Fresno's Best

In 2019 three of us sat in Tommy Adlard’s living room downtown with a bottle of wine, a few microphones, and no plan, and talked with Aaron Foster for two hours. Seven years and 220 episodes later, this is the last episode of Fresno’s Best. My friend Dustin Maddox sat across from me in my living room on East Harvard to talk it through. I could have recorded this alone like a journal entry, but I d...

How do you change the way a community talks about immigration? Elizabeth Camarena and Linda Renland think one answer is a great documentary with a side of pupusas. In this episode of Fresno’s Best, Jordan talks with two founders of the People On The Move Film Series. It’s a volunteer-run series that screens films about migration in Fresno and pairs each one with a panel and food. Elizabeth is a lo...

Alexa Teal Green grew up in Fresno, left for UC Irvine, and spent nearly a decade in Los Angeles and the Bay Area working in comedy, tech marketing, and corporate events before COVID brought her home. Now she leads events and engagement at KVPR. She and Jordan talk about: coming back to Fresno and bringing corporate skills to smaller organizations what engagement really means how to measure succes...

Vince Mancini is back on Fresno's Best to talk about food.  Vince has been covering food for Fresnoland, and his reporting on Bulle, the city's buzzy new fine-dining spot, set off one of the more heated local food fights in recent memory. He went in to write a review, liked the food, and then started hearing from employees about bounced paychecks and unpaid vendors. The pushback that followed rais...

Judicial elections are some of the hardest races to vote in — nonpartisan, low-information, and easy to skip. In this episode, Jordan Mattox sits down with Jeff Hammerschmidt, a candidate for Fresno County Superior Court judge, to cut through that and get at how he actually thinks. A former Fresno DA prosecutor turned criminal defense attorney, Jeff brings experience from nearly every seat in the...

There's no tiki bar in Fresno — yet — but there's a thriving tiki community, and Wayne Stonecipher was instrumental in building it. Wayne is the founder of Central California Tiki, the group he started around 2018 that has grown from four friends making drinks out of the Smuggler's Cove book into a community of well over a thousand members celebrating "tiki escapism" across Central California, fro...

Jordan Mattox sits down with Jose Salazar, a senior defense attorney on the major crimes team at the Fresno County Public Defender's Office and a candidate for Fresno County Superior Court judge. Born and raised in Sanger in a family of immigrants, Jose traces his path from Central Valley high school football and debate to Berkeley, UC Hastings law school, and over a decade defending some of the m...

Meaghan McCready spends half her life suspended in the air and the other half at the front of a psychology classroom — and on this episode she makes the case that the two aren't as far apart as they seem. Host Jordan Mattox talks with Meaghan about her path into aerial arts, from a spur-of-the-moment sign-up at Fulton 55 to a decade of teaching silks, sling, and lyra at her downtown studio. They d...

Organist, conductor, and educator Cactus Harris joins Jordan to make the case that the pipe organ is anything but boring. From teaching himself accordion out of his mother's closet to commanding the 1928 Robert Morton theater organ at Warnors, Cactus traces a winding path through saxophone, keyboards, and a master's in conducting. He and Jordan dig into the instrument's unexpected origins, the mis...

District 7 City Council candidate Nav Gurm joins Jordan to make his case ahead of the June 2nd election. A UCLA and UC Davis Law grad who returned home to Fresno against the brain drain trend, Nav lays out his vision for housing, homelessness, public safety, economic development, and city hall culture. The conversation covers his all-of-the-above approach to the housing crisis and what revitalizin...

Naindeep Singh is running for Fresno City Council in District 1, and he's framing this race as a question of insider versus outsider — a contest of values and integrity rather than the old red-versus-blue divide. Jordan sits down with Deep to talk about what it's actually like to run for council in Fresno, the trade-offs of the district voting structure, and the critique that community organizers...

On this episode of Fresno's Best, Jordan sits down with Fernando Macias, the General Manager and Creative Director of the Eden Wine Lounge, to talk about why Fresno's nightlife has been missing somewhere you can actually hear the person across from you. Fernando opens up about the philosophy behind Eden: dim, neo-soul-soundtracked, intentionally conversational, and built as a juxtaposition between...

