Doctors empowered kids for a day to act as miniature medics and treat their stuffies at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco — showing shots and check-ups don’t have to be scary.By Lesley McClurg

The study highlights the need for residents to have an evacuation plan and to leave early in case of emergency.By Dana Cronin

A movement is growing to bring small, portable, affordable solar to a balcony or backyard near you. But before you see them everywhere, advocates must break through significant barriers.By Laura Klivans

A new survey shows state residents believe climate change poses a personal and financial risk, and they want more action from the government — though cost is a concern.By Danielle Venton

Within decades, rising seas threaten to flood Marin County’s transportation network and isolate communities unless action is taken, according to a recent study of climate vulnerabilities.By Ezra David Romero

New from NPR's Embedded: Hosts Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez travel across Latin America and within the U.S. to understand how women in Brazil discovered one of the medications that's used for self-managed abortions, the spread of this method across the world, and how this approach is shaping the future of abortion in the U.S. Learn more abou…

In Orange County, where the local CARE Court refuses to force people with psychosis into treatment, one social worker drove 30,000 miles last year searching for unhoused clients with schizophrenia — asking if they want help, again and again and again.By April Dembosky

To prepare for sea level rise, scientists installed textured tiles on San Francisco’s seawall to see what material best attracts marine life and boosts biodiversity.By Ezra David Romero

Inside a tiny room beneath Oracle Park, the San Francisco Giants are quietly reshaping what it means to be strong — on the baseball field, in the clubhouse and for the next generation of fans.By April Dembosky

The non-crisis warm line will lay off 127 staffers and cut its operating hours in half as county officials pull all its funding following a change in California’s mental health spending.By April Dembosky

New from NPR's Embedded: Reporter Zach Mack thinks his dad has gone all in on conspiracy theories, while his father thinks that Zach is the one being brainwashed. In 2024, after the latest round of circular arguments, they decided to try something new, an attempt to pull each other out of the spell each of them thinks the other is under. Can one fa…

We go back almost 100 years, to the beginning of women's inclusion in elite sports. It turns out that men had an odd variety of concerns about women athletes. Some doubted these athletes were even women at all. And their skepticism resulted in the first policies requiring sex testing. Tested is a six-part series, you can binge all the episodes now …

New from NPR's Embedded podcast and CBC in Canada: Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal? That's the question facing a small group of elite athletes right now. Last year, track and field authorities announced new regulations that mean some women can't compete in the female category unless they lower their body's natur…

In their final episode, Invisibilia searches for the right way to say goodbye. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastcho…

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.c…

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy…

This week on Invisibilia, could the rebrand of a familiar pill open up a new way to control fertility in a post-Roe America? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy 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. Learn more ab…

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy 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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices 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? Learn more about sponsor message choices: p…

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. Lear…

Friendship gets the Invisibilia treatment. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy 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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy 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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy…

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: …

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. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy…

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…

Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy NPR

Invisibilia is back! Stories that help you see the world differently, with new hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy NPR

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…

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…

What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift that allows her to see things that will happen in the future that no one else can see. A look at how we think about the future, and the important ways the future shapes the p…

Welcome to what is possibly the most tense and uncomfortable summer program in America! The Boston-based program aims to teach the next generation the real truth about race, and may provide some ideas for the rest of us about the right way to confront someone to their face. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here…

Daniel Martinez discovered the unthinkable: a creature that breaks one of the most fundamental laws of life. In the wake of his discovery--which has been widely confirmed by the scientific community--all kinds of people have thrown themselves into trying to unlock the secrets of how this creature seems to cheat death. Cellular biologists, aging res…

Bernie Krause was a successful musician as a young man, playing with rock stars like Jim Morrison and George Harrison in the 1960s and '70s. But then one day, Bernie heard a sound unlike anything he'd ever encountered and it completely overtook his life. He quit the music business to pursue it and has spent the last 50 years following it all over t…

You hear the train barreling towards you and you're tied to the tracks. It's an impossible situation. Most people would panic, and then a tiny handful would think up improbable workarounds. This season on Invisibilia: inventors in desperate times. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy…

What happens when you treat artificial intelligence with unconditional love? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy NPR

Producer B.A. Parker started recording her calls with her father because she was concerned about the care at his nursing home. But the recordings gave her a window into something very different: their relationship. So she started recording her calls with her grandmother as well. A story of relationships told through the small recorded calls between…

As a parent, what do you do when your four-year-old starts telling you about memories that can't possibly be his? Memories that he says are from a past life? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy PolicyBy NPR

A mysterious profile pops up on a dating app - leading to a bubble of chaos and confusion. A story about trying to sort fact versus fiction, how destabilizing that can be, and a very strange confrontation with the truth. NOTE: Since this story was originally published, we have added some background reporting and context to the episode. Learn more a…

Richard Kraft was in a fog of grief when he bought his first Disney collectible at an auction. But once he started, he couldn't stop. In the first episode of our new fall season, we explore the role of positive distraction in the face of adversity. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy…

Invisibilia is a show that runs on empathy. We believe in it. But are we right? In this episode, we'll let you decide. We tell the same story twice in order to examine the questions: who deserves our empathy? And is there a wrong way to empathize? If you or somebody you know might need help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/…

A young woman discovers a pattern in her dating habits that disturbs her - a pattern that challenges her very conception of who she is and what she believes in. The realization sets her off on a quest to change her attractions. But is this even possible? And should we be hacking our desire to match our values? Learn more about sponsor message choic…