California's Governor’s Race Remains Wide Open. Here’s What to Know Before the Primary

From controversies to campaign promises, California’s governor’s race is national news. And with ballots landing in mailboxes already, the race is still a toss-up — with eight candidates vying for the state’s top job. We sit down with KQED political correspondents Guy Marzorati and Marisa Lagos to hear more about the candidates and what we should look for in the final weeks before Election Day. 

In Northern California’s Maternity Desert, a Humboldt Midwife Offers Intimate Births

Despite being the nation’s most populous state, there’s increasingly fewer places to give birth.  In rural areas, giving birth can be  difficult and dangerous as local hospitals shut down maternity wards. In Humboldt County, some women now travel hours in labor to reach the nearest delivery room. One small birth center in Eureka is trying to fill that gap with a different approach to care. There, midwives spend more time with patients and offer a calmer, more personal setting for births. It’s a model that could help address the state’s growing maternity care crisis.

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⁠In East Oakland, a Store Where 1 Item Is Always Free⁠

If you find yourself wandering around Oakland’s Dimond District, you might come across a rather unusual store. The space looks like a hoarder’s attic. It’s crowded with mismatched objects: glassware, old electronics, knitted hats, typewriters and rotary phones. But you don't need money to shop here, you can actually take one item home for free. Free Oakland UP is both an art installation and mutual aid model, offering commentary on waste and reuse. KQED’s Srishti Prabha brings us the story of this space, and what it means to community members.

⁠A Basketball Trailblazer: My Mother, the WNBA Star You’ve Never Heard Of⁠

On May 8th, the WNBA will celebrate the start of its 30th season. Along with a surge in viewership and attention in recent years, players are also celebrating a new collective bargaining agreement. Athletes will receive 20% of gross league and team revenue, resulting in a big bump in salaries. This progress comes after decades of advocacy by early players who worked to carve out space for the women’s professional game. Judy Mosley McAfee was one of them. She was the sixth woman drafted into the WNBA. Last July, her daughter, reporter Audy McAfee looked back at her mom’s career.

In California, Women’s Hockey Is Growing

In February, the U.S. women’s hockey team took home Olympic gold. The win has inspired a new wave of players, including adults. Recently, USA Hockey announced that the number of women and girls who’ve signed up to play the sport has surpassed 100,000 for the first time. In California, women’s college hockey is growing too. Much of that momentum comes from grassroots efforts by women who don’t want to hang up their skates. Reporter Susan Valot hit the ice to bring us this story from Los Angeles.

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For people living with serious mental illness, there’s more to recovery than clinical treatment. Los Angeles County’s Hollywood 2.0 pilot program puts that idea into practice. Inspired by an Italian city’s holistic and successful approach — centered on friendship and purpose — officials brought the model stateside. For people like Mignon Poon, who spent years unhoused, the opportunity for community has proved pivotal. Reporter Lee Romney takes us inside a program that offers a new model for mental health care.

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This week, we’re revisiting two stories from Lisa Morehouse's series, California Foodways.

California’s fruits and vegetables make a lot of stops on the way from the fields to your table. One of those places is the Oakland Produce Market, which supplies small markets, restaurants and other food providers with the freshest foods. You don’t have to work for a grocery store or run a restaurant to shop here, as long as you buy in bulk. Lisa got up in the middle of the night to meet some of the people who keep the Oakland Produce Market humming. 

Then we head to farm country, where you often see signs  that say “Food Grows Where Water Flows.” The system of canals and reservoirs that feeds farmland in the Central Valley is one of the biggest in the world. But irrigation canals are also places where people dump unwanted objects, like toilets, furniture or shopping carts. It’s Big Valley Divers’ job to clean and maintain the canals and the dams that send water to farms. Lisa spent a day in Colusa County to learn all about the unusual job that keeps the water flowing.

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This week, we're revisiting a conversation from September 2025 about resilience 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, Good Medicine. Host Sasha Khokha sat down with Keliiaa for a conversation about comedy, identity, and how laughter can help keep us going during hard times. 

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This Northern California Tribe is Reclaiming Mendocino Forest For Future Generations

The Potter Valley band of the Pomo people is the first tribe in California to use a Forest Service grant to create a community forest near Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County. It will soon be a place where the tribe can offer youth camps and community events all year round. KQED’s Outdoors reporter Sarah Wright attended a mushroom foraging event on this ancestral land, which will now remain a forest for generations to come.

New Film Follows Indigenous Teens Kayaking the Klamath River After Dam Removal

A new documentary from Oregon Public Broadcasting follows a group of Indigenous teenagers as they kayak more than 300 miles down the Klamath River. They’re the first to paddle the entire length of the Klamath after four dams were taken down in 2024 — the largest dam removal in US history. First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath was filmed over the course of the monthlong paddle last summer, following the teens as they traversed waters that were allowed to flow freely again for the first time in 100 years. Host Vanessa Rancano speaks with the film’s producer, Jessie Sears, and one of the paddlers featured in the film, 16-year-old Tasia Linwood. 

In the 1970s, Bay Area Lesbians Created Their Own Economy

San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood is known all around the world as a gay mecca. But the city was also once home to a thriving, self-sustaining lesbian community in the city’s Mission District. KQED Arts editor Nastia Voynovskaya takes us to a new historical exhibit. It tells the story of the lesbian-owned restaurants, printing presses and bookstores that offered a safe haven in the face of discrimination.

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From Financial Freefall to Stability. How One Man Found a Way to Stay in the Bay

The cost of living in California has only increased in the last year. And between housing, food, utilities and gas, many of us have been forced to get creative with our budgets in order to continue living here. Vanessa Rancaño has this profile of a man in the Bay Area whose decision to stay in California –despite his financial hardships– is also a matter of safety.  