In February, Gilbert Quesada opened the PM Lounge — Fresno's first private business and social club — on a bet that the city has a higher-end hospitality appetite nobody's been serving. This week, Jordan is joined by special guest co-host Vince Mancini to sit down with Gilbert inside one of the club's private suites and talk through what it takes to build something like this here, and what it migh...

Sandra Celedon is the President and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities and a lifelong resident of California Assembly District 31. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who began their lives in the U.S. as farm workers, she grew up in Calwa, graduated from Roosevelt High, and earned her public health degree at Fresno State. Over more than two decades in public health and community organizing,...

Seven seats are open on the Fresno County Superior Court bench this June — the largest judicial shakeup in recent memory for a system that touches almost every resident, usually on their worst day. Jordan sits down with two of the candidates running for Seat 6: Rosalina Nunez , a 16-year family and civil attorney whose path into law began as a second-grader in immigration court during the Reagan a...

In this episode, Jordan sits down with Minkah Taharkah — multidisciplinary artist, land steward, and coordinator for the California Farmer Justice Collaborative — for a wide-ranging conversation about food, equity, and what it means to put down roots in Fresno. Minkah traces her relationship with ecology from her childhood on Crenshaw Boulevard, where she watched the city cut down a boulevard full...

In this episode of Fresno’s Best, host Jordan Mattox sits down with Kerman Mayor Maria Pacheco, who is now running for Fresno County Supervisor, District 1. Drawing from her lived experience growing up in poverty, raising children as a young parent, and navigating social services firsthand, Pacheco offers a deeply personal perspective on the systems that shape life in the Central Valley. The conve...

In this episode of Fresno’s Best , Jordan Mattox sits down with Ariana Martinez-Lott—community organizer, District 7 city council candidate, and longtime advocate for neighborhood-driven change. Ariana shares how her background in child development, her family’s immigrant experience, and her early exposure to disability through her brother shaped the way she understands systems, culture, and commu...

In this episode of Fresno’s Best , Jordan Mattox sits down with tennis coach Zach Ocegueda for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of tennis in Fresno and what it takes to grow as a player. Zach shares his coaching philosophy, emphasizing accessibility, repetition, and building confidence in athletes of all ages—arguing that anyone can become a great tennis player with the right mindset an...

Fresno’s Best host Jordan Mattox sits down with Miguel Arámbula, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley Housing Collaborative, for a wide-ranging conversation about housing, entrepreneurship, and the future of downtown Fresno. Miguel shares how his early experience rehabbing homes and working in community development led him into housing policy, and why he believes the Central Valley needs a...

Gardening is one of the most practical ways to reconnect with the land we live on—and in a place like Fresno, where climate, water, and ecology are constant topics of conversation, it can also be a civic act. In this episode of Fresno’s Best, host Jordan Mattox sits down with Linda Furnas, President of the Fresno County University of California Master Gardener Advisory Board and a member of the Bo...

On this episode of Fresno’s Best , Jordan Mattox sits down with Tai Chi instructor Francisco E. Alvarez to explore the discipline, philosophy, and lineage behind one of Fresno’s longstanding martial arts communities. Inspired as a child by Bruce Lee’s appearance in The Green Hornet , Francisco began training in different martial arts, building a foundation of discipline that eventually led him tow...

Today we’re talking about something that quietly shapes our daily lives in Fresno—our trees. From the ones lining our streets and shading our homes to the big, aging oaks that define entire neighborhoods, trees are one of the most important—and most misunderstood—parts of our city. My guest today is Ian Ashby, a board-certified master arborist and consulting arborist based here in Fresno. Ian help...

What does it really take to build community in Fresno — and why does alcohol sit at the center of so many of our public spaces? On this episode of Fresno’s Best, host Jordan Mattox sits down with Evan, entrepreneur and founder of Grizzly Fest, to talk about food, festivals, sobriety, and the hidden structures that shape life in the city. Evan shares why The Mad Duck remains his go-to Fresno restau...

What does “recovery” actually mean — and why does it matter so much for how we live, move, and age? In this episode of Fresno’s Best, host Jordan Mattox sits down with Paris Gaines and Dr. Chris Telesmanic, Doctor of Physical Therapy, from Recover Lab — a Fresno-based recovery and wellness studio focused on personalized, evidence-informed approaches to healing and longevity. The conversation explo...