The California Report Magazine

This week on The California Report Magazine: What Skid Row Taught Acclaimed Violinist Vijay Gupta About Music When violinist Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at just 19 years old, he was the youngest to ever take a chair in a major orchestra in the U.S. But despite that shining achievement, he was desperately unhappy. Now in his late 30s, Gupta has a new memoir out called Restrung....

‘Podcasting Democracy’ Helps Constitution Come to Life for Teens As America gets ready to celebrate its 250th birthday, a new project called Podcasting Democracy is helping high school and middle school students engage with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Participants created a series of audio commentaries connecting how those founding documents still affect their lives today, and how the...

How a Pacifica Bar Became a Flashpoint for Queer Civil Rights The San Francisco Bay Area is known as one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly areas in the country but it wasn’t always this way. Back in 1956, the beachside city of Pacifica was the scene of a police raid at a local bar, known to be friendly to the queer community. Hazel’s Inn’s owner, Hazel Nikola had her liquor license revoked and was arres...

Connecting With My Father, and My Heritage, in Mandarin Many children of immigrants grow up hearing a language at home that they never fully learn to speak. For second generation kids in the US, the top three heritage languages are Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog. Mandarin Chinese is the native language of reporter Anna Zou. But up until a few months ago, she could barely speak it. Central Valley Fat...

Recent Graduates Reflect on How AI Is Reshaping Their Future Over the past few weeks, several college commencement speakers who praised artificial intelligence were booed by graduates. As these graduates  enter an uncertain job market, they’re grappling not only with an unpredictable economy but also with the feeling that artificial intelligence is unstoppable. AI can impact whether or not you get...

June is Pride Month, and for this week’s show we’re featuring excerpts from our Love You for You series, which recently won a regional Murrow award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Gender-expansive youth are often talked about in the news but we rarely hear from them, in their own words, especially about how they can thrive with loving support from their families and communities...

Uncovering Women Miners’ Forgotten Legacy in the ‘Swiss Alps’ of Sequoia National Park  Mineral King is located in the southern part of Sequoia National Park but its remote location means it gets fewer visitors than other parts of the park. So the campers and backpackers that make the trek are rewarded with a spectacular mountain range with rushing waterfalls. There are only a handful of buildings...

Going for a Hike in a California Park? Don’t Forget Your Sewing Supplies Hiking clubs are nothing new. But a group in Los Angeles is now trying to stretch their creative muscles while making new community. Los Angeles’ Hike and Sew members gather every other week in Los Angeles to get into nature with their needle and thread.  Reporter Clare Wiley joined the group as part of our Community Connecti...

The Story Behind the Bear on the California Flag is Bigger Than One Legend The grizzly bear on California’s state flag makes it distinctive and recognizable. Many people believe the bear is Monarch, one of the last California grizzlies. Captured in the mountains in 1889, he was held in captivity and displayed to the public for the last 22 years of his life. The KQED podcast Bay Curious wanted to f...

California's Governor’s Race Remains Wide Open. Here’s What to Know Before the Primary From controversies to campaign promises, California’s governor’s race is national news. And with ballots landing in mailboxes already, the race is still a toss-up — with eight candidates vying for the state’s top job. We sit down with KQED political correspondents Guy Marzorati and Marisa Lagos to hear more abou...

⁠In East Oakland, a Store Where 1 Item Is Always Free⁠ If you find yourself wandering around Oakland’s Dimond District, you might come across a rather unusual store. The space looks like a hoarder’s attic. It’s crowded with mismatched objects: glassware, old electronics, knitted hats, typewriters and rotary phones. But you don't need money to shop here, you can actually take one item home for free...

For people living with serious mental illness, there’s more to recovery than clinical treatment. Los Angeles County’s Hollywood 2.0 pilot program puts that idea into practice. Inspired by an Italian city’s holistic and successful approach — centered on friendship and purpose — officials brought the model stateside. For people like Mignon Poon, who spent years unhoused, the opportunity for communit...

This week, we’re revisiting two stories from Lisa Morehouse's series, California Foodways. California’s fruits and vegetables make a lot of stops on the way from the fields to your table. One of those places is the Oakland Produce Market, which supplies small markets, restaurants and other food providers with the freshest foods. You don’t have to work for a grocery store or run a restaurant to sho...

