The Point Fire in Sonoma County is fueled by dry grass and brush, which is expected to drive increased fire activity during a warmer-than-average summer.By Steph Rodriguez

While zero-emission car sales made up a quarter of all new vehicles sold in California last year, the transition to clean cars is rolling out unequally across the state.By Laura Klivans

With emergency departments across the nation facing a surge in homeless patients, OakDays in Oakland stands out. Its integration of medical services within permanent housing is a caring model that alleviates strain on overcrowded hospitals.By Lesley McClurg

Tomales residents and a UC research team are trying a new approach to planning for wildfire evacuations through a board game.By Katherine Monahan

Vanya Agrawal’s sonification project earned a spot at an international science fair this past spring.By Danielle Venton

A beloved San Francisco shoreline sits at a nexus of both nature and the built environment, of both history and the future.By Danielle Venton

For decades, San Francisco has been spilling raw sewage onto streets and beaches. The city now faces the prospect of spending billions to upgrade its infrastructure and comply with the Clean Water Act.By Katherine Monahan

In their final episode, Invisibilia searches for the right way to say goodbye.

Sometimes the holidays are filled with the people you love. Other times, they're marked by an absence. In this special holiday episode, new Code Switch co-host and former Invisibilia producer B.A. Parker tells a story about family, loss and preserving memories before it's too late. Then Parker joins Kia and Yowei to reflect on the making of this st…

Bad bosses. Obnoxious coworkers. Unfair compensation. There are so many reasons people feel disempowered in the workplace. But how can our feelings about power enable or disrupt the larger dynamics we hate at work? This week, Yowei Shaw seeks answers from a power researcher and a union organizer.By NPR

After months of working from home and retreating from the world, Kia Miakka Natisse is stuck - in her house, and in her head. In an attempt to break out of the funk, she's searching for wisdom at the bottom of the ocean with South Africa's first Black freediving instructor, Zandile Ndhlovu.By NPR

In San Jose, California, a community clinic was stumped as to why their clients were seeing ghosts. This week, a story about grappling with ghosts of our past and one clinic's attempt to heal intergenerational trauma.By NPR

This week on Invisibilia, could the rebrand of a familiar pill open up a new way to control fertility in a post-Roe America?By NPR

Alex is a comic who feels perfectly comfortable commanding a packed, rowdy audience, but consistently submits to what other people want in everyday life. This week, a look at how uncomfortable feelings about power can backfire on ourselves and the people we love. We get the help of a power expert - a dominatrix - to untangle Alex's power dynamics, …

2022 feels like walking a tightrope. We're grappling with control of our bodies, our time, the direction of our country - while trying to not spin out and just doomscroll. So this season, Invisibilia takes on control. The narratives we have about what's in or out of our control. Invisible tools of control. The crutches we use to FEEL in control but…

Would you ever consider going to therapy with a friend?Two best friends who call themselves brothers were drifting apart, so they asked psychotherapist Esther Perel to help — and we listened in. This episode was recorded in collaboration with Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel and a companion episode can be heard on her podcast.…

Sh*t happens. So why is it so hard to talk about? This week, the ways that poop divides and binds us in our friendships.By NPR

A lot of us think that it's a bad idea to get physical with friends. We worry it'll get messy, maybe even ruin the friendship. But if physical intimacy between friends weren't so taboo, what could our friendships look like? In this episode, we explore the gray zone of sex and friendship, following a man who deliberately kept his friendships with wo…

You know the old saying--keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But what if you can't tell the difference? In this episode, the story of two friends who got caught up in a Top Secret operation that tested their assumptions about trust, betrayal, loyalty, and power.By NPR

It's a basic tenet of friendship that you get to choose your friends. We look at two institutions that took away that choice: convents circa the 1960s and a summer program with unusual rules. What do we lose and what do we gain when we give up our preferences and try to make friends with everyone equally?…

It's one of the most common and infuriating friend mysteries out there - a friend disappears into thin air. But where do these ghosts go? And why are we so haunted by them? If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.…

Friendship gets the Invisibilia treatment.By NPR

Let's get slow. Producer Abby Wendle picks up the gauntlet that was thrown down in the last episode "The Great Narrative Escape." Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.By NPR

Imagine a TV show with no plot, no characters, no tension... and yet, it went viral! In this episode, we have a story that questions storytelling as we know it. Plus, co-hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw take a spectacularly unspectacular train ride.By NPR

Is 209 Times helping or hurting the community it claims to serve? What does the site mean for the future of local news in America? And what can be done about it? In the final installment of "The Chaos Machine" series , Yowei finds herself in the middle of a long-standing tug of war over who owns the truth.…

The man behind 209 Times is not who you'd expect. In Part 2, co-host Yowei Shaw discovers the website's surprising origin story, and ends up at the frontlines of a revolt against the mainstream media and a fight over who gets to own the truth.By NPR

Yowei gets a tip about Russian trolls in Stockton, California and falls down a hole of swirling conspiracy theories. At the center is a scrappy, controversial website that has become one of the most popular sources of local news in town. Some say it's doing important investigative journalism while others say it's spreading hateful lies about progre…

This week, news of a rare blood clot in a patient at UCSF, after he received the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, brought this very small risk close to home. The chance of developing these blood clots is tiny — only 2 in 1 million. And UCSF reported Monday that the patient is doing well and expected to go home in a few days. Still, knowing th…

Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth?By NPR

Invisibilia is back! Stories that help you see the world differently, with new hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw.By NPR

