The California Report Magazine

Part 1 of our new series Love You for You features trans and nonbinary youth in conversation with people in their lives who love, support, and mentor them. Gender-expansive kids have been in the headlines a lot lately, but we rarely hear them tell their own stories. Our series highlights kids who are thriving, with complex, multifaceted identities that go beyond gender. This week, we’ll hear from...

Election Day is almost here, and in most of California, there's just one measure on the ballot: Proposition 50. Backed by Governor Gavin Newsom, Prop 50 aims to create more Democratic-leaning districts. It's a move to counter Texas's redistricting plans favoring Republicans. And  some heavy hitters are lining up on both sides, including former President Barack Obama, Representative Alexandria Ocas...

The California Report just turned 30! On November 4, we’re throwing a party to celebrate, at KQED in San Francisco, with special guests whose stories we’ve featured on our show. This week we’re reprising two of those stories. ⁠How Experimental Composer and Performer Kishi Bashi Brings New Ideas to Life⁠⁠ Kishi Bashi has been releasing music for over a decade. The Santa Cruz-based musician and comp...

Need a Gorgeous Diwali Outfit? Nimisha Aunty Will Take Care of You On a recent weekend, a Morgan Hill home’s two-car garage was transformed into something dazzling. Shoppers tried on embroidered Indian outfits and excitedly chatted in Hindi and Gujarati. This is Nivy’s Nook, the homegrown boutique Nimisha Jadav runs out of her garage. As part of our series about about people spreading joy and buil...

On October 6, 1995, The California Report’s first weekly show went on the air. Today we’re celebrating our birthday with a look back at that first show, which explored issues we’re still grappling with today, and featured a soundscape that created a roadmap for covering this huge, diverse state.  How a Chinese Laundryman Shaped US Civil Rights From San Francisco The increased number of violent ICE...

Today we’re bringing you an excerpt from the first episode of a new podcast called A Tiny Plot, from our friends at KQED’s Snap Studios. About one third of our nation’s homeless population is here in California – with close to 6,000 people on the streets each night in Oakland alone. Producer Shaina Shealy spent more than a year following a group of unhoused people at Union Point Park in Oakland as...

Located near Hayward in Alameda County, Russell City was once home to mostly Black, Latino and poor white families boxed out of other Bay Area neighborhoods by redlining and the cost of living. But in the 1960s, after the county refused to extend water and sewer service to Russell City, it declared it a “blight,” and used eminent domain laws to bulldoze the community and displace more than 1,000 r...

This week, our series on Californians and resilience continues 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-Native comedy show, G...

This week, we’re bringing you an excerpt of the KQED podcast Close All Tabs, which features stories about how digital culture shapes our lives. Their new occasional series, OGs of Tech, looks beyond the billionaires to spotlight the often-overlooked innovators who helped build the digital world we live in today. One of these OGs is Felidoro Cueva, who grew up in a rural village in the Andes mounta...

This Labor Day weekend, we’re bringing you some of our favorite stories from the California Report Magazine archive. You may have seen these viral stories on your social media feeds: a frightened shelter dog bonding with their foster; a good samaritan helping a street vendor by buying all their merchandise; an artist drawing a portrait of a stranger and listening to their life story. These acts st...

The Independent Journalist Covering Immigration Raids In Her Own Community  Earlier this summer, 17-year-old Kevin Robles was in his friend's car driving through their neighborhood in Oceanside when he noticed vehicles with tinted windows and nearby, masked men taking someone out of a red car. He started live streaming on Instagram and it went viral. But then a little over a week later agents with...

How a Pasadena Church is Helping One Senior Through Wildfire Recovery It’s been more than seven months since the Eaton Fire tore across Altadena, just east of Los Angeles. Rebuilding homes and neighborhoods could take years – a daunting timeline, especially for seniors. Local advocates worry that many elders within Altadena’s historic Black community won’t be able to rebuild. Afro LA’s Corinne Ruf...

Recently, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at fundamentally changing how the country addresses homelessness. The order promises to crack down on street homelessness across the country, in part by institutionalizing people with mental illness. Here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom has criticized Trump’s recent order, while at the same time encouraging a more punitive approach to...

