The California Report Magazine

By KQED

What's The California Report Magazine about?

Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.

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The California Report Magazine episodes:

04.26.2024
Parents (and Teachers) Just Don't Understand
It's Youth Takeover week here at KQED, a time when we hand the mics over to local high school students. This year, we hear from teens at Fremont High School in in East Oakland. They talk about the challenges they face right...
04.19.2024
After Parole, ICE Deported This Refugee Back to a Country He Never Knew
After escaping genocide in Cambodia, Phoeun You’s family settled in Long Beach. But after being bullied as a teen, You joined a gang. He ended up shooting and killing a teenager. You served 25 years in California prisons and tried...
04.12.2024
Why Italians in California Were Treated as 'Enemy Aliens' During WWII
Within months of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, as more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were being sent to incarceration camps, other ethnic groups also became the target of new wartime security measures. Italian citizens living near California’s coastline...
04.05.2024
Making a Home in Fire Country
As journalists, we don’t often tell our own stories. We separate ourselves from the issues we cover. But sometimes, the story hits close to home. This week, we’re featuring a story from Erin Baldassari, KQED’s Senior Editor for Housing Affordability. Growing...
03.29.2024
A Queer Journalist Reflects on the Legacy of the Proposition 8 Tapes
Proposition 8 's Lessons for One Queer Journalist In November 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, taking away the right to marry from same-sex couples. But two years later, two same-sex couples sued the State of California in federal court. Prop...
03.22.2024
'Racist Trees' Uncovers Little Known History of Palm Springs' Black Community
Today Palm Springs is known for mid-century modern architecture and queer-friendly culture. But a new documentary on PBS's Independent Lens explores the history of racist housing practices in the city that effectively hid a black neigborhood behind a wall of trees. “Racist Trees” covers the fight to remove those trees decades...
03.15.2024
The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Japanese-American Story of Love, Imprisonment and Protest
Nine months into Satsuki Ina’s parents’ marriage, Pearl Harbor was bombed. Their life was totally upended when, along with 125,000 other Japanese-Americans, they were sent to incarceration camps. After unsuccessfully fighting for their civil rights to be restored, they renounced...
03.09.2024
Oscar-Nominated Shorts Tell Joyful California Stories
When Oscar season rolls around, everyone’s trying to catch up on the blockbuster films. But there’s rarely buzz about the short films, especially the short documentary category. This year, two joyful California films made the nominee list. Nǎi Nai and Wài...
03.02.2024
On Our Watch: A Whistleblower at California’s Most Violent Prison
When correctional officer Valentino Rodriguez first stepped behind prison walls, he wasn’t just starting a job, he was joining a brotherhood. What he didn’t know was that he was now bound by an unwritten code that would ultimately test his...
02.24.2024
How the Freeway System Shaped California
In many California cities, freeways and sprawl are just a fact of life. They’re baked into the design of much of the state. But how did we get here? Just how did freeways come to be such a big part...
02.17.2024
Could 'Urban Villages' Help Fix San Jose's Suburban Sprawl?
How The Bay Area’s Biggest City Wants to Overcome Its Sprawl The cars and trucks we drive account for nearly half of California’s total carbon emissions. And bringing those emissions down is going to require more than just swapping out gas...
02.10.2024
From Mannequins to Musical Roads: More of California's Hidden Gems
This week, we feature stories from our Hidden Gems series about out-of-the-way secret spots in California - places you might want to visit on a road trip! How This Oakland Business Gives Mannequins New Life (Almost) You might not notice them, but...
02.03.2024
How an Entire Oakland Block Decided to Go Solar
Roughly a quarter of California’s carbon emissions come from our buildings and the energy that powers them. And we need to cut those emissions down to next to nothing to avoid the scary effects of climate change. Making a home green is pretty...
01.27.2024
A Taste of Southeast Asia at Stockton's Angel Cruz State Park
On the northern end of Stockton, you'll find Angel Cruz Park. Most weekends it's lined with food vendors, many of them Hmong and Cambodian immigrants. For more than 30 years, this has been a destination for made-to-order dishes, where locals argue over who...
01.20.2024
Could Pickleball Help Change Prison Culture?
California’s oldest prison, San Quentin, has a new name. It's now the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. It was already known for its college classes and arts programs. But Governor Newsom is hoping a major overhaul of the prison and new...
01.13.2024
Unhoused Californians on the 'Bleeding Edge' of Climate Change
Whether it’s severe heat, cold, fires, or floods, people experiencing homelessness are on the bleeding edge of the climate emergency. Reporting for the KQED podcast, Sold Out: Rethinking Housing In America, Vanessa Rancaño follows the story of one woman who...
01.06.2024