This week, we're revisiting a conversation from September 2025 about resilience with Oakland comedian Jackie Keliiaa. She’s a stand-up, writer, actor, and producer whose work not only reflects on her everyday life, but also her Native heritage. She’s been featured on Comedy Central, Team Coco, Netflix and IllumiNative's list of 25 Native American Comedians to Follow, and she organizes the all-Nati...

This Northern California Tribe is Reclaiming Mendocino Forest For Future Generations The Potter Valley band of the Pomo people is the first tribe in California to use a Forest Service grant to create a community forest near Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County. It will soon be a place where the tribe can offer youth camps and community events all year round. KQED’s Outdoors reporter Sarah Wright attend...

From Financial Freefall to Stability. How One Man Found a Way to Stay in the Bay The cost of living in California has only increased in the last year. And between housing, food, utilities and gas, many of us have been forced to get creative with our budgets in order to continue living here. Vanessa Rancaño has this profile of a man in the Bay Area whose decision to stay in California –despite his...

This San Francisco Post Office Is the Only Address Some Residents Have In San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, there’s a unique post office. It’s the U.S. Postal Service General Delivery Unit — a mail service where people who don’t have a permanent address can pick up mail. For the past decade, it’s been a lifeline in a district that’s home to 2,000 unhoused residents, allowing them to receive...

The Eaton Fire Ravaged Black Altadena. A Journalist Documents Its Resilience After the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena in 2025, reporter James Farr went live on radio station KBLA in Los Angeles. His weekly call-in show, Conversations Live: Altadena Rising, highlights the voices of fire survivors, focusing on the people from Altadena’s historic Black neighborhoods, which the fire disproportionate...

The Eaton Fire Destroyed Altadena’s Lush Greenery. These Volunteers Are Growing It Back The Eaton Fire was merciless when it came to  Altadena’s celebrated green spaces, destroying or damaging most of the leafy trees that lined the streets in many neighborhoods. Reporter Steven Cuevas tells us how local advocates are scrambling to restore what was lost and save what’s still standing.   A Post-War...

This week marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a somber anniversary that many Ukrainians here in California are commemorating. In fact, Silicon Valley is home to a large Ukrainian diaspora – many immigrants from Ukraine have come to work in the tech industry as engineers. Some of them have been using their tech skills to bolster the effort to defend Ukraine, and this...

When Cherish Burtson was sent to prison, she says one of the main things that helped her get through her time was reading. She devoured memoirs and books on mindfulness, which helped her manage the challenges she experienced behind bars. After she was released, she began to volunteer with Books Thru Bars San Diego, a group that provides reading materials to people who are  incarcerated. But lately...

When most of us head to the airport, it’s to fly out and leave. But some people go to the airport to stay, sometimes for months on end. People experiencing homelessness have had a presence at the airport since at least 2018, but airport officials say their number has grown. The San Francisco Police Department says it encounters about 35 unhoused people at the airport every day. But helping them fi...

Three years ago this week, Oakland bakery owner Jen Angel lost her life when a “smash and grab” robbery went horribly wrong. Ishmael Jenkins Burch, then 19, was driving the getaway car and was initially charged with murder. We bring you an excerpt from an episode of the Snap Judgment podcast, which explores  what happens when Angel’s community pushes for restorative justice instead of retribution,...

This weekend marks one year since the deadly Eaton Fire was contained. From the moment the fire first broke out, reporter Steven Cuevas began talking to his neighbors, to business owners, and other people who make up the fabric of this vibrant community, and we’ve featured those stories on our show ever since. Host Sasha Khokha joins Steven  as they  revisit some of those neighbors, including a 94...

This week we're featuring two stories from our friends at the Bay Curious podcast.  San Francisco’s Historic ‘Relief Cottages,’ Built After the 1906 Earthquake, Are Hidden in Plain Sight After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire leveled 80% of San Francisco, more than a quarter of a million residents were temporarily displaced. People who had the means left the city, but many low income San Franciscans d...