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All Episodes

East Bay Yesterday — 145 episodes

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Title
1

“Fishing kept us out of trouble”: Memories of the Berkeley waterfront

2

“No casual experiments”: Inside a legendary psychedelics lab

3

Covering the counterculture: How a rebellious era shaped journalism

4

“I felt burning in my throat”: Preparing for nuclear war in Livermore

5

Welcome to "the floating city": How the Hornet dodged destruction

6

“That’s where my power came from”: Betty Reid Soskin's century of chaos and hope

7

How to save a house: Meet the people maintaining some of the Bay’s oldest homes

8

“He wanted people to take risks”: An underdog movement’s astonishing rise

9

“My neighborhood looks the same as it did 50 years ago”: What needs protection – and what needs to change?

10

“The ballroom communist”: How a radical aristocrat changed Oakland

11

“We let everybody throw it away”: How garbage worked before corporations took over

12

Fighting fascism can be fun: La Peña celebrates 50 years of creative struggle

13

“Respect the patch”: How Oakland’s oldest Black motorcycle club survived more than 60 years

14

“Not on the wealth corridor”: Why older neighborhoods get left behind

15

Industry makes and breaks the Bay Area: A crash course with Richard Walker

16

People of the Pacific Circuit: Oakland’s place in the global economy

17

“Crockett became Italy”: How a sugar factory created an immigrant enclave

18

“A town in the middle of a city”: Live from Jingletown with the Co-Founders crew

19

Punks on film: How Murray Bowles captured “the physical expression of drama”

20

A century of mysteries: Exploring the Fox Theater’s hazy history

21

Freight trains, plants, and a vanishing world: Joey Santore on industry and ecology

22

The missing chapter: Filling in the blanks of the Bay Area’s Native American history

23

Sea walls won’t save us: The past and future of the Bay’s shifting shorelines

24

“These stories still matter”: Bay Area Lesbian Archives starts a new chapter

25

“The mecca of pleasure seekers in California”: Exploring the rise of the amusement industry

26

“Those wonderful smells”: A Bay Area coffee history crash course

27

“Everybody wants it preserved”: Time is running out to save this Oakland landmark

28

"A crazy gamble": Celebrating 75 years of KPFA radio

29

“The jewel of Oakland”: Exploring Lake Merritt and Children’s Fairyland

30

“The neighborhood time forgot”: A strange sliver of waterfront

31

“Climbing was all I had”: A history of bouldering in the Berkeley Hills

32

“The streets have changed”: “Drug Lords of Oakland” author on the rise and fall of local kingpins

33

"Rotten City" no more: The history of a tiny town's transformation

34

“He was bringing people together”: Why was Dr. Marcus Foster murdered?

35

Unearthing “lives of the dead”: A tour of Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery

36

Abortion, poetry, and stink-bombs: A different kind of “self-help” movement

37

Tales from the pit: Lessons from Berkeley’s landfill

38

"End of the line": How we lost the Key System

39

Long Lost Puzzle: What happened to the grizzly bears and old growth redwoods?

40

“You get to play a game of detective”: Longtime librarian Dorothy Lazard uncovers a whole new world

41

A curious conversation: Myth-busting and more with Olivia Allen-Price

42

From volcanoes to potholes: Excavating stories below the soil with Andrew Alden

43

“Time is not money”: Challenging clocks, nostalgia, and more with Jenny Odell

44

"Who was Joaquin Miller?": Assessing the legacy and land of a controversial icon

45

"We were being erased": The woman who saved California’s Black history

46

“Is reform possible?”: Investigating Oakland’s dysfunctional police department

47

Saved from the wrecking ball: The resurrection of Oakland’s Paramount Theater

48

Rooted in Richmond: Touring a "cultural gold mine"

49

What happened to “America’s most-read woman”? Rediscovering Elsie Robinson

50

“It’s okay to talk about sex toys”: Nenna Joiner digs deep into pleasures of the past

51

Nurses, Novelists, Politicians, and Punks: Miriam Klein Stahl’s “Hella Feminist” portraits

52

“What made Julia Morgan different?”: Exploring the early years of a superstar architect

53

“If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with”: When Ronald Reagan sent troops into Berkeley

54

“They’re scared of this book”: Oakland history under attack

55

“Oakland isn’t a bad place”: Ed Howard’s lifelong mission to uplift The Town

56

How to not pay rent: Long-term squatter Violet Thorns on “the art of becoming untouchable”

57

“They wouldn’t sell us rice”: A Filipina elder’s memories of survival and song

58

From playgrounds to the pros: The rise (and fall?) of Oakland as a sports mecca

59

“They were real macks”: How the Ward Brothers inspired a cult classic

60

“A new Pacific frontier”: The beginnings of Berkeley

61

"He stole the town": Oakland's founding father was a villain

62

“Black Art was her language”: Searching for the mother of a movement

63

"More than just the 1960s": Following the footsteps of rock & roll legends

64

“The porters were fed up”: C.L. Dellums and the rise of America’s first Black union

65

“Like a neon space carnival”: The trippy memories of a 90’s “Raver Girl”

66

“There’s no reason to be San Francisco”: The mixed legacy of Oakland’s ambition

67

“It was my whole universe”: William Gee Wong on growing up in Oakland’s Chinatown

68

“Dear Brown Eyes”: How a stash of old letters helped heal a family

69

“Who ordered the hit?” Investigating Mac Dre’s tragic murder

70

Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 2: “You become an art anthropologist”

71

Hoover-Foster Stories, Vol. 1: BBQ, books, and big banks

72

“We’re no longer afraid to be Black”: Before the Panthers, this group was the vanguard

