The Finest

What's growing in your backyard? In San Diego, one of America's most biodiverse regions, the answer is more complicated than you might think. It's home to roughly 3,000 plant species, with many still undocumented. This episode follows hikers, students and nature lovers using the free app iNaturalist to photograph plants and animals, contribute to a global biodiversity database and help scientists...

Matcha has become a worldwide sensation. The bright green powdered tea now appears in lattes, smoothies, desserts and viral foods across social media feeds. Demand has surged so quickly that producers in Japan are struggling to keep up. But matcha's story didn't begin in a cafe. For centuries, the tea has been at the center of a carefully choreographed ritual known as the tea ceremony, a practice...

Lou Curtiss dedicated his life to preserving forgotten music — and now his extraordinary personal collection is being shared with the community he nurtured for decades. At Folk Arts Rare Records , thousands of vinyl records, CDs, tapes and rare recordings are being unboxed, cataloged and placed on shelves for music lovers to explore and purchase. In this episode, we meet Brendan Boyle, who began s...

Content note: This episode contains discussion of suicide and domestic abuse. If you or someone you know needs support, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This episode is a special feed share from One of Their Own, a KPBS true crime podcast created and hosted by KPBS racial justice and social equity reporter Katie Hyson. In 2018, 25-year-old San Diego police officer Ciara Estr...

San Diego's Topeka Clementine brought the KPBS patio to life with a performance as part of the Sundrenched Sounds live music series — spontaneous, communal and emotionally charged. Blending sharp storytelling with sing-along moments and unexpected humor, the set moved seamlessly between intimate confession and collective call to action. We sat down afterward with Kai Simovich, the musician behind...

The bold, joyful sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle are woven into San Diego’s landscape, even if many people don’t know her name. In this episode, we explore the life and legacy of the artist behind Queen Califia’s Magical Circle, the Sun God at UC San Diego and the beloved Nikigator in Balboa Park. After decades of boundary-breaking art and personal hardship, Niki came to San Diego late in life...

Jessica Sanchez grew up in the South Bay, the daughter of Filipino and Mexican American parents. Her mother says she started singing as soon as she could talk. By age 10, Jessica was performing all over San Diego's South Bay, including her local Seafood City grocery store, before taking the national stage on the very first season of " America's Got Talent ." By 16, she became the runner-up on "Ame...

Elizabeth "Ely" Rosales Aguilar has built Raíz Chocolate from her San Diego home kitchen, turning a childhood love of chocolate into a small but thriving business. She carefully sources Mexican cacao and crafts silky bars and rich drinking chocolates, like champurrado, using recipes passed down for generations. Her work is precise and deliberate, highlighting skill, patience and artistry while rem...

Risograph printing was built for efficiency — a fast, economical way to make thousands of identical copies for offices, churches and schools. It was never meant to be expressive or personal. After newer technology pushed the machine into obsolescence, artists began discovering risography — drawn to its unpredictability, physicality and limits. From a squatted bank in the Netherlands to DIY print s...

The Finest returns with a new season, exploring the people, art and movements redefining San Diego culture. From discovering new species in local preserves to reviving forgotten arts, crafting chocolate at home and forging unexpected connections, these stories celebrate ingenuity, resilience, and community. Premiering Jan. 15, new episodes drop weekly. Search The Finest wherever you get your podca...

We’re dropping a special minisode during our season break with one request: Help shape Season 2 of The Finest by taking our anonymous survey at KPBS.org/TheFinestSurvey. Your feedback helps guide what stories we cover next — and it enters you in a raffle to win an exclusive The Finest T-shirt. We’ll draw winners before the Season 2 premiere on Jan. 15. Plus, KPBS Racial Justice and Social Equity R...

For many people who are incarcerated, a single book can be life-changing – a rare source of freedom and connection in a system built on isolation. That was true for Cherish Burtson, who discovered during her time in federal prison that reading could be a source of survival. Books became her escape, her education and a starting point to rebuild her life. But getting books behind bars isn't easy. Ac...

Alice Barnett's music once echoed across America — her songs were performed on national radio, reviewed in major newspapers and sung in concert halls from New York to Los Angeles. But over time, her name slipped from memory. In this episode, San Diego musician and researcher Katina Mitchell brings Alice's story back into focus, tracing her journey from a gifted young composer in Illinois to an int...