It’s been nearly seven months since the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, killing 30 people and hollowing out a once vibrant community. For many survivors, the fire has impacted their mental health, as many try to navigate rebuilding their homes and their lives. Reporter Steven Cuevas lives in Altadena, and he’s been talking to therapists who are finding ways to support their community at the same...

Luis Rodriguez credits reading and writing for keeping him resilient his whole life. He’s best known for his 1993 memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., which chronicles how he joined a gang at age 11, found himself homeless and using heroin, and wound up in the juvenile justice system. He went on to write 17 books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and he served as poet laureat...

In May, the Golden State Valkyries kicked off their inaugural season. Even though they just started playing games in front of Bay Area fans, the team is said to be valued at $500 million dollars, the most of any franchise in the WNBA. And the team just had their first player named to the All-Star team: Forward Kayla Thornton was named as a reserve. These days the WNBA is on fire with record viewer...

You can hear elements of hip-hop, R&B and even jazz in Tokimonsta’s intricate drum loops, synths and bass lines. On her latest album, Eternal Reverie, the Grammy-nominated producer found inspiration in a Brazilian record, and created music tinged with the memories of a close friend. For our series on California composers, Reporter Clare Wiley brings us this profile of Tokimonsta and the devastatin...

Summer is the heart of the baseball season. But recently the country’s oldest professional sport has been going through some changes. It’s not just the moves to speed up the pace of play. These days, along with training in the weight room or the bullpen, players are also spending time with their team’s sports psychologist. KQED’s health correspondent April Dembosky goes behind the scenes at the Sa...

88-Year-Old Audio Engineer Sandy Stone Survived Transphobic Backlash and Made History Audio engineer Sandy Stone got her start working alongside Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills & Nash. When she joined the California lesbian music label Olivia Records, some feminists wanted to kick her, and all trans women, out of women’s spaces. But Stone went on to become the first openly trans...

In California, music and winemaking seem to go together. Visit any of the state’s countless wineries and you can hear all kinds of music, from jazz and folk, to classical and Americana. But one artist on the Central Coast takes that connection especially seriously: he spent years making an album full of sounds from a vineyard. Reporter Benjamin Purper takes us to San Luis Obispo to learn more abou...

Meet the Woman Reuniting Eaton Fire Survivors With Lost Treasures The fierce Santa Ana winds that whipped the Palisades and Eaton fires into deadly infernos also spared precious things you’d think would have been the first to burn: old family photos, children’s art work, postcards, even pages of old sheet music. Those things sometimes blew across neighborhoods, and people are still finding them as...

In the 1960s and early 1970s, California was at the forefront of movements for racial justice, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and protests against the Vietnam War. But at the same time an anti-tax revolution began to take shape, led by an unlikely political figure: Howard Jarvis. This week, as we mark the 47th anniversary of the passage of Proposition 13, we’re featuring a special episode from our frie...

A Ford Factory Changed Milpitas, Then It Bacame a Mall  The Great Mall of Milpitas, in Santa Clara County, wasn't always a mall; it used to be a massive Ford auto factory. The San Jose Assembly Plant opened in 1955, after relocating from Ford's outdated Richmond location. The new factory put Milpitas on the map, transforming a sleepy agricultural town into a thriving city. The factory’s opening al...

Sitars and Symphonies: LA Composer Reena Esmail Fuses Indian Ragas with Western Rhythms We continue our California composers series with Reena Esmail. Her childhood in Los Angeles had two soundtracks: the Western classical music her parents loved, and the old, scratchy Bollywood tapes her paternal grandparents would play over and over. Those multicultural influences shaped what would become the dr...

In Rising Voices of  El Cerrito's Young Poets, a Message About Resilience As our series about Californians and resilience continues, we hear from El Cerrito’s poet laureate, Tess Taylor, and students at Harding Elementary School. They wrote about what resilience means to them for a recently published anthology called “Gardening in the Public Flowerfest.” For One Vietnamese Family in LA, This Broth...