California Sun Podcast

Sam Liccardo, the 65th mayor of San Jose, shares his view of the city as facing unique challenges and only now coming into its own. Liccardo also discusses his effort to get elected leaders around the state behind a proposal to turn PG&E into a customer-owned utility.

David Ulin, the former L.A. Times book editor, interprets Joan Didion, just as she interpreted California. As the editor of the new multi-volume edition of her collected works, Ulin shares insights about Didion as a writer and cultural figure and about her vision of California.

John Dunbar, the newly elected president of the League of California Cities, explains how the organization — made up of nearly 500 cities, more than 3,000 local elected officials, and 50 board members, all with different agendas and each struggling against Sacramento for local control — really works.

Paul Theroux, the renowned travel writer and author of the new book "On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey," takes the trip that all of us in California should take to understand our southern neighbor. Traveling by car along the border and deep into the interior of Mexico, he helps us appreciate the people and places that impact our culture, our economy, and the future of our state.

California and Silicon Valley may have created much of today’s America. But according to tech entrepreneur and presidential candidate Andrew Yang, the impacts are only just beginning. While we worry about Facebook and social media, we’re overlooking larger threats on the horizon and the “techlash” that will result from artificial intelligence and automation.

Dr. Manuel Pastor, USC professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity discussed how the future of work, politics, demographics, and race can be found in California. A state was once considered reactionary in the 1980s became a progressive beacon. Now it’s paying a price for that success.

Lincoln Mitchell, author of "San Francisco Year Zero," makes the case that the San Francisco of today begins in 1978. The assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the massacre of Peoples Temple members in Jonestown, the explosion of the city’s punk rock scene, and a breakthrough season for the San Francisco Giants, he says, all led inevitably to 2019 San Francisco.

Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, details how the school is developing our next generation of journalists while taking advantage of the unique media resources of Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

Soleil Ho, the newly minted restaurant critic at the S.F. Chronicle, shares her modern approach to food criticism, the politics of food, and the responsibility of being our culinary cartographer at a time when food is inseparable from who we are.

Producer Rocky Lang and film archivist Barbara Hall share the intimacy of personal letters from the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, John Huston, Ingrid Bergman, and others. Their collection, "Letters from Hollywood," is a voyeuristic but heartfelt examination of a bygone era, where personal letters reflected the passion and work of the time.