A Pandemic Pivot Helped These Californians Launch Successful Food Businesses
This week we're featuring stories from our ongoing series Flavor Profile, featuring folks who started successful food businesses during the pandemic. Gas Station Filipino Dessert Shop Is Among NorCal’s Most Delicious Secrets Inside a nondescript National gas station off the 205 in Tracy,...
12.30.2023
Encore: Oakland Rapper Guap on His Black and Filipino Roots
This week we're revisiting a story from our series Mixed: Stories of Mixed-Race Californians. It originally aired in March 2023. Even if he’s not always recognized as part of the Asian American community, Oakland-born rapper Guap is fiercely proud of his...
12.23.2023
Encore: The Little Known Wartime History of Japanese Americans Living in Japan
This week we’re sharing a story from August 2023. It’s the little known history of Japanese Americans who were living in Japan during World War II. Reporter Kori Suzuki found out that his own grandmother, who he’d always thought was born...
12.16.2023
Centering Shared Humanity In Wartime
‘I’m Pro-Humanity’: One Palestinian’s Call for Peace in the Face of Tragedy Like a lot of people, journalist Asal Ehsanipour has been in a state of despair since the latest war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7. One of...
12.09.2023
Uncovering Abuse in a CA Disability Group Home
Katrina Turner lives in Fair Oaks, outside of Sacramento. She’s 43, nonverbal and developmentally disabled. Katrina lives in a special kind of group home for people who need a lot of support day to day. She has a history of self-injury,...
12.02.2023
Towns Along Pacific Coast Trail Struggle After Dixie Fire
Two Years After the Dixie Fire, Towns That Relied on Pacific Crest Trail Hikers Are Still Struggling Two years ago, the Dixie Fire nearly wiped the Pacific Crest Trail off the map. With a lot of work, the trail has mostly...
11.25.2023
Stories of California History Through Food and Family
On this week's show we're revisiting two stories about family, food and farming. We start in the Central Valley where David “Mas” Masumoto says he farms with ghosts. On his family’s organic peach, nectarine and grape farm south of Fresno, California,...
11.18.2023
The Aftermath of an LA City Council Scandal
It’s been a year since one of the biggest political scandals in its history rocked the Los Angeles City Council. In October 2022, a secret audio recording of three Latino council members and a labor leader was leaked to the...
11.11.2023
Searching For Home On Higher Ground
This week, we’re featuring an episode from our friends at the KQED podcast SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing In America. This season they're focusing on how climate change is affecting where and how we live. Climate change is intensifying wet periods...
11.03.2023
How a California Tribe Fought to Get Their Ancestral Land Back in Eureka
In the winter of 1860, white settlers massacred dozens of Wiyot people as they slept. Most were women, children and elders. Settlers then stole the Wiyot people’s land, including an island the tribe considers the spiritual center of the universe....
10.27.2023
Did I Actually Contact a Dead Person? A Science Editor In Search of His Mother’s Ghost
This Halloween weekend, we enter the realm of the unknown, and bring you a ghost story produced in collaboration with the Bay Curious podcast. Jon Brooks is a reporter and former KQED science editor who lives in the world of...
10.20.2023
Resilient Family Farmers Making It Work
From Laos to California: The Remarkable Journey of Ia Moua When the Vietnam War ended, thousands of Hmong people who had fought with American troops were no longer safe in their homelands. Many relocated to the U.S, like Ia Moua. She,...
10.13.2023
California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law
California’s Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act was meant to protect transgender people, reducing the trauma of physical and sexual assault experienced by many transgender women in particular when housed in men’s prison. But the culture at state prisons and...
10.06.2023
All-Female Mariachi Band Shatters Stereotypes
This All-Women Mariachi Group From Sacramento Is Redefining the Genre One hundred years ago, all-female mariachi bands didn’t exist. Even 50 years ago, women playing mariachi was rare. Today, though, women like Dinorah Klingler are rewriting the story of mariachi culture....
09.29.2023
An Ode to Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba"
Flavor Profile: Rize Up Gives Visibility to Black Bakers Like many others, Azikiwee Anderson took up making sourdough during the pandemic. Once he mastered the basics, he started experimenting with ingredients no one had ever put into sourdough: gojuchang, paella and...
09.22.2023
Symphony by Non-Verbal Teen Is His ‘Unforgettable Sunrise’
Non-Verbal Teen to 'Take On the World' With a Symphony Written in His Head Jacob Rock is a non-verbal, autistic teenager from Los Angeles who wasn’t able to speak until 2020. That’s when he began to vividly type out his thoughts...
09.15.2023
Cambodian Californians Seek Ways To Heal Trauma Of The Past
Cambodian Americans Work to Heal Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma More than 40 years after a genocide that killed two million people in Cambodia, the refugees who survived are still struggling to move past the trauma of the Khmer Rouge regime. From...
09.08.2023
Encore: W. Kamau Bell’s Family Explores the Mixed-Race Experience in New Film ‘1,000% Me’
