East Bay Yesterday – Liam O’Donoghue

#036 – Today we speak with Liam O’Donoghue, the host and producer of the East Bay Yesterday Podcast. Liam explores the stories of culture, politics and nature from Oakland, Berkeley and other towns throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties. It was named the “The Best Podcast about the East Bay” in 2017 by the East Bay Express. Liam says he started the podcast to share the great untold stories he heard from residents.

“every time I talked to people who lived around Oakland or lived around the East Bay for a long time, I realized they had really good stories – stories that I hadn’t known about before. They told me, and I felt like stories that most people probably weren’t aware of and I felt like someone needed to collect those stories and share them and celebrate them”.

Liam is a trained journalist and his work has appeared in outlets such as KQED, Oaklandside, Berkeleyside, Mother Jones, Salon, East Bay Express, 99% Invisible, The Kitchen Sisters, and the syndicated NPR program Snap Judgement. He intentionally decided to go with audio vs print medium to share these stories because the show is really about the guests and he wanted their voices to be the main thing driving the narrative.

The podcast got picked up by KPFA and Liam now writes a monthly column for SF Gate. Liam has given many presentations on local history at libraries, schools and bookstores and throughout the Bay Area, but he is most proud of the inclusion of his content by schools.

“one of the things I’m most proud of is that it’s actually being used in a lot of curriculums now by local teachers everywhere from the middle school level, up through the grad school level. People who are looking for ways to get their students excited about local history are using the podcast and the radio show to get the kids excited about that. So that’s been really rewarding to see that happen”.

Be sure to listen until the end to hear how the podcast has led to sold out boat tours on the bay.