The California Report Magazine: Recent Episodes
KQED
Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.
Oakland’s Wahpepah's Kitchen Reclaims Native Dishes Crystal Wahpepah wanted to be a chef since she was 7 years old. Like her grandfather and mother, Wahpepah is a registered member of the Kickapoo tribe of Oklahoma. She remembers learning to make fry bread with her aunty and grandmother — and picking berries with her grandfather on the Hoopa Reservation where she spent time as a child. But while growing up on Ohlone land in Oakland, Wahpepah was struck by the Bay Area’s lack of Native restaurants, despite the region’s large Indigenous population and palette for diverse cuisine. So she decided to change that. It wasn’t just a matter of culinary representation, it was a matter of reclaiming Native food sovereignty. KQED’s Bianca Taylor brings us her story as part of our ongoing series Flavor Profile, which features folks who started successful food businesses during the pandemic. Round Valley Residents Hope Pedestrian Path Saves Lives Round Valley is located in one of the farthest reaches of Eastern Mendocino County. At its center sits the small town of Covelo, a remote community way up in the hills, with Highway 162 running through the middle of town. There’s no public transportation here, so locals, many of them members of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, have to walk on the highway, which has almost no shoulder. Residents have been hit and killed over the years, so the community has been pushing authorities for more than a decade to build a pedestrian path. Reporter Eileen Russell lives near Covalo and tells us what’s held the project up for so long. Coast Miwok Group Buys Marin Property, a Piece of Their Ancestral Land When Joe Sanchez was 8 years old, his grandmother asked him to make a promise to never forget his California Indian heritage. He’s spent his life living up to that charge, studying the history of his people and volunteering in the community. In July, he and the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin purchased a 26-acre piece of land in the rural Marin County community of Nicasio, once Coast Miwok territory. It’s believed to be the first modern “Land Back” effort in Marin County, part of a growing movement across California to get land back to the original indigenous people who lived on it. KQED's Vanessa Rancaño reports.
When the Castle Fire started burning in August of 2020, it ripped through Sequoia National Park, burning for months and with an intensity that has become increasingly normal during wildfire season. Just one year later, the KNP Complex fire devastated this same region. Together, these two massive fires burned grove after grove of giant sequoias, thousands of the largest trees on earth. Trees found only in California. Sequoias are adapted to fire, but decades of fire suppression and hotter, drier conditions from human-caused climate change have led to infernos that even these magnificent trees can’t weather. Since 2020, up to one fifth of the state’s sequoias have died from severe fire. Sometimes, the cones that hold their seeds have been incinerated too. Some scientists are worried there will be no sequoias in Sequoia National Park in the future. Now, national park scientists are proposing a plan to harvest surviving sequoia seeds, nurture them into seedlings in a protected environment, and then replant them in the wilderness. But critics say that proposal goes against the very definition of wilderness. At the heart of this debate are some big questions: What is natural? And how much should humans intervene? KALW reporter Marissa Ortega-Welch explores both sides of the issue while hiking out to see the damage done to a sequoia grove in the middle of a wilderness area in the national parks. This story was brought to us by KALW Public Radio, and made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Latinos helped build the city of San Jose, though its a history largely forgotten or ignored. This week, we’re highlighting the impact Mexican-Americans have had on the Bay Area's biggest city, through the lens of one Chicana trailblazer. And we'll hear how this activism is helping guide those hoping to keep a fixture of the city's immigrant communities alive, as vendors at the Berryessa Flea Market fight for its future.
This week we’re featuring a story from our friends at Code Switch. It’s the little known history of Japanese Americans who were living in Japan during World War II. Recently, reporter Kori Suzuki found out that his own grandmother, who he’d always thought was born in Japan, is a Kibei Nisei, a second generation American who returned after living through the war in Japan. In this story, he explores his grandmother’s memories and discovers new aspects of himself along the way.
This week we’re featuring the Los Angeles Times’ podcast, “Foretold.” It’s the story of a young mother, Paulina Stevens, who was raised in a Romani American family on the Central Coast. Paulina shared her story with reporter Faith Pinho as she sought to leave the sometimes stifling culture she’d grown up in and the life of fortune telling prescribed for her in her teens.
One of the biggest stories in hip-hop right now is set to play out in a courtroom later this year, when Atlanta rapper Young Thug goes on trial for gang-related activities. One of the key pieces of evidence cited in the indictment are his lyrics. The phenomenon of rap songs being played in court dates back to the early ’90s, with an early example happening in the Bay Area during the trial of one of the region’s most famous rappers, Vallejo’s own Mac Dre. There’s a lot of lore around Mac Dre’s trial, so as part of That’s My Word, KQED’s yearlong project on Bay Area hip-hop history, reporter Jessica Kariisa set out to discover what really happened. Plus, there’s all kinds of slang that comes out of hip hop, but that doesn’t mean we’re always using it the right way. Pendarvis Harshaw, host of the KQED podcast Rightnowish, has some opinions about how to use “slap.”
In 2018, the Woolsey Fire burned nearly 97,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It was one of the most destructive fires in Southern California history. Among the stories that emerged from the fire was one that seemed made for Hollywood: a group of Malibu surfers who stayed behind and helped save their town from the flames. In the new podcast Sandcastles, host and producer Adriana Cargill explores their story and tells us what we can learn from them about living safely in wildfire country. Plus, there were many things Julie Menter loved about her Oakland home when she first moved there in 2017. Chief among them were the three towering redwood trees in her backyard. Last year, one of the trees started to look sick. It had lost almost all of its leaves and, despite Menter watering it, it wasn’t bouncing back. She’s noticed, not just in her backyard but all around Oakland, redwood trees are looking dry and scraggly. So our friends at the Bay Curious went to find out what was going on with these iconic coast redwoods.
This week we’re bringing you one of our favorite stories from 2022. You’ve probably heard of Bobby Seale and The Black Panthers. Or Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement. But what about Kartar Singh Sarabha and the Ghadar Movement? Or Kala Bagai and the fight against redlining? This week we dive deep into the hidden history of early South Asian activism in our state. How Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other South Asian immigrants and their children laid the groundwork for social movements that still resonate today in California. Host Sasha Khokha teams up with KQED politics correspondent Marisa Lagos, and they meet a couple who created the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour.
Communities in LA County, like the city of Glendale, are home to the world’s largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. Starting more than a century ago, Armenians fled their homeland during the Armenian Genocide and many of them ended up in California. But now, some LA Armenians are moving in the other direction, back to Armenia. Reporter Levi Bridges traveled to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to meet some of the Angelenos who’ve made the move. And this week we kick off our new series “Flavor Profile,” about folks who opened successful food businesses during the pandemic. Some of them had little or no experience, like Rhea Patel Michel and Marcel Michel in Los Angeles. They took flavors from their Indian and Mexican heritages to start Saucy Chick Rotisserie. Sasha Khokha brings us their story from Los Angeles. Plus, our Hidden Gems series continues with a visit to Petaluma. The Sonoma County city has a lot of beautiful historic architecture, in part because many of its buildings were spared the devastation of the 1906 earthquake. One building dates back to 1904, and though its name has changed, it’s been a theater for over 100 years. The group that is keeping it alive is not a historic society, but rather teenagers. Reporter Jessica Kariisa brings us the story of the Phoenix Theater.
This week we're featuring an excerpt from the Kitchen Sisters' special, House/Full of Black Women. For eight years now 34 Black women have gathered monthly around a big dining room table in Oakland, California. They meet, cook, dance, and strategize — grappling with the issues of eviction, erasure, gentrification, inadequate health care, and the sex trafficking of Black women and girls that overwhelm their community. Spearheaded by dancer/choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith and theater director Ellen Sebastian Chang, these women have come together to creatively address and bring their mission and visions to the streets. Over the years they have created performances, rituals, pop-up processions in the storefronts, galleries, warehouses, museums and streets of Oakland. You can hear the full version of House/Full of Black Women and more stories on the Kitchen Sisters Present podcast.
At This Library, You Check Out a Human, Not a Book — and Sit Down to Talk California prides itself on being a diverse state that welcomes folks from all kinds of backgrounds. But actually connecting people who have radically different life experiences — that can be a challenge. The Santa Monica Public Library is hosting events to encourage deep one-on-one conversations between people from different backgrounds. Reporter Clare Wiley tells us about “The Human Library.” ‘It’s All I’ve Wanted’: How an Innovative Bay Area Training Program Is Helping This Fire Victim Become a Firefighter In the fall of 2017, Lupe Duran was overwhelmed with feelings of loss and uncertainty. The Tubbs Fire had just killed 22 people and decimated thousands of homes in Santa Rosa, including his own. A welding student at the time, it occurred to him he should become a firefighter, like the professionals he’d seen save people’s homes. Through an ad, he found the FIRE Foundry, a nonprofit collaboration of the Marin County Fire Department, local organizations and universities. The organization offers free educational services and support aimed at propelling women and people of color into sustainable careers in the fire service. KQED’s Farida Jhabvala Romero reports. How the Oceano Dunes Became a Refuge for Artists and Writers in the 1920s Just south of Pismo Beach, along California’s Central Coast, the Oceano Dunes are a popular recreation spot for locals and tourists alike. It’s one of the few state parks where people can drive motorized vehicles on the sand. But those dunes also hold some little known history. For two decades, starting in the 1920s, the dunes were home to a colony of artists, writers and intellectuals called “Dunites.” KCBX’s Benjamin Purper reports it was a place where they could live freely and make art without much money.
California music legend Chris Strachwitz passed away last month in San Rafael at the age of 91. He was the founder of Arhoolie Records, which championed traditional roots music like zydeco, blues, Norteño and Tejano. Starting in 1960, Strachwitz recorded hundreds of albums documenting this music, traveling to far flung corners of the country to find improbable stars. In 2019, his longtime friends and collaborators the Kitchen Sisters produced a documentary called “The Passion of Chris Strachwitz,” which we bring you today.
Deborah Miranda is an award-winning poet, writer, professor, and an enrolled member of the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area, with Santa Ynez Chumash ancestry. Miranda researched wax cylinder recordings made almost a century ago of some of the last speakers of indigenous languages in California, along with other primary source materials about the history of California Indians, for her award winning book, “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir.” It features drawings, poems, newspaper clippings, photos, and prose. Miranda talks with host Sasha Khokha about the book, which has just been released with new material for an updated 10th anniversary edition.
This Thanksgiving weekend, we’re reprising one of our favorite episodes about family and belonging. It’s about what happens when you don’t learn your “heritage language," the language your parents or grandparents speak. Like many of us who are multiracial, or children of immigrants, KQED reporter Izzy Bloom gets asked all the time why she doesn’t speak her heritage language, Japanese. She usually says she's not as good as she'd like to be because her mother didn't teach her older brother, and because he wasn't taught Japanese, neither was she. It sounds simple enough, but the story is actually much more complicated. We hear about Izzy’s journey to get to the real answer, and find out what she discovers about her family along the way.
Immigrants held in ICE detention centers often hold jobs in those facilities: scrubbing toilets, cleaning showers, sweeping dorms, folding laundry, even working as barbers. Those positions often only pay a dollar a day. For the last several months, some of those immigrant detainees in two facilities in and around Bakersfield have gone on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. Host Sasha Khokha talks with KQED’s labor correspondent Farida Jhabvala Romero, who has been talking with immigrants from inside detention. who say they’ve been retaliated against for going on strike. And new law declares California a safe state for families who want to come here to get hormones or puberty blockers for transgender kids. The law protects parents who have nonbinary or trans kids and want gender-affirming care for them. This year, 21 states have tried to restrict or ban medical care for trans kids. KQED’s health correspondent Lesley McClurg brings us the story of one family from Texas who just upended their life and moved to California to protect their child.
On this week's show, we're sharing an episode of the KALW podcast Uncuffed, which is made by inmate journalists at Solano State Prison and San Quentin State Prison. A prison might not be the first place you'd think of to celebrate a wedding. But it's where Uncuffed producer Edmond Richardson is marrying the love of his life, Avelina. He talks about his joys and his fears as the day approaches and we learn what it takes to have a ceremony at San Quentin.
We head to Nevada County, where students are mobilizing around an election for school board next week. Some of them are even too young to vote, but they’re working to defeat conservative school board trustees who they say have failed to stop racist and homophobic bullying on school campuses. As KQED’s Julia McEvoy tells us, these students in Grass Valley are trying to help elect candidates they hope will take racist and anti-gay behavior more seriously. Plus, communities across California marked Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, with altars and processions honoring loved ones we’ve lost. In some of those ceremonies you may have seen an Aztec dance (Danza Azteca) troupe performing as an offering to the spirits, and as a celebration of their lives. Reporter Sebastian Miño-Bucheli has spent some time with Aztec dancers in San Francisco, and tells us how they show up for their community not just for Day of the Dead, but all year round. And in honor of Day of the Dead – and Halloween week – we bring you a story about spirits…and some mischievous kids. Storyteller JP Frary, six-time winner of the Moth StorySlam, shares this tale from his childhood in Mendocino County.
Reporter Jessica Kariisa is Ugandan American, and she’s spent years listening to and writing about African pop music. When she moved to the Bay Area, she wasn’t sure what she’d find in terms of an African music scene. Gentrification and the rising cost of living have pushed many Black communities out of cities in the Bay Area and beyond. But, after doing some digging, Jessica discovered an African music scene that's thriving. And we pay tribute to the first DJ to play rock and roll on the West Coast. Art Laboe cultivated a devoted fan base over his nearly 80 years on the air. He trademarked the term “oldies but goodies,” and claimed to have invented the on-air dedication, where lovers send songs to each other over the airwaves. Laboe died earlier this month at age 97. We reprise host Sasha Khokha’s interview with him from 2019.
This week, we bring you the first episode of the new season of a podcast from LAist Studios called Imperfect Paradise: The Sheriff. KPCC correspondent Frank Stoltze explores how a former Sheriff’s lieutenant with almost no leadership experience rose to become the head of the largest law enforcement agency west of the Mississippi, and how he turned out to be a leader with authoritarian tendencies. Alex Villanueva, a longshot maverick candidate, ran for LA County Sheriff as a progressive reformer and won, surprising everyone. After taking office in 2018, he mocked reform, resisted oversight, and launched criminal investigations of his enemies. Now, the people who propelled him to power are looking to boot him from office in this year's election.
In East San José, a scrappy strip mall anchored by a bánh mì shop doesn’t look like much. But it's a bustling transportation hub. Every morning by 8 a.m., there’s a steady stream of riders lining up for the daily run of the Xe Đò Hoàng, or “Royal Coach” in Vietnamese. Those in the know call it the “Bánh Mì Bus,” which takes passengers all the way to Orange County and back. Christine Nguyen takes us along for the ride. And we head to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and travel back in time to the early 1900s. That’s where an amusement park sprung up, drawing loyal visitors for decades. As part of a collaboration with our friends at KQED’s Bay Curious podcast, reporter Christopher Beale takes us on a journey to learn about Playland-at-the-Beach.
