Feature Archive

Whole wheat pizza, organic foods, and salad bars don’t sound like typical school lunch options, but that’s what’s being served in one Bay Area school district.

With more children today over weight and less inclined to exercise, experts believe it’s not all about food. We sit with child obesity expert, Dr. Francine Kaufman, to discuss the future of children’s health.

Youth sports in California are hurting. Umpires and referees are in short supply, resulting in postponed and cancelled games, abbreviated seasons and the loss of some sports altogether. What does the future hold for youth sports if there aren’t enough people to officiate?

People think the organ transplant system is there for us all. But as waiting lists grow, some patients realize they need to be active in finding their organs…from a live donor, from the internet, even from China. However, many worry about the ethical implications.

During the summer, the Central Valley’s Portuguese community stages regular bullfights in the tradition of their homeland. For the past 30 years, thousands have attended these evening events, where the only concession to American culture and laws is that the bull is spared harm. The animal is covered in Velcro and the matador’s lances simply stick to the material.

How does Yosemite preserve its natural splendor while maintaining millions of visitors every year?

Death Valley National Park has one of the darkest skies in the United States — for now.

Correspondent Judy Muller catches more than just fish when she takes us fly fishing at Yosemite National Park.

Producer Coll Metcalfe, Associate Producer Anne Lilburn, and New Media Producer Marc Phu discuss the story behind You’ve Got Mail. You’ve Got Mail looks at some cities and counties offering citizens free wireless internet access.

In a community where overnight street parking is illegal, a unique Santa Barbara program helps people living in their cars find places to spend the night.

Big companies like Google and Earthlink see gold in that plan and are partnering with the city of San Francisco to build a network to connect the city. A poor, rural southeastern Indian reservation in San Diego County is providing wireless Internet access to reservations across a 250 square mile network via transmitters mounted on mountaintops.

We sit down with Sun Microsystems Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos to find out why open source is the business model of the future.

Some cancer patients face paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for drugs that may save their lives.

Assemblyman Keith Richman discusses the challenge of healthcare reform in California.

In the coastal community of Santa Barbara, the median home cost - more than $1.2 million - has forced local police, fire fighters and nurses further and further inland for affordable middle class housing. What happens when first-responders live outside the community they are protecting?

We sit down with Kai Ryssdal, host of public radio’s “Marketplace,” to find out his down-to-earth reasons why not to overinvest in your home.

In 2005, California logged more than 7,700 police pursuits in which 16 people died and 1,351 were injured. Though legislators last year passed a law that may or may not curb the number of pursuits, this explosive debate is far from over.

Los Angeles is the car-chase capital of the world. More pursuits happen here than anywhere else on the planet. So what is it about Los Angelinos that leads them to run? And why do Los Angelinos love to watch?

Firefighters call it the “Big Screen”: the front door to Los Angeles Fire Station #9, through which firemen have watched a human tragedy unfold for years. Station #9 sits in the middle of the country’s gravest homeless problem—Los Angeles’ skid row.

We spoke with Angela Alioto, who was appointed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to write the 10-year plan to take 3,000 chronic homeless people off the street.

California’s Central Valley is the country’s heartland but it also has a poverty rate nearly double that of the rest of the state. In this final installment in our Kids For Real series, 10 year-old Ramiro gives us a first-hand look at how his family copes with hunger.

Californians are traveling in record numbers to Baja California, Mexico, for health care. The news is that they’re doing it through their own HMOs.

Famed reality TV producer Mark Burnett gives his .02 cents on what politicians could do to improve ratings, er, voter participation.

Tag along with a promiscuous RFID chip as it travels from factory floor to supermarket checkout counter.

Why is Santa Monica getting a bad rap for its treatment of the homeless after decades as a haven for California’s dispossed? Hear from more than both sides of this hotly contested issue.

For over a decade, a mysterious oil spill tainted California’s beaches. The source? A freighter that sank in 1953. Could future spills from shipwrecked vessels be prevented?

Why are thousands of Californians putting their own lives at risk by buying prescription medicine from illicit vendors? A look at the roots of this growing concern and what Los Angeles County is doing to prevent its spread.