73

“We’re uncovering a lost civilization”: A look at the New Deal’s local legacy

74

BART, bathhouses, and beyond: The friendship behind “The Cruising Diaries”

75

“We were here before California was a state”: Talking Latino history with Jose Rivera

76

“It was like a carnival”: The betrayal of Oakland’s 1946 General Strike

77

Goodbye, Telegraph Avenue: An audio time capsule of the past decade

78

“We’re not selling a neighborhood”: A new guidebook spotlights landmarks of conflict and resilience

79

“A home burned every 11 seconds”: A deadly tragedy that could happen again

80

“They insist on being here”: Oakland’s official bird refuses to be moved

81

Why Dorothea Lange still matters: Q&A with Oakland Museum's Drew Johnson

82

“How you organize that rage”: Challenging the police before Black Lives Matter

83

EBY Q&A Live: Opening up about oysters

84

A town within The Town: Oakland Army Base workers on its rise and fall

85

From war to love: My grandma remembers the Oakland Army Base

86

“We were being erased”: The woman who saved California’s Black history

87

EBY Q&A: The Bay and beyond with Chris Carlsson

88

EBY Q&A: How did it get so expensive to live here?

89

“OK, let’s go crazy”: How an unusual contest became the pride of Piedmont

90

Unfair housing: Why racism and real estate are so hard to untangle

91

EBY Q&A: Leland Stanford, the original tech bro

92

“It wasn’t part of my childhood”: Chicano Power and the rise of Día de los Muertos in Oakland

93

EBY Q&A live: A wild ride through BART history

94

EBY Q&A: Betty Reid Soskin's century of chaos and hope

95

EBY Q&A: 50 Years of free health care

96

Deep in Canyon, part 3: “A community of choice”

97

EBY Q&A: The earth-shattering history of a small East Bay town

98

EBY Q&A: Taking South Asian history to the streets

99

“I enjoyed every day”: A tribute to Ruth Beckford

100

EBY Q&A: How to do nothing in Oakland with Jenny Odell

101

“If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with”: When Ronald Reagan sent troops into Berkeley

102

EBY Q&A: Exploring Lake Merritt and Children’s Fairyland

103

Deep in Canyon, part 2: “It wasn’t utopia... it was real.”

104

Deep in Canyon, part 1: “Paradise with a dash of chaos”

105

Bonus episode: Q&A with “Evolutionary Blues” director Cheryl Fabio

106

“The Silent Generation was over”: Building Berkeley’s 1960s student movement

107

“Getting shot was one of the best things that happened”: Life after an Oakland assassination attempt

108

“Respect the patch”: How Oakland’s oldest Black motorcycle club survived nearly 60 years

109

“It’s in the DNA of hip-hop”: Tracing the local roots of a musical movement

110

“Get to know us first”: Longtime residents reflect on Oakland’s transformation

111

“This strange monument”: The story behind one of Oakland’s most prominent abandoned buildings

112

Long Lost Oakland, chapter 5: Overcoming racism, Lew Hing became king of Oakland’s canning industry

113

Long Lost Oakland, chapter 4: Balloons, booms & busts

114

Long Lost Oakland, chapter 3: How battles over sacred sites have revived Ohlone culture

115

Long Lost Oakland, chapter 2: “When the shipyard closed, my dad came home and cried”

116

“I’ll die if I let go”: After the earthquake, West Oakland came to the rescue

117

Long Lost Oakland, chapter 1: Grizzly bears & redwood trees

118

“They can’t believe he lived here”: Why John Muir settled down in the East Bay

119

Lenn Keller and the roots of the East Bay’s lesbian of color community

120

“You can’t replace that with photos”: Why so many buildings in Oakland have been picked up and moved

121

True shorties, vol. 1: Horse heads & bullet holes

122

“The freest time of my life”: Richard Pryor’s transformative East Bay experience

123

“The queen of the West Coast blues”: Sugar Pie DeSanto serves up sweet & spicy stories

124

“I believe in the elders”: Pendarvis Harshaw on gathering OG wisdom

125

“Monsters rising out of the mud”: From industrial wasteland to renegade art gallery

126

“What about the underdog?”: Dorothea Lange never stopped fighting for freedom

127

Before the A’s: The East Bay’s earliest baseball teams

128

“They knew it was a lie”: Exposing the cover-up behind Japanese-American mass incarceration

129

“Where are those ancestors now?”: How battles over sacred sites have revived Ohlone culture

130

Bruce Lee’s Oakland years: From a legendary fight to a new philosophy

131

America’s first sanctuary city: The missing chapter in a story of resistance

132

The East Bay punk explosion: How a scene rose from the ashes to create a music mecca

133

The rise and fall of the Oakland Ku Klux Klan

134

California’s only black whaling captain: William Shorey’s journey from sailor to celebrity

135

10,000 years of Oakland, 1 piece of land

136

“We were in liberation education”: Exploring the lost lessons of the Black Panthers’ school

137

From “one-hit wonder” to “legend”: 30 years later, a singer gets to re-live his dream

138

Goodbye to the “flying saucer”: Why many Oaklanders are taking the demolition of a diner personally

139

Before “1984” & “Hunger Games”: How the first modern dystopian novel was born in Oakland sweatshops

140

I grew up in Oakland’s oldest cemetery

141

Oakland’s “lost” Latino neighborhood

142

“Celeste Guap is not the first”: A history of sexual abuse, the OPD, and a refugee community

143

From garages to galleries in Uptown

144

Oakland's oldest soul food chef doesn't want to quit

145

Oakland's first "celebrity" librarian