The Finest

Dianna Cowern, better known as Physics Girl, built a career explaining science to millions of people. But after a mild case of COVID, she developed debilitating symptoms that left her largely bedbound and unable to do many of the things she once took for granted, including sharing physics videos with her devoted fans. After struggling to find answers, she was diagnosed with ME/CFS and mast cell activation syndrome. Three years after she stopped making videos, Dianna recently returned to Physics Girl with a new science video. We talk with Dianna and Kyle about the illness that changed their lives, the treatments that have helped her regain some abilities, the challenges of caring for someone with a poorly understood condition and what researchers are still trying to figure out.

Guests:

• Dianna Cowern aka Physics Girl, science communicator and physicist
• Kyle Kitzmiller, Long Covid and ME/CFS advocate and Physics Girl’s husband

Sources:

• The Surprising World of Local Twitch and YouTube Streamers (Julia Dixon Evans, Voice of San Diego, 2019)
• Community-Developed Resource Guide for Infection-Associated Chronic Conditions (IACC, 2025)
• ME/CFS Prevalence in the Long COVID Era: A Corrected U.S. Burden Estimate Using Infection-Associated Chronic Condition Modeling (Cynthia Adinig, CYNAERA Institute via SSRN, 2026)

San Diego musician Nicole Hernandez grew up in Tijuana with a Cuban father and a mother from Sinaloa, Mexico. The music she heard growing up, from salsa and reggaeton to hip-hop, now finds its way into her sound. After discovering Nicole through the NPR Tiny Desk Contest, we invited her and her band to perform at the KPBS San Diego Book Festival. After the performance, Nicole joined us in the studio to talk about her debut album, "Layers," writing in English and Spanish, the stories behind songs like "Viste" and "Rina," and how she brought together an all-women band of musicians from around San Diego.

Guest:

• Nicole Hernandez, musician

Nicole's band for the Sun Drenched Sounds live performance:

• Drums: Sarah Brew
• Congas: Sahar Malik
• Bass: Angelica Yumi Pruitt
• Guitar: Athalia Rodriguez

• Nicole Hernandez's Tiny Desk Contest submission, "Viste" (2026)
• Nicole Hernandez, "Pa Ya" official music video), from "Layers"
• Daddy Yankee, "Gasolina" (2004)
• Havana D'Primera, "Pasaporte" (2013)
• How Tijuana Went From Stopover to Destination (Frankie Mills, New Lines Magazine, 2026)
• 10 standout San Diego artists from the 2026 NPR Tiny Desk Contest (Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS, 2026)

A viral beach meetup in Pacific Beach brought hundreds of remote workers together to work in the sun. It also raised a bigger question: If working from home gives us so much freedom, why are so many people craving connection?

" The costs of remote work are really subtle, and they are slow to take hold," says researcher Emma Harrington. "It takes a while to feel these accumulated effects of not having as strong connections to your colleagues. By contrast, not going on that commute, that happens immediately and is quite salient."

We take our laptops (and mics) to Petco Park for a remote work day and put the idea to the test. Can people actually get work done at a baseball game? And what happens when you replace the isolation of working from home with a crowd of strangers? We talk with Emma about the hidden downsides of remote work, from loneliness to missed opportunities for mentorship and friendship, especially for younger workers. Then, as the Padres game heads into the ninth inning, our experiment takes an unexpected turn.

Guests:

• Emma Harrington, researcher
• Scott Muirhead, Remote Worker Guy
•  All the hard-working fans in the stands who took a break to talk to us

Sources:

• 'Bring Your Own Desk' | Remote workers set up office on Pacific Beach sand (Alex Lai, CBS 8, 2026)
• Remote workers return to Law Street Beach — this time with a city permit and cleanup plan (Thomas Murphy, Times of San Diego, 2026)
• The Number of People Primarily Working From Home Tripled Between 2019 and 2021 (United States Census Bureau, 2022)
• Hybrid Work (Gallup, 2026)
• Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026)
• We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data. (Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel, New York Times, 2026)
• Mistakenly seeking solitude (Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, National Library of Medicine, 2014)
• Remote work -- not AI -- has sidelined recent college graduates, research finds (Andrea Hsu, NPR, 2026)

The Kumeyaay have long told stories through rock art, vivid images carved into stone that preserved culture, memory and meaning. Today, that tradition continues in a new comic book created by Kumeyaay educators and historians to challenge the erasure of Indigenous history in California classrooms. Co-written by SDSU professor Ethan Banegas, a member of the Barona Band of Mission Indians, the book brings Kumeyaay life — from ancestral knowledge to colonization and resistance — into a format designed for students and teachers. Blending community memory, academic research and lived experience, the comic is both a resource and a tool of reclamation. It replaces silence with story, and invisibility with truth.

