The Bay

Many Bay Area students are starting school this week, and in California, classes will mostly be in-person. At the same time, COVID cases are rising due to the delta variant. But after a year of remote learning, families and students have mixed feelings about going back to school in person.

Guest: Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor of education and equity. Read the episode transcript here.

Follow The Bay to hear more local Bay Area stories like this one. New episodes are released Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3 a.m. Find The Bay on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, NPR One or via Alexa. 

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Even before the pandemic, public transit did not feel safe to many women and girls. That’s why the #NotOneMoreGirl initiative was launched and spearheaded by Bay Area youth — and they've already helped create changes at BART.

As BART service resumes at near pre-pandemic hours, advocates say keeping vulnerable people safe is more important than ever.

Guests: Haleema Bharoocha, senior advocacy manager at Alliance for Girls and Santana Tapia, with the #NotOneMoreGirl campaign and co-founder of Fluid Coffee and Events

Click here to watch the bystander intervention training video produced by the Not One More Girl Campaign. Read the episode transcript here.

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Just when there was a palpable sense that everything might be OK, the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 came along.

The race to vaccinate more people is now even more urgent; healthcare workers who are seeing more patients say another surge is entirely preventable, if only more people would get vaccinated. 

Guest: Lesley McClurg, KQED science reporter

Read the episode transcript here.

Follow The Bay to hear more local Bay Area stories like this one. New episodes are released Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3 a.m. Find The Bay on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, NPR One or via Alexa.

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COVID-19 cases are on the rise again, fueled by the contagious Delta variant. And over the past few weeks, many Bay Area restaurants and bars have responded by requiring customers to prove they've been fully vaccinated before dining inside.

Today, we visit one San Francisco business that recently made this decision.

Guests: Eduardo Sandoval and Eva Lee of Santería margarita bar in San Francisco

Read the transcript here.

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For the next few weeks, we’re taking a break from making new episodes. It’s a lot of work to bring you 3 shows a week, and we’re going to use this time to rest up and reflect. 

We’re still going to be accessible if you want to hit us up with questions, comments or story ideas. We’re on Twitter @TheBayKQED, and reachable via email at [email protected]. 

Our next episode will be on Monday, August 2. Thank you all so much for listening and for supporting the show, and we’re looking forward to sharing new episodes with you all when we come back.

Episode transcript here: https://bit.ly/3hwPZbA

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Our colleagues at KQED and NPR have spent countless hours analyzing the world of police discipline, thanks to a police transparency law that unsealed thousands of files. 

And over the past few weeks, they’ve been sharing that work in the form of On Our Watch, a limited-run podcast that brings you into the rooms where officers are interrogated and witnesses are questioned, to find out who this shadow system of police accountability really serves, and who it protects.

Many episodes of On Our Watch also focus on Bay Area police departments. And today, we wanted to share an episode that focuses on Antioch — and what happened when a veteran detective spent years leaking operational secrets.

Subscribe to On Our Watch here. 

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Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law that extends California’s eviction protections for people economically impacted by COVID-19 — and who have paid at least 25% of the rent they owe — until Sept. 30. The state also has a plan to use $5.2 billion in federal money to pay for 100% of rental debt owed by eligible tenants.

So for now, California has prevented thousands of landlords from evicting tenants who have been behind on rent due to the pandemic. But if we don’t want to be in the same situation in 3 months, the state needs to get relief money to the people who need it — and fast. 

Guest: Molly Solomon, KQED housing affordability reporter and co-host of Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America

Episode transcript here. Subscribe to our newsletter here.

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California is in a second year of drought. And depending on where you live, you might already have water restrictions in place. Healdsburg, for example, has a mandatory 40% water restriction, while Santa Rosa has a voluntary 20%. In Mendocino County, and in areas of the North Bay that rely on the Russian River for water, cities, farmers and residents are trying to save for current and future droughts. 

Guest: Ezra David Romero, KQED climate reporter

Episode transcript here. Subscribe to our newsletter here.

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It’s our 500th episode! One of the great joys of working on the show has been using our space to help people in the Bay Area get excited about or involved in issues they care about. Often that starts with local government.

So we want to share one of our favorite episodes with you from earlier this year with tips about how to publicly address your elected leaders. Then, after that, we all hop on the mic to talk a little bit about why we love this episode, and share some stories from The Bay's early days.

Guest: LaTonda Simmons, Oakland city clerk from 2004 to 2020, currently assistant city administrator

Episode transcript here.

This episode of our By the People series first published on January 4, 2021.

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Forty years after the AIDS epidemic, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens those most at risk in the LGBTQ community across the world. Community organizers in the Bay Area have been building on the work of people like Bobbi Campbell, a San Francisco nurse who became the first person to go public with a cancer associated with AIDS. His work to educate the other gay men in the city was the beginning of an activist-led campaign that helped protect the queer community from AIDS even before the federal government acknowledged the disease.

Guest: Sarah Hotchkiss, KQED Arts’ Senior associate editor

Read more of KQED Arts’ series Pride as Protest.

Episode transcript here.

This episode originally aired on June 26, 2019. Subscribe to The Bay to hear more local Bay Area stories like this one. New episodes are released Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3 a.m. Find The Bay on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, NPR One or via Alexa.

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