It was a year ago that we suddenly all found ourselves working from home and obsessively washing our hands as the novel coronavirus started to spread in the U.S. and the Bay Area. A lot has changed since then: how we live, work, parent, plan and communicate. The coronavirus is hardly “novel” anymore. It has altered all of our lives. KQED science re…

Marine scientists have observed a massive decline of California’s underwater kelp forests in recent years. Studies have linked the die-off to a host of factors including an ocean heat wave, a deadly sea star virus, and an influx of voracious kelp-eating sea urchins. Kelp’s long flat leaves and bulbous stems provide habitat for marine mammals, fish …

A nation-leading workplace safety rule specifically designed to combat the risks of an airborne virus should have been protecting hundreds of thousands of California workers from COVID-19. The Aerosol Transmissible Diseases Standard took effect 12 years ago — and it anticipated a pandemic. But one year into the pandemic, workers say enforcement is …

Federal wildlife officials announced this week that monarch butterflies qualify to be protected as an endangered species. But, the iconic insect won’t be receiving that status under the Endangered Species Act due to a backlog of other species in line for protection. In California, where monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains mostly flock for the wint…

President-elect Joe Biden has said that the environment and climate change will be top priorities of his administration. On Jan. 20, Biden will not only take the helm of a country shaken by climate-driven disasters like wildfires and hurricanes, but also inherit the consequences of the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations. T…

Amid a record-breaking fire year, a new report out Thursday says the state lacks a grasp on the true costs of wildfires. The report is from the California Council on Science and Technology, an independent nonprofit organization established to offer state leaders objective advice from scientists and research institutions. Ahead of the CCST’s public …

We’re in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century, one in which adherence to public health guidelines makes all the difference between an out-of-control pestilence and a serious but containable emergency. California, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, slowed what looked to be its inexorable spread with an extraordinary y…

The fire refugees kept calling, all of them elderly, all of them newly homeless after Paradise burned in 2018. Some 70 miles to the south in Grass Valley, Katrina Hardin answered those calls. Hardin managed a senior apartment complex — none were available, so she begged her friends to open up their spare rooms. The demographics of the victims haunt…

Doctors say the antiviral drug remdesivir is one of the few treatments that benefits patients hospitalized with COVID-19. But the drug, made by Gilead Sciences, can cost more than $3,000 for the full course of treatment, and some hospitals — including several in the Bay Area — say it’s in short supply. Foster City-based Gilead is currently the only…

Stepping onto the 55-acre grounds of the San Francisco Botanical Garden feels a bit like entering the chocolate room at Willy Wonka’s factory, if that storybook setting were bursting with real plants instead of ones made of candy. Located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, just blocks away from bustling city life (though not as bustling during these…

Black, Latino and indigenous people are severely under-represented as learners and teachers of science, technology, engineering and math in academia. The lack of diversity has been documented for decades with little or no improvement. Minority youths experience bias, discrimination and harassment, contributing to persistent power imbalances. As the…

At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Margo Henderson ordered a lot of takeout pizza and quesadillas. But she worried that the greasy comfort foods she indulged in at the pandemic’s outset had nudged her down a slippery slope. For most of her 29 years, Henderson has grappled with an eating disorder that caused a deep aversion, even disgust, f…

Hacking, phishing, surveillance, disinformation... these are tools used to silence dissidents and influence elections. But what happens when these same methods are used against an ordinary citizen? The story of a man fighting an enemy he can't see and becoming increasingly paranoid.Which makes him a lot like the rest of us. What happens when you no…

Updated: May 6, 2021, 5:02 p.m. Leer en español. After another winter of lackluster rainfall, Northern California is facing a worse-than-average wildfire outlook, with most counties in the state in severe to extreme drought. “Unfortunately, all evidence points towards a particularly severe fire season, once again, in most of California. And it’s an…

As California cities and counties begin a gradual loosening of restrictions on daily life, researchers around the state and nation are ramping up efforts to track the coronavirus’ evolution. Monitoring changes in its genetic code will help contain the virus on two fronts: pointing toward areas for therapeutic drugs or vaccines to target and aiding …

From the start of this pandemic, science news has unfolded at a dizzying pace and crushing volume. Scientific research, which usually creeps along in the background until publication day and then pops up to say something worthy, is suddenly making breathtaking international news every few days. The speed of science research has gone into overdrive …

No one knows exactly how this coming fire season will shake out, but experts and fire officials agree the COVID-19 pandemic will make an already hard job much tougher. Fire agencies and emergency managers are now planning how they’ll fight wildfires, issue evacuation orders, set up shelters and handle power shutoffs in the face of the massive chall…

Sassy Outwater-Wright has battled cancer her entire life. She lost her sight to the disease. (Miriam Cooper) When COVID-19 started rapidly spreading, hospitals throughout the country canceled elective surgeries to free up hospital beds and conserve protective equipment like masks and gowns. Surgery departments canceled everything from cosmetic proc…

The strange story of an unlikely crew of people who band together to take on one of our largest problems using nothing but whale sounds, machine learning, and a willingness to think outside the box. Even stranger, several of the world's most accomplished scientists seem to think they might have a good idea. | To learn more about this episode, subsc…

A city council candidate says he's black. But his opponent accuses him of being a white man pretending to be black. If race is simply a social construct and not a biological reality, how do we determine someone's race? And who gets to decide? We tell the story of a man whose racial identity was fiercely contested... and the consequences this had on…