California Sun Podcast

Mark Thompson was, for over 25 years, one half of the team of Mark and Brian, hosts of the iconic morning radio show on KLOS-FM in Los Angeles. Their show was a mix of comedy and music, and their personalities quickly became woven into the fabric and car culture of the city. Despite initial resistance from the audience, their show became number one in L.A. and was widely imitated. They earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a place in the Radio Hall of Fame. The Mark and Brian show was a testament to the once-upon-a-time power and intimacy of radio, and Thompson shares how that legacy evolved.

Zev Yaroslavsky, served 20 years on the LA City Council and 20 years on the LA County Board of Supervisors, a distinguished career unmatched in recent memory. Now a faculty member at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Yaroslavsky recently saw his daughter-in-law elected to a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Yaroslavsky reflects on his institutional memory of Los Angeles, comments on the city's evolution, its history of homelessness, and changes to government. He shares his thoughts on the corruption currently occurring at City Hall and the rarified atmosphere of the Board of Supervisors. While he appreciates the academic life he leads, we get the sense that there is a certain something that he misses about being in the arena.

Leighton Woodhouse, a Bay Area journalist and filmmaker, looks at homelessness, fentanyl, and the streets of our California cities through the lenses of our recent elections, his experiences growing up in the Bay Area, and his recent eye-opening visit to Portland. He wonders if there can ever be a policy solution to our urban problems, if Los Angeles will be the new San Francisco, and whether we've passed our prime as a state and a nation.

Stephen Galloway is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, producer, and dean of Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. He spent nearly three decades in writing, editing, producing, and leadership roles at The Hollywood Reporter, where he also created and produced the television series "The Hollywood Masters." Today, at Chapman, he sees a dedicated and talented group of students entering a business that bears little resemblance to the one he's worked in, but a group that he thinks will redefine movies as we know them.

While homelessness and crime appear to be the issues most driving our elections in California cities this year, it's fentanyl that is really on the ballot. My guest, journalist and author Sam Quinones, details how fentanyl changes everything we know about what's happening on our streets. Tents, shelters, jail, and death are all connected to fentanyl. We discuss how we got here, how bad it is, and what, if anything, might be done.

Rabbi Noah Farkas serves as the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. A long-time civic leader, he has not been surprised by the recent outbreaks of hate speech on the City Council, or by the anti-semitism of Kanye West. He shares his thoughts about the response to West, the culture of the city, the increasing fear he sees among the Jewish community, and the power of diversity and conversation that he hopes might help in this troubled moment.

Alex Shultz, a long-time reporter for SFGATE, has been looking at how San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson seems to only be pitching to the right side of the plate. The billionaire owner of the Giants has made large donations to some of the most far-right candidates and election deniers in the country, including Cindy Hyde-Smith, Herschel Walker, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, and Ron Johnson. Shultz discussed Johnson and the conflation of sports and politics in one of the most liberal cities in America.

Los Angeles Times columnist Erika D. Smith looks at the current implosion of the L.A. City Council, the mayoral race, and the city's place in the pantheon of systemic political mismanagement. She speculates that the city will have to go through all the stages of grief before it comes out the other side, where perhaps something positive can emerge. Until then L.A. politics may provide more drama than the Dodgers.

Joe Mathews returns to the California Sun podcast to examine what he sees as the folly of Gov. Gavin Newsom's national political ambitions. The longtime California journalist and academic thinks Newsom will never be president, in part because California is so politically and culturally disconnected from the rest of the country, but also because Newsom himself is just too peculiar. He suggests Newsom might be better off trying to become president of an independent nation of California.

Some days it seems that the problems of housing and homelessness offset all the good things about California. People and companies are leaving the state at an alarming rate, and the problems continue to grow. Governance, in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, appears paralyzed. Maybe we need to start over with all new leadership? So says our guest on this week's podcast, a professor of economics at UCLA and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lee E. Ohanian.