Crosscurrents KALW

The Kenneth Rainin Foundation just announced this year's fellows. Today, we meet one of them, Dr. Ayodele “WordSlanger” Nzinga. Then, we visit a bookstore that’s founded on a mission to serve the community. And, a reading from Berkeley author Adam Mansbach.

In this episode, we head to Oakland to meet some very old and very short trees and the dedicated volunteers who care for them. Then, we stop and smell the roses at the Morcom Garden. Plus, a traveling art exhibit on James Baldwin makes a stop in Oakland.

If you talk about prison reform in California these days, you might hear about reducing overcrowding, dismantling the death penalty and changing sentencing law. You also might hear Norwegian prisons. Today, we bring you the Uncuffed episode from Norway which just won a Silver award under the category of social issues for the 2024 New York Festival Radio Awards.

People's Park closed in January so that UC Berkeley could build a student dorm. In this episode we find out if this the end of the park or just another chapter in its story. Then, how the departure of Oakland's last major league baseball team has prompted a lot of finger pointing. It’s the next episode from Foul Ball.

In this episode, we hear how one music venue in West Oakland holds the neighborhood's history and its future. We take a stroll down 7th street, and visit Esther’s Orbit Room. Then, we talk about the global rise of African dance music with Tshego Lets-oalo of KALW’s music show On Repeat.

In California prisons, people have to work. They get jobs in the kitchen, cleaning up on the yard or stacking milk crates in a factory. And the implication are of that work is complicated. In today's episode, we hear about real jobs and prison pay in a new episode from Uncuffed.