California Sun Podcast

Randy Shaw, a longtime San Francisco housing advocate rejoins the California Sun Podcast to discuss some recent shocking scenes in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. He also looks at how homeless and housing needs in California still might get some attention after the coronavirus pandemic.

Dan Walters, a columnist for CalMatters, is the dean of journalists covering Sacramento and California government. We went to Dan to get his assessment of how Gov. Gavin Newsom was handling the coronavirus crisis and what the pandemic might mean for the state. Walters looked ahead to a mountain of future debt, stalled legislative initiatives, an underfunded unemployment insurance system, limited public health infrastructure, and a long-lasting set back for the Golden State.

Matt Richtel, a Pulitzer prize-winning technology and science journalist for the N.Y. Times, is the author of "An Elegant Defense." In this week's podcast, he reminds us that while we search for the vaccine or the antiviral for the human operating system, we already have one. It's not made by McAfee or Microsoft, but rather it's our complex immune system. It's a system that is both saving us and also killing us.

Maybe we should be trying to solve our current coronavirus crises in Silicon Valley, and not at the National Institutes of Health? This week we talk with journalist Chip Walter, who takes us inside the work of a group of well-known tech boomer billionaires trying to find a way to achieve immortality by stopping the aging process.

Steve Lopez is one of California's legendary columnists and reporters. In his 45th year in journalism, 20 of those writing a column for the L.A. Times, Lopez's life has merged with the fabric and lifeblood of the city he covers. The author of the best-selling book "The Soloist" shares his views on his career in journalism, housing, and the future of California and Los Angeles.

Conor Dougherty — New York Times economics reporter, Bay Area native, and the author of "Golden Gates" — looks deeply into California's housing crisis, the historical economic forces that have driven it, the sad results we see on our streets, and the activists pushing for new public policies. He explains how and why what's happening in California should be a cautionary tale for the rest of the country.

Naomi McDougall Jones lays out the battle lines for gender parity in Hollywood. The actress, writer, and producer — whose Ted talk "What it's like to be a woman in Hollywood" has more than a million views, and whose new book is "The Wrong Kind of Women" — has helped ignite a new conversation about the women-in-film movement.

David Talbot, a long time Bay Area journalist and political activist returns to the California Sun podcast to share a reimagined view of the world after his life-threatening stroke. His near-death experience, and what he learned from it, is also the story of our times.

Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times film critic for almost 30 years and the regular film critic for NPR's "Morning Edition," looks at the state of Hollywood on the eve of the Oscars. He describes a business edgier than some of this year's movies, one that's operating far out on the precipice of change and about to be eaten by Netflix.