By KCRW
The stories shaping California's Central Coast, hosted by Jonathan Bastian.
Santa Barbara is having a vigil tonight for the 34 people who died in the Conception diving boat fire. We look at the history of diving in the area. Also, a new collection of personal essays written by a Westmont...
Hope Refuge helps underage sex trafficking survivors transition to a new life of freedom. And a San Luis Obispo Assemblyman hopes to keep California’s last nuclear power plant running with his proposal to reclassify nuclear power as renewable energy. ...
Scientists hope to reduce whale fatalities from ship collisions. A new sound technology will detect when the endangered animals are present and then alert cargo ships to slow down. More Mesa is on the market for $65 million and community...
Santa Barbara author T.C. Boyle explores how technology affects our lives in his short story The Relive Box . In Testimonios: Early California Through the Eyes of Women the authors have translated and transcribed taped oral histories from early California...
Pacific Standard employees took to social media to express their shock and anxieties over the magazine’s abrupt end. As fears of deportation grow among undocumented immigrants, complaints about fraudulent immigration lawyers are also on the rise. The city of San...
The last standing nuclear power plant in California may face safety issues if there's an electrical power outage during wildfire season. A new Sea Center exhibit at Stearns Wharf looks at efforts to revive the endangered wild abalone. And the...
A couple’s regenerative farming practices in Moorpark inspires the popular documentary “The Biggest Little Farm.” Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days’ tradition of selling decorated eggs on the sidewalk is under scrutiny for its environmental footprint. A new report suggests ideas...
The youngest of a 15-generation family farm in Carpinteria leaves the family history of growing fruit and flowers to embrace the “green rush” of cannabis cultivation. After six deaths this year at the Oceano Dunes Vehicular Recreation Area - and...
Kids’ free summer food programs are seeing low attendance following fears of increased ICE raids. California regulators hear public comment on ideas for decommissioning Platform Holly - the only oil drilling platform in the Channel that lies in California state...
Santa Barbara County uses a state grant to boost programs aimed to keep minors out of prison. An iconic Santa Barbara architect weighs in on his ideas for better downtown housing design. Lotusland’s renovated Japanese Garden offers an opportunity for...
County Supervisor, Das Williams, discusses cannabis permits in Santa Barbara County. Scientists look to explain the spike in gray whale deaths. Some new wine trends might impress your friends.
William Finnegan talks surfing, writing, and growing up.
Ventura approves a 24-hour homeless shelter. Marc McGinnes talks his new book “In Love with Earth”. And State Street gets cozy with some new shared commercial spaces.
The public weighs in on fracking California’s public lands. Gun shows will continue at Ventura County Fairgrounds. Trash collection rates rise in Santa Barbara. And a lifelong Santa Barbara forager shares his mushroom tales.
A memorial helps mark this week’s five year anniversary of the deadly Isla Vista shootings. Pest control issues crop up for avocado farmers in Carpinteria who neighbor with cannabis cultivators. And, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Goleta all remain slow to...
Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, talks about his new book “Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport.” And the Rosewood Miramar hotel in Montecito opens its flagship restaurant, Caruso’s.
Santa Barbara homeless residents will receive more wrap-around services, but may also face tougher rules on city park behavior. One woman explores the culinary and social joys of eating out alone. The Squire Foundation partners with the Santa Barbara Public...
Plains All American and DCOR face court decisions for business in the Santa Barbara Channel. A new program at UCSB hopes to encourage more students to study the humanities. Three UCSB music students share the stage with world-famous cellist and...
The Santa Barbara City Council voted to require landlords to provide one-year leases to tenants. It also took a big step toward approving a "just cause" eviction ordinance. After years of drought water conservation, the City of Santa Barbara lifts...
Debris nets go up in the slide zones of Carpinteria and Montecito in an effort to save money and reduce mudslide risks. Large container ships are asked to voluntarily slow down as the pass through the Santa Barbara Channel during...
The trees at the Ellwood Mesa preserve have been dying off, and the California Monarchs are following suit. Santa Barbara’s newest poet laureate talks about her two year tenure and her quest to take poetry from the university to the...
The city of Santa Barbara gets a state grant to try and help the roughly 900 people who are homeless in the city. Old Town Goleta has a reputation for being pretty sleepy. Can a booming beverage industry pour some...
An investigation by the Ventura County Fire Department says power lines owned by Southern California Edison started the Thomas Fire. The debate continues over whether or not the county should approve new onshore oil drilling near Santa Maria. And hundreds...
Birds are chirping, creeks are flowing and wildflower buds are beginning to pop up and down the Central Coast. A landscape architect who understands the complicated and delicate nature of creating public memorials offers advice to Montecito. And neuroscientists from...
A new Crisis Intervention Team in Santa Barbara County pairs a sheriff’s deputy with a mental health specialist. Photographer James Balog explains the massive impact humans are having on the elements. And KCRW tours Santa Barbara's largest landfill, which is...
Confidential records detailing police misconduct and use force are on the verge of becoming public in California, but the union representing Ventura’s sheriff's deputies is pushing back. There’s a new executive director at the Santa Barbara...
The president of Santa Barbara City College announces his retirement as students fume about how he handled disputes over race and gender. A local historian walks through a 4-mile-long tunnel below the Santa Ynez mountains to learn about Santa...
Tensions flare in the town of Carpinteria over the smell of pot. A local air traffic controller, who went without pay during the government shutdown, reflects after attending the State of the Union Address. And a new documentary highlights Santa...
The debate over gun control and gun shows heats up in Thousands Oaks after the Borderline shooting. A new documentary tells the controversial story behind a park that was once a cemetery in Ventura. And a rising Chicano musician returns...
Southern California’s largest utility company is suing Santa Barbara County for failing to prepare for last winter’s deadly debris flows. Award-winning author George Saunders believes fiction can help bring the country back together. And it’s...
Local federal workers are picking up free food as the government shutdown continues. More than 1000 PG&E workers in San Luis Obispo fear for their jobs as the utility declares bankruptcy. Santa Barbara is beginning to automatically enroll residents...
One year ago, torrential rain pelted the hillside community of Montecito, which was scorched a month earlier by the Thomas Fire. It unleashed a flow of mud and boulders the size of cars and killed 23 people. We check in...
A proposal to build tiny homes for the homeless in downtown Santa Barbara comes to a bitter end. A local production of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ has an unusual twist -- a woman playing the role of Scrooge. And...
A year ago, the Thomas Fire swallowed large swaths of Ventura County and lept into Santa Barbara’s front country, setting the stage for the late-night debris flow that took 23 lives. As we observe those anniversaries, we’re checking back with...
A local environmentalist says we should spend more time and money preparing for natural disasters than responding to them. A Ventura resident who lost his home in the Thomas Fire says rebuilding is taking longer than he’d hoped. Local animal...
A year after the Thomas Fire began, a new book out of Ojai tells stories of the community’s destruction and regrowth. Cuddle groups are popping up all over the place, including Santa Barbara. And, according to a newly released report,...
The city of Santa Barbara says it needs a new police station, but building one means displacing either farmers or lawn bowlers. The Woolsey has not only destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate, but it’s...
On the heels of a deadly mass shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, two blazes in the area are forcing more than 100,000 residents in Ventura and L.A. Counties to evacuate their homes.
At the peak of his career as a palliative care doctor in Santa Barbara, Michael Kearney found himself burned out and in a state of personal suffering. Even though he had become an expert in treating the pain of others,...
California and the Trump Administration finally found something to agree upon: offshore wind farms, which could be coming to the Central Coast. In the wealthy enclave of Montecito, an expensive race is shaping up for the local water district. Also,...
Author Pico Iyer returns to Santa Barbara to preview his upcoming speaker series. Columnist Starshine Roshell brings us inside the surprisingly large world of local trivia nights. And more controversy at the Santa Barbara Unified School District, as...
California becomes the first state to impose gender quotas on corporate boards, but will the new law make it through legal review? It’s a close race for the 25th Congressional seat in Ventura County, as Democrats try to flip the...
The race for two open seats on the Santa Barbara Unified School Board is heating up. Engineers say an aging levee in Ventura could put thousands of homes at risk. A new documentary connects the dots between the 2015 Volkswagen...
Cases of Valley Fever are spiking along the Central Coast. If Governor Jerry Brown wants to decrease the state’s carbon footprint, why is he approving new onshore oil drilling? A journalist tours a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley owned...
A third of the storefronts along downtown State Street in Santa Barbara sit vacant, and the city is trying to change that. Park officials in the Santa Monica Mountains say four new mountain lion kittens are a product of inbreeding....
Police officials in Lompoc are kicking homeless people out of an encampment along the Santa Ynez river. A local entrepreneur says his product reduces the risk of shark attacks. The United Farm Workers labor organization has a new female president....
California may become the first state to require large companies to have women on their boards. An economics professor from UCSB says we should prepare for a future with no physical cash. A new cookbook tells the story of one...
Officials with the Los Padres National Forest want to create fire breaks to protect communities from wildfires, but environmentalists worry about the harmful effects of commercial logging. Writer T.C. Boyle’s latest piece of fiction in the New...
This Saturday, LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel will lead students from the Music Academy of the West and the LA Master Chorale in Mahler’s Symphony Number 2, the “Resurrection," at the Santa Barbara Bowl. As wildfires continue to rage...
The City of Ventura is struggling to come to terms with story of a man who was murdered by a homeless person in a popular local restaurant. We’ll get reaction. Then, to San Luis Obispo where a mentally ill inmate...