"Dispatch From Paradise" writer Cora Lee went searching for ghosts in Presidio Park, but her exploration of San Diego's supernatural underbelly didn't stop there. She visited San Diego's many mysterious cults in person, meeting members and observing their practices, and explored a long-running family dynasty of fortune tellers that has sometimes drawn law enforcement and media attention. In this H...

San Diego's rising rock trio Slacker helped launch the pilot phase of the new KPBS Music Series with a live performance — loud, joyful and a little chaotic in the best way, but played with real precision and skill. Dressed in button-down shirts and ties, the band tore through their songs on the KPBS patio as the lunchtime crowd cheered. We sat down with the band right after their set to talk about...

San Diego's Cameron Mofid set out on an audacious quest: to break the record for being the youngest person to visit every country in the world. His journey took him to 195 nations, from peaceful capitals to conflict zones few dare to enter. Along the way, he faced moments of danger and discovery, including assuming a fake identity in Yemen to navigating a terrorist threat in Somalia and making a b...

For our 20th episode, The Finest team reflects on our season so far — the episodes that made the biggest impact, what still lingers with us months later and a taste of the gems left on the cutting-room floor. From Our Lady of Guadalupe to birding and romantasy books, we revisit comments from fans (and critics) and how these stories continue to resonate. Julia and Anthony also share a quick list of...

Mabel’s Gone Fishing is more than a seafood restaurant in North Park — it’s a Michelin Bib Gourmand honoree that quickly became part of the neighborhood’s cultural fabric. We meet owner Chelsea Coleman, whose family history includes longtime Padres announcer Jerry Coleman and a KPBS love story. Together with her team, she has built a space that blends local ingredients, Spanish and Portuguese flav...

What happens when a TV station pauses its regular programming to auction off everything from kitchen utensils and European vacations to toilet seats and rare art — with guests like Big Bird and Dick Van Dyke dropping by? In San Diego, those broadcasts became unforgettable. This episode dives into the history of the KPBS auction — a weeklong fundraising marathon that energized the community for mor...

In this episode, recorded live at the KPBS San Diego Book Festival , authors Emily Greenberg ( "Alternative Facts" ) and Moses Ose Utomi ( "Forever Desert" trilogy ) delve into storytelling across genres. Greenberg's politically charged, experimental fiction and Utomi's fantasy, rooted in West African mythology, may appear vastly different, but both investigate how societies — real and imagined —...

In 1975, Lucky's Breakfast, also known as Lucky's Golden Phenix, opened in North Park with a few U-shaped booths, a short-order griddle and a man named Lucky Wong at the helm. Well into his 80s, Lucky worked as a one-man show: He took every order from memory, cooked and served every plate and made every customer feel like family. "Everybody thought they were special to him," said Ruth Kramer, a lo...

Blink-182 is the biggest band to ever come out of San Diego. But their path — from the dungeon of the original SOMA to global stardom — was shaped by a lot more than just talent. With music journalist Dan Ozzi , co-author of bassist Mark Hoppus' new memoir, "Fahrenheit 182," we revisit the band's early years and the lucky breaks that helped launch them, from skate videos to a last-minute drummer s...

Romantasy has become one of the fastest-growing book genres in publishing — a blend of epic love stories and magical stakes that's capturing the imaginations of readers. Once dismissed as unserious or overly indulgent, the genre is now being embraced by a new wave of fans, thanks in part to #BookTok , viral buzz and social commentary that touches on real-world issues through fantastical stories.&n...

Port of Entry is a KPBS podcast that tells cross-border stories that connect us — from people whose lives are shaped by the border itself. The show is fascinating and fun, always taking listeners to new places and introducing them to incredible people and stories from both San Diego and Tijuana. In this bonus episode, we're sharing a recent installment of Port of Entry that the whole Finest team l...

Isauro "Junior" Inocencio, Ron Recaido and Romali Licudan grew up as second-generation Filipino Americans in Southeast San Diego during the 1990s. As violence intensified in their community, they found inspiration in comics, hip-hop and murals. They formed a crew to create large-scale, permission-granted graffiti on a neighborhood wall. Their goal was to express themselves and offer something posi...