In California, music and winemaking seem to go together. Visit any of the state’s countless wineries and you can hear all kinds of music, from jazz and folk, to classical and Americana. But one artist on the Central Coast takes that connection especially seriously: he spent years making an album full of sounds from a vineyard. Reporter Benjamin Pur…

In this election year, the issue of immigration has become especially contentious. As one of the four states that share a border with Mexico, California has often tried to lead compassionately, especially when it comes to supporting immigrant children who come here alone. So far this year, nearly 10,000 immigrant youth have made new homes in Califo…

This week, as wildfires continue to burn across our state, we’re re-airing a story from Erin Baldassari, KQED’s Senior Editor for Housing Affordability. Erin’s reporting took her back to Nevada County, where she grew up. She wanted to learn how people there are adapting to the rising risk of wildfires due to climate change. And she started by askin…

How the Black Panthers Helped Shape U.S. Schools Back in the 1960s, people were challenging the status quo in a lot of ways, including how schools should be run. At the same time, the Black Power movement was gaining traction, when the Black Panther Party formed in Oakland in 1966. The FBI considered them dangerous becuase of their belief in Black …

Oakland Composer and Harpist Destiny Muhammad Has Always Charted Her Own Path Sitting on stage with her harp resting in her lap, Destiny Muhammad repeats this mantra: “Excellence, Beauty, and Success.” It’s part mic-check and part pump-up. When she first started learning to play the harp, the Oakland-based composer and musician used to suffer from …

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 their American citizenship. That meant the US government branded them …

On a recent afternoon, a group of mechanics gathered at a lowrider show. This isn't Los Angeles – a city where lowrider culture has deep roots – it's more than a 1,000 miles away in Mexico City. For decades, Mexican immigrants have headed north and shaped the culture of California’s cities. But now, a growing number of their children and grandchild…

Some composers picture colors or abstract shapes when they’re working on a new piece. Derrick Skye thinks about space. His fascination with the cosmos is threaded throughout his compositions, including the latest in his series "Prisms, Cycles, Leaps." For our series on California composers. reporter Clare Wiley sat down with the Los Angeles-based S…

With the presidential race now in uncharted territory, Kamala Harris’ candidacy is putting her under a microscope. Not just her political career but everything about her background, including her mixed race heritage. Last year, we brought you a series inspired in part by Kamala Harris’s visibility as a mixed race person when she became Vice Preside…

Caregivers don’t get a lot of recognition despite doing hard and essential work. This week, stories about caregiving at all phases of life and how hard it can be for some families to provide that care themselves or even find professional help. Systemic Neglect: How Staffing Shortages In Nursing Homes Leave Patients Trapped in Hospitals When taking …

On this week's show: For the past 13 years, DJ Ramzi has been sharing his deep knowledge and passion for Arabic music with listeners all over the world through his radio show and podcast, “Arabology.” But Ramzi Salti is not just a deejay, he's also an advanced lecturer in the Arabic program at Stanford University. His goal is to expose people to th…

This holiday weekend, we're replaying 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 mannequins can be found everywhere from the tiniest boutiques to Target. But what happe…

This week, we're sharing an episode from Inheriting, a new podcast from our friends at LAist Studios and the NPR Network. The show, hosted by Emily Kwong, is centered on the stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander families. It explores how one event in history can ripple through the generations of those families. In this episode, we hear fro…

Elsie Saldaña is a living piece of queer history. The 79-year-old has been doing drag since the 1960’s, making her the oldest drag king still performing in the U.S. She’s known as El Daña, and she didn’t get her start in LA or San Francisco. She’s from Fresno, where she worked the fields as a child. This pride month, reporter Celeste Hamilton Denni…

Songs In the Key of Fatherhood Rightnowish host Pendarvis Harshaw's love of music was passed to him from his mom. He says her love of funk, R&B, new jack swing and hip-hop laid his musical foundation. Now that he's a dad, Pendarvis is now passing all of that musical knowledge down to his daughter, song by song. Santa Cruz Museum Celebrates Filipