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What is California?

44 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 8 ratings

Conversations with notable Californians in a quest to understand the Golden State

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Episodes

Farewell (for now!) from 'What is California?'

November 29, 2022 08:00 - 2 minutes - 2.64 MB

=====  Produced, hosted and edited by Stu VanAirsdale Theme music: Sounds Supreme Twitter: @WhatCalifornia Substack newsletter: whatiscalifornia.substack.com Email: [email protected]

Episode 39: Anita Chabria

November 15, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 37.4 MB

Anita Chabria is a California columnist for the Los Angeles Times. "I don't think you have to align with someone politically to tell a fair story. I just think you have align with the truth." Notes and references from this episode:  Episode 7: Erika D. Smith - What is California? @anitachabria - Anita Chabria on Twitter  Anita Chabria story archive - LA Times “Are pooches in San Francisco getting high off meth-laced poop? Conservatives hope so,” by Anita Chabria, LA Times  “Armed and ...

Episode 38: Dan Walters

November 08, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MB

Dan Walters is a California political columnist for CalMatters. I’ve argued on many occasions that politics is not a leading-edge occupation. It doesn’t lead. It follows. It reacts rather than acts. I think we in the media depict politicians as the people at the head of the parade—the drum majors strutting along and leading the parade. Really, they’re the people at the end of the parade with the scoop shovels, when you think about it.  Notes and references from this episode:  @DanCALmatte...

Episode 37: Ellen Pao

November 01, 2022 07:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MB

Ellen Pao is the co-founder and CEO of Project Include as well as the former CEO of Reddit. Part of [ending online harassment] is just having a backbone. As a leader, just saying: “The people who are using my product and who are creating all the content, they actually matter to me. And I don’t want them to be abused. I don’t want them to be harassed.” It’s not that hard to make that change. Notes and references from this episode:  @ekp - Ellen Pao on Twitter  Project Include - home page ...

Episode 36: Alicia Garza

October 25, 2022 07:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MB

Alicia Garza is the principal at Black Futures Lab and the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. California is not seen as one of those places that has a high density of Black people, and therefore it's not seen as a place where Black culture is innovated. But it should be. Notes and references from this episode:  @aliciagarza - Franklin Leonard on Twitter  Black Futures Lab - home page  Black Census Project - home page “Lady Don’t Take No” with Alicia Garza - Apple Podc...

Episode 35: Greg Lucas

October 18, 2022 07:00 - 51 minutes - 46.8 MB

Greg Lucas is the California State Librarian. The more I see of California, the more I realize how special we are. I’ve been to European countries. I’ve been to South American countries. I’ve been to Malaysia. I’m fairly well-traveled. I’ve yet to find a country that has everything California has. [...] We forget sometimes how extraordinary a place this is. Notes and references from this episode:  @GregLucas20 - Greg Lucas on Twitter  California State Library - Visitor’s center  “Malcol...

Episode 34: Rep. Jackie Speier

October 11, 2022 07:00 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MB

Jackie Speier is the representative for California’s 14th Congressional District.  I really played by a set of rules that you served on the Board of Supervisors and then you ran for the Legislature and then you ran for Congress. I really came to Congress too late in my political career. I was 57 years old when I got elected to Congress. It’s based on seniority, so it takes forever to get to a position of authority, and everything is run through the chairs of committees. I had the luxury in ...

Episode 33: Dr. Garen Wintemute

October 04, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 57.6 MB

Dr. Garen Wintemute is an emergency room doctor at UC Davis Medical Center and the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program. We are in the midst of a huge national experiment that’s going to answer the question: What happens when you take a society that is exhausted, fearful, concerned for its future, angry at itself, polarized... and throw a bunch of guns into it? We have no alternative but to live through answering that question. Notes and references from this episode:  UC D...

Episode 32: Allison Arieff

September 27, 2022 07:00 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MB

Allison Arieff is the editorial director of print for MIT Technology Review.  I feel like all of America looks at infrastructure kind of the way a negligent homeowner looks at their house. “Yeah, the roof’s kinda leaky, but we’ll give it another year.” Invariably what happens is you’ve waited too long, your whole house floods, your insurance premiums go up, and it costs you three times as much to fix your roof–because you waited. Writ large, that, to me, is how we deal with infrastructure. ...

Episode 31: Miyoko Schinner

September 20, 2022 07:00 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MB

Miyoko Schinner is the founder of Miyoko’s Creamery. "People look at a single point in history and think that’s the way it’s been forever. But it hasn’t been. […] There was a time when everyone thought TV dinners were all the rage, and they were delicious. That was the standard at one point. And they didn’t want to have a big beautiful salad. Nobody wants to eat TV dinners now. People would prefer to have a big beautiful fresh salad. So tastes do evolve. Humans do evolve. We can introduce n...

Episode 30: Zeke Lunder

September 13, 2022 07:00 - 49 minutes - 45.8 MB

Zeke Lunder is the creator of the wildfire tracking resource The Lookout. The lookout is kind of a safety blanket for the [fire] crew boss. It’s nice knowing there’s someone up on the hill who’s got your back. So we kind of want to have people’s backs in California, and be a calm voice on the radio when things are getting a little squirrely—to let them know, “Hey, you should get out of there. You don’t need to run, but something’s coming.” Notes and references from this episode:  @wildlan...

Episode 29: Franklin Leonard

September 06, 2022 07:00 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MB

Franklin Leonard is the creator of The Black List. You can sort of make the case that Hollywood IS the American film industry. For me personally, I think of Hollywood as the people who are working in that system. I think Hollywood for me also invokes the history of that industry. And the history of that industry isn’t great in a lot of facets. … But when I think about the people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with within this ecosystem at this moment, I’m also very optimistic.  Note...

Season 3 Trailer

August 24, 2022 07:00 - 3 minutes - 3.63 MB

Greetings from What is California? HQ, where I’m excited to share with you the trailer for Season 3 of your favorite podcast about the Golden State. This season promises to be an enlightening, amusing, challenging, and all-around compelling set of conversations with notable Californians in our ongoing quest to understand this crazy, fascinating place. I’m thrilled about this season’s guest lineup to date, which includes some of our state’s most intriguing voices weighing in with their uniqu...

See You in Season 3!

May 12, 2022 07:00 - 2 minutes - 3.85 MB

Produced, hosted and edited by Stu VanAirsdale Theme music: Sounds Supreme Twitter: @WhatCalifornia Substack newsletter: whatiscalifornia.substack.com Email: [email protected] Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked What is California?, please rate and review What is California? on Apple Podcasts! It helps new listeners find the show.

Episode 28: Lenya Quinn-Davidson

May 05, 2022 07:00 - 46 minutes - 63.3 MB

Lenya Quinn-Davidson is a fire adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council. I think it’s really important for Californians in general to build comfort with fire–to build a relationship with it, to get out and see what it actually looks like on the ground. That’s a big part of the work that I do.  Notes and references from this episode:  Fire in California - University of California Cooperative Extension N...

Episode 27: Felicia Marcus

April 28, 2022 07:00 - 47 minutes - 65.9 MB

Felicia Marcus is a visiting fellow with the Water in the West program at Stanford University, as well as a founding member of the Water Policy Group. I think there was a bit of denial where folks felt like they had planned for a three-year drought, and they were fine. It’s like, “Dude–we could have a 10- or a 40-year drought.” So that’s not good enough. We kind of [need] to amp it up.    Notes and references from this episode:  Water in the West program - Stanford University Water Polic...

Episode 26: Josh McNair

April 21, 2022 07:00 - 32 minutes - 29.3 MB

Josh McNair is the creator of the travel website and video series “California Through My Lens.”  Without leaving the state, you could have a lifetime’s worth of experiences and adventures that are amazing–that are second to none. I never would have thought that was true before I started [California Through My Lens]. And to think that I’m 10 years in, and I still love traveling California? I never would have thought that was gonna be true either. That’s been the most surprising thing for me....

Episode 25: 'Farmer Fred' Hoffman

April 14, 2022 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MB

Episode 25: “Farmer Fred” Hoffman Fred Hoffman hosts the podcast and newsletter “Garden Basics with Farmer Fred” and is a Lifetime Master Gardener with the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners program in Sacramento County.  Notes and references from this episode:  FarmerFred.com - Farmer Fred home page @farmerfred - Farmer Fred on Twitter Get Growing with Farmer Fred - Farmer Fred on Facebook “Garden Basics with Farmer Fred” podcast - Apple Podcasts “Garden Basics with Farmer Fre...

WIC? Programming Note

April 07, 2022 07:00 - 51 seconds - 810 KB

A brief programming note and advisory about our April 7 episode.

Episode 24: Sarah Miller

March 31, 2022 07:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MB

Sarah Miller writes the newsletter The Real Sarah Miller, hosts the podcast “Very Specific Interviews” and co-hosts (with Joshua Clover) the podcast “Didn’t See It, Don’t Need To.”  California is both where I live and also feels like a foreign country. I think sometimes, if you feel like you live in a foreign country, it kind of makes you feel more alive–in the sense that you’re constantly noticing the experience of being. Notes and references from this episode:  @sarahlovescali - Sarah M...

Episode 23: Rigel Robinson

March 17, 2022 07:00 - 49 minutes - 45.5 MB

Rigel Robinson is a member of the Berkeley City Council, representing District 7 (encompassing UC Berkeley). As the region is growing, as the state is growing, we should be educating more Californians. I believe that educating more young people is a good thing—full stop. [...] I think this whole situation boils down to a prioritization of two things: The comfort of our longtime residents versus the basic needs of our new residents. Notes and references from this episode:  @RigelRobinson -...

Episode 22: Justin Ray

March 10, 2022 08:00 - 43 minutes - 39.4 MB

Justin Ray is the writer of the “Essential California” newsletter at the Los Angeles Times. I want to stretch the limits. I want to write about things that you may not have heard of, be that some trial in Los Angeles for male birth control or some crazy thing that’s happening in a small town in California. I wanna tell you about new things. I had the idea that there are a lot of people who felt the same way–that we’re getting a lot of the same stories about Newsom, about coronavirus–and I d...

Episode 21: Kristina Cho

March 03, 2022 08:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MB

Kristina Cho is the creator of the food blog and Instagram feed Eat Cho Food and the author of the cookbook Mooncakes & Milk Bread. Having the opportunity to live in this incredible neighborhood in California gave me some type of resolve, and I was able to feel confident embracing both sides of me. I think if I grew up in California, in some of these different neighborhoods, I would probably feel and be able to fully embrace the Asianness and Americanness more than I am now. But it’s a thin...

Episode 20: Louis Virtel

February 24, 2022 08:00 - 51 minutes - 47.1 MB

Louis Virtel is a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a co-host of the Crooked Media podcast Keep It. I remain shocked that I could meet a ton of people who are like me here. I really thought that was a New York thing. [...] I really thought in the abstract it was the land of models and actors, and I’m so psyched to learn: No–this is totally where I belong, [around] people who have made me so much funnier. I guess I’m just shocked to belong here so much, even though everything I’ve ever wanted...

Episode 19: Ken Layne

February 17, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutes - 48 MB

Ken Layne is the creator of Desert Oracle magazine and Desert Oracle Radio. I like a mythological landscape, you know? If you can figure out how to live in a landscape like that–at least for my temperament–that’s everything. Notes and references from this episode:  @KenLayne - Ken Layne on Twitter   Desert Oracle magazine - home page Desert Oracle Radio - home page Desert Oracle Radio - Apple Podcasts Desert Oracle Vol. 1 - MCD/Picador  Robinson Jeffers - Poetry Foundation The Land ...

Episode 18: Stacy Corless

February 10, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutes - 51.3 MB

Stacy Corless is the District 5 supervisor for Mono County and past board chair of the Rural County Representatives of California. What we’ve seen over the last couple of years in a county like Shasta really has been, at its heart, an anti-government movement rooted in cynicism and mistrust of government [and] institutions. I have to say that the majority of county supervisors I’ve met and worked with in this state can’t support that. We got elected to provide services–to stand up for the p...

Episode 17: Baratunde Thurston

February 03, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MB

Baratunde Thurston is the creator and host of the podcast How to Citizen, the author of the book How to Be Black, and a founding partner of the news and commentary website Puck.  The choices that California businesses make impact people all over the world who don’t even know where California is. It’s not just technology that gets made in California. It’s how it gets made. It’s how it gets funded. What types of tools get built are the ones that can accrue a ton of returns to the investors. T...

Episode 16: Daniel Swain

January 27, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutes - 54.2 MB

Daniel Swain, Ph.D., is a climate scientist in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and The Nature Conservancy   of California. He is the founder of the blog Weather West.  If you have a flash flood in an uninhabited desert, then it’s not causing anyone any problems. But if you have an ark-storm scenario in the Central Valley and you exceed the capacity of the levees ...

Episode 15: Dr. Monica Gandhi

January 20, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MB

Dr. Monica Gandhi is the director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and the Medical Director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital ("Ward 86.") We’re all angry because we’re sad. We look at movies and everyone’s crowded together, and we really miss that. And I promise it'll come back. But even if it doesn’t come back completely normally, please evaluate what gives your life meaning, and spend time with people. Because it’s not actually about school closure...

Episode 14: 'Year in Review' Roundtable

December 09, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutes - 52.2 MB

What is California? winds up its first season with its inaugural Year in Review episode! Host Stu VanAirsdale is joined by special guests Gustavo Arellano (columnist and podcaster, Los Angeles Times), Serena Dai (senior editor for food & wine, San Francisco Chronicle), and Emily Hoeven (newsletter author, CalMatters) to discuss the ups, downs, and delights of California in 2021.  Thank you for listening to Season 1 of What is California? We’ll be back in January featuring all-new conversati...

Episode 13: David Mas Masumoto

December 02, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutes - 46.8 MB

David Mas Masumoto is an author and farmer at Masumoto Family Farm in Del Rey, CA. Industrial agriculture didn’t care about story. The work that I did—the work that Sun Crest [peaches] sort of launched—was, “No, there’s story behind every food that we eat, every bite. And that story is part of the meaning of food. Let’s find out more about that story.” Notes and references from this episode:  You Won't Believe it's Vegan Pumpkin Pie, by Gena Hamshaw, Food52 Masumoto.com - Masumoto Family...

Episode 12: Marcos Breton

November 23, 2021 08:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MB

Marcos Breton is the California Opinion Editor for McClatchy, based in Sacramento.   As long as I’m sitting in the chair that I’m in, I want to talk about those things and write about those things honestly because they’re a part of who we are. They’re a part of our history in California. It doesn’t mean you don’t love our country. It doesn’t mean you don’t love our state.  I think real freedom begins with truth.   Notes and references from this episode:    @MarcosBreton, Marcos Breton ...

Episode 11: Jaime Lowe

November 18, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MB

Jaime Lowe is the author of Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.   For a long time, a stereotypical idea of what California might be would have this Hollywood glamor. Now it’s this Silicon Valley glamor, and it’s this sheen of wealth and success and privilege and manifest destiny and gold. And I think that we need to acknowledge that that is actually absolute destruction. For the ma...

Episode 10: Elaine Howle

November 11, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutes - 48.9 MB

Elaine Howle is the California State Auditor. I don’t particularly like that characterization [“scathing audit”] What our audits are intended to do is—as I’ve said to staff and at legislative hearings—is speak truth to power. To let people know we’ve audited this program, we’ve looked at how the state agency is implementing this program, and we found some significant weaknesses, and it needs to be improved. Now, our language—the tone—is sometimes very strong, and some agencies don’t like it...

Episode 9: Sonja Trauss

November 04, 2021 07:00 - 48 minutes - 44.9 MB

Sonja Trauss is the founder and executive director of YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard).   “NIMBYism is something that arises instinctively in response to a proposed change. People just do it. They want it. They have the feeling. They trust their feelings: ‘This feels bad; it IS bad.’ [...] That’s what we’re going against: How do we help people feel OK with change? How do we help people process it?”   Notes and references from this episode:    @sonjatrauss, Twitter   YIMBYLaw.org - Yimby L...