Small Ring, Big Dreams: The Central Valley’s Backyard Wrestling Underdogs

If you turn off Highway 99 just north of Stockton, you’ll find the 209 Dragon’s Den. The venue is wedged between a private home, a plant nursery and a barn, offering one of the humbler places to tangle in the independent wrestling scene. Since it launched about a year ago, it’s been drawing wrestlers from around the state. But the 209 Dragon’s Den isn’t just a place to bring the community together– it also helps wrestlers better understand themselves and their sport. Reporter Hannah Weaver takes us ringside. 

A Black-Owned Ranch in Southern San Diego Fosters Community and Ancestral Connection 

On a dusty road north of the Tijuana border is S&S Friendly Ranch. Founded in 1980 by siblings Sim Wallace and Sarah Buncom, the ranch started as a place to board their horses. But as KPBS’ Audy McAfee reports, the 10-acre ranch is now a community gathering place and a hub for education and innovation, thanks to their descendants.  

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This San Francisco Post Office Is the Only Address Some Residents Have

In San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, there’s a unique post office. It’s the U.S. Postal Service General Delivery Unit — a mail service where people who don’t have a permanent address can pick up mail. For the past decade, it’s been a lifeline in a district that’s home to 2,000 unhoused residents, allowing them to receive items like ID cards and Social Security checks. We spend an afternoon at General Delivery with reporter Erin Bump. 

Erika Oba On Weaving Asian American History Into Her Music 

In the 1970s, Asian American jazz artists found inspiration in Black musicians who used music as a tool for social change. They experimented with different styles alongside those musicians. They introduced instruments from their cultures to the genre, like taiko drums and the koto. The result was a new kind of sound, and a reflection of Asian America’s emerging political power. Today, the legacy continues. And as KALW’s Cara Nguyen discovered, there’s a new generation of Asian American jazz musicians like pianist Erika Oba, who are asking what it means to make music that honors this rich history, and speaks to the moment. 

A Queer Climate Movement Takes Root Along the Russian River

Sonoma County’s Russian River has been a destination for queer folks for more than a century. But these days, as a new generation is seeing the impact of climate change on the area, they’re doing more than vacationing. KQED climate reporter Ezra David Romero introduces us to a couple getting their hands dirty and creating a refuge for other LGBTQ folks. 

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The Eaton Fire Ravaged Black Altadena. A Journalist Documents Its Resilience

After the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena in 2025, reporter James Farr went live on radio station KBLA in Los Angeles. His weekly call-in show, Conversations Live: Altadena Rising, highlights the voices of fire survivors, focusing on the people from Altadena’s historic Black neighborhoods, which the fire disproportionately ravaged. He’s given voice to the community as they have moved from processing the shock and destruction of the fire, to navigating displacement, and deciding whether to rebuild. Reporter Steven Cuevas brings us this profile of radio host James Farr, and a few of the people whose stories he’s been following over the last year.  

AfroLA: Covering Altadena’s Black Community With a Long View

It’s been more than 14 months since the deadly Eaton Fire ravaged Altadena, particularly its Black neighborhoods that were home to elders and multigenerational families. While many news outlets have pivoted away from Altadena, the nonprofit solutions journalism outlet AfroLA, whose tag line is “Unapologetic. Black. Los Angeles” has remained committed to uplifting wildfire survivors’ stories throughout the slow process of recovery. The California Report Magazine’s host Sasha Khokha talks with AfroLA reporters Corrinne Ruff and William Jenkins about what sets this kind of community-focused Black journalism apart – and Ruff and Jenkins share the stories of some of the residents they’ve been following, including Black architects committed to rebuilding their neighborhood.

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The Eaton Fire Destroyed Altadena’s Lush Greenery. These Volunteers Are Growing It Back

The Eaton Fire was merciless when it came to  Altadena’s celebrated green spaces, destroying or damaging most of the leafy trees that lined the streets in many neighborhoods. Reporter Steven Cuevas tells us how local advocates are scrambling to restore what was lost and save what’s still standing.  

A Post-War Program is Influencing Home Rebuilds in the Pacific Palisades

A year after the Palisades Fire, rebuilding has been slow. But some local architects have been thinking about ways to move things along, taking inspiration from a 1940s post-war project. One of the goals of the Case Study House program was to build homes quickly, using inexpensive materials. The idea ended up revolutionizing architecture and forever linking Los Angeles with the mid-century modern home. KCRW’s Brandon Reynolds tells us how a new version of that program could help fire survivors get back into homes faster, and maybe even start another architectural renaissance.

How a Bay Area Program Helps Unhoused Residents Become Protectors of Their Environment

Researchers estimate 10% of California’s unhoused population lives along waterways. In the absence of enough affordable housing and shelter, it feels like the best of bad options for many. But trash and other hazardous materials can bring detrimental effects to these waterways. So a Bay Area pilot program is teaching unhoused residents ecological literacy and creek restoration. It’s a novel approach to address the environmental harms brought on by the growing number of unhoused people setting up camp along creeks and canals in California. 

Music Creates Connections for Bay Area Residents and Families Confronting Memory Loss

Studies have found that music can actually help with diseases associated with cognitive decline like Alzheimer’s or dementia. At Sutter Health’s Ray Dolby Brain Center in San Francisco, a monthly singing circle is offering respite and joy for people with memory loss and their caregivers. As part of our Community Connections series, The California Report Magazine’s intern Srishti Prabha introduces us to a couple who help lead the group in song.

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