PST with Emily Dreyfuss

San Francisco ballots are four pages front and back this year. On this episode of “PST,” host Emily Dreyfuss opens hers up and gets help making sense of the statewide races and propositions facing California voters this midterm election. 

First we hear from The San Francisco Standard’s comedy correspondent Sophia Garrow about her California gubernatorial candidate interviews. She tells us what Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra are like in person, and why her conversations with them went viral.

The Standard’s politics reporters Dustin Gardiner and Gabriel Greschler then walk Emily through her actual ballot. T...

Spoilers ahead! Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything has everyone talking, and we’ve got a lot to say. Host Emily Dreyfuss is joined by SF Standard news editor Kevin Truong and senior Silicon Valley correspondent Theo Baker, author of How to Rule the World. They break down the Theranos founder’s final days before prison, the eerie “have you ever told a lie?” scene, and the scene-stealing Billy Evans. Theo also reveals that Billy, posing as Elizabeth Holmes on Twitter, tweeted at him.

Kevin also reports back about his 11-hour triple feature. He reviews...

San Francisco police cleared just 14% of rape cases last year. That’s half the national average and the lowest of any large county in California, according to an SF Standard investigation. One city leader decided that was unacceptable.

On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar. Melgar called a City Hall hearing this month that brought SFPD leadership to the table and won commitments to overhaul how the department handles sexual assault. 

Melgar explains why sexual assault has been deprioritized compared to other crimes, and how she plans to...

Anthropic and OpenAI are headed towards record-breaking IPOs, with a wave of new AI wealth about to hit San Francisco. Who gets rich, who gets priced out, and what will the city look like after?

“PST” host Emily Dreyfuss talks with Mat Honan, editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review, about soaring home prices, what the Facebook IPO taught us, AI bubble fears, and loving a city that keeps minting millionaires. Then SF Standard reporter Emily Shugerman joins Dreyfuss to talk about how AI lab employees are becoming one of the biggest single-issue political donor blocs in the country. 

What happens when a group of self-described “sluts” decide men need help with flirting? They create SlutCon, a three-day Bay Area conference where men pay between $3,000 to $18,000 to learn how to flirt, escalate, and date without being seen as too awkward. 

On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss talks with SF Standard tech culture reporter Zara Stone, who attended all three days of SlutCon at Lighthaven in Berkeley. The event, co-organized by controversial sex researcher and blogger Aella, featured dozens of “flirt girls” and various training sessions like “Confidence Engineering” and “Physical Escalation."

Together with Emily, Zar...

Ryan Clark and his partner were dancing at a Pride event in 2023 when a man stumbled out of the crowd toward them. Under the flashing lights of the Midway Club, just south of Dogpatch, the man began to grope them inside and outside of their pants, the couple said — first Clark, then his partner. They repeatedly told him they were monogamous and wanted him to stop. He didn’t, they say, until they shoved him.

They claim that man was Manny Yekutiel, a San Francisco cafe owner, well-known nightlife personality, and now a frontrunner in the District 8 Boar...

San Francisco public schools put an AI reading tutor called Amira in front of every K–5 student without telling parents. Host Emily Dreyfuss only found out when a substitute teacher mentioned it. Until then, she thought Amira was a real person.

This week, SF Standard reporter Ezra Wallach joins Emily to explain what Amira is, how it arrived in SFUSD through a larger curriculum purchase, and why kids say it can't understand them. They dig into the biggest question parents have: what happens to their children's voice recordings? That includes a line about deleting voice data that qu...

By now you've probably heard of Flock: the license plate cameras that critics say have turned your daily commute into a surveillance network. Dozens of cities, from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, are pushing back – and in SF, two of the people leading that fight are 16-year-old Lowell High School juniors.

Emily Dreyfuss talks with Zachary Schwartz and Hugo Zorn, the founder and outreach lead of DeFlock SF, about how a YouTube rabbit hole turned into a full-blown local movement. They discuss what Flock's automated license plate readers actually track, a recent data breach affecting hundreds of re...

