There are three main theories that explain the origin of the mysterious hole dug into Mount Shasta, and each theory tells a different story about the region’s history. (Cat Schuknecht/KQED)
What would you do if one morning you woke up and there was a 15 foot wide, 60 foot deep hole dug into the side of a massive volcano in your town?
That's what happened to the people of Mt. Shasta back in 2009, and they've been guessing and debating who dug the hole and why ever since. The theories include people searching for a lost continent, people looking for Native American artifacts and people looking for gold.
A view of the California State Capitol in Sacramento. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
While federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., can rarely seem to come together to pass much legislation of note, the California Legislature has been busy this week. The two-year legislative session ended on Friday night with a flurry of votes on big, consequential issues including:
Wildfire reform: Provides $1 billion for fire prevention over 5 years and allows utilities including PG&E to pass on some costs from the 2017 wildfires to ratepayers.
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Net neutrality: Prohibits internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down internet traffic and charging more for faster service, among other things, mirroring Obama-era rules that were repealed by the Trump administration.
School start times: Bars middle and high schools from starting before 8:30 a.m. Would go into effect in 2021 at the earliest and wouldn't apply to rural schools.
Criminal justice: Numerous criminal justice reform bills passed which would, among other things, end cash bail, increase access to police misconduct files and body cam footage, make it more difficult to charge kids as adults and prevent people who did not have a direct connection to a killing from being charged with felony murder.
Longtime leaseholder of the Grand Lake Theatre Allen Michaan has purchased the building from his longtime landlord, and plans to file for historic status. (Gabe Meline/KQED)
I love seeing movies in a theater, especially one that has some character and history. One of my favorite memories from my first summer living in San Francisco is seeing the premiere of the HBO movie "Looking" at the Castro Theater, and since moving to Oakland, I've quickly fallen in love with the Grand Lake Theater.
This column from KQED Arts' Emma Silvers perfectly captures the magic of movie theaters and how happy we should be when they get the support they need to survive.
Back-to-school time is usually a period of happy stories about the promise of a new school year. But KQED's Vanessa Rancaño has been all over some much less optimistic news coming out of Oakland Unified School District.
The news that the district was cutting some high school sports got a lot of attention, but what received far less — and yet will impact many more students — was the district's decision to end a free dinner program that provides evening meals to some 3,000 low-income students in the district.
We started with a mystery and we'll end with a mystery.
This one has to do with the strange stone walls that dot the region's landscape from down near San Jose north through the Berkeley Hills. People have theorized about the provenance of these walls for more than 120 years.
Were they built by aliens? Or visitors from a lost continent? Or are they just a bunch of boring rocks?
KQED's Dan Brekke has spent years looking into all the wild theories that have popped up to explain the "East Bay Mystery Walls" for Bay Curious and, I promise, his story is worth your time.
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