California Sun Podcast

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.

Dr. Joely Proudfit has traveled from tribal poverty to become a three-time tenured Cal State University professor and was a member of President Obama's National Advisory Council on Indian Education. She is a leading advocate for Native American education, sovereignty, cultural preservation, and ecological stewardship on behalf of California's largest-in-the-nation American Indian population.

Jonathan Littman, an author and innovation consultant, discusses his recent LA Magazine story that pries open how the traffic app Waze is hacking our city streets and adversely impacting neighborhoods — all with the artificial hope that we might get somewhere a few seconds faster.

Autumn McDonald, the director of New America CA and a former advisor to the late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, details her organization's disruptive efforts to promote and aid non-profits in seeking economic equity and inclusion via innovation, technology, and storytelling.

Anne Lamott, the beloved California author, has always strived to help us better understand ourselves. She shares some personal touchstones she holds onto in the midst of turmoil and global chaos and she reminds us that "everything will work if you just unplug it for a few minutes." Her latest book is "Almost Everything: Notes on Hope."

D.J. Waldie, in the tradition of historians Kevin Starr and Mike Davis, contextualizes our understanding of California and Los Angeles history and explains why, especially given the issues we face today, we're really "just like the rest of America, but only more so."