This week we're revisiting one of our favorite interviews from our Mixed! series. W. Kamau Bell has centered conversations about race in much of his work as a comedian, author and TV host. But when Kamau, who's black, and his...
09.01.2023
The Invisible Work that Makes Hollywood Hum
LA Food Bank Welcomes Striking Writers and Actors Actors and writers are still on strike and a lot of folks behind the scenes from screenwriters to stunt doubles – are struggling. To help strikers, some businesses are offering discounts to union...
08.25.2023
Indigenous Californians Flexing Their Power in Big and Small Ways
Oakland’s Wahpepah's Kitchen Reclaims Native Dishes Crystal Wahpepah wanted to be a chef since she was 7 years old. Like her grandfather and mother, Wahpepah is a registered member of the Kickapoo tribe of Oklahoma. She remembers learning to make fry...
08.18.2023
Giant Sequoias Are Burning. Should We Replant Them?
When the Castle Fire started burning in August of 2020, it ripped through Sequoia National Park, burning for months and with an intensity that has become increasingly normal during wildfire season. Just one year later, the KNP Complex fire devastated...
08.11.2023
From Cesar Chavez to La Pulga: Latino Activists Make Their Mark on San Jose
Latinos helped build the city of San Jose, though its a history largely forgotten or ignored. This week, we’re highlighting the impact Mexican-Americans have had on the Bay Area's biggest city, through the lens of one Chicana trailblazer. And we'll...
08.04.2023
The Little Known Wartime History of Japanese Americans Living in Japan
This week we’re featuring a story from our friends at Code Switch. It’s the little known history of Japanese Americans who were living in Japan during World War II. Recently, reporter Kori Suzuki found out that his own grandmother, who...
07.28.2023
Foretold: A Fortune Teller's Unpredictable Future
This week we’re featuring the Los Angeles Times’ podcast, “Foretold.” It’s the story of a young mother, Paulina Stevens, who was raised in a Romani American family on the Central Coast. Paulina shared her story with reporter Faith Pinho as...
07.21.2023
Did Mac Dre Go to Prison Because of His Lyrics?
One of the biggest stories in hip-hop right now is set to play out in a courtroom later this year, when Atlanta rapper Young Thug goes on trial for gang-related activities. One of the key pieces of evidence cited in the indictment...
07.14.2023
How a Group of Surfers Helped Save Malibu from Wildfire; Redwoods Struggling
In 2018, the Woolsey Fire burned nearly 97,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It was one of the most destructive fires in Southern California history. Among the stories that emerged from the fire was one that seemed made...
07.07.2023
Encore: Mapping a Radical Legacy of South Asian Activism in California
This week we’re bringing you one of our favorite stories from 2022. You’ve probably heard of Bobby Seale and The Black Panthers. Or Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement. But what about Kartar Singh Sarabha and the Ghadar Movement? Or...
06.30.2023
More California Armenians Are Moving Back to Their Parents’ Native Land; Flavor Profile: LA's Saucy Chick; Petaluma Teens' Find Community at the Phoenix Theater
Communities in LA County, like the city of Glendale, are home to the world’s largest Armenian population outside of Armenia. Starting more than a century ago, Armenians fled their homeland during the Armenian Genocide and many of them ended up in...
06.23.2023
Activism Through Performance: Oakland’s House/Full of Black Women
This week we're featuring an excerpt from the Kitchen Sisters' special, House/Full of Black Women. For eight years now 34 Black women have gathered monthly around a big dining room table in Oakland, California. They meet, cook, dance, and strategize — grappling...
06.16.2023
Checking Out Santa Monica's 'Human Library'; Hidden History of Oceano Dunes
At This Library, You Check Out a Human, Not a Book — and Sit Down to Talk California prides itself on being a diverse state that welcomes folks from all kinds of backgrounds. But actually connecting people who have radically different life...
06.09.2023
The Passion of Chris Strachwitz
California music legend Chris Strachwitz passed away last month in San Rafael at the age of 91. He was the founder of Arhoolie Records, which championed traditional roots music like zydeco, blues, Norteño and Tejano. Starting in 1960, Strachwitz recorded...
06.02.2023
Is California Really the Abortion Haven It Claims to Be?
When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, California declared itself an abortion haven, an abortion sanctuary. The governor invited women from around the country to come here for safe, accessible abortions. He even set aside taxpayer dollars to help...
05.26.2023
‘We Had a Mission’: Longtime Richmond Teacher Reflects on Once-Stellar High School; Cooking Up LA's Next Chefs
When John F. Kennedy High School opened in 1967, it was a model of innovation. The Richmond school was designed for flexible scheduling, team-teaching and empowered students to take responsibility for their own learning. It also had award-winning extracurriculars and...
05.19.2023
The End of Wood Street: Inside the Struggle for Stability, Housing on the Margins of the Bay Area
KQED's Erin Baldassari has spent months reporting on what was once the largest settlement of unhoused people in Northern California. The city of Oakland has recently evicted some 300 people who were living in tents and trailers along Wood Street,...