What is it like to be a dad and your first-born son goes off to college? That just happened for Adolfo Guzman-Lopez. He’s covered higher education for years at KPCC in Los Angeles, but when his own son moved into his freshman dorm this month, Adolfo was not prepared for the reaction he’d have. And we meet a mom from East Palo Alto who's spent years trying to help her kids cope with anxiety and trauma. They’re among a rising number of children across California struggling with their emotional and mental health. KQED's Blanca Torres found that just as before the pandemic, most kids who need help don’t get it. But she also discovered what happens when families like Jasmine’s can access care. And we end with writer Caroline Hatano's ode to the Japanese American community that once farmed all over Southern California. Her grandfather farmed flowers on the Palos Verdes peninsula for 70 years. This summer, the city of Palos Verdes terminated the lease, closing the last Japanese American farm in the area. Her story comes to us as part of a collaboration with Civil Eats, a daily news source for critical thought about the American food system.
As the Monterey Jazz Festival kicks off again this weekend, we go back in time to a chilly evening in 1962. Sixty years ago, a groundbreaking musical premiered at the festival called “The Real Ambassadors.” It featured a glittering array of jazz titans, including Louis Armstrong. This was during the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, and the musical cast artists of different races, challenging racism and social injustice through jazz. “The Real Ambassadors” was written by two Californians influential in moving jazz into the mainstream: Dave and Iola Brubeck. He grew up on a cattle ranch in Ione in Amador County, she in Redding. They met in Stockton at College of the Pacific in 1945, and went on to become a couple and lifelong collaborators. We bring you this story from The Kitchen Sisters and producer Brandi Howell.
The pioneering Asian American actress Anna May Wong will be one of five American women the U.S. Mint is recognizing this year with an image on the American quarter. Wong was born in Los Angeles in 1905, and she grew up helping out at her father's laundromat. As a kid, she skipped school to visit movie sets and mimicked the actors at home. She would eventually become Hollywood’s first Chinese American movie star. Host Sasha Khokha talks with Nancy Wang Yeun, a sociologist and expert on race in Hollywood about Wong's legacy and some of the difficult roles she had to play. Then we ask what is it like to talk about your gender identity in different languages? What happens when the pronouns for “he” and “she” in a particular language are similar, or even identical? We meet Emmett Chen-Ran, who decided during his senior year of high school to tell his parents he is transgender. While he grappled with whether they would accept and understand him, there was another challenge: deciding what language he should use to tell them – English or Chinese?
About 30 minutes off Interstate 5, in the Central Valley, there’s a town that’s a vital part of California's history, and Black history in the U.S. It’s called Allensworth, and it was founded as a kind of Black utopia back in 1908. It was self-governed by Black residents, and had its own school, church, bank, debate society and glee club. And for a while, it was thriving. These days, though, Allensworth is a dusty, tiny, farmworker town that’s struggling to survive. There are few jobs or businesses. The drinking water isn’t safe. And hardly anyone visits – or even knows about – the state park there that was built to commemorate Black history. But preserving Allensworth’s history and legacy has come up in meetings of California’s Reparations Task Force. That’s the nine-member body investigating the lingering effects of slavery. They’re coming up with proposals for how to address historical inequities for Black Californians. Reporters Lakshmi Sarah and Teresa Cotsirilos introduce us to some of today’s Allensworth residents, fighting to preserve the town’s history, and its future. We’ll also hear how water plays a vital role in the town’s survival.
We’re reprising an investigation from The California Report’s Central Valley reporter, Alex Hall, that recently earned a National Murrow award for News Documentary. In 2020, California’s Foster Farms became the site of one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a meat or poultry plant. Hall spent a year and a half talking to spouses and family members of workers who spent decades at the company’s chicken-processing plants. She found that hundreds of Foster Farms workers tested positive for the virus in 2020. Sixteen people died and at least 20 others were hospitalized. Hall’s investigation shows that as plants stayed open to maintain the food supply, and workers got sick from COVID-19, Foster Farms didn’t always give a complete picture of the problem to health officials, state regulators and their own employees. We meet families who lost loved ones who worked at Foster Farms – families who are grieving, struggling financially, and trying to make sense of what happened. We’ll also include an update on the fact that Foster Farms was recently sold to a private equity firm.
What does it means to be a journalist when the story you’re reporting on also affects you? That’s a question Ericka Cruz Guevarra, host of the KQED podcast The Bay, explored on a recent episode. She shares her story about a camping trip she went on with her best friend during the pandemic. But it’s also a story about the mental health impact of reporting the news when you’re a journalist of color. Plus, we have an update on two stories we’ve brought you about two women of color who’ve had to struggle hard to get recognition in Hollywood. Native American actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather recently received an official apology from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for the abuse endured at the 1973 Oscars, and the impact it had on her career. Actress Juanita Moore appeared in more than 80 films and TV shows, but wasn’t always credited for her work. In 1959, she became the fifth Black actor in movie-making history to be nominated for an Oscar. The pioneering actress will finally be honored with her very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Our lives are full of routines. From the time we get up, to what we eat for breakfast, to the modes of transportation we take from place to place. But do we really know the stories behind the buildings we pass by and the people who live or work in them? One reporter gives us an inside look into four different businesses on one Berkeley block. Then we go to East Oakland to meet 10-year-old Hemer as she starts sixth grade at a new school. The pandemic contributed to increases in depression and anxiety for many young people, and some students are still struggling. In this story, we learn how California is investing new dollars in an effort to address their mental health needs.
This week, we’re heading to the high desert town of Susanville, to sample some of the most gourmet food you can find in Lassen County… in a community college cafeteria. We meet the Palauan chef who’s finding a way to bring a taste of home to a community that in some ways, isn’t so different from his Pacific island homeland. Then we’ll visit the foggy coastal city of Pacifica, to learn about a little-known WW2 incarceration camp for Japanese-Americans. And how one man’s diaries leave us vivid clues about what life was like there.
Today, it’s an unassuming beige building on a busy Berkeley street. But in the 1970s, the Rainbow Sign was a groundbreaking center for Black culture, politics, and art. It hosted dozens of high-profile Black thought leaders and performers, including James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, and Shirley Chisholm. The Rainbow Sign was open to all – as a performance venue, political organizing space, and cafe. It lasted just a few short years, from 1971-1977. But it left profound mark on the young people who attended concerts and performances there, including Vice President Kamala Harris. This episode first aired on January 7, 2022.
In 2021, we brought you a story from reporter Kori Suzuki about Dahbia Benakli. She was a preschool teacher who lived in Walnut Creek, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area. She and her two kids were facing eviction from their apartment. That story ended in an uncertain place, with Dahbia waiting to find out whether or not she’d get to keep her apartment. In December, her landlord took them to court for refusing to leave their home. Across California, the number of evictions is rising. As public health restrictions around COVID have lifted, emergency housing protections like a statewide ban on evictions are also disappearing. And without them, more and more people are getting kicked out of their homes. In an update to the story, Kori Suzuki tells us about what happened to Dahbia and her family. This story is about what this moment is like for a lot of renters right now - and the options you might have if you find an eviction notice on your doorstep.
How to Save the World: Audio Diaries from a High School Climate Activist Survey after survey shows people who are Gen-Z – born between 1996 and 2012 – consider climate change to be the biggest challenge we’re facing. KCRW’s Caleigh Wells followed one teen climate leader in Los Angeles, Paola Hoffman, for months. She collected audio diaries and captured her speeches at climate strikes, her testimony before the state legislature, and her high school graduation…all while Paola carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. An Investigative Reporter Digs into His Own High School Journalism Teacher’s Troubling Behavior We've brought you several stories about high school students across California who've been speaking out against sexual harassment and abuse from their peers as part of the #MeToo movement. But there's also a disturbing pattern of cases emerging in which teachers are being accused of harassing and grooming high school students, especially girls. Host Sasha Khokha talks about this trend with Matt Drange, a Senior Correspondent at Business Insider. For a recent story, he went back to his own high school in Rosemead in the San Gabriel Valley. His article is titled “He Was My High School Journalism Teacher. Then I Investigated His Relationship With Teenage Girls.” Hidden Gems: The Pirate Ship on Big Bear Lake Set in the San Bernardino Mountains, Big Bear Lake is a popular tourist destination for Southern California families looking for snow in the winter, and lakeside recreation in the summer –swimming, fishing, and of course boating. For our Hidden Gems series, reporter Amanda Font set sail on a historic vessel that celebrates pirates and pop culture.
This week, we're teaming up with our friends at LAist Studios to share an episode from the new season of their podcast “Imperfect Paradise: The Forgotten Revolutionary.” It's the story of Oscar Gomez, a radio DJ and Chicano student leader during a time of explosive anti-immigrant political rhetoric in the early 90s. Some people thought Gomez was going to be the next Cesar Chavez. But then, he died near the UC Santa Barbara campus, under mysterious circumstances. KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez first started digging into Gomez's story with a story we aired back in 2019, when UC Davis awarded Gomez a posthumous degree. The new podcast investigates Gomez's death, his legacy, and how reflecting on Gomez forced Guzman-Lopez to examine his life, activism, and journalism.
The Ojai Valley’s climate has been ideal for growing certain tree crops. But climate change is making it windier, drier, and hotter there. As Lisa Morehouse tells us, none of that is good for farming. And neither is Ojai’s rising cost of real estate. And this summer, incarcerated youth will help fight California's wildfires. These young men are hacking containment lines with hand tools. It's part of a program within the juvenile justice system meant to provide job training. But as KQED's health correspondent Lesley McClurg explains, it's been all but impossible to find firefighting jobs once they're released. Plus, you can find boba shops all over California. Some stick to the original tea with tapioca balls. Others expand their menus with smoothies, slushes, and coffee. So to start a boba business that stands out takes some creativity. For our series Hidden Gems, Amy Mayer found a surprising specialty at San Bruno's Kiss My Boba.
California is full of incredible, unique places. Even for those of us who have lived here all our lives, there are unusual, off-the-beaten-path spots we’ve never even heard of. The California Report Magazine has been exploring some of those places as part of our Hidden Gems series. In 2017, Sasha Khokha hosted this Hidden Gems show from a zipline in Sonoma County, with help from producer Suzie Racho. They soared above the redwoods – with their microphones, headphones and tape recorders. And we're happy to report that all of the places we visited back then, from Nancy's Airport Cafe in Willows to L.A.'s Donut Man, are still around and open to the public.
Today, California is seen as a haven for people across a broad spectrum of human sexuality and gender identity. But fifty years ago, even here, being gay meant living in the shadows. It was essentially a crime. It was also considered a mental illness, so judges were committing people to psychiatric hospitals as well as to prisons. Lee Romney brings us the story of Gene Ampon, who was a teenager when he was sent to a California state mental hospital in Atascadero for two years. Lee's reporting is in collaboration with Jenny Johnson, a former public defender who helped start and run the San Francisco Behavioral Health Court.
For Immigrants Fleeing Gender-Based Violence, a Long Road to Asylum in US California has long tried to be a welcoming place for immigrants. But sometimes our state’s efforts have conflicted with federal policy. Under the Trump administration, the rules changed about just who qualifies for asylum. That has made things rocky for people fleeing persecution based on their gender. KQED’s Immigration Editor Tyche Hendricks has been following a woman who escaped years of abuse in Guatemala, and finally made her way to California. Move Over Monterey? Pacifica Lays Claim to Iconic Jack Cheese We’ve brought you a lot of stories of how iconic California foods and drinks got their start…from the Martini to Rocky Road ice cream. This week, we’re diving into the origin story of Monterey Jack Cheese. You might guess with a name like Monterey Jack that it comes from the beachside town of Monterey. But there are rumors that Monterey Jack was actually created in Pacifica, a foggy town just south of San Francisco. In a story from our friends at Bay Curious, reporter Christopher Beale takes us on a journey to find the true origins of Monterey Jack.
'Like You’re on a Different Planet': Visiting the Mysterious Farallon Islands If you look west from San Francisco, when the fog is clear and the light is just right, you might be able to see a cluster of islands jutting out of the ocean like sharp, misshapen teeth. The Farallon Islands sit 27 miles west of San Francisco. They get their name from the Spanish word farallón, which means “sea cliff.” For our series Hidden Gems, The California Report’s Izzy Bloom braved the rough waters to get up close with wildlife a lot of Californians have only ever imagined. Women Share Their Experience of Getting an Abortion Before Roe Made It Legal With abortion rights in jeopardy, many women are sharing their personal stories. For those who terminated pregnancies before it was legal in 1973, the memories can be especially painful. KQED health correspondent Lesley McClurg has the story of three women. Blues Singer Marina Crouse Celebrates a Language She Had to Fight to Learn Fourth-generation Californian Marina Crouse is well known for her powerful voice singing the blues. Now she's got a new album out in Spanish, and it features songs originally sung by Eydie Gorme. Marina Crouse, who's based in the Bay Area city of El Cerrito, has reimagined and re-interpreted Eydie Gorme’s music with her new album, “Canto de mi Corazon.” Crouse talks to host Sasha Khokha about why she decided to honor Eydie Gorme in this way.
To a lot of people outside our state, California is one of two places: L.A. or San Francisco. Hollywood or high tech. The beaches or the redwoods. And frankly, to a lot of Californians who live here, there’s a vast part of our state between L.A. and S.F. that people consider “drive-through” country: the San Joaquin Valley, which stretches from the Sierra Nevada to the Coastal range, from Stockton to Bakersfield. It’s a place that – culturally, politically, and geographically – could almost be its own state. It’s “The Other California.” That’s the name of a new podcast from our friends at KVPR that explores the richness of this region. Each episode takes listeners on a journey to visit a different small town. We’ll hear excerpts from the podcast, and chat with host Alice Daniel and reporter Kathleen Schock.
This spring, the nation’s oldest park ranger, Betty Reid Soskin, hung up her hat and retired, at the age of 100. For years, she led tours of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. She played a major role in helping to establish the park and museum, which honors the women who worked in factories during wartime. You’ve probably heard of Betty Reid Soskin. But what you may not know is that she’s also an activist, author, singer/songwriter, and a poet. Soskin’s life has so many chapters. The documentary duo The Kitchen Sisters bring us this tribute to Betty – a kind of mixtape of stories that drop in on her life of 100 years, gathered and preserved by producers and archivists over the years.
What happens when you don’t learn your “heritage language” — the language your parents or grandparents speak? Like many of us who are multiracial, or children of immigrants, our intern Izzy Bloom gets asked all the time why she doesn’t speak her heritage language, Japanese. She usually says she's not as good as she'd like to be because her mother didn't teach her older brother, and because he wasn't taught Japanese, neither was she. It sounds simple enough, but the story is actually much more complicated. We hear about Izzy’s journey to get to the real answer, and find out what she discovers about her family along the way.
