A small group of volunteers in Berkeley field book requests from prisoners across the country.
Welcome back to the Tales of Two Cities podcast! This episode is about being locked up. This week we’ll meet formerly incarcerated people who share their experiences behind bars and also learn about the ways they’re getting their lives back on track after their release. We’ll also look at a different kind of lock up as we hear about animals who are affected by isolation and confinement. We will follow rodent-trapping researchers in an effort to study mammals and also…
Fifteen years ago, Dan McNevin and two other men sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, alleging that a priest at a church in Niles had abused them as children. At first, McNevin felt validated. It seemed like he might finally get justice and hold the diocese accountable. As he told the press at the time, going public and confronting what had happened seemed like the only way to move forward. Then the backlash followed. “I was ridiculed. I was…
Welcome back to the Tales of Two Cities podcast! This episode is all about our guilty pleasures. This week we’ll take you to Zoonie’s Candy Shop in Oakland to relive your childhood, learn about how people who have shopped too much are managing all the stuff they have, and hang out with a group of friends trying to solve a murder mystery — and who want you to know that games aren’t just for kids. And finally, we’ll meet up…
Over the years, Nella Gonçalves has become very used to hearing a certain question: “Ew, you work with the homeless? Don’t they stink?” Gonçalves is the deputy director of Beyond Emancipation, an organization that helps foster youth transition into lives as independent adults. Gonçalves meets a lot of very young people in very difficult positions; she said there’s not a single youth she works with who wouldn’t know what it’s like to fear homelessness. Yet, she observed, even though barely…
Oakland activists Lead to Life melt guns into shovels and use them to plant trees.
The Evergreen Cemetery has nothing of the dark, morbid and ghostly atmosphere people tend to associate with graveyards or see in the movies. It is a sunlit, open space with tall palm trees and mountains in the background. It feels paradoxically full of life. At 11 am on a Monday, there are not a lot of people there. Other than me and a gardener, only one woman with bright pink neon shoes can be seen from a distance. She seems…