At the KPBS San Diego Book Festival, we brought together three organizers from very different book clubs to talk about the communities they've built around reading. Enid Sherman has been meeting with the same group of women for 25 years. Mimi Phung started the North County Vietnamese Book Club to connect with other Vietnamese people and better understand her own heritage. And Courtney Geilenfeldt's cookbook club brings people together around a different cookbook and a shared meal each month. Their stories get at a bigger question: What makes a group of people become a community? They talk about the friendships that have grown from their clubs, the conversations that happen around the books and the moments when a monthly gathering becomes something people can't imagine giving up. Plus, they share some favorite books and advice for anyone thinking about starting a book club of their own.

Guests:

• Courtney Geilenfeldt, University Heights Women's Walk Cookbook Club
• Mimi Phung, North County Vietnamese Book Club
• Enid Sherman, Books, Bagels and Broads
• Kristin and Nancy, Chapter Three Book Club
• Krystal, Silent Book Club, San Diego
• Chih, The Lemon Literary Society
• Joseph, book club member
• Stephanie, Mission Valley Reads and Bibliobibuli

Sources:

• Federal Data on Reading for Pleasure: All Signs Show a Slump (Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts, 2024)
• The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey (Jessica K Bone, Feifei Bu, Jill K Sonke, Daisy Fancourt, iScience, 2025)
• APA poll reveals a nation suffering from stress of societal division, loneliness (American Psychological Association, 2025)

What started as a few skits between friends has grown into one of San Diego's most talked-about independent creative projects. The creators of "End of the 8" take us behind the scenes of turning their love of Ocean Beach into a sitcom, casting friends instead of actors, filming in local businesses and discovering that one pilot was enough to bring their community together. They talk about learning as they went, keeping creative control and why the Ocean Beach neighborhood itself has become the show's biggest star.

Guests:

• Daniel M. Dyer, director and co-producer of "End of the 8," co-founder of Visual Candy
• John Cristini, co-producer of "End of the 8" and one of its stars

Ocean Beach spots mentioned in this episode:

• The Harp | 4935 Newport Ave.
• Hodad's | 5010 Newport Ave.
• Raglan Public House | 1851 Bacon St.
• Little Lion Cafe | 1424 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.
• Winstons Beach Club | 1921 Bacon St.

Sources:

• Sitcom based in OB makes its way around the indie film circuit (Tessa Balc, Times of San Diego, 2026)
• Help Us Create More "End of the 8" Episodes (GoFundMe)

Every new technology changes the way art is made. Generative AI is pushing those questions into the spotlight faster than many artists expected. As with other big leaps in industry and technology throughout history, it's not always as simple as being for or against it.

From animation studios and independent creators to Comic-Con panels and university labs, we follow the people navigating one of the creative world's biggest turning points. Some choose not to use AI. Others see it as another tool. Many fall somewhere in between. Their stories reveal that the real conflict isn't simply humans versus machines. It's about preserving imagination, protecting artists and deciding what role technology should play in creative work.

As AI becomes more capable, one question keeps surfacing: What makes a piece of art feel unmistakably human?

Guests:

• Jeaux Janovsky, animator
• Marc Biagi, voice actor and professor of Information Technology at San Diego City College
• Ben Zhao, designer of Glaze and Nightshade; professor of computer science at University of Chicago
• Taylor Johnson, founder of Mortis Studio, a San Diego animation and creative house
• Camille Jones, co-creator of "Middle of Everything" and a former CDC epidemiology expert
• Darby Vickers, philosophy professor at University of San Diego and advisory member of the Animation Guild AI Task Force
• Connie He, director of "Dear Upstairs Neighbors"
• Geoffrey Long, professor of Emerging Technology and Design at Miami University in Ohio
• Attendees of San Diego Comic-Con 2026

Sources:

• Critical Crossroads: The Impact of Generative AI and the Importance of Protecting the Animation Workforce (Animation Guild, 2024)
• Future Unscripted: The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Entertainment Industry Jobs (Animation Guild, 2024)
• Marvel faces backlash over AI-generated opening credits (Adrian Horton, The Guardian, 2023)
• Amazon MGM Studios Embraces AI: Greenlights Three Series for Prime Video Under New ‘GenAI Creators’ Fund’ (Todd Spangler, Variety, 2026)
• Netflix will launch an AI animation studio — but 51% of people aren’t in favor of a future with generative AI content in it (Danni Santana, Moneywise, 2026)
• Death Threats, Doxxing and AI: How Animator Jorge Gutiérrez Killed His Own Show in 36 Hours (Clayton Davis, Variety, 2026)
• The Legend of John Henry: Talcott, WV (National Park Service)
• How Professional Visual Artists are Negotiating Generative AI in the Workplace (Harry H. Jiang, Jordan Taylor, William Agnew, Carnegie Mellon University, 2026)
• “iScream” Music Video (Deaton Chris Anthony, Mortis Studio, 2022)
• How animators and AI researchers made ‘Dear Upstairs Neighbors’ (Cassidy Curtis, Sarah Rumbley, News from Google, 2026)

We’re revisiting a classic episode from Season 1, reported from Comic-Con 2025.