AI company CEOs – the same people building these products – keep warning that AI could end humanity. This week it boiled over: an Anthropic researcher quit and accused his employer of endangering the world, and a current Anthropic safety lead agreed with him publicly. Host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard tech editor Heather Kelly to explain what's really driving the AI industry's sudden wave of doomsday manifestos – regulatory capture, looming IPO paperwork, and a string of AI "misalignment" incidents.

Emily then speaks to Claire Stapleton, who spent 12 years crafting Google's "don't be evil" image before helping organi...

A scooter rider in San Francisco is killed on Market Street. A CEO loses his teeth in a bike crash on Arguello. And buried in a 130-year-old newspaper clipping is proof that SF has been failing its cyclists since 1894.

On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with two people living San Francisco's bike-vs-car divide from opposite sides. First, Standard reporter Garrett Leahy breaks down his investigation into the “slot" – the notorious rail gap on Market Street that's been throwing cyclists since the cable car era – and the wildly divisive reader reaction to his story. Then...

For years, "bipping" (SF slang for car break-ins) was practically the city's signature crime – so common it inspired rap lyrics and a whole genre of "never leave anything in your car" advice. But new reporting shows car break-ins in San Francisco have plummeted since their 2017 peak .

On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard reporter Max Harrison-Caldwell to unpack his story "Rest in Peace, Bip City." They dig into where the term "bipping" came from, why it became a bizarre point of local pride, and what actually drove the steep decline – was it a...

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age 80 – and San Francisco is mourning her like family. On this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss talks with the people who felt her impact most directly here: Zulema Rubalcava of the SF Department of Early Childhood on the local chapter of Dolly's Imagination Library, which has sent nearly 10,000 SF kids free books since launching last August; Angela Vincent, who's thrown Dolly tribute nights at local bars since 2020; Jacob Stensberg, artistic director of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, on their Pride tribute show and Dolly's quiet, decades-long support of the LGBTQ+ community (in...

San Francisco just opened its first brand-new elementary school in decades – Mission Bay School. But nearly 100 neighborhood families couldn't get in. Why? Because in SFUSD, even a brand-new school down the street doesn't guarantee your kid a spot.

In this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with SF Standard reporter Ezra Wallach to break down San Francisco's infamous school lottery, which is the enrollment system that determines where your child goes to school. Together they explain how it works, who gets priority, and why 31% of SFUSD families don't get their top school pick.

Th...

San Francisco is failing survivors of alleged sexual assault – and the numbers prove it. SFPD cleared just 14% of rape cases last year, which is half the national average and the lowest rate of any major county in California. 

SF Standard investigative reporter Anya Schultz joins host Emily Dreyfuss to break down what she found after months of digging into how the city handles rape investigations. The picture is alarming: roughly 80% of alleged rape cases are currently sitting inactive; the Special Victims Unit has lost half its investigators since 2019; and police failed to publish legally required rape kit dat...

San Francisco is blanketed in AI billboards that make no sense. And most of us have just... stopped reading them. But a few people are fighting back.

This week on PST, host Emily Dreyfuss talks to three of them. Harris Alterman and Dave Ross are two New York comedians who've been plastering parody AI ads in the NYC subway ("Payroll, now in pill form." "UnderwAIr. Panties that think.”). Then, there’s Tucker Bryant, a San Francisco conceptual artist who rented a real billboard in the city's SoMa neighborhood and used it to advertise a fake chatbot – one powere...

A 22-story condo tower proposed on top of a Safeway grocery store in San Francisco’s affluent Marina District has become a flashpoint for the city’s YIMBY vs. NIMBY housing war. And a photo from a recent community meeting there showed exactly who's on which side.

