KQED's Perspectives

For Dick Heinzelman, life was never quite as satisfying as it was at four years old playing with a toy truck in a pile of dirt.

A Nigerian immigrant, Rosan Agbajoh was baffled by the maze of laws that held her fate. So she decided to do something about it.

For technologists like David Stork, Stanley Kubrick’s 50-year-old film ‘2001:A Space Odyssey’ was a blueprint to the future.

In 2010, Katrina Lake recruited 20 friends for an experiment: she wanted to see if she could choose clothes for them that accurately matched their style and personality. That idea sparked Stitch Fix, an online personal shopping service that aims to take the guesswork out of shopping. Today, it has over two million customers and brings in nearly a billion dollars in annual revenue. Plus, for our postscript "How You Built That", how Brian Sonia-Wallace built "Rent Poet" — a poem-on-demand service for weddings, corporate gatherings, and other events.

The world is full of busy, buzzing doers. But Lane Parker calmly weights when might be the right time to do most anything.

Bernie Krause’s recordings document the devastating impact environmental factors like drought and climate change have had on songbirds.

Mike von der Porten says that when high tech communications failed or proved inadequate during last fall’s epic fires, one old fashioned technology worked really well.

His whole life Pete Gavin has relied on his parents. Now he is retired and they are elderly, leaving him adrift.

Paul Staley finds ominous parallels in the practices of California’s 49ers and the new breed of data miners.

Before he turned 40, Nolan Bushnell founded two brands that permanently shaped the way Americans amuse themselves: the iconic video game system Atari, and the frenetic family restaurant Chuck E. Cheese's. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," an update on H2OPS, a non-alcoholic take on craft-brewed – a fragrant sparkling water made with hops. (Original broadcast date: February 27, 2017)

Michael Ellis tours the three types of desert in California.

#MeToo and #TimesUp are powerful cultural forces that have created very real challenges and opportunities for parents like Shane Safir.

Psychiatry resident Matt Hirschtritt finds that all his mental health skills are inadequate to a patient who is losing his home.

Tasneem Sadok is Muslim, and her headscarf draws much attention.

Stephen Lavezzo spent years trying to cope with a habit of his father that he found completely annoying.