Romantasy has become one of the fastest-growing book genres in publishing — a blend of epic love stories and magical stakes that's capturing the imaginations of readers. Once dismissed as unserious or overly indulgent, the genre is now being embraced by a new wave of fans, thanks in part to #BookTok, viral buzz and social commentary that touches on real-world issues through fantastical stories.

On this episode of The Finest, we explore romantasy's rise, with roots in fan fiction, online communities and personal storytelling. We talk with San Diego authors, booksellers and fans, and hear from a professor who studies popular romance and romantasy fiction to understand what makes the genre so powerful — and why it's resonating so deeply across the culture.

"This idea that romance trivializes is not new," says Netta Baker, an advanced instructor of English at Virginia Tech. "All the way back in the 18th century, Ann Radcliffe novels were thought to stir improper passions in young women."

We also take you inside Comic-Con 2025, where romantasy panels drew some of the longest lines of the weekend, and unpack the genre's biggest misconceptions — that it's unserious, overly steamy or somehow not "real" fantasy. What we found instead was a powerful form of storytelling — one that reflects the real world, often giving women power and agency they don't always feel in daily life, and bringing thousands of people back to books.

Romantasy might just surprise you.

Guests:

• Netta Baker, Advanced Instructor of English at Virginia Tech
• Adalyn Grace, #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling fantasy author of the "Belladonna" series
• Kaylie Smith, #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling dark fantasy romance author of the "Wicked Games" series
• Comic-Con 2025 attendees we met during romantasy panels and signings, including Autumn Mitchell and Julia

Books mentioned in this episode:

• "Flame and Thorns" by Marion Blackwood
• "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas
• "Fourth Wing" by Rebecca Yarros
• "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas
• "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
• "A Curse Carved in Bone" by Danielle L. Jensen
• "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James
• "Belladonna" by Adalyn Grace
• "Phantasma" by Kaylie Smith
• "A Hunger Like No Other" by Kresley Cole
• "Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

Mentioned in this episode:

• Brandon Sanderson | Bestselling fantasy author whose influence helped shift perceptions around genre fiction
• Anne Radcliffe | 18th century gothic novelist whose work sparked early moral panic about women reading romance
• Harlequins | Mass-market paperback romances, known for being inexpensive, widely available and foundational to how romance has been consumed and critiqued
• Fabio Lanzoni | Male model who became the iconic face of steamy romance covers in the '80s and '90s

Sources:

• What Is Romantasy, Anyway? (M. K. Lobb, Writer's Digest, 2024)
• Print Book Sales Fell 2.6% in 2023 (Jim Milliot, Publishing Weekly, 2024)
• Print Book Sales Saw a Small Sales Increase in 2024 (Jim Milliot, Publishing Weekly, 2025)
• These were the bestselling books of 2024. (Emily Temple, Lit Hub, 2025)
• Romantasy and BookTok driving a huge rise in science fiction and fantasy sales (Ella Creamer, The Guardian, 2025)
• How Dragons, Magic and Steamy Sex Took Over the Book World (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Ellen Gamerman and Isabella Simonetti, The Wall Street Journal, 2024)
• The Power of BookTok: Why TikTok's Book Community Is Driving a New Era In Publishing (TikTok via Forbes, 2025)
• Erotica and Pornographby: A Clear and Present Difference (Gloria Steinem, Ms. magazine, 1978)
• Dragons and Sex Are Now a $610 Million Business Sweeping Publishing (Ella Ceron, Bloomberg, 2024)
• Federal Data on Reading for Pleasure: All Signs Show a Slump (Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts, 2024)
• What Helps Stress, Your Mood and Brain Health? Books (Ari Cofer, Right as Rain by UW Medicine, 2024)
• 
  
• Does reading fiction make us better people? (Claudia Hammond, BBC, 2019)

How can we speak up in a way that feels authentic? How can we build something instead of just reacting? Whether it's marching in the streets, advocating for our collective rights or making art, protest and resistance have always been a part of the American story. Recorded live during "KPBS Podcasts Live: The Art of Protest," sign painter and content creator Koy Sun doesn't simply offer a blueprint for protest. Instead, he shares how creativity, craftsmanship and community have become his own forms of resistance. From helping his parents' restaurant through social media to championing local artists and businesses, he explains why slowing down, making things by hand and investing in others are deeply intentional choices. He also talks about the decline of traditional sign painting, the pressure to create in an era of algorithms and AI, and why authenticity — not perfection — is what people connect with most.

Guests:

• Koy Sun, sign painter and content creator

Mentioned in this episode:

• Forge Creative | The design firm behind Zohran Mamdani's 2025 New York City mayoral campaign
• Koy Sun's video about Mamdani's campaign design | " For me, being a sign painter means showing the world that there's power in hiring artists and doing things the slow, traditional way."
• Thai Test Kitchen | Koy Sun's parents' Thai restaurant in Sorrento Valley
• Libélula Books & Co | An independent bookstore in Barrio Logan with a hand-painted sign by Koy Sun
• Mazikaa | A San Diego organization dedicated to celebrating and preserving Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) music and culture