What's The California Report Magazine about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The California Report Magazine episodes:

Parents (and Teachers) Just Don't Understand

After Parole, ICE Deported This Refugee Back to a Country He Never Knew

Why Italians in California Were Treated as 'Enemy Aliens' During WWII

Making a Home in Fire Country

A Queer Journalist Reflects on the Legacy of the Proposition 8 Tapes

'Racist Trees' Uncovers Little Known History of Palm Springs' Black Community

The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Japanese-American Story of Love, Imprisonment and Protest

Oscar-Nominated Shorts Tell Joyful California Stories

On Our Watch: A Whistleblower at California’s Most Violent Prison

How the Freeway System Shaped California

Could 'Urban Villages' Help Fix San Jose's Suburban Sprawl?

From Mannequins to Musical Roads: More of California's Hidden Gems

How an Entire Oakland Block Decided to Go Solar

A Taste of Southeast Asia at Stockton's Angel Cruz State Park

Could Pickleball Help Change Prison Culture?

Unhoused Californians on the 'Bleeding Edge' of Climate Change

A Pandemic Pivot Helped These Californians Launch Successful Food Businesses

Encore: Oakland Rapper Guap on His Black and Filipino Roots

Encore: The Little Known Wartime History of Japanese Americans Living in Japan

Centering Shared Humanity In Wartime

Uncovering Abuse in a CA Disability Group Home

Towns Along Pacific Coast Trail Struggle After Dixie Fire

Stories of California History Through Food and Family

The Aftermath of an LA City Council Scandal

Searching For Home On Higher Ground

How a California Tribe Fought to Get Their Ancestral Land Back in Eureka

Did I Actually Contact a Dead Person? A Science Editor In Search of His Mother’s Ghost

Resilient Family Farmers Making It Work

California Prisons Fail to Uphold Transgender Rights Despite State Law

All-Female Mariachi Band Shatters Stereotypes

An Ode to Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba"

Symphony by Non-Verbal Teen Is His ‘Unforgettable Sunrise’

Cambodian Californians Seek Ways To Heal Trauma Of The Past

Encore: W. Kamau Bell’s Family Explores the Mixed-Race Experience in New Film ‘1,000% Me’

The Invisible Work that Makes Hollywood Hum

Indigenous Californians Flexing Their Power in Big and Small Ways

Giant Sequoias Are Burning. Should We Replant Them?

From Cesar Chavez to La Pulga: Latino Activists Make Their Mark on San Jose

The Little Known Wartime History of Japanese Americans Living in Japan

Foretold: A Fortune Teller's Unpredictable Future

Did Mac Dre Go to Prison Because of His Lyrics?

How a Group of Surfers Helped Save Malibu from Wildfire; Redwoods Struggling

Encore: Mapping a Radical Legacy of South Asian Activism in California

More California Armenians Are Moving Back to Their Parents’ Native Land; Flavor Profile: LA's Saucy Chick; Petaluma Teens' Find Community at the Phoenix Theater

Activism Through Performance: Oakland’s House/Full of Black Women

Checking Out Santa Monica's 'Human Library'; Hidden History of Oceano Dunes

The Passion of Chris Strachwitz

Is California Really the Abortion Haven It Claims to Be?

‘We Had a Mission’: Longtime Richmond Teacher Reflects on Once-Stellar High School; Cooking Up LA's Next Chefs

The End of Wood Street: Inside the Struggle for Stability, Housing on the Margins of the Bay Area