SF Standard reporter Kevin Nguyen joins host Emily Dreyfuss to break down the 800-unit project, why neighborhood opposition no longer has the power to kill it, and how developer Align timed their proposal to sidestep Mayor Daniel Lurie's new Family Zoning rules.

Then, New York Times housing reporter (and...

After six years and a bureaucratic maze involving PG&E, BART, and the Historic Preservation Commission, Jollibee has officially opened its doors on Market Street in San Francisco. In this episode of PST, host Emily Dreyfuss breaks down the full story, and what it reveals about the real cost of doing business in San Francisco.

First, SF Standard food editor Lauren Saria gives a primer on Jollibee: the cult Filipino fast food chain known for its Chickenjoy fried chicken, sweet spaghetti, and the legendary peach mango pie. Lauren shares why the opening feels like a cultural milestone...

Is streaming television broken? Netflix is hemorrhaging second-season viewers, prices keep climbing, and the service that once felt like magic now feels like a monthly bill you forgot to cancel. Host Emily Dreyfuss — who loves television so much she actually has a TV tattoo on her arm — brings in Bloomberg’s media and entertainment editor Lucas Shaw, to diagnose what's wrong with the streaming era.

Emily and Lucas get into why Netflix's second-season viewership is collapsing, whether engagement actually matters to these streaming platforms if users aren’t canceling, and the uncomfortable truth that streaming (with its ads and...

Is a liberal arts education still worth it in the age of AI? Or is college about to become obsolete?

Host Emily Dreyfuss is saving up to send her two kids to a liberal arts school like Wesleyan University, where she and her husband met. But as AI promises to replace everything from coding to essay writing, she's starting to wonder: do liberal arts schools still make sense to attend?

This week, Emily sits down with two Wesleyan insiders to make the case for liberal arts education. First, she talks with President Michael S. Roth...

Cindy Cohn spent decades at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) fighting for digital rights, including taking on the NSA's mass surveillance program. Now, as AI reshapes the internet, she's sounding the alarm again. In this episode, Cohn joins host Emily Dreyfuss to talk about why the copyright lawsuits against AI companies are the wrong fight, why privacy harms are the real threat but are much harder to litigate, and what it would actually take to protect your rights in the age of ChatGPT and Claude. She also explains why the government and corporate surveillance are not separate problems, and...

What does it actually take to build a humanoid robot in America – and why can't we do it yet?

Host Emily Dreyfuss's 79-year-old mother has been joking for years that she wants a robot companion, inspired by viral humanoid robot videos and Korean dramas. So Emily welcomes robotics reporter Kylie Robison to find out if that's even possible. Kylie is a host and writer at Core Memory who recently wrote an article titled, ‘This Is Why America Can’t Have Robots And Other Nice Things.’ 

On the show, Kylie breaks down actuators – the small motorized parts that...

Rupert Murdoch's empire made three major moves into California this year: launching the California Post tabloid, backing former Fox News host Steve Hilton's run for governor, and agreeing to buy San Jose-based streaming platform Roku for $22 billion. Coincidence? Or a coordinated push to reshape the most populous state in America? 

Host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter to unpack what's really going on. He’s the author of two books related to Murdoch’s Fox News, including ‘Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for America...

Voting day is around the corner, and a hell of a lot of money is changing hands. The words "unprecedented" and "billionaire bonanza" come to mind.

On this episode of PST, we follow the money across the races defining California's political future: the wide-open governor's race, the battle to succeed Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, and the ballot measure that's unleashed a flood of fury from the ultra-wealthy — a proposed one-time 5% tax on California's roughly 200 billionaires.

Host Emily Dreyfuss sits down with The Standard's Emily Shugerman and Hannah Wiley to unpack the mega-donors, su...

Student journalist Theo Baker made a name for himself in 2023 when, at the age of 18, his reporting at Stanford led to the resignation of the university’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Yes, Baker got the president of his university fired… as a freshman.

