

In light of the recent changes to public mask mandates, we revisit an episode we aired in January. Two years into the pandemic, as restrictions loosened disabled, immunocompromised, and medically vulnerable people feared that their health would be further jeopardized.

Guest:  Lesley McClurg, KQED health reporter

This episode first aired January 26, 2022

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On Tuesday afternoon, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that would limit how police store and use DNA profiles obtained from evidence and kept in their labs. The changes happened after the district attorney’s office found the San Francisco Police Department had used DNA from a survivor’s rape kit to link her to an unrelated crime years later. It’s hard to know just how many people’s DNA was used in this way, raising concerns about what power law enforcement yields with advancements in DNA technology.

Guest: Alex Emslie, reporter for KQED

This episode was produced by Maria Esquinca and Christopher Beale, hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra and edited by Kyana Moghadam

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When a student makes an allegation of sexual assault, their options for redress are often unsatisfying. Few cases end up in the legal system, and rarely do schools get sued for how they respond to those allegations.

In one rare, recent case, one student’s allegations did end up in a courtroom — and in front of a jury. The student sued the East Side Union High School District alleging administrators didn’t do enough to protect her from further abuse after an alleged explicit video of her circulated around school. And as it turns out, more students are filing cases against school districts’ handling of such allegations.

Guest: Holly McDede, reporter and producer for KQED

Recommended listening: 

• SF Students Are Still Pushing for a Reckoning With Sexual Abuse

This episode was produced by Maria Esquinca and Alan Montecillo and hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra

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Redistricting is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to redraw a city’s political map. It’s an important yet arcane process that should ultimately lead to fair, equitable representation in local government — and it’s really hard to do. 

In San Francisco, the process hasn’t just been hard; it's been chaotic, confusing, heated — and as Mission Local columnist Joe Eskenazi writes, "indefensible." Ultimately, the commission did not meet its legal deadline of April 15 to complete its maps, leaving the future of the city's district lines up in the air.

Guest: Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local editor and columnist

This episode was produced by Alan Montecillo and Maria Esquinca, and hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra.

Episode transcript

Recommended reading:

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The rise of Uber in San Francisco a decade ago marked the beginning of the end for much of the taxi industry. Taxi companies went bankrupt and drivers struggled to pay off their medallions, pushing many of them into debt. 

But now, Uber sees an opportunity in the same industry it nearly destroyed. Uber has struck a deal with taxi hailing apps in San Francisco and New York that will allow riders to hail taxis through Uber’s app. Some taxi drivers see an opportunity to boost their pay; others are skeptical that the company can be trusted. So what’s really in it for Uber?

Guest: Levi Sumagaysay, senior reporter for Marketwatch

Episode transcript

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In 2020 call outs for mutual aid donations flooded social media, and people responded with an abundance of money, food and time. Two years later, interest and support has waned while the needs have not gone away. As government aid like the child tax credit and stimulus checks expire, organizers across the Bay look at filling in the gaps.

Guest: Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, community engagement reporter for KQED

Episode transcript

Recommended listening:

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It may feel a little far from the Bay Area, but Sacramento is home to our state Capitol. And just a stone’s throw away from that building, in the downtown area, is where the city experienced its deadliest mass shooting ever on Sunday. 6 people have been killed, and at least 12 have been injured.

Guest: Saul Gonzalez, host of KQED's The California Report

This episode was produced by Maria Esquinca and Alan Montecillo, and hosted Ericka Cruz Guevarra,

Recommended listening:

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The rainy season is over. But it didn’t feel like much of a rainy season at all. And now, California is in another year of drought. In the Bay Area, the North and South Bay are getting hit the hardest.

Being asked to save water isn’t new to Californians. So what other solutions are on the table for how we can adapt to drier winters and shrinking dams?

Guest: Ezra David Romero, climate reporter for KQED

Recommended listening:

• Our Fire Conversation Needs to Change

This episode was produced by Alan Montecillo and Maria Esquinca, and hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra.

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Before the Emeryville shoreline was a shopping center and commercial area, it was the site of a sacred burial site belonging to the Ohlone people, natives of the San Francisco Bay Area.

There were once more than 425 of these shellmounds across the Bay Area. And today, native people are still working to protect what’s left of them. Bay Curious explores the history of these shellmounds, and what happened to them.

Episode transcript

This episode of Bay Curious originally aired Nov. 8, 2018. Since then, the California Court of Appeals ruled that a housing development could move forward on the West Berkeley Shellmound site, despite arguments by the city of Berkeley and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. Berkeley appealed the ruling, but the State Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

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When it comes to basketball in the Bay Area, there’s no team that’s done more winning than Stanford’s women’s team.

Since 1990, the Cardinal have won 15 conference championships, 3 national championships, and have made the Final Four 15 times. Now, they're two wins away from back-to-back national titles, with a semifinal matchup against the UConn Huskies tonight at 6:30 pm PT. And under the helm of longtime head coach Tara VanDerveer, the winningest coach in women's college basketball history, Stanford has also played a huge role in breaking barriers in the face of inequities between women's and men's sports.

Episode Transcript

Guest: Michelle Smith, freelance women’s basketball writer

Links:

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