Episode 8: Miriam Pawel

October 28, 2021 07:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MB

Miriam Pawel is the author of The Browns of California, The Union of Their Dreams, and The Crusades of Cesar Chavez. Part of what I think is important about my work is that I try to translate California for people who do not live here—particularly people on the East Coast. I always say that I understand what they think of California because I was one of them. [I] really began to write about California because I found it such a fascinating place and, in many ways, a misunderstood one. Notes...

Episode 7: Erika D. Smith

October 21, 2021 07:00 - 49 minutes - 45.3 MB

Erika D. Smith is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. I do think there’s a lot of geography tied to people’s values and interests. I’ve enjoyed exploring different parts of the state and getting to know people who very much identify with where they’re from and care a lot about it for various different reasons. [They] oftentimes feel like other people in other parts of the state don’t understand where they live and what they do and what their life is like—which is probably true. But I thi...

Episode 6: David L. Ulin

October 14, 2021 07:00 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MB

David L. Ulin is the editor of the Library of America's Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s, the editor of Air/Light literary journal, and the former books editor for the Los Angeles Times.  I think [Joan Didion] is a corrective. Part of what drew me to her initially was that her inner weather and my inner weather are not that dissimilar. So there was that sense of recognition, but also the idea of her as a corrective of all that sunshine-y, California lotus-land myth. She is actively trying to ...

Episode 5: Michael Tubbs

October 07, 2021 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MB

Michael Tubbs is the former mayor of Stockton and the author of the upcoming book, The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home. Stockton is representative of where California intersects—or where California collides. You have this tension between rural and agricultural and urban. I remember telling people I was from Stockton, and everyone thought it was a community with a lot of farms. I was like, “I ain’t never seen no farm!” It’s a city with city issues but a very agricultural backgrou...

Episode 4: Karina Longworth

September 30, 2021 07:11 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MB

Karina Longworth is the creator and host of the podcast You Must Remember This and the author of the book Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood. I definitely have memories of being on the city bus for long periods of time. There is something, I think, sort of romantic and cinematic about watching the neighborhoods change outside the window. I definitely spent a lot of time looking out those windows, listening to music on a Walkman, and just sort of thinking about thi...

Episode 3: Graham Farrar

September 23, 2021 07:00 - 51 minutes - 46.8 MB

Graham Farrar is the Chief Cannabis Officer at Glass House Brands, based in Santa Barbara I think the thing that makes California special for cannabis is that this is where the culture originated, and there’s such a center of gravity here. There’s a center of gravity for a lot of things [culturally]—not to be arrogant about California. You’re talking Hollywood and music and a lot of that kind of stuff. But it really is the cultural capital for cannabis. You have so many of the good breeders...

Episode 2: Marisa Lagos

September 16, 2021 13:00 - 38 minutes - 34.8 MB

Marisa Lagos is a politics correspondent with KQED, based in San Francisco. We love direct democracy, and we love to bitch about direct democracy. It really is in our DNA here that we constantly have these ballots---whether it’s this recall or Schwarzenegger’s or the two dozen initiatives that we often see on big ballots. And everyone, every time, is like, “Why are we doing this? This is crazy.” But if you turn around and say, “So you don’t think we should have this?”, they’re like, “No, no...

Episode 1: Gov. Jerry Brown

September 09, 2021 07:03 - 57 minutes - 53.1 MB

Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown Jr. is the 34th and 39th governor of California. "We’re dealing with news. We’re dealing with the Texas abortion statute, a recall, polarization, Obama, Biden, McConnell… This is all the hurlyburly of politics. Government as I experienced it is more mundane. You show up—first of all, you’ve got to hire a staff. The Legislature puts in 4,000 bills. They’ll probably land 1,200 on your desk. You sign 90% of them, but then you’ll have an issue, and reporters will be ...

Trailer - What is California?

August 17, 2021 19:30 - 6 minutes - 6.25 MB

"What is California?" is a new podcast hosted by journalist Stu VanAirsdale. The show features conversations with notable Californians in a quest to understand the Golden State. The podcast premieres Sept. 9 (aka California Admission Day!). Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the website at whatiscalifornia.com Subscribe to the free newsletter at whatiscalifornia.substack.com Follow "What is California?" on Twitter: @WhatCalifornia

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