History of California Podcast

Today, we have Gary Krist on the show. Gary has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is the bestselling author of the acclaimed narrative nonfiction books The Mirage Factory, Empire of Sin, City of Scoundrels, and The White Cascade.  He has also written five works of fiction. Krist has received the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kau...

Jack Gedney is the author of The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live and a compact field guide to the trees of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2018, he has written a column on local birds, “On the Wing,” for the Marin Independent Journal. Jack currently co-owns a wild bird feeding and nature shop in Novato, California. The focus of our conversation today...

 Today we have Dr. William Deverell on the show. Dr. Deverell is a professor of History, Spatial Sciences, and Environmental Studies at USC. He's an American historian with a focus on the 19th and 20th century American West. He has written works on political, social, ethnic, and environmental history, and is the founding director of the Huntington USC Institute on California and the West. This was...

Today, we have Dr. James Tejani, Associate Professor of History at Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo, on the show. We will be discussing his new book A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America .  Here’s the description of the book:  The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobile...

I am so excited to share today’s episode with you. For those of you who follow my substack, you may know that I have decided to make my way through Steinbeck this year. We started with Pastures of Heaven, a short story cycle that comes a few years after his first publication, called Cup of Gold, which is a historical novel set in Mexico. I decided to skip that first book as Pastures of Heaven turn...

Today, we have Dr. Brittany Friedman on the show. Dr. Brittany Friedman is a sociologist and expert on cover-ups, politics, and the dark side of institutions. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Friedman's research has appeared in the Washington Post, NPR, The Nation, Jacobin Magazine, and the Associated Press, among others. She is co-founder of the...

Rob Crisell is an author, poet, actor, winemaker, and teacher in Temecula, California. For the past eight years, he has taught poetry and Shakespeare with the Murrieta Valley Union School District. He has been a Shakespeare lecturer with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He has acted in The Merchant of Venice, Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), Baskerville, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo an...

In the last episode on the first series about the railroads and California, we conclude by discussing how the Big Four sought to cement the railroads and the meeting the Central and Union Pacific to bind east to west. 

On today's show, we welcome Rebecca John. Rebecca is a Research Fellow at the Climate Investigations Center. She is also a freelance journalist and award-winning documentary film maker. As a Producer and Director of the acclaimed  “Extreme Oil” /  “Curse of Oil”   series for  PBS /BBC  her work was awarded a  Cine Golden Eagle  for News Analysis. Other award-winning and nominated series and films...

Today, we welcome Dr. Maxwell Johnson on to the program. He is the author of  A Connected Metropolis: Los Angeles Elites and the Making of a Modern City, 1890–1965,  a fascinating a book about the development and key players in early days of Los Angeles.  Buy his book here.

Naomi Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winning author of multiple traditional mystery series and noir short stories. Her Mas Arai mysteries, which have been published in Japanese, Korean and French, feature a Los Angeles gardener and Hiroshima survivor who solves crimes. Her first historical mystery, Clark and Division, which won a Mary Higgins Clark Award, follows a Japanese American family’s move to C...

Today, we have Dr. Oliver A. Rosales on the show. Dr. Rosales is a Professor of History and former Faculty Coordinator of the Social Justice Institute at Bakersfield College, earned a B.A. in History at the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in History at California State University, Bakersfield, and a Ph. D. in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a former V...

Dr. Tore Olsson is a historian of the United States since the Civil War, specializing in the U.S. South, popular culture, rural and agricultural history, transnational history, the environment, and food. His work emphasizes making history accessible and relevant to diverse audiences through writing and teaching. His most recent book, Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Vi...

Today, we have an episode with four amazing scholars, Dr. Lisa Barg, Dr. Tammy Kernodle, Dr. Dee Spencer and Dr. Sherrie Tucker, to discuss the life, signficance, and legacy of the Melba Liston, a pioneering jazz instrumentalist, composer, and arranger.  Here's a link to the introduction to the Melba Liston Research Collective

In this episode, we jump into the background of the transcontinental railroad and the companies and government initiatives designed to complete this monumental infrastructure project. 

Today, we have historian Dr. Sandra Bonura on the show. Dr. Bonura is a frequent storyteller and lecturer on the importance of using a multitude of primary sources to gain perspective on historical events, and the author of the 2020 biography of John D. Spreckles (the Hotel Del Coronado’s longest owner) entitled, “Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego” and more recently "Th...

Today we have Dr. Richard J. Goodrich on the show. Dr. Goodrich is an author and historian. After 20 years as a history professor, Dr. Goodrich decided to move full time into writing. His interests range from ancient history, the Roman Empire, and early church history to the modern age. His latest book is L.A. Birdmen, A Gripping History of Early Aviation on America's West Coast. This joins his pr...

Paul Haddad is the author of several books about his native Los Angeles, including the critically lauded, L.A. Times Bestseller "Inventing Paradise: The Power Brokers Who Created the Dream of Los Angeles," "Freewaytopia: How Freeways Shaped Los Angeles," "10,000 Steps a Day in L.A.: 57 Walking Adventures," and "High Fives, Pennant Drives, and Fernandomania: A Fan’s History of the Los Angeles Dodge...

In this introductory episode, we complete some table setting by looking at some of the history and development of railroads before diving into California and railoroads. 

Today we have Alex Brown on the show. Alex is a librarian, local historian, author, and writer, and an Ignite award winning critic. Much of their writing covers black history, librarianship, YA, and speculative fiction. The focus of our conversation today is their two books of nonfiction, Hidden History of Napa Valley and The Lost Restaurants of Napa Valley and Their Recipes. I really enjoyed talk...

Today, we have Matthew Davenport on the show. Matthew is an attorney and the author of two books, the second of which, The Longest Minute:   The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 is the topic for today's conversation. Matthew's first book, First Over There , was a finalist for the 2015 Guggenheim Lehrman Prize in military history, and was heralded by Pulitzer Prize winning historian...

Eric Porter is Professor of History, History of Consciousness, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz, where he is also affiliated with the Music and Latin American and Latina/o Studies departments. He previously taught in the American Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz as well as at the University of New Mexico and the University of Nevada, Reno. His research and teaching interest...

Today, we conclude by discussing the later life of Leland Stanford. 

Today, we have Langdon Moss on the show. Langdon is hosting a great new podcast called The Savage West where he unravels the complex web of early western expansion, taking listeners beyond the basic narrative to expose the raw realities of America's savage origins. What truths lie beneath the legends of violence, greed, hope, and courage? What do the history books get right, and what ideas, events...

Dr. Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her influential research examines the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. An award-winning author, teacher, and mentor, she has written three acclaimed books: How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, an...