Lately we've been trying to bring you more stories about people who are pursuing their passions and finding joy right now. A few months ago, KQED culture reporter Chloe Veltman went out with friends to a restaurant in the Sonoma County town of Guerneville. There was a cover band playing called Suzi’s Last Resort. The group's leader started her showbiz career when she was pushing forty and how, at nearly eighty, she’s still at it. Plus...Turning 21 is a big deal! But for 200,000 young people, turning 21 catapults them into a bizarre legal limbo. That’s what happened to Eti Sinha, and her twin sister, Eva. The Sinha sisters grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. But as they got older, they discovered their right to stay there was conditional, temporary. That’s because they’ve aged out of their parents’ family immigration application. What do you do when circumstances beyond your control threaten to force you out of the only place you’ve ever called home? KQED’s Rachael Myrow of our Silicon Valley Desk tells us how Eti and Eva not only have managed to stay in the US, but help others do the same.
You’ve probably heard of Bobby Seale and The Black Panthers. Or Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement. But what about Kartar Singh Sarabha and the Ghadar Movement? Or Kala Bagai and the fight against redlining? This week we dive deep into the hidden history of early South Asian activism in our state. How Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other South Asian immigrants and their children laid the groundwork for social movements that still resonate today in California. Host Sasha Khokha teams up with KQED politics correspondent Marisa Lagos, and they meet a couple who created the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour.
One thing that’s helped some of us get through the last pandemic has been finding joy in food. This week, stories about dishes that bring us comfort and make us happy. From a kitchen in the back of a Hmong grocery store in Yuba County, to an Indian sizzler: a dish invented in California that’s a mishmash of ingredients from different countries. Plus, it's our annual Youth Takeover week, when we hand over the mic to high school students. We hear from Clara Chiu, a junior at Woodside High School, who explores what it's like to navigate imposter syndrome.
This week we have two stories about Californians determined to look for threads of hope and connection right now. We’ll hear about a new project to transfer farmland in San Mateo County to the indigenous people whose ancestors lived and thrived there. And we’ll meet a family from Placer County that's on a mission to rescue a young relative in Ukraine.
This week, we have stories of home and history. We start with novelist Susan Straight. She's a professor of creative writing at UC Riverside, and also grew up in the city. Her new book, Mecca, is a story of intertwined characters who all have deep roots in the mountains, deserts and canyons near Riverside and Coachella, and who are all in their own ways, looking for a version of the California Dream. And KQED's Adhiti Bandlamudi takes us to San Jose to explain why the city has had five Chinatowns throughout its history, but doesn’t have one today.
Many people have been hitting the road for Spring Break, so we wanted to reprise our Hidden Gems show from September 2021. Every year we go on a road trip highlighting some of our favorite secret spots. Come with us as we visit the prehistoric Fern Canyon, a funky beauty salon/museum in the desert, a San Jose shop making pillowy mochi, the majestic Burney Falls and a food truck featuring homestyle chicken and rice in the Central Valley.
In 2020, California’s Foster Farms became the site of one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a meat or poultry plant. The California Report’s Central Valley reporter, Alex Hall, spent a year and a half talking to spouses and family members of workers who spent decades at the company’s chicken-processing plants. She found that hundreds of Foster Farms workers tested positive for the virus in 2020. 16 people died and at least 20 others were hospitalized. In this episode that originally aired in October 2021, Hall’s investigation shows that as plants stayed open to maintain the food supply, and workers got sick from COVID-19, or even died, Foster Farms didn’t always give a complete picture of the problem to health officials, state regulators and their own employees.
Angela Lynn McConnell grew up in the forested hills of the Hoopa Valley reservation in Humboldt County. She was proud of her heritage. Angela, 26, was a budding journalist, committed to shedding light on important tribal issues. In September 2018, she was murdered. What happened to her is unfortunately too common in Indigenous communities: Indigenous women and girls disappearing or turning up dead. Most of these cases are never solved. But families of the missing and murdered have been coming together to demand justice, and their advocacy has led to a wave of new federal initiatives. Reporter Lee Romney tells us about the roots of this crisis – and how Northern California tribes are taking the lead to come up with solutions.
This week, Sasha Khokha talks to Neda Toloui-Semnani, an Emmy Award winning writer and producer about her new book, "They Said They Wanted Revolution, A Memoir of My Parents.” It's pieced together from interviews, diaries and archives, and it dives deep into her family's history, both in the U.S. and Iran. Plus, KQED's Chloe Veltman tells us about the rise in bilingual children’s books, especially in Spanish and English. The stories don’t just highlight diverse characters, but also have a strong social justice focus. And we talk to Jessica Martin, the Healdsburg art teacher who helped create PepToc, a hotline featuring encouraging messages from elementary school kids. The project went viral thanks to social media. While Martin thought the line might get 100 calls a month, it's exploded to 11,000 calls an hour.
This week, we’ve got two stories featuring two very different musical artists. Each of them won a singing contest as a teenager that launched their career. One was a singer in 1960s Saigon, who rode the wave of edgy modern music inspired by the California surf sound. The other was a vocalist who got his start in Los Angeles' Central Avenue jazz scene in the 1940s and had a career that lasted over 70 years,
During the pandemic, so many Californians have lost their jobs, and struggled to pay rent. People have been forced to make really difficult decisions. Like choosing between buying groceries, or paying the landlord. Federal, state, and local governments did put some eviction protections in place during the pandemic. And Congress handed out nearly 50 billion dollars to help people catch up on missed rent. But people still got evicted. Most of those pandemic protections were temporary. And now, things are getting worse. But evictions don't affect everyone equally. They're more likely to hit some communities harder than others. And that’s the focus of the new season of the podcast Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America. We bring you the first episode from KQED housing reporters Erin Baldassari and Molly Solomon.
This week Sasha Khokha sits down with author Sabaa Tahir to talk about her latest young adult novel, All My Rage. The book is rooted in her own experiences growing up in her family's 18 room motel as the child of Pakistani immigrants and one of the few South Asians in her rural town. She's an award-winning author and her earlier series, Ember in the Ashes, which had a woman of color hero, hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. And even though California joined the union as free state back in 1850, that didn’t mean slavery didn’t exist here. As gold rush prospectors flooded the state, enslaved Black people sometimes came too. And even Black people who entered the state free from bondage didn't always stay free. In fact, the passage of California's Fugitive Slave Act in 1852 allowed slave catchers to take free Black people back to slave states, and the law sanctioned the re-enslavement of Blacks freed by their enslavers. In 2020. reporter Asal Ehsanipour brought us the story about the very last slavery case in California -- a story that starts in what was once rural Sacramento.
We’re sharing a new podcast from our friends LAist Studios called ‘Imperfect Paradise.' It tells stories about how California – with its reputation as a sunny haven for artists, dreamers, and progressive politics – doesn’t always live up to that promise. The show's first season launched earlier this month with 'Home is Life,' a series from KPCC reporter Jill Replogle, which looks at a question many cities in California are struggling with: how to get unhoused people into stable housing? She found that the problem isn’t always finding land, or money, to build permanent supportive housing. It’s the neighbors.
If you’ve been watching the Winter Olympics, you’ve probably caught sight of some of the amazing California athletes. In fact, 29 Team USA athletes call California home. That’s more than any other state. Back in 1960, California hosted the winter games near Lake Tahoe. What happened in Tahoe that year left its mark, and not just on future Olympics. Plus, it's cookie season! This time of year, sales of Girl Scout cookies top Oreos and Chips Ahoy. And Girl Scouts aren’t just going door to door anymore. They’ve expanded into online sales. The California Report’s former education reporter Ana Tintocalis used to be a scout, and her nine-year-old daughter Gianna recently became one herself. Ana says while she’s trying to be open-minded about the virtual cookie world, she’s got some questions about it. And, on the outskirts of Oakland’s Chinatown, you can hear the rhythmic pulsing of hot ovens and the steady screech of revolving griddles. Alicia Wong and her mother Jiamin run the Oakland Fortune Factory, where joy and positivity are the not-so-secret-ingredients that have kept their business thriving.
Writer Wajahat Ali's Decision to 'Actively Invest in Joy' “Go back to where you came from.” It’s an insult that unfortunately, many of us have heard. For writer Wajahat Ali, it’s also the title of his new book. It traces his childhood in Fremont, CA, his activism as a UC Berkeley student after 9/11, and the challenges he’s faced as a son, a father, and a writer. It chronicles him almost dying from a heart condition, his young daughter getting cancer, and other family tragedies. But the book is funny. Host Sasha Khokha talks to Ali about why he’s decided to actively invest in joy. Taquero, Farmworker, and Beloved Grandfather Lost to COVID: A Family Remembers 'Papi Tomás' If you’ve tuned in to our show over the last year, you might have heard our series of remembrances of people who’ve died from COVID. And now we’ve hit a grim milestone: more than 80,000 Californians lost to the virus. We hear from the family of a farmworker who lived in Madera, in the San Joaquin Valley. His granddaughter, Madi Bolanos, is a radio reporter with KVPR, the local NPR station in Fresno, and she brings us this tribute.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, members of Reverend Jim Mitulski's congregation, many of them healthy young men, were dying from a terrible disease. There was no cure, there still isn’t. Reporter Christopher Beale brings us the true story of how a San Francisco pastor changed the definition of “communion,” and committed felonies to comfort his flock.
Scientists say that back in the 1980s, millions of monarchs came to California each year. By 2020, that number dropped to fewer than 2,000. Numbers are way up this year, but that doesn't mean they're out of the woods. Reporter Amanda Stupi visited Lake Merritt in Oakland, looking for answers on how to help the butterfly population. Then, California may have some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, but it often struggles to enforce those laws. A new investigation from CalMatters, a nonprofit news outlet covering California policy and politics, finds that the state has failed to take guns away from thousands of domestic abusers. And those failures can have deadly consequences. CalMatters’ Robert Lewis brings us the tragic story of one young mother in the Central Valley. WARNING : This story has graphic descriptions of violence and could be upsetting.
Host Sasha Khokha talks to author Jaime Cortez about his new book of short stories, “Gordo.” The collection is set in the Central Coast farmworker camps he grew up in near Watsonville and San Juan Bautista. By the time he was 10, Cortez was a veteran of the annual garlic and potato harvests. The book, which he calls “semi-autobiographical,” is a journey of queer self-discovery and complex identities that don’t fit the usual stereotypes of Steinbeck country. Plus, this weekend is the Jewish holiday Tu BiShvat, a time to gather around food, and honor trees and the harvest. In February 2020, for her series California Foodways, reporter Lisa Morehouse joined a Tu BiShvat celebration in Tuolumne County. No one knew then that just weeks later, the COVID pandemic would stop many in-person gatherings like these, and create some tensions so many communities are still navigating.
Today, it’s an unassuming beige building on a busy Berkeley street. But in the 1970s, the Rainbow Sign was a groundbreaking center for Black culture, politics, and art. It hosted dozens of high-profile Black thought leaders and performers, including James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, and Shirley Chisholm. The Rainbow Sign was open to all – as a performance venue, political organizing space, and cafe. It lasted just a few short years, from 1971-1977. But it left profound mark on the young people who attended concerts and performances there, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
We’re saying goodbye to 2021 and cheers to 2022! To go along with your New Year’s Eve toasts, we’ve got a show about drinks and cocktails that got their start here in California. From the Pisco Sour to Irish Coffee, there are some fascinating California history lessons in these stories.
High above the lights of Los Angeles, there’s a place where you can actually see the stars and planets in the dark winter sky. It’s called the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Peter Gilstrap went to see what happens on Mt. Wilson when the stars come out. Plus, Catholic Latinos across the state commemorate Las Posadas, the journey of Joseph and Mary as they searched for refuge and a safe place for her to give birth to the baby Jesus. Madi Bolaños went to a celebration in Firebaugh. And we hear from Sonoma County songwriter Sean Hayes. He has a new album out called “Be Like Water.” And we mourn the loss of Mexican icon and King of Mariachi, Vicente Fernández, who died December 12th at age 81. Back in 2007, Fernández came to California on his biggest US tour to date. And the California Report’s Senior Editor Victoria Mauleón brought us a story about the impact he had on his fans on this side of the border.
These days, It can be a lot harder to find what you might call a “good” job. The kind of job where a person is employed by one company and gets things like health insurance, paid sick days, and at least minimum wage. Today, all kinds of businesses from Uber to janitorial companies argue they’ve come up with something better: “gig work,” in which workers are independent contractors, not employees. But some workers in California are pushing back against the “gig economy. " After Jerry Vasquez started working as a janitor, with a business that promised he’d be his own boss, he began to question just how independent he really was. This week we’re talking with Krissy Clark, host of Marketplace’s documentary podcast “The Uncertain Hour." She features Jerry's story in her special series, “This Thing We Used to Call Employment.” She says what happened to him could have a huge impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and our whole economy.
Finding a place to call home is getting increasingly harder here in California. The pandemic has been particularly hard on renters. There’s been a lot of news about the end of the statewide eviction moratorium this fall. But it’s not just evictions. Some renters are also facing another challenge – harassment from their landlords. A growing number of California cities are moving to ban landlords from using aggressive practices to try to push out tenants. Kori Suzuki tells us about one renter’s experience with her landlord – and what it cost her. And, If you’re a parent, you know the fear of dying before your child is old enough to care for themself…But what if your child will always need some extra care, even as an adult? What if there aren’t other family members to help? What if other family members can’t, or won’t, step up? Polly Stryker tells us about a group of parents in San Mateo County who are in the process of creating a self-sustaining community for their adult children called Big Wave.
This week, we’ve got a couple of storytelling treats for you: two legends and how they’ve left their mark on our state. In the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, there’s a massive blue mural painted in shades of blue, depicting figures of women among waves and cascading water. In the foreground, a woman stands to the side, a giant tear falling from her eye. “La Llorona’s Sacred Waters” was painted by Bay Area artist Juana Alicia back in 2004. But there are differing versions of her story – both in Mexico and here in California. And what do we do when we're presented with something we can't explain? Do we just chalk it up to the supernatural...or superstition? In this story that first aired in 2018, we explore the mystery of a bizarre 60-foot deep hole that once appeared on Mt. Shasta, and why a guy who works at an old school video store might have some answers.
We’re sharing some stories about the unexpected ways food plays a role in our lives, and in the history of California. These are some of our favorite stories from the award-winning series California Foodways, which has aired on The California Report Magazine since 2014. Reporter Lisa Morehouse has been reporting food stories from every one of the state's 58 counties.
The crash ‘em, smash ‘em motorsport of demolition derby had its heyday in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. These days, derbies are featured at county fairs and racetracks. But once a year, Irwindale Speedway in Los Angeles County hosts an annual all-women derby. Plus, during the pandemic many people tried to figure out new ways to connect to break through the isolation. KQED’s Silicon Valley reporter, Adhiti Bandlamudi, actually started dating someone new during lockdown... and found true love. Finally, we head to a museum in San Francisco's Chinatown that's preserving the neighborhood's glamourous history from the 1930's to 60s.