Now, Baker is out with his debut book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, which pulls back the curtain on a secretive, hyper-privileged echelon of students who are aggressively courted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists from the moment they arrive on campus. In the age of the AI gold rush...

Tech layoffs are back — and this time, AI is reshaping the rules. Meta is expected to lay off another 8,000 employees next week, roughly 10% of its remaining staff, after first announcing the cuts last month. Those impacted will join the more than 100,000 tech workers who've received layoff notices since January from companies like Oracle, Coinbase, and Snap. Some tech leaders blame the rise and cost of AI; others are simply continuing a pattern of reducing headcount wherever possible.

We hear from The Standard's tech editor, Heather Kelly, on what makes this moment different and how it's throwing once-secure wo...

San Francisco is a trashy city. We're not talking about the vibes – we’re talking about the state of our sidewalks.

Anyone who lives here knows the feeling of walking down the street with something to throw away… and absolutely nowhere to put it.

Because SF has shockingly few public trash cans. How has one of the wealthiest cities in the world ended up so short on such a basic need? And what would it take to fix SF’s dirtiest problem? Turns out, there’s a lot more to the sto...

We all know San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the world – but did you know that the average renter here spends about 34% of their salary on housing alone? So, after that rent check clears, what’s left?

To help us answer these questions, we talk to San Francisco’s Chief Economist, Ted Egan, to make sense of SF’s unique rental market, as well as André Lucas, a recent SF transplant who has gone viral with a series of videos about how to live well in SF without breaking the bank.

The WNBA's hottest team - the Golden State Valkyries - is on the cusp of a brand new season. After a blockbuster debut last year that saw sold-out crowds of 18,000 fans, the Valks are sure to bring the heat both on and off the court again this summer - and with that, new supporters, like our very own Emily Dreyfuss! To get us up to speed with this Bay Area franchise, we chat with the Standard's sports editor Kerry Crowley. We then meet Danielle Thoe, owner of SF's only women's sports bar. And we end with a game hosted...

Ronan Farrow spent 18 months investigating Sam Altman for The New Yorker. This week, he joined us to talk about what he found.

Farrow and co-author Andrew Marantz spoke to over 100 people in Altman's orbit for their 16,000-word piece, "Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?" The story landed just days before a Molotov cocktail was thrown at Altman's San Francisco home, amid a national wave of anxiety about AI and the people building it.

In this conversation, Farrow talks about the pattern of deception described by Altman's own colleagues and investors, OpenAI's tr...

Freelance journalist Jasmine Sun calls the SF-DC-AI axis "the most important story in the world" — so we brought her to Manny's in the Mission to break it down live. We get into the AI partisan divide, how Washington is thinking about jobs, and then spend 20 hilarious minutes grilling her on her 2026 cultural predictions. Spoiler: Graza olive oil is still out; cultured butter is in.

For more information and episode transcripts, visit ⁠sfstandard.com/pacific-standard-time⁠. Support this podcast from The San Francisco Standard by becoming a subscriber: www.sfstandard.com/subscriber

BART is considering cutting 70% of its service. Muni could eliminate 20 lines. Stations might close permanently. And after 9 p.m.? You're on your own.

San Francisco's public transit system is facing the worst financial crisis in its history — a slow-motion collapse years in the making, accelerated by the pandemic and the rise of remote work. This week, we explain how we got here, what's on the ballot this November to address it, and what Bay Area transportation may look like if voters don't show up.

Guests: Garrett Leahy, SF Standard transportation reporter; Laura Tolkoff, transportation policy di...

San Francisco's crime rate is lower than it's been in decades, and politicians are lining up to take credit. We break down what's really happening. Plus: we consider whether putting your dog’s stinky poop bag in someone else's trash can is a crime — or, if not a crime, a moral failure.

More reading:

For more informa...

San Francisco has the lowest rate of children per capita of any U.S. city — and if you've ever tried to afford childcare here, you know why.

