Audio Academy

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Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. This one comes from New York staff writer Jelani Cobb. He asks, “How did there get to be an entirely separate city inside of Oakland?”

It can be hard to run a successful restaurant in the Bay Area. And there are additional challenges that come with being a trans chef. But despite those hurdles, one Oakland restaurant owner is determined to make it work.

Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. Adam Incera recently visited San Francisco from New York and wanted to know: Why does the Bay Area have so many transit systems?

State officials in California say more than 1.5 million people have purchased health insurance through a taxpayer funded marketplace. That's a 1.6% increase over last year's enrollment. 

This award-winning documentary explores the lives of Sikh youth in America, and how they confront and respond to violence, sometimes with humor.

Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. Ben Harney wanted to know why is it called earthquake weather?

Have you ever gone camping and thought you saw something mysterious in the woods?

‘Tis the season when we see houses bedecked in lights and hear hecka holiday songs wherever we go. One place where the sights and sounds of the season are concentrated is what’s known as Christmas Tree Lane.

Jules Indelicato is a Bay Area musician. They recently took part in the durational performance art project "Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy." For eight hours a day, three days in a row, 30 women and non-binary musicians played popular love songs on repeat.

In a quiet spot, just west of the bustle of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, sits a garden dedicated to English literature’s crowned prince: William Shakespeare. Once you make it past the entrance gate and down the worn brick path, you are transported into an English garden filled with manicured flower beds, trimmed lawns, and people escaping the noise of the city.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been featuring work made by KALW’s Audio Academy. It’s a program funded in part by the Association For Continuing Education. And also, in part, by listeners like you who care about hearing people from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. We’re in a membership campaign right now, so we thought it was a great time to highlight the work our Audio Academy graduates have produced over the last 7 years! This show focuses on Bay Area places, big and small.

For today's Audiograph, we're headed to a tucked away area in a popular park.

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Let’s start with a little backstory. More than $15 million was raised for last year’s elections in San Francisco, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. That’s a lot of cash! About a third of it came from independent groups that raise private money to influence voters. The concern with these political action committees or PACs is that, because they’re private, you don’t really know who’s behind them. 

In 2013, KALW started the Audio Academy. Since then, we’ve trained more than 50 people to be radio journalists. Some were seasoned print journalists who wanted to transition to radio. Some had audio production experience but had never reported a story. And others had never spoken into a microphone or picked up a reporter’s notebook. After nine months, they could all write, record, and edit a feature story.

In 2013, KALW started the Audio Academy. Since then, we’ve trained more than 50 people to be radio journalists. Some were seasoned print journalists who wanted to transition to radio. Some had audio production experience but had never reported a story. And others had never spoken into a microphone or picked up a reporter’s notebook. After nine months, they could all write, record, and edit a feature story.

If you’ve spent any time walking around San Francisco lately you’ve probably seen signs in corner stores about Proposition C.  It's about e-cigarettes and it’s sparked one of the most impassioned debates going on in the city this electoral season.

For today’s Audiograph, we’re headed to the rodeo.

The Golden Gate Park Rose Garden is an oasis of color and smell, popular among both tourists and honeybees. Fuchsia, red, peach, yellow and white blooms explode everywhere.

Eric Cetnarski works as a sound healer in Oakland. Sound healing can be many things: from listening to our favorite songs to using our voices. 

The Bay Area’s long history of chocolate spans all the way back to the Gold Rush. Since then, the region has been a source for chocolate innovation again and again, from a Berkeley-based revolution in chocolate desserts to a craft chocolate revolution in the ‘90s that turned the industry on its head.

There’s a long history of chocolate making in the Bay Area that goes all the way back to the Gold Rush. Over a century later, a new guard of chocolate makers is picking up where a previous generation of innovators left off, and they’re leading a small but potent revolution in the chocolate industry.

San Francisco’s oldest working streetcar is a survivor. Car 578, sometimes called “The Dinky,” has a Cinderella story. Once the laughingstock of the fleet, it went on to inspire Muni’s collection of historic cars. 

You’ve probably seen them: groups of men looking for work, standing in front of Home Depot or waiting on corners of busy thoroughfares. These men are day laborers, looking for short-term work ranging from gardening to painting. 

We all know we’re supposed to prepare for earthquakes, but how many of us really have a plan?

ADVISORY: This story contains mature content.  

In the 1960s, the Tenderloin was a center for the LGBT community in San Francisco. But even there, they faced discrimination and harassment, often from the police. Felicia Elizondo first came to the Tenderloin from San Jose as a teenager in 1963. It was there that she took part in the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in 1966, one of the first transgender riots in the country.

For this week’s Audiograph, we’re going somewhere that’s unusually quiet.

According to a Harvard study, more than 40 percent of parents didn’t have “the sex talk” with their kids. But California — especially San Francisco — is leading the way in making sure kids get the sex education they need. Things weren’t always this way.