Identity is always complicated, and for multiracial folks who straddle many identities, it can be isolating. It can also be invigorating and rich to belong to multiple communities and celebrate that complexity. The latest census shows it's demographic to pay attention to: 2020 data reflect a 276% increase in people who identify as multiracial compared to 2010. Sasha Khokha is joined by special guest host Marisa Lagos as they delve into the mixed race experience, grounded in their own backgrounds. They'll talk with pioneering artist Kip Fulbeck, whose hapa project allowed mixed-race folks to answer the question "What Are You?" in their own voices and hear a conversation between two listeners who share a similar Black/Filipina background, but straddle different generations.
Last year, California’s Foster Farms became the site of one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a meat or poultry plant. The California Report’s Central Valley reporter, Alex Hall, spent a year and a half talking to spouses and family members of workers who spent decades at the company’s chicken-processing plants. She found that hundreds of Foster Farms workers tested positive for the virus in 2020. 16 people died and at least 20 others were hospitalized. Hall’s investigation shows that as plants stayed open to maintain the food supply, and workers got sick from COVID-19, or even died, Foster Farms didn’t always give a complete picture of the problem to health officials, state regulators and their own employees. We meet two families who lost loved ones who worked at Foster Farms, and are grieving, struggling financially, and trying to make sense of what happened.
California was likely named for a character in an early 16th century Spanish novel. Queen Calafia was a mythical Black warrior who ruled an island of Amazon women, and commanded an army of griffins. She is said to have worn armor made of fish bones, and used weapons made of gold. Most Californians don’t know this origin story, but a Bay Area theater company hopes to change that. Plus remembering Eureka's lost Chinatown. And Latin Grammy-nominated composer Gabriela Ortiz has a new concerto for flute and orchestra inspired by El Camino Real...and the California fast food chain Taco Bell.
We look at an epidemic that has been raging during COVID: In California alone, more than 10,000 people died of a drug overdose just this past year. Some California doctors and caregivers are using two new models of treatment for those struggling with addiction. Health Reporters Lesley McClurg and April Dembosky take you inside hospitals and clinics to meet people struggling with addiction who are getting help in new ways. For the first time, doctors and caregivers are asking: what do you need from us?
Over Labor Day weekend 2020, the historic, fast-moving Creek Fire tore through remote wilderness in the Sierra Nevada northeast of Fresno, trapping hundreds of campers at a Mammoth Pool Reservoir. A new podcast from KVPR explores what it takes, in the era of climate change, to launch a successful, large-scale rescue from a massive forest fire. "Escape from Mammoth Pool" gives us an intimate look at the people involved in the rescue effort — survivors who helped save strangers, and National Guard members who said this was scarier than war. We're devoting our whole show this week to sharing parts of the podcast and talking with reporter Kerry Klein. She spent a year interviewing survivors and rescuers, listening to 911 tape, and pouring over government documents and data to piece together what happened.
Every year we highlight some of our favorite secret spots in California — places tourists and longtime residents alike might not know about. This week, we’re taking you all over the state of California, from a coveted food truck in the Central Valley to remote corners of Humboldt County.
This week on The California Report Magazine, we talk with Oakland-based musician Fantastic Negrito about his new song, "Rolling Through California," that explores the dissonance between the California Dream and the reality of living in the Golden State today. Plus, the story of one father and the family awaiting him in the Central Valley city of Los Banos. He followed the rules and went back to Mexico for the final step to apply for his green card: an interview at the U.S. Consulate. His wife and kids expected him back in a week or two. But it's been more than two years. Plus, 20 years ago, host Sasha Khokha wrote an article about then 17-year-old Fatima Shah, a Pakistani-American who was one of many South Asian students that experienced racist backlash after 9/11. They met again on the steps of Fatima's old high school.
Reporter Lee Romney brings us a documentary about a longtime couple from rural Northern California, near the Oregon border. They’ve each faced a domestic violence charge in state court, and they have a lot to share about their journey to wellness. The key: understanding where generational violence comes from by talking openly about the trauma of things like boarding schools, the Indian Slave Act, and massacres. Colonization intentionally and forcibly severed indigenous people from their land, traditions, and language here in California. That history created patterns of generational trauma and abuse. Now some leaders from tribes like the Yurok are trying to help both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence reconnect with the cultural practices that were taken away.
California is in the grip of another round of devastating wildfires, including history-making blazes that have jumped from one side of the Sierra to the other, fueled by overgrown forests thick with dry brush. But it hasn’t always been that way. For thousands of years before contact with Europeans, the Karuk people, like many other indigenous people, tended their land with fire. The Karuk tribe is one of the largest in California, spanning parts of Humboldt and Siskiyou counties along the Klamath River. When the federal government took over managing the forest in the mid-1800s, it stripped the Karuk people of their relationship with fire. Suppressing cultural burning and indigenous fire management techniques has had profound effects, contributing to the mammoth fires burning year after year across the state. In this half-hour documentary, KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton walks through the forest with tribal leaders and witnesses a controlled burn firsthand. She looks at the relationship between the Karuk and cultural burning, and the tribe’s negotiations with the state of California to get that control back
A year ago this August, some 12,000 lightning strikes exploded across Northern California, igniting more than 585 wildfires. In the Santa Cruz Mountains scattered blazes grew into one massive burning organism — The CZU August Lightning Complex Fire — scorching some 86,000 acres, and destroying over 900 homes and Big Basin Redwoods, California’s first state park. In the aftermath, the storytelling duo The Kitchen Sisters turned their microphones on the region, looking for what was lost and what has been found since lightning struck.
This week, we continue the story of Mauricio Hernández, an undocumented immigrant who had an unexpected brush with television fame in the US. A new opportunity draws him back over the border to Mexico, but it comes at a heavy cost to his life. Reporter Levi Bridges brings us the conclusion of his documentary, Mauricio Across the Border. A version of this story was first produced by the KCRW podcast UnFictional.
Mauricio Hernández grew up in Mexico City dreaming of one day being on TV. As a teen, he crossed the border to California and got a job sweeping the floor of a body shop in LA. And then, something unexpected happened...something that led to moments of surprising fame. Reporter Levi Bridges brings us the first part of his documentary, Mauricio Across the Border. A version of this story was first produced by the KCRW podcast UnFictional.
This week, we feature some of our favorite history stories from The California Report Magazine archive. The Forgotten Filipino-Americans Who Led the ’65 Delano Grape Strike Today, grapes in the grocery store don’t seem that controversial. But in 1965, a historic strike in California’s Central Valley set in motion the most significant campaign in modern labor history: the farmworker movement. While the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez are widely known, the contributions of Filipino workers and labor leader Larry Itliong are often overlooked. But without them the UFW wouldn't exist. Reporter Lisa Morehouse brought us this story in 2015. Breaking the Silence on Angel Island’s Immigration Station Angel Island State Park is just a short ferry ride away from San Francisco’s wharf. Most visitors make the trip to bike, picnic and catch a stunning glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. But hidden in plain sight is a remnant of a time when California wasn’t so welcoming to immigrants. It’s a historic landmark that many Bay Area residents and visitors don’t realize exists on the scenic island: one of the oldest immigration detention facilities in the nation. Marisol Medina-Cadena visited Angel Island for this story in 2018. The Occupation of Catalina Island And now we’re going to head to another island -- one activists occupied nearly 50 years ago in an effort to reclaim it. In August 1972, a Chicano rights group called the Brown Berets camped out on Catalina Island for three weeks. They were demanding that unused land be turned into housing. Reporter Ariella Markowitz grew up on Catalina, but she only learned about this part of the island’s history when she brought us this story last summer.
Remember that moment just about a month ago when there was a palpable sense everything might be OK? The economy was reopening. People were packing back into restaurants. Even exhausted health care workers breathed their first deep sigh of relief — as communities across California experienced the first real lull in the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the Delta variant hit California, and rapidly took hold, particularly in unvaccinated pockets of the state. It now appears to be spreading two to three times faster than the original strain of the virus. Plus, author Kliph Nesteroff has written about comedy for years. His latest book, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy, takes a look at a community of Hollywood talent that’s been misunderstood, stereotyped, and often thought not to exist at all. And one out of eight new moms in California experiences postpartum depression. Two years ago, the FDA approved the first and only medication designed to TREAT postpartum depression. It’s called brexanolone and most women who get it start feeling better within days. But the drug is outrageously expensive: $34,000. And according to a new KQED investigation, California’s largest insurer makes it extremely difficult to get.
Listener advisory: Some accounts of sexual assault in this story contain explicit details and strong language that some may find upsetting or objectionable. For nearly a decade, Jesús Antonio Castañeda Serna, better known to parishioners as Father Antonio, drew in hundreds of followers from Fresno's Latino community to his charismatic, Spanish-language congregation, earning him the nickname, "el padrecito que hace milagros" (the priest who performs miracles). Now facing up to 23 and a 1/2 years in prison, his accusers – most of them adult men – say he sexually assaulted them during healing rituals he said they needed in order to heal from curses and sexual sins. As he awaits trial, he continues to lead parishioners who swear by his innocence and say Castañeda's alleged victims made up lies to obtain legal status in the United States. TCR's Alex Hall first reported this story in 2020 and she explains where the case stands today.
A lot of stories about people who are blind are sensational. They focus on the trauma of losing sight or the triumph of overcoming adversity. But what about the rich ways people who are blind experience the world every day? This week we’re going to explore that beauty in an episode from 2019, when we teamed up with the podcast the World According to Sound.
Fifty years ago, an unlikely musical group evolved out of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party. The band’s mission was to spread the seed of social revolution, and their militant agenda would put them up against the intertwined forces of white supremacy and racist police. Reporter Peter Gilstrap brings us a documentary about the rise and fall of The Lumpen. More: A Trojan Horse of Funk and Soul: The Story of the Black Panthers House Band
More than 60 percent of Latinos in some Central Valley counties are still not vaccinated. The numbers are even more dramatic for younger folks, especially teens and those in their 20s -- and for indigenous farmworkers. Now former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, along with famed Ranchera singer Carmencristina Moreno and other musical groups, are trying to get the word out through original songs, radio dramas, and poems in Spanish, English, and Mixteco. Plus, as part of our series remembering Californians who've died from the Coronavirus, we hear from the family of Tony Escobar. Tony, who immigrated to San Francisco from Nicaragua, was 68 years old. For them, it was heartbreaking to see Tony -- a star athlete from Mission High School, salesman and all-around family man -- forced to stop moving. And did you know there are fewer birds now than there were 50 years ago? For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse visits farms in Napa and near Watsonville to learn how farmers can help these birds, and some new research that shows how those birds are helping farmers.
For this Pride month, we reprise our 2019 episode looking back at the early days of the queer rights movement, exploring the impact of that activism on young people today, and hear about a place that’s become a refuge for the LGBTQ+ community in rural California.
For thousands of years before contact with Europeans, the Karuk people, like many others, tended their land with fire. The Karuk tribe is one of the largest in California, spanning parts of Humboldt and Siskiyou counties along the Klamath River. When the federal government took over managing the forest, it stripped the Karuk people of their relationship with fire, and that has had profound effects. These days, the forest is overgrown, and thick with dry brush. Last fall, the massive Slater Fire decimated cultural sites and homes. KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton looks at the relationship between the Karuk and cultural burning, and their negotiations with the state of California to get that control back.
For some Asian women who were on the fence about buying guns for protection, the racist violence of the past year pushed them over the edge. Reporter Christine Nguyen tells us about two women from Southern California who are learning to shoot guns, and navigating the stigma around gun ownership within their families. Plus, in Oakland, Maribel Villanueva died from COVID-19 at age 46. She was a single mom and left behind a 10-year-old son, David. Now his aunt and his teacher are trying to fill her shoes. And a Southern California school has been selected to become one of the first Space Force JROTC units in the country, and the only one in California.
When most schools across California shut down last year, teenagers were stuck at home. For some, that meant months alone to reflect on experiences of trauma in high school. But they didn’t all keep that pain to themselves. Instead, hundreds of young people turned to social media to share their stories. Plus, an update on the story of Luna Guzmán, a young transgender woman from Guatemala. She lived through years of brutal abuse and discrimination in her hometown, and dreamed of seeking asylum in California. Now she's finally getting her chance, not in California, but New York. And, we’ve been bringing you tributes to Californians we’ve lost to COVID-19. This week, we hear from Vince Crisostomo, whose father Francisco died from COVID the day before his 87th birthday.
This week we bring you an excerpt from a new investigative reporting podcast produced by KQED and NPR. After a new state law unsealed dozens of internal affairs files, reporters began examining cases of police misconduct and serious use of force. The first case involves Katheryn Jenks, who called 911 for help from her home in the small Northern California town of Rio Vista in 2018. But after the police arrived, she was bitten by a police K-9 and wound up inside a jail cell, facing serious charges. We hear part of Jenks’ story, and a preview of upcoming episodes.
Arnett Moore is launching a one-man campaign: to get his aunt, actress Juanita Moore, a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Juanita receive an Academy Award nomination for her role in the 1959 film, Imitation of Life. As Arnett says, "She's a star without a star." Plus, two violinists fix up a 1971 VW bus and travel the West Coast, bringing music and joy to all they encounter. And host Sasha Khokha heads into the kitchen to watch Nelson German at work. German owns two restaurants in Oakland where he showcases his culinary roots. German is the only California contestant on this season of the reality cooking competition series "Top Chef."
COVID-19 devastated California’s arts and culture world. But the blow to singers across the state has been particularly harsh, and not just financially and socially. After an early super spreader event in Washington State caused more than 50 choir members to contract the virus, singers in California were forced to confront a devastating truth: this beloved everyday activity, which feels so good and is so healthy, had become...a killer. Singing went underground. But it didn’t go away entirely. Throughout this pandemic, KQED's Chloe Veltman has been following what happened to singing across our state. How it went from almost disappearing entirely, to helping us maintain solidarity, social purpose and a sense of humor through these dark, dark times.
Families put their loved ones in nursing homes because they think they’ll receive better care. They assume someone will keep an eye out. But that’s not always true. Conditions were bad in some California nursing homes even before COVID. When the pandemic hit, things got much worse. More than 9,000 nursing home residents in the state have died from COVID-19. Some facilities didn’t even take basic precautions. The missteps, even the deaths, come as no surprise to advocates for nursing home reform. But as KPCC investigative reporters Elly Yu and Aaron Mendelson discovered, the state also knows these nursing homes are failing patients, and lets them stay in business.
Even though many of us might feel like we’ve got more of a handle on the coronavirus pandemic now, we will all be marked by it forever—especially those who’ve really been in the trenches. Lisa Fagundes is normally a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. But starting last spring, she and thousands of other city and state workers were redeployed to become contact tracers, calling people who may have been exposed. Our health correspondent April Dembosky asked Lisa to keep an audio diary for us over the last year. Listening through these entries, you can hear – in real time – how the pandemic changes her. How it picks her up, twists her in all directions, and then drops her on the other side. Just like it’s done to all of us.