This week, host Emily Dreyfuss is joined by SF Standard head of audio Sophie Bearman, who reported on the real cost of raising kids in the city, to talk about why even families earning $400,000 a year feel squeezed.

They also make the case for why, despite it all, SF is a pretty magical place to raise a family — plus the debut of a new segment, "Psst," where they shar...

This week on the show, hosts Jesse Alejandro Cottrell and Emily Dreyfuss take a look at where the San Francisco housing market stands in 2026 — and who it's actually working for — with SF Standard real estate reporter Emily Landes. Landes explains what's driving SF's latest housing surge: AI workers cashing out before their companies even IPO, rock-bottom inventory, and a median home price that just crossed $2 million. Plus, we explain the "Dirt Alley" saga, and play a quiz game called "What Did It Sell For?!"

More reading:

⁠The Wishlist: Buying a home on an educator’s salary...

Army veteran and San Francisco nightlife fixture Michael “Mickey” Gerold led a seemingly charmed life of private clubs and powerful friends. But his ex-girlfriend Emilia London claims that behind closed doors, he arranged for her to have sex with men for money. The earnings, totaling more than $100,000, went completely to fund Gerold’s lifestyle, London said.

On this week’s episode of “Pacific Standard Time,” SF Standard reporter Anya Schultz discusses her blockbuster investigation into alleged sex crimes, explains what motivated London to share her allegations publicly, and details how she stumbled across the story at San Francisco Fa...

This week on “Pacific Standard Time,” Replit CEO Amjad Masad tells us about the intense backlash he has faced for being outspokenly pro-Palestine — and Silicon Valley’s “only contrarian.” And Casey Newton of Platformer and the “Hard Fork” podcast drops by to gab about getting engaged and his reaction to Wired’s “gay tech mafia” story.

More reading:

For more information and episode transcripts, visit ⁠⁠sfstandard.com/pacific-standard...

This week on “Pacific Standard Time," reporter Rya Jetha explains why the tech world is in a frenzy over AI’s capabilities — and why many rank-and-file engineers are facing an unsettling existential crisis. Plus, reporter Astrid Kane takes us inside the Castro Theatre’s high-stakes makeover. Was the controversy worth the result? (Spoiler: It’s glorious.)

More reading:

AI writes the code now. What’s left for software engineers?

The Castro Theatre is officially back: Here’s who graced the grand reopening

For more information and episode transcripts, visit ⁠⁠sfstandard.com/pacific-standa...

There’s a new way to catch “Pacific Standard Time” — we’ve added video to our podcast.  We’ll continue to drop new episodes each week, with hosts Emily Dreyfuss and Jesse Alejandro Cottrell covering the latest news affecting San Francisco and the Bay Area.

This week on “Pacific Standard Time”:

News and business editor Kevin Truong on the teachers strike that has shut down San Francisco public schools. Plus, Emily’s kids drop by the office to explain what they’re doing — and what they’re worrying about — now that schools are closed.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan...

For a lot of people, 2025 was a rough year — and 2026 isn’t proving much better. So amid difficulty and despair, “Pacific Standard Time” hosts Emily Dreyfuss and Jesse Alejandro Cottrell wanted to discover the ways people are embracing joy.

At the first live taping of “Pacific Standard Time,” Dreyfuss and Cottrell talked about the big and small ways San Franciscans are finding joy this year. They interviewed The Standard’s Zara Stone about the way techy self-optimizers are tracking and tweaking their way toward joy and Bonobo Network founder William Winters about what the city’s robust orgy community c...

It’s not just you. San Francisco chefs are “mortified” by how much it costs to eat at their restaurants.

That’s according to Sara Deseran, an editor-at-large at The Standard who covers food and dining. She talked to chefs and restaurant owners who are trying to price their menus without scaring away customers.

This week on “Pacific Standard Time,” Deseran sits down with host Emily Dreyfuss to discuss how chefs feel about their menu prices, what factors are influencing costs, and what diners can do to feel a little better when settling the tab.

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