Crosscurrents

Journalist Mary Roach on the Mars rover landing, Oakland's three professional sports team might be on the move out, a cooperative for bikes in East Oakland, and local musician Amelia Romano.

Today we are featuring the harp-playing of Amelia Romano. She’s one of three young harpists performing at the “Festival of Harps, the Next Generation,” taking place this Wednesday, August 8 at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. Music starts at 7pm.

Bike culture in the Bay Area runs the gamut, from high performance racing to hipster fixies. Keeping a bike can be an expensive hobby, and as with cars, some people use their bikes as an extension of their personal style.

At ColectíVelo, a community bike shop in East Oakland, bicycles are still seen for their primary purpose: transportation. The shop provides free space and tools, bike repair training in Spanish and English, and access to bicycles for those with low incomes.

What happens when you combine local public radio, a story slam, and a grilled cheese cook-off? A recipe for a good time! KALW is bringing you a live menu of food-themed tales from professional storytellers and local residents. It's part of our new community storytelling project, Hear Here: A Pop-Up Radio Project. Be sure to stay for the evening’s three acts:

APPETIZER: Professional storyteller and radio producer hamming it up on stage

MAIN COURSE: Grilled cheese cookoff, judged by select audience members

If you think back to the 1997 film Contact, you’ll recall a scene where Jodie Foster, playing alien-hunting astronomer Ellie Arroway, lies on her car hood with huge headphones on her ears, in a field of towering white satellite dishes. She’s waiting for something. A signal. She lies still, her eyes closed. And suddenly, she hears something, the sounds of something – someone  – beyond the earth, communicating with her.