So much of what our country is wrestling with right now are questions about power. How do we hold people in power accountable? How can people who haven’t had power claim it? Those questions are at the center of a new podcast from WBEZ called “Art of Power.” Sasha Khokha talks with the podcast's host: author, NPR Silicon Valley Correspondent and California Report alum, Aarti Shahani. Plus another in our series of tributes to members of vulnerable communities and front line workers lost to COVID. This week, Sylvia Morton's daughters remember their mother.
We’ve been asking our listeners to tell us about loved ones they’ve lost. This week, we bring you the first in a series of stories to remember them. Eric Warner died of COVID in San Quentin Prison at age 57. He was born and raised in San Francisco, the son of Filipino immigrants. He was a barber, a boxer, and also a beloved brother. Eric’s older brother Hank brings us this tribute. Plus, LA Unified School District is testing out a pilot program to expand outdoor learning. Reporter Deepa Fernandes visited some outdoor classrooms in Southern California to see how they’re trying to make it work. Those stories and more...
This week, we bring you a documentary we first aired in December that generated a lot of response from our listeners, changing life for the person at the center of this story. When she turned 15, Luna Guzmán, like many girls in Guatemala, celebrated with a quinceañera. But it was a secret party, with a borrowed dress, because her family couldn't fathom her as a transgender girl. So she put her soccer jerseys back on and tried to pass as the boy she knew she wasn’t inside. Even as she dealt with brutal violence, she decided to take a terrible risk and leave everything behind in Guatemala, to try to find a life in California: the one place in the world where she could imagine being safe. Host Sasha Khokha followed Luna Guzmán over the last two years, reporting from a migrant shelter in Tijuana, an ICE detention center in San Diego, and a tiny drag bar in Modesto.
It’s one thing to write about COVID from home. It's another to see it, to hear it. KQED health reporters April Dembosky and Lesley McClurg go inside two hospitals near Sacramento: Lesley shadowed doctors in the intensive care unit, and April spent time in the ER. One year into the pandemic, it was clear these clinicians were not celebrating any anniversaries. They’ve seen too much. Too much has changed. For them, there is no post-COVID world. We hear about the little ways, the big ways, and the surprising ways COVID has changed the way doctors do their jobs.
Harvey Shields has worked with some of the Bay Area’s best professional athletes. But since the pandemic hit, Shields has switched gears, and started helping COVID 'long-haulers' recover from their symptoms. Plus, Katherine Kim runs an oral history workshop at the Koreatown Youth and Community Center. Four of the women killed in the Atlanta-area shootings were Korean. That has sparked an intergenerational dialogue with the high school students in Katherine's workshop about how to navigate life as Korean-American women in a climate where there's already so much uncertainty. She brings us a personal commentary.
Marlene Baker lives in Siskiyou County. It’s vast and remote: 6,000 square miles home to just shy of 44,000 people. Marlene has lived with mental illness for years, and that kept her on the streets for a very long time. She racked up minor arrests, cycling through jail and back onto the streets. A similar crisis plays out across California, but rural areas face specific and profound challenges. In Marlene’s case, though, something big happened: A whole bunch of people teamed up to make sure she could heal right there in the community – without getting shipped off to a state mental hospital hundreds of miles away. And, it turns out, her success has helped bring about some bold changes in the way Siskiyou County is confronting its mental health crisis. Reporter Lee Romney has been following Marlene’s story since 2019. She checked in on her recently, and brings us this excerpt from a podcast-in-production she produced with Jenny Johnson called “November In My Soul.”
In the spring of 2018, former President Donald Trump's first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, stood near the border wall in San Diego and made an announcement that would have a devastating and lasting impact. The result was thousands of children being taken away from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and isolated from them for months or years. Most have been reunited, but hundreds of children are still separated, their parents deported without them. KQED Immigration reporter Michelle Wiley brings us the story of one woman who has been traveling to rural Central American towns, sometimes on foot, to try and find some of the parents who are still missing their children. Plus, what can the Biden Administration's new task force do to remedy the enduring harm those separations have caused?
The debate rages on about when California schools should bring students back to campuses after nearly a year since schools shut down in-person classes. Distance learning is taking a toll on students and parents. It’s also taking a toll on teachers, especially those with their own kids at home. KQED’s Vanessa Rancaño asked one Oakland teacher to keep an audio diary for a day, documenting her every move. Plus, California public health officials have given the green light for school sports to start up again. Finally, medical experts and politicians have pointed to the Tuskegee study as a reason why Black Americans have reservations about the coronavirus vaccine. But as KQED's April Dembosky found, in most cases, Tuskegee is a scapegoat.
Adamu Chan and Edmond Richardson met while they were incarcerated at San Quentin about two years ago, and have been best friends ever since. Adamu was released last fall, and they’ve kept in touch by writing letters to each other. We’ll hear part of an episode Adamu helped produce for the KALW Public Media podcast, “Uncuffed.” Then, we mark the loss of literary giant Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died on February 22nd at the age of 101. Poet, activist, and publisher of many Beat poets of the 1950s and 60s, Ferlinghetti was considered by many to be the soul of San Francisco’s counterculture movement. The Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, bring us an audio documentary they produced in honor of Ferlinghetti’s 99th birthday.
In recent weeks, racist attacks against Asian-Americans around the state have intensified. We begin the show with the voices of people speaking out against the violence, and calling for solidarity between communities of color. The anti-Asian violence we’re seeing today evokes a painful time in history for Japanese-Americans. February 19th marks the anniversary of President Roosevelt’s executive order that forced some 120,000 people into incarceration camps during World War II. As part of the Yonsei Memory Project's collaboration with StoryCorps, we’re bringing you conversations that reflect on that time and on its legacy across generations.
Remember live music? We figure we could all use a little joy right now, so as we continue The California Report’s 25th birthday celebration, we’re sharing some of our favorite music stories from over the years.
Some garment workers in LA spend their days sewing masks and gowns for first responders. But many aren’t getting tested for COVID, much less going to the hospital if they get sick. Plus, we’ve brought you so many stories about struggling with the loss of hope, and how much work there’s left to do to really reckon with America’s racist history. But this week having a conversation with someone who creates art from a deep sense of hope, and whose work also focuses on Black joy. Cauleen Smith is an artist and filmmaker who still believes we all have the means to create utopia in our everyday lives. Her immersive installations are currently on display at SFMOMA and LACMA.
We are almost reaching the year mark when it comes to how long many of us have been stuck inside at home. And if you live with roommates, that space can feel smaller and smaller as time goes on. But what happens when roommates have different ideas about what it means to be safe during COVID? That’s the question KQED’s Adhiti Bandlamudi has been wrestling with. She usually reports on Silicon Valley, but today she brings us a first-person account of what it’s like being a Millennial with roommates she never imagined she’d be stuck with in a pandemic. Plus, changes to the state's vaccine rollout, and a 9-year-old poet brings us a message of hope.
In his inauguration speech, President Joe Biden called for bringing unity to what we all know is a deeply hurt, deeply divided country. Right after the president spoke, country music star Garth Brooks sang “Amazing Grace.” KQED’s Arts and Culture Reporter Chloe Veltman spoke to a number of California artists with strong ties to the song about its enduring power. Plus, we drop in on a family excitedly watching the inauguration of Vice President Kamala Harris with their two young daughters who see themselves in her. And we visit a school in Watts — Locke College Preparatory Academy — that has been looking for ways to empower students in the aftermath of the violence in Washington.
The whole world will be watching next week as Kamala Harris is sworn in as our next Vice President. But there’s one person who will be tuning in who says he owes his life to her. Plus, the pandemic has been making things more challenging for schools that serve some of the newest Californians: Guatemalan immigrants who speak a Mayan language called Mam. And reporter Lisa Morehouse joins us to memorialize three Californians who passed away last year, each with a connection to agriculture.
This week we bring you four stories; about hope, stewardship, compassion, and community.
2020 will forever be the year of COVID-19 – and wildfires, police shootings, school over Zoom. So much heartbreak. But all year long, there were people who stepped up, sacrificed so much and kept going. As we ring in a new year, we revisit some of our favorite stories about the people who inspired us in 2020.
The California Report is celebrating our 25th year on the air, so this holiday weekend, we’re digging into our archives to bring you some of our favorite stories from the season.
As we officially head into winter – and hopefully snowy weather in the Sierra Nevada – we bring you the tale of the Donner Party; the version you may not have heard before. You might be familiar with the ghoulish CliffsNotes version of this story: about a band of people traveling over the Sierra in covered wagons, trapped in the snow and forced to turn to cannibalism to survive. But behind the Donner Party legend, there’s another story: one about prejudice, injustice and murder. KQED reporter Carly Severn tells us what happened when those 81 people were stuck in the mountains back in 1846, and how this disaster came to represent everything California wanted to forget.
We’re all bracing ourselves for a surge in hospitalizations, for more people lost to COVID-19, for more closures and lockdowns. So we’re reprising one of our documentaries about another time we all faced a public health crisis. A time when the federal government was slow to respond, so the community had to step in to take care of each other. Lisa Morehouse brings us the story of a woman who became an unexpected source of comfort to people suffering from AIDS in the early 1980s. Her baking business, Sticky Fingers Brownies, provided gooey marijuana-filled brownies to people dying from the disease in San Francisco. Pot brownies weren’t going to save anyone’s life over the long term, but Meridy Volz says they brought some relief, and there wasn’t a lot of relief in those days.
When she turned 15, Luna Guzmán, like many girls in Guatemala, celebrated with a quinceañera. But it was a secret party, with a borrowed dress, because her family couldn't fathom her as a transgender girl. So she put her soccer jerseys back on and tried to pass as the boy she knew she wasn’t inside. Even as she dealt with brutal violence, she decided to take a terrible risk and leave everything behind in Guatemala, to try to find a life in California: the one place in the world where she could imagine being safe. Being herself. Host Sasha Khokha has followed Luna Guzmán over the last two years, reporting from a migrant shelter in Tijuana, an ICE detention center in San Diego, and a tiny drag bar in Modesto. Her story says a lot about how U.S. immigration policy fails when it comes to recognizing people who live outside the gender binary, how the epic backlog of asylum cases in the U.S. can add to their trauma, and how transgender migrants at the border are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
This weekend, when so many of us have had to make the difficult choice to spend the holiday away from our loved ones, we’re inviting you to a virtual family gathering, with some of our favorite stories from Thanksgiving 2017.
KQED Science reporter Lesley McClurg brings us two stories of populations struggling with isolation during the pandemic. First, the story of two older women successfully navigating this tumultuous time with limited resources. Then, youth therapists are hearing about depression, anxiety and even suicide ideation a lot more than usual among kids who haven’t attended school in person since March. Hear one Oakland family’s story. Plus, a new project called Sounds of California commissioned 10 original songs from local artists about Boyle Heights, a longtime immigrant neighborhood East of Downtown Los Angeles that’s been gentrifying. Host Sasha Khokha talks with musician Quetzal Flores, who’s been helping to curate the project.
The California Report is celebrating 25 years on the air, and this week, we’re digging into our archives to give you a break from political news and share some of our favorite food stories from over the years. It’s a feast for your ears!
The rest of the nation perceives California as a giant blue monolith, a liberal and progressive stronghold. But the reality is many of the statewide measures backed by progressives this year, from rent control to affirmative action, didn’t pass. The California Report Magazine recaps the “mixed bag” of statewide election results.
September 28, 2020. It’s the middle of the night, at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa. About 200 senior citizens are outside, sitting on folding chairs or in their wheelchairs. Just waiting. Most of them were in bed just a few hours before, until a massive wildfire came racing toward their retirement community. Many of them had been through this before in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. That fire was a reckoning; with nature, with our state and county leaders, with the companies we pay to take care of our elderly loved ones. And still, three years later, we are leaving hundreds of frail seniors in the literal cold while wildfire threatens their community and the last place in their lives they will call home. The California Report’s health correspondent April Dembosky and science reporter Molly Peterson spent a year investigating long-term care homes around the state to see how they're planning for wildfire, and if it's enough.
Dr. Jessica Zitter works at Highland Hospital, a public hospital in Oakland, where she specializes in critical and palliative care medicine. She says having hard conversations about our end-of-life wishes can transform our fears about death into hope about life. We meet several people she's helped guide through the process of talking about death, including a grocery store worker in LA who got sick with COVID, an Oakland man hospitalized with serious lung disease who struggles to face his own mortality, and a son who had to watch his 92-year-old father die of COVID far away from family, alone in a hospital bed. Dr. Zitter is the author of “Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life.”
Got your ballot? Still making up your mind on those California propositions? We’ve got you covered. This week, The California Report Magazine breaks down some of the statewide ballot measures with a few KQED reporters.
October marks the 25th anniversary of The California Report, and this week, we’re kicking off the first in a series of shows celebrating 25 years on the air. In this first installment, we’ll listen back to stories that showcase some of the ways the state has been a trailblazer. From passing first-in-the-nation climate change initiatives, to legalizing medical marijuana, to galvanizing the immigrants-right movement and marrying same-sex couples at San Francisco City Hall back in 2004, our state is often on the frontlines of progressive change. Host Sasha Khokha is joined by Scott Shafer, senior editor for KQED’s Politics and Government Desk and former host of The California Report.
California is the land of record-breaking home prices and climbing rents. But it’s also a place where on any given night, more than 150,000 people live in tents and cars, RVs and shelters. So many wild extremes. But what can we do about it? That’s the question a new KQED podcast is tackling. It’s called SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America. It explores how the pandemic has complicated housing for so many people, and looks at some possible solutions. This week on The California Report Magazine, we’ll hear the first episode, and learn about the roots of California’s homeless crisis, as well as recent efforts to house people struggling with homelessness in hotels. SOLD OUT is hosted and reported by KQED housing reporters Erin Baldassari and Molly Solomon.
‘Music Was Our Language’: Grammy-Award Winning Producer Turns Mic on Sister; Dan 'The Can't Stand Up Comedian' Smith; Artists Capture Wildfire’s Destructive Power – and Beauty
Palliative care expert Dr. Jessica Zitter says that tough conversations about end-of-life options can help inform how we want to live our lives.
After touring the world with Snoop Dogg and the Black Eyed Peas, Jinho Ferreira served as an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy for eight years. He said he wanted to fight police violence from the inside.
From Prison Fire Crew To Pro Firefighter; Volunteer Firefighting Couple Find a Silver Lining; How Wildfire Smoke Intersects with Race and Place; An Ode to Big Basin's Redwoods
Featuring:
Lorena Gonzalez, Lawmaker, San Diego
Ellen DuBois, Professor Emirita of History and Gender Studies, UCLA
Rita Barschak, 100-year old voting rights activist, Los Angeles
Maxine Anderson, Voter Education volunteer, San Francisco
Aida Hurtado, Chicano/a Studies Professor, UC Santa Barbara
Kristen Olsen, Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors
Honey Mahogany, transgender activist, San Francisco
Gurleen Kaur Mander, political science major, Fresno
Arianna Nassiri, SF Youth Commission
Deep in the Mojave Desert sits California City: a would-be city of the future; a place where empty desert land is presented as a ticket to the American Dream. For decades running, real estate developers have gotten rich by selling this dream to thousands of people, many of whom are hard-working immigrants looking to build a better future. But the reality is much different. The land investments never paid off and the landowners, many of whom scraped together their life savings to buy a plot of land, were left with next to nothing. We devote the whole show to an excerpt from the first episode of “California City,” new podcast from LAist Studios, hosted and reported by Emily Guerin.
The Forgotten Occupation of Catalina Island So much of the activism we’re seeing right now around racial justice has roots in radical movements that erupted in California –– The United Farm Workers, The Black Panther Party, the Asian American Political Alliance, the Native American occupation of Alcatraz. In August 1972, another occupation kind of flew under the radar here in California. A Chicano activist group called the Brown Berets camped out on Catalina Island for three weeks, demanding that undeveloped land be turned into housing. The California Report Magazine’s intern Ariella Markowitz grew up on Catalina, but she only recently learned about this slice of the island’s history, and says it feels more relevant now than ever. ‘California Love’: New Podcast Explores Growing Up Both Black and Brown in LA LAist Studio's new podcast “California Love” features Walter Thompson-Hernández, a former New York Times writer, as he returns to Los Angeles and reflects on the complexity of his hometown. Part memoir, part love letter to the City of Angels, the podcast revisits the childhood pals he used to tag buildings with, lessons he learned from his immigrant mother, and explores how race and identity have always shaped his life and work. Host Sasha Khokha talks with Thompson-Hernández about their shared hometown in an extended interview and preview of the series, featuring excerpts from several episodes.
Hiroshima Survivor Reflects 75 Years After the Bomb; Nuns On Aging With Grace; COVID Doctors Open Up About Their Mental Health
"We Have No Hospital - It's Gone"; HIV Survivors On Living Through Another Pandemic; Contact Tracing Resurfaces Controversy
Matt Hay is a sophomore in college when he finds out he is going to lose his hearing. He coasts through the early years of his diagnosis in denial, but as his hearing aids get bigger and bigger, Matt realizes he wants to capture the sounds that are slipping away: his girlfriend's voice, the click of her heels; and especially, the songs of their invincible youth. Matt starts listening to music with a new appreciation — truly studying it — as he curates the soundtrack for the rest of his life. Behind each song, there is a coming-of-age story about freedom, tragedy, and falling in love. As The California Report's Health Correspondent April Dembosky reports, When Matt’s hearing eventually fades to nothing, the silent soundtrack in his head takes on a role he never imagines.
Letters to Incarcerated Loved Ones; Former San Quentin Inmate Fights for Friends Still Inside; How Doctors' Unconscious Bias Hurts Patients
A documentary about a band with a mission to spark social revolution through the Trojan Horse of funk and soul.
Roller skate in church; Healing Sierra hot springs; Live jazz by the beach; A shrine to pop culture; Places Called What?!
Father Antonio Castañeda has been charged with 22 counts of battery, sexual battery, attempted sexual battery and attempt to prevent a witness/victim from prosecuting.
Letters to a Father in Prison; Sounds That Remind You of Pop; Remembering a Dad Lost to COVID.
Young Activists in Fresno and S.F. Push for Racial Justice; Latinx Book Club Challenges Anti-Blackness; Why We Need Diverse Contact Tracers; A COVID Doctor Shares His Story
As nationwide protests continue in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, we explore how the death of Oscar Grant – shot by a transit officer while lying face-down, unarmed on a train platform - galvanized a new generation of activists, and helped spark a sustained call for change.
LA Koreatown Family Devastated by COVID, Navajo Nation "Ground Zero" for COVID, A Nurse Finds Joy; Motorcyclists Deliver PPE, The Class of 2020: No Prom, No Graduation
An Activist With Autism Creates a New Routine; A Conversation With Disability Rights Activist Alice Wong; A Teacher With Visually Impaired Students Gets Creative
Great-Grandma Survived, and Forgave; California's Last Known Slave; Taking a Stand at the 1973 Oscars
A 164 Year-Old Hotel Closed for the First Time; The Fate of Mark Twain's Old Newspaper; Disabled and Broke in Yosemite; Keeping a Cafe Going Along the Pony Express
One Man's Mission To Bring Groceries to Rural Trinity County; 90% of Catalina Unemployed; Transforming a Sacramento Restaurant to a Food Kitchen; Filipinos Feed the Frontlines. Plus: What's Bringing You Joy?
Social distancing haiku; Poet captures life on the brink; Building a GenZ pop empire from home; Show doesn't stop for 83 year old comic
Dispatch from the ER; Kids Can't Hug their Nurse Mom; Comforting the Dying from Afar; A Public Health Officer Gets Sick; In-Home Caregivers Demand Face Masks
An immunocompromised boyfriend; "Is sex still safe during a pandemic?"; Voicemails about life without sex; A WFH Dominatrix
How a San Francisco woman became an unexpected source of comfort at a time when another pandemic rocked the state.
Everyone's home at my apartment complex; Connecting through Corona Diaries; Gen Z: Masters of virtual connection; Video games for the soul; What brings you joy?
A bartender, a farmworker, a person on disability and a musician cope with the fallout from COVID-19.
A 19-year-old runs for office; Colleges hold voting centers; Activists fall in love; Catalina Island loses its theater.
Scars of Internment at Heart Mountain; Big Band Swing Meets Taiko Drumming; My Mom Has DACA
Sometimes, it’s only after something really terrible has happened that you start to see the signs leading up to it. Years later, Rudy Coronado still refers to what happened as “that day.” He still thinks about what he said to his wife, and, what he didn’t say. He says he doesn’t blame her. But he can’t forgive her, either, for what she did. In this episode of The California Report Magazine, KQED's April Dembosky tells the story of what happened that day in Los Angeles.
The California Report Magazine listeners and reporters take the stage to share their stories about the 'California Dream' and whether it's still alive.
Excerpts from a live stage version of The California Report Magazine's night of storytelling, 'Dreaming the Golden State,' which explored California dreams found, and lost.
An artist's legal battle brings up complex questions about who owns images of cultural heroes; a superfan’s obsession with 'Heat' leads to a Hollywood ending; and the Vietnamese immigrant who helped make Sriracha so popular.
How do you tell the story of Jerry Brown’s political career? You start by sitting down with the former California governor for over 40 hours of interviews.
Most children of immigrant parents know what it's like to walk between two worlds. In this week's episode, Sandhya Dirks takes us back with her to her mother's India.
Elliot Franks, Lucia Lucas and Breanna Sinclairé are transgender opera singers navigating an industry that has been slow to evolve with the times.
Memories of Internment; Childcare Saves a Family; The Fight Over Police Use of Deadly Force; Legal Cannabis' Impact on Farming
A Fantasy World Made of Cardboard Boxes; Bringing up Baby in a Tiny House; What Box Do you Check?; Transgender Prisoners
An Afro-Diasporic Remix of The Nutcracker; The Ghost of Mary Ellen Pleasant; A Slave Auction in Los Angeles?; Indigenous Red Market
Robin Burton started out trying to find her mom. But the search morphed into something else: a mission to help other people who are homeless and missing too.
Forty-one years ago this week, more than 900 people died in a mass suicide in Jonestown, a remote settlement in South America. This documentary follows a Bay Area man who unravels the tangled family history that binds him to that tragedy.
Prison-to-College Pipeline, Prop 13’s Impact on the CA Dream, Letter to My CA Dreamer, a Dream Shaped By Water
A Mind Scarred by Wildfire, Survivors Struggle to Find Housing, Radio Station Relays Fire Info in Indigenous Languages
A paramedic and ER nurse from Northern California may himself be a conduit between the living and the dead.
Tijuana’s First Early Childhood Education Center…Affiliated With a Migrant Shelter, Fictional Podcast ‘Moonface’ Explores Being Korean and Queer, Alums of Iranian Jewish School Reunite 40 Years Later
A landmark ruling in 1977 changed special education for black students in California. But many educators, black parents and advocates say plenty remains broken.
The world of mollusk, a master in tinkering, guitarist Ioana Gandrabur, an architect who listens to buildings and designing how products sound.
It has been almost 30 years since Aerial Gilbert lost her sight. In that time she’s relearned just about everything she used to do before going blind — and she did it through the power of sound.
Climate change is making it hotter everywhere in California. And heat can be a sneaky threat to our health and safety. It’s getting more dangerous, and deadly - even in parts of California you wouldn’t expect.
Author and Dance Teacher’s Mission to Redefine Aging, Rocky Road Ice Cream’s Bumpy History, Singer Mike Marshall’s Second Chance, Letter to My California Dreamer
Elliot Franks, Lucia Lucas and Breanna Sinclairé have taken enormous risks to live their most authentic lives. And they’ve navigated an industry that has been slow to evolve with the times.
Police shootings of Black and Latino men have sparked protests across California and the nation. The East Bay city of Vallejo is also grappling with officer-involved shootings. Community members there are asking for accountability, and demanding answers.
Young Central Valley Mariachi Heads to Harvard; Finding Love After Alzheimer’s; Susan Straight’s “In the Country of Women”; Letter to My Dreamer: Lake County Farm
Some schools are teaching kids how to deal with the physical and mental impacts of anxiety.
In this personal story, KQED's Sandhya Dirks takes us back to her mother's India -- to a tell a story about inherited trauma, mental illness, and South Asian history.
This summer, forget the tourist traps and come along with us on a sonic journey to explore some of California’s out-of-the-way, cool spots that make this place we call home so unique.
Robin Burton may never find her mother, but she’s made quite a few friends during her search. That's because she launched a Facebook group called 'Missing & Homeless' that now has more than 63,000 members.
It took two years to track down the Capay Valley arsonist. He was convicted of 12 counts of arson, but he's suspected of setting 152 fires over the course of 18 years.
Motherhood was going great for Lisa Abramson, until the walls started talking to her. But she said being in the hospital made her feel more crazy.
Pricey and Potent Pisco Punch, The Birth of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, The Complex Origin of Fortune Cookies, The Ranch Behind Hidden Valley Ranch
Trans Man Finds Refuge in Small Town Cafe; Selling Flowers Through the AIDS Crisis; Compton Cafeteria: CA’s Stonewall; Why Harvey Milk Still Matters to Young People
An Island Drink with California Roots, Podcast Connects Filipino Diaspora, The Humble Burger That Fueled the Big Dam, UC Degree For Late Chicano Activist
Letters to My Father in Prison, Sounds of My Father, A Father’s Day Haircut With a Weed-Whacker
Today we’ll meet six seniors: a student, a volunteer, a farmer, someone looking for a job, a woman about town, and man whose daughter is his caretaker.
Video Store Survives Netflix, Last Roller Rink Organist, Typewriter Poet, Fleetwood Macrame, Ferris Bueller Revisited
How Water Shaped the California Dream; This Boom Town Boomed Best When You Boomed With It; An Advice Show for POCs; A Surprising Beauty Queen
Faith in Her Child Despite What the Docs Said, Dominatrix Mom, Mothering in the Shadow of Big Oil, A Song for Grandma
Pregnant at 15, Pressured to be Polite, Always Tired, Embracing 'Body Positivity', 'My Natural Hair Journey', Living In Two Worlds, Cooking With Kenny
Fortune Cookie Mystery, Blind in California, Sexual Assault in Yoga, Shooting for a College Degree
Navigating High School as a Deaf 16-Year-Old; My Sister Can’t Speak, But She Makes Herself Heard; What It Means to ‘Edit Out’ a Disability; Ski School for All
For many Californians, their only reference point for the Coachella Valley is the annual music festival which kicks off this week. But there are other sides to Coachella — the ones locals see.
Methamphetamine is back in California. This time around, it's sending more and more people to the hospital, to rehab and to the morgue. Learn about one woman's two-decade battle with meth, from when biker gangs helped the drug take root in California to today’s deadly epidemic.
It’s one of the biggest police corruption scandals in modern California history, and one you probably didn’t hear about if you live outside the Central Valley. And it wasn’t an isolated incident.
Persian New Year from Afar; Remembering the King of Surf Guitar; Golden State Plate: Santa Maria BBQ; Letter to my California Dreamer: Palo Alto in the '70s
How a Janitor Invented a Bestselling Junk Food; Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 100; Artists Reimagine 'Valley Girl'; A Letter From Charles Schulz, 50 years later
Reuniting with Mom (and missing Grandma); High School at age 20?; Kids send Postcards to other Kids in Detention; Conditions for Migrant Kids in Custody; From England’s Green Hills to California’s Deserts
Most wildfires ignite by accident. But some are set on purpose - and arsonists are very hard to catch. We find out how investigators caught one of them. It took two years and dozens of people to track him down.
When Black Farmworkers Picked California's Crops; Letter to My Dust Bowl Grandparents; When Bakersfield was the Center of the Country Music Universe
Living With the Ex; Genetically Sensitive to Rejection?; Stories of Last Kisses; Listeners' Favorite Breakup Songs
93-Year-Old DJ Still Connects Lovers Over the Airwaves, Cold Water Romance, Love Worth Fighting For
Spike in Homeless Kids on Central Coast; Busting Homeless Myths; A Letter to A Revolutionary Dreamer; What Makes Your Salad Taste Like California?
Golden State Plate: The Story of Pisco Punch; Trans Trucker Finds his California Dream; A Mom’s Journey to Accepting Her Transgender Child, At Age 4; California Therapists Volunteer To Help Immigrants Coming out of Detention
The Evolution of Casa Sanchez, Prather Ranch Cows, Frank Fat's Restaurant, Taxi Medallions Take Toll, Letter to My CA Dreamer
Ten years after an unarmed black man was shot and killed by a white police officer as he lay face-down on a train platform, we explore how Oscar Grant’s death galvanized a new generation of activists, and helped spark a sustained call for change.
Hear some of the most appetizing stories from our Golden State Plate series, where we explore the history of some of the iconic food and drink born right here.
A jailhouse songwriter's deep friendship with Johnny Cash. How a crusading heroine became a demon in Victorian San Francisco. LuPaulette Taylor on her nearly five-decade career at a West Oakland school. Two teens from Menlo-Atherton High on their childhood.
Female DJs Find Empowerment in Oakland, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore Intertwine Their Musical Roots, New Book Celebrates the Work of Los Lobos, ‘The Soul Chance’ Goes Analog to Capture Retro Reggae Sound.
How has the controversial law - which essentially locks in a homeowner's property tax to the year they bought their home - affected four different Oakland residents? Reporter Vanessa Rancaño invited them over to find out.
Motherhood was going great for Lisa Abramson, until the walls started talking to her. But being in the hospital made her feel more crazy.
'Surrogate Family’ Supports Migrant Mom, How Did Raymond Mata in a Mass Grave, Attack of the Nutria, Saying Goodbye to Paradise.
Daley Dunham was a junior at UC Berkeley when he decided to donate sperm. He likened it to donating blood — an opportunity to do something good for a person in need. Except when you donate blood, you don’t get a tidal wave of children crashing into your life 20 years later.
Forty years ago, preacher Jim Jones ordered hundreds of his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch. One man unravels the tangled family history that binds him to that tragedy.
First Time Candidates Reflect on ‘The Long Run’, Millennial and Retiree Candidates Swap Advice, Hotel Workers Push for ‘Panic Buttons’, Golden State Plate: The Martini Story, Straight Up, With a Twist
The Ghost of Mary Pleasant, Haunted Lighthouse, Fishy Origins of Cioppino, An Orphan’s California Dream
Caregivers Save Lives But Lose Everything, KPFZ: Lake County’s Wildfire Lifeline, ‘A Little Broken,’ Fire Baby Turns One
Miko Fogarty left her dream dance job with a top company after just one year. Two years later, she’s on her way to becoming a doctor - and overcoming alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her former coach.
Aisha’s Wahab’s ‘Long Run,’ Terisa Siagatonu’s Moment on Earth, My Carbon Footprint, A Writer’s CA Dream, Alice Coltrane’s ‘Spiritual Eternal’
Reporter’s Notebook from Tijuana, The French Dip’s Roots, Seeking a Seat on the School Board, Cannabis Meds at School, The Forest Transforms Me
Green Goddess Dressing, Poetry of Climate Change, California’s Original Detention Center, A Granddaughter’s Message to “Ojiichan,” Sign Wars on the Campaign Trail
Yoga community struggles to rein in sexual misconduct, abuse in its ranks; How wildfire increases poverty; 92-year old artist says planet Earth is ‘screwed’
Sons & Brothers Camp, Betty Valencia’s ‘Long Run’, The (W)hole Story on Mt. Shasta, Lured From Germany By SF ‘Sound’
Science shows childhood trauma leads to poorer health later in life, mentally and physically. But there are ways to intervene that can heal the wounds of the past for a parent, and safeguard a daughter’s future.
Illegal Love in Uganda, The Damaging Effects of ‘White Voice,’ One ‘Lost Boy’s’ Journey Out of Sudan
Mexican Restaurant Feeds Fire Victims, Coping With Fire Trauma In Santa Rosa, Music Giants Talk ‘Downey to Lubbock’, A Separation Still Painful After 76 Years
My Dad Spent My Childhood Behind Bars, Summer Camp for Refugee Kids, Asian American Actresses Rewrite the Script, My Mom’s Teenage Dream
Mom Seeks Refuge at the Border; Healing from Family Separation Four Decades Later; No One Recognizes this Hong Kong Star in Berkeley; Hello to Coachella, Grass Valley and Nevada City!
We've come a long way from a 6-foot-tall computer. But the internet hasn't solved everything it promised to. This week we visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to muse on how the internet has changed our lives.
On Her Own at 17, LGBTQ and Homeless, Finding the Gay Mecca, Family Separations Open Old Wounds
Black Chasm Cavern; Foster’s Bighorn; Back Dancing and Dynamite Society; Valley Relics Museum; Forestiere Underground Gardens
A Taste of Oaxaca in Madera; My Big Brother’s CA Dream; High School Behind Bars; Woodworking for the Blind
Sirhan Sirhan’s Brother; My Mom’s California Dream is Muted; TEPCO Dishes Out Nostalgia
Losing Language Behind Bars; Rachel Kushner’s New Novel Based on Friendship with Women Prisoners; Life After a Life Sentence; Letter to My CA Dreamer: A Place Where Dreams are Safe to Grow
Parents Deported, Big Sister in Charge; When UC is not the Golden Ticket; Tell Us Your California Dream Story; L.A.'s 'No ICE' Man
Addicted to Heroin and Living in a Motel with a Baby on the Way, Persistent Poison, Calling it Quits on the Golden State, Birthplace of Flamin' Hot Cheetos
Faith in Her Child Despite What the Doctors Said, When Mom Doesn’t Approve of Your Job…As a Dominatrix, Moving Towards Motherhood in the Shadow of Big Oil, A Song for Grandma
Fighting Harassment At High School, Seniors Share Advice on 'Lives Well Lived,' Potstickers and Pie at Sacramento's Oldest Chinese Restaurant, Does Rent Control Work?
They explore issues like homelessness, redefining masculinity, and finding identity through art.
Konocti: A Last Resort For People Hit With Disaster, A Second Chance After Two Decades of Anxiety, Finding Self-Esteem…Through Pole Dancing, Poet Re-Examines his Farmworker Past, The Town That Changed Its Name to Happy Camp
Oakland’s Time-Travelling Map, The Secret World of Inez Burns, Japanese-American 1950s Car Clubs, A Firefighter on Witnessing Too Much Tragedy
A Cemetery of Life Saving Secrets on Point Reyes, How California’s Rice Fields Are Welcoming Back the Birds, Couples Counselors Get Real About Their Own Marriages, The Sodden Story Behind Whiskeytown, CA.
Throughout 2017, a team of Snap Judgment producers - together with Oakland activists and parents - learned about Oakland’s homicide victims, their families and communities.
College hopefuls leaving California, a taste of home for South Asian seniors, when a job becomes a friendship, A Place Called 'Peanut'
Modern-day Gold Miner Still Finds Plenty, A Visit to Paradise (CA), How CA Went from Anti-Immigrant to ‘Sanctuary State,’ Birdsong Clues to Climate Change
A special half-hour investigation based on 911 tape + interviews with first responders and survivors of the Oct. 2016 Northern CA wildfires. A collaboration with Reveal.
Taxi Drivers Losing Their Identity, Queer Skateboarders Confront Macho Culture, A Teen Loner Turns into a Celebrated Mapmaker of California's Wilderness
On This Ice Skating Team There Are No Olympians and No One Under 25 Robyn Fernsworth wakes up before the sun rises every Saturday morning so she can ice skate for two hours. But she's not training for the next Winter Olympics, she's practicing with the IceSymmetrics, a masters synchronized skating team based in Oakland. The IceSymmetrics are a group of moms, lawyers, teachers, some professional skaters...and they're heading to Portland this week to compete in nationals. Bianca Taylor caught up with Robyn during practice. The Lowly Seagrass That Could Save Your Oysters From Climate Change What do you do when a global problem like climate change lands on your front doorstep? That’s what’s facing oyster farms up and down the West Coast, which are already feeling the impact. But, as KQED Science reporter Lauren Sommer tells us, one Bay Area oyster farm is teaming up with scientists to find a way to use nature to adapt. Timbuctoo: The Ghost of a Ghost Town For the next installment in our series "A Place Called What?!", about California places with bizarre or surprising names, we take a trip to Timbuctoo! Sacramento Finds and Celebrates Itself in New ‘Lady Bird’ Walking Tour While Hollywood prepares for the Oscars on March 4, a "Lady Bird"-themed walking tour began its inaugural trek in Sacramento. We join the tour and hear from guides and tourists about their personal connection to the semi-autobiographical movie. Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig called her film a “love letter to Sacramento.” What did the film mean for Sactown superfans? Mean: A Conversation with Myriam Gurba True crime, memoir and ghost story, "Mean" is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana.
When Italians in California were "enemy aliens," Black Panther: the Movie vs the Movement, The Body is Not an Apology, Life as a Stay-At-Home Dad
No One Under 60 Allowed at This LA Dance Party, Singing Gondoliers, Facing Violence and Isolation as a CA Deportee in El Salvador, Lasting Health Effects of Sexual Harassment, Chinese History in Fiddletown
Being in DACA Limbo, A Musician on Love and Loss, Conserving Water With GMO Beer, Seeking Help for Post-Partum Depression, A Town Named For Coal
Kids and Medical Cannabis, Grammy Nods for Young Composer, Moringa Mania, A Song Springs From Tragedy, Berkeley Perfume Museum
A Janitor Fights Back, Songwriter In a Cage, White Awake, Brothers Vie For Superbowl Spot
A Ride with a Rapper, The Curse of Bodie, From Ashes to Ashes, #MeToo Sparks A Former Abuser to Speak Up, A Town Called You Bet
As we head into 2018, we feature stories from our 'Start the Conversation' series, about people bridging divides despite their differences.
Refugee Café, Viet Nguyen on why Refugees are Threatening. Holocaust Survivor’s Roommate? The Granddaughter of Nazis, Syrian Family Puts Down Roots in Oakland
Elaborate Christmas Display by a Non-Christian, Giving Back with a Tamalada, Turning Up the Politics by Turning off the Amps
Public Art You Can’t Avoid Seeing, They Went from Immigrants to 'Burrito Royalty,' #USToo: Assault in the Jehovah’s Witness Church, Tiny Bookstore With Big Appetite for Old Cookbooks.
Controversial Discipline Practices, School for Autistic Kids Post-Wildfire, A Teacher’s #MeToo Story, Sphinx Buried in Sand Dunes
Helping the Homeless, By Living With them, A Reporter and A Politician Share Loss, Giant Tree Stump Takes the Opera Stage, Bumpass Hell
Unusual Romance Leads to Unlikely Family, Food and Family from 826 Valencia, Bringing Seniors Some Love, the OId-School Way, Gospel Quartet of Brothers Find Praise Outside the Church Walls
A Human Library, 'California Typewriter,' an Ode to Analogue, Placido Domingo’s 50-Year Run in L.A., Winery Faces Life After Fire, A Visit to Volcano, Calif.
From Aptos, California to ZZYZX (Population 1), it's a weekly California road trip for your ears, and your imagination.
Cattle ranching moms. Homeless college students. Young mariachis. They’re all Californians, and we’ve got their stories. Subscribe now.
Meet Flipper’s Ted Falconi, Vietnam Vet and Punk Rock Legend Flipper may not be the best-known band from Oakland, but after more than 40 years, it’s definitely one of punk’s most influential. It has inspired scores of musicians like Kurt Cobain and Moby. A large part of its signature sound comes from guitarist Ted Falconi, a Vietnam vet who brought the noises of war home with him. KQED’s Kevin Jones has this profile.
He Served in the U.S. Military, But That Didn’t Stop His Deportation Jose Cardenas decided to enlist in the Army because his stepfather was a veteran. Cardenas’ son and grandson have kept up that family tradition of military service, but Cardenas lives in Mexico now and not by choice. He was deported. He's one of tens of thousands of veterans who've served in the U.S. military but aren't U.S. citizens. KQED’s Erika Aguilar met him in Tijuana where hundreds of deported veterans now live.
What Vets Want at the End of Life Is Very Different From What Civilians Want Many veterans of the Vietnam war are now in their seventies and some are coming to the end of their lives. What soldiers, even former soldiers, want in death may be very different from what civilians want. Honor and respect can be much more important than being comfortable or free of pain. That can make vets harder to treat at the end of life, as KQED’s health reporter April Dembosky explains.
Raised by the River in Forks of Salmon, California In our continuing series “A Place Called What??” about California places with peculiar names, we visit Forks of Salmon, a very tiny town in Siskyou County where two forks of the Salmon River meet. To find out more about the town, the California Report’s Bianca Taylor called up professional kayaker and filmmaker Rush Sturges, who was born and raised in the place he affectionately calls "Forks."
A North Korean Refugee’s Journey to a Life in Southern California President Donald Trump’s trip to Asia this week comes at a point of extreme tension between the United States and North Korea. One sticking point has to do with North Korean refugees and Trump's executive order banning them from entering the U.S. The ban worries North Korean refugees already here. Many survived a harrowing journey, leaving friends and family behind. KCRW’s Benjamin Gottlieb tells the story of one man who escaped North Korea and made it to California.
Sound Guru Bernie Krause’s Beloved ‘Wild Sanctuary’ Destroyed by Fire Last month's fires in Northern California destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. But we also lost some key cultural landmarks. One of those places was an inspiration to artists, scientists and sound recordists around the world. Yet mostly unknown to its neighbors in Sonoma County's Valley of the Moon. It was home and studio of Kat and Bernie Krause. KQED Science Editor Craig Miller had visited many times before - both as a journalist and friend. After the fire, he returned, to help sort through the rubble - and record this story.
Nearly 2,000 Miles From Home, A Prisoner Gets a Visit From His Mom More than a decade ago, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in our state's prison system. That meant prison officials could do whatever it took to ease the overcrowding, including shipping thousands of inmates to other states. It was supposed to be a temporary solution. But many years later, many California prisoners are still locked up out of state. KCRW's George Lavender follows one mother on a journey to see her son, who's now two thousand miles away.
Trans Singer Encounters Mother (and Bathroom Laws) on Tour in the South For more than 40 years, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus has used its music to help create community and inspire activism. The chorus recently went on a tour of five southern states. The idea was to support local LGBTQ communities in the South. KQED Arts Reporter Chloe Veltman caught up with them on the tour bus. She tells us about one of the singers and his mom, who hadn't heard him perform since he was living as a little girl.
Lost Mural with Covert Political Messages Rediscovered in Post Office Basement You may not have heard of Victor Arnautoff, but he was a Russian artist who painted murals around San Francisco in the 1930s. He started off as an assistant to Diego Rivera and became known for his work on San Francisco's Coit Tower. He also painted three murals inside California post offices, including one in the Bay Area city of Richmond. But as Eli Wirtshafter tells us, that mural disappeared for almost 40 years. Until an amateur sleuth tracked it down.
Welcome to Rough and Ready, the Tiny Town That Used to Be a Republic Now for another installment of our new series, A Place Called What?!, about California towns with bizarre and surprising names. Last week we took you to Zzyzx, near Death Valley. And we asked our listeners for their ideas for weird place names. Scott Schlacter of San Jose sent us a note asking how the town of "Rough and Ready" near Grass Valley in Nevada County go its name. So KQED's Bianca Taylor called up Jayna Ashcraft, who lives in Rough and Ready. She says her small gold mining town has a big history: in 1850, it seceded from the nation, and temporarily became its own republic.
The Water Belongs to Everyone, and This Blind Kayaker Will Prove It We start our show with a man on a mythological mission. His name is Ahmet Ustunel. He lives in San Francisco, and he has a dream. He wants to return to his homeland of Turkey and take a big journey on a tiny kayak across the Bosphorus Strait, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. Think enormous freighters. And his little human-powered boat. But Ahmet Ustunel faces a unique challenge that will make this much harder for him. The California Report’s Laura Klivans joined him at a lake, where he’s training to make the journey.
You May Have Seen This Man Zipping Around Berkeley, but Did You Know He’s the Godfather of Disability Rights? “Hale” is a new short film exploring activism around people with disabilities. It tells the story of Hale Zukas, who helped make Berkeley the birthplace of the disability rights movement. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a child. He went on to study Russian and math at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and he helped found Berkeley’s groundbreaking Center for Independent Living. Filmmaker Brad Bailey made the documentary as his thesis project at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. He just picked up a Student Academy Award for the project.
Oakland Dad Reunites with Family After Lengthy ICE Detention We introduced you to this family a few months ago, when they found themselves in limbo because of new immigration policies under President Trump. The father, Maguiber -- he's named after the guy in the TV show MacGyver -- is from Guatemala. He's 27, and undocumented. He was arrested by immigration agents in February, and held in a jail in the Bay Area city of Richmond. Meanwhile, his wife has been struggling to care for their three children on her own. Maguiber has no serious or violent criminal history. In the past someone like him probably would have been released within a month or two on bond. But Maguiber spent over half a year in detention, before he got his day court. KQED's Julie Small brings us this update on his story.
A Day of the Dead Tradition Blooms in the Central Valley In some California communities with roots in Mexico, the last days of October are spent getting ready for Day of the Dead, and that means making altars for loved ones and covering them with marigolds. Those bright orange flowers aren’t always easy to find. The California Report's Vanessa Rancaño met a farmer who’s growing them in the Central Valley for people longing for a piece of home.
Welcome to Zzyzx, California – Population: 1 A lot of us Californians like to hit the open road, explore miles of highway, or venture off into some back roads. Sometimes, we come across towns with some pretty bizarre and surprising names, from Rough and Ready to Bumpass Hell. So today we're launching a new series we’re calling "A Place Called What?!" For our first installment, we head to Zzyzx. If you’re driving on I-15 near Death Valley, you might spot the sign. You won’t find any shops or restaurants or even houses there. But you will find the Desert Studies Center, a research station operated by a consortium of seven California State Universities. Rob Fulton manages the center, and he’s the only permanent resident in Zzyzx.
Voices From the Fires The wildfires that roared through Wine Country will rank among the deadliest and most destructive in California history. But many Californians are already jumping in, doing what they can now to support the recovery. We hear from both survivors and volunteers, who are looking ahead to a new future, post-fire.
An Oakland Hills Fire Survivor's Advice to a North Bay Fire Victim Jill Permutt couldn’t sleep the night the fires broke out near her home in Santa Rosa-- the moon was oddly red, and the winds were whipping fast. That feeling of desperate, surreal, surging panic? Joan Tanzer has felt it too. She lost her house in the Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991. Until last week, the two women were strangers. But then a mutual friend told Joan about Jill, about how her entire neighborhood in Santa Rosa had just burned to the ground. Joan called her right away, and since then they’ve talked several times. Sasha Khokha brings us inside their conversation, to hear the exchange of stories and advice.
How Do You Help Homeless Kids Stay in School? When families lose their homes, whether from fire, foreclosure or another kind disaster, helping the kids adapt is tough. Now we're going to hear about fifth grader who became homeless after his family was evicted from their home in Oakland. He spends hours just trying to get to school each day. Federal law says school districts are supposed to help students like him, making it as easy as possible for them to get to school, even as they bounce around in search of stability. Reporter Lee Romney spent the day with 10-year-old Naseem Bennett.
Worshipping at Santa Monica’s Church of Type In Santa Monica, off Pico Boulevard, there’s a shop that feels like it's from another time, from the era before computers, scanners and copiers. Kevin Bradley, the proprietor, is a master of the handset letterpress. After spending two decades building up his business in Tennessee, he came West to carry on the sacred tradition. Reporter Peter Gilstrap takes us to Bradley's storefront studio, the Church of Type.
Voices from Fire-Ravaged Northern California In Northern California, the week began with a sudden onslaught of flames whipped up by the wind. Multiple wildfires erupted across wine country. Homes, businesses and entire towns have been burned to the ground. Now, even as firefighters continue to work, many residents are returning to see what is left.
For Santa Rosa’s KZST Radio Station, the News is Personal Before Sunday night, if you tuned into KZST 100.1FM in Santa Rosa, you’d probably hear a talk show, pop music, or some classic hits. But since fires broke out across Sonoma County, phone and Internet access have been severely limited. So, the station’s staff has transformed it into an essential news source, broadcasting information about the wildfires live, 24/7. The station is surrounded by some of the worst fire damage to date. Ninna Gaensler-Debs takes us there.
My Santa Rosa KQED Online Arts Editor Gabe Meline lives in Santa Rosa, one of cities worst hit by the wildfires, with his wife and daughter. When they left their house, they grabbed their emotional treasures: their photos, old letters and their cat. The family is fortunate. Their house has survived, but Meline is a third generation Santa Rosan, and the fires have devastated the landscape where he grew up, and the sentimental landmarks that make the city his hometown.
Read Gabe's essay, 'My City Is on Fire'
PHOTO DIARY: Life in the Path of a Wildfire
What Happens When You Have ‘Fish Blood,’ But You Can’t Fish? For centuries, the Yurok tribe has lived along and fished the Klamath River in California’s far north. But this fall, the number of chinook salmon making their way up the Klamath is the smallest on record. Salmon is essential to the Yurok. It doesn't just represent food or livelihood; salmon is life. For the series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse went north to Yurok country.
A Week After a Massacre, Life Goes on in Vegas More than half the victims of this week’s mass shooting in Las Vegas were from California. Many Southern Californians, especially, have a deep connection to Las Vegas, but in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, there's not a lot of obvious acknowledgment of what happened, with casinos and hotel marquees still ablaze with intensity. What's changed? And what hasn't? Just Like My Mother: How We Inherit Our Parents’ Traits and Tragedies For many of us, our worst fear is ending up just like our mom or dad. It’s easy for our parents’ traits and habits to get passed down to us, and the same is true for the tragedies they experienced. Many Vietnamese refugees who fled the war and its aftermath don't like to talk about the circumstances of their escape, the traumas they faced live on in their children. Years After Tragedy, Fresno’s Hmong Seek Cultural Understanding for Next Generation About 20 years ago, eight Hmong teenagers in Fresno committed suicide. Their parents were refugees from Laos, and they knew the teen deaths were connected to their past. Second generation Hmong are reclaiming their parents’ history. Editor of Prison Newspaper Leaves Legacy Behind California’s journalistic community buried one of its own this week. Arnulfo Garcia was editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, a newspaper produced, written and edited by inmates. He formed the first and only chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists inside a prison. Just two months after his release from prison, at 65 years old, Garcia died in a car crash near Gilroy. He's remembered for accomplishments reached far beyond the prison newsroom.
On this special edition of The California Report Magazine, we go back in time to look at the Vietnam War and how it shaped the lives of some Californians. This week we’re in San Diego, home to the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton.
The Teen and Marine Who United to Resist the Vietnam War and Racism in the Military Not all the battles were fought in Vietnam -- enlisted men were also fighting a war against racism within the ranks. We’ll hear how that revolt took hold at Camp Pendleton, and sparked an unlikely friendship. He was a young marine. She was the daughter of a farmworker. They met at a coffeehouse called ‘The Green Machine.’ It was one of many around the country where active duty GIs could get free coffee, listen to music, read underground newspapers and talk with peace activists. These coffeehouses were key in building the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam.
Remember When Camp Pendleton Was a Refugee Camp? These Vietnamese Sisters Do In the Spring of 1975, the North Vietnamese took control of Saigon and the United States began frantically evacuating tens of thousands of South Vietnamese. Seemingly overnight, Camp Pendleton transformed into a makeshift refugee camp. That first wave included two teenage sisters, Evelyn and Jessica Kheo. They came from a well-to-do family in Saigon. At the camp they shared a tent with two other families, and used scratchy army blankets to keep warm. They hadn’t been back to Pendleton in 42 years -- and they let us tour the base with them.
Bridging the Political Divide, One Dinner at a Time Many of us are taught not to talk politics at the dinner table -- especially if your guests fall on different sides of the political spectrum. But as Bianca Taylor tells us, a new movement called ‘Make America Dinner Again’ breaks this rule, in a big way. It's the latest installment in our series "Start the Conversation.”
2 Years After Destructive Valley Fire, Lake County Rebuilds and Readjusts Between earthquakes, fires and hurricanes, a lot of us have been thinking about what's important to us, what we'd fight to keep if we faced a natural disaster. Those questions aren't theoretical to people in Lake County who survived a massive wildfire two years ago. When the smoke cleared, the fire had burned up 70,000 acres, destroyed 1,280 homes and killed four people. KQED reporter Sukey Lewis grew up in Lake County, and she went back to check in on how some of her friends are recovering.
War Is Not a Game: An 'Air Force Brat' On Growing Up with the Consequences of Vietnam We've been bringing you stories of Californians whose lives have been impacted by the Vietnam War. We reached out to you, our listeners, and many of you responded with your memories. We hear from Sacramento resident Angela Shortt, whose father served in the U.S. Air Force during the war. She was eight years old when her family was sent to live on a military base in the Philippines in 1966.
A Surfer Reflects on Life’s Waves So, what does an 83-year-old woman who surfs the cold waters of San Francisco's Ocean Beach have in common with a Buddhist monk hiking through the Himalayas? They're both people author Jaimal Yogis encounters as he scours the planet looking for the secrets to internal happiness, in his new book "All Our Waves Are Water." Yogis is a Bay Area surfer, journalist and meditation teacher. He joins us to talk about his book, which chronicles his quest for the perfect wave, and for an internal life that can weather storms, lulls, and thrilling rides.
Meet the Heartbeat of the Oakland A’s At every home game, some of the Oakland A's most diehard baseball fans bang out beats -- different ones for each player, and each action on the field. You can find this informal drum corps in Section 149 in the bleachers of the Oakland Coliseum. They got their start nearly two decades ago, and they’re likely to remain a fixture at A’s home games. The team just announced its intention to build a downtown ballpark and remain rooted in Oakland. Tena Rubio spent a home game with some long-time drummers: Bryanne Aler-Nigas, Will MacNeil, Andy Cho, and The California Report’s own Nina Thorsen, who drums for the A’s when she’s not making radio.
For Isolated Trinity County Residents, One Man Is Their Food Lifeline Trinity County is one of those places that doesn’t get in the news too often, unless it’s wildfire season like it is now. It’s a remote, rural part of northern California that can be breathtakingly beautiful. And it’s also one of the state’s most food insecure places, where many people don’t know where their next meal will come from. For the series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse brings us this profile of one man who helps feed them.
Photographic Portraits Bring You Face to Face With the Vietnam War It’s been more than 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War. And a lot of the people who fought, died and escaped from that conflict are coming to the end of their years. As KQED’s Rachael Myrow tells us, a Bay Area photographer is striving to give them the dignity and honor they’ve earned and a chance to feel remembered.
Monterey Jazz Festival, at 60, Honors Past and Celebrates New Talent This weekend, the Monterey Jazz Festival celebrates its Diamond Anniversary. It’s Sixty! The California Report’s Suzie Racho and our jazz critic Andrew Gilbert give us a preview.
Latino Artists Tap Into Science Fiction to Imagine ‘Alternate Worlds’ ‘Mundos Alternos,’ a massive new exhibit at UC Riverside’s Culver Center for the Arts, features more than 30 artists from across the Spanish speaking world taking on immigration, trade, colonialism and other cross-border issues through the lens of science fiction. The California Report’s Steven Cuevas went to check it out.
Oakland Residents Say Tent Encampments Threatening Neighborhoods In many California cities, homelessness has reached a boiling point. There's not enough housing or space. And tent encampments are cropping up in neighborhoods where they’re not always welcome. That's happening big time in Oakland, where complaints about homelessness have increased more than 700 percent over the last six years. KQED’s Devin Katayama has been spending time with neighbors who have totally different perspectives on the issue.
Gentrification and Climate Change Meet at ‘The North Pole’ Can you make gentrification and climate change funny? Those two very serious topics come together in the comedy web series, "The North Pole." The show revolves around a homegrown trio of best friends: Nina, Marcus and Benny, who find themselves an endangered species in a rapidly gentrifying city. The California Report's Sasha Khokha talks to Josh Healey, writer and producer of The North Pole, which premieres online September 12.
'Playing With Fire' Retrospective Pays Tribute to Artist Carlos Almaraz Some call Mexican-born painter and muralist Carlos Almaraz the John Coltrane of Chicano art. Like Coltrane, his life was cut short before he was able to reach his full potential. He died when he was 48. Now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is showcasing the first comprehensive retrospective of his work in decades. But as Steven Cuevas tells us, Almaraz’s story begins worlds away from the galleries of major museums, in the streets of L.A.’s barrios.
An Undocumented Immigration Attorney Reacts to End of DACA California is home to more DACA recipients than any other state, and they're still absorbing news this week that President Trump plans to phase out the program that’s given them temporary protection from deportation. We wanted to check back in with a "dreamer" we introduced you to last year, when she became the first undocumented PhD to graduate from UC Merced. She came here as a child from Mexico and worked her way through school picking watermelons, cleaning hotels, and selling produce at flea markets. We talked to her from Chicago, where she’s doing post-doctoral research. Dulce Garcia is an immigration attorney in San Diego and like many of her clients, her future is also uncertain because of her immigration status. In an interview with KPBS’s Marissa Cabrera, she says DACA changed her life and that she’s not going back in the shadows.
At the California Museum’s New ‘Unity Center,’ Conversations Trump Confrontations This week the California Museum in Sacramento is celebrating a new exhibit called the Unity Center, and it’s opening the same weekend far-right rallies in Northern California are expected to draw white nationalists. That’s an eerie coincidence, because the idea for the center began nearly 20 years ago when Sacramento was reeling from a string of hate crimes linked to white supremacists. Host Sasha Khokha checked out the exhibit.
Abandoned Bikes Get New Life After Burning Man Festival It’s that time of year again: Burning Man. The festival began in the ‘80s on a beach in San Francisco. But now, people gather in a desert outside Reno, Nevada. Thousands of “burners” will travel there from all over the world, and many will be bringing along bicycles. After it’s over, most of the festival’s structures and artworks will be ritually burned or packed up and taken away. But that’s not always true of the bikes. Kerry Klein at Valley Public Radio has this story about how some Burning Man bikes end up almost 400 miles away, at a Central Valley middle school.
Family Ties Bind New Albums from Douyé and The Sons of the Soul Revivers Each month, The California Report's Suzie Racho and our jazz critic Andrew Gilbert get together to talk new releases. They’re here on this week’s show with a couple of albums with strong family ties: Los Angeles singer Douyé’s ‘Daddy Said So’ and ‘Live at Rancho Nicasio’ from The Sons of The Soul Revivers.
The Family Biz: San Jose’s Kitazawa Seed Company This week we continue our occasional series, Family Biz, about small, family-owned companies in California. The Kitazawa Seed company was founded 100 years ago in San Jose by a Japanese immigrant who sold vegetable seeds to other Japanese Americans hungry for the tastes of home. The business almost went under several times. During World War II, the Kitazawas were locked up in an internment camp. Decades later, the company was saved yet again -- by a different Japanese-American family. But the two families never really talked about what this company represents. That’s what drove Maya Shiroyama, a 61-year-old from Oakland, to finally visit Tom Kitazawa, the last surviving son of the company’s founder. Reporter Alyssa Jeong Perry was there for that meeting, and brings us this story about a historic company that defied the odds.
Pinning Down One Man’s Button Obsession We’re going to end our show with a treasure hunt. It’s not gold we’re looking for, but rather a button. The kind that say stuff like “Vote for Kennedy” or “I Love California.” While most people don’t give these things a second thought, The California Report’s Ryan Levi introduces us to a man who’s spent the last 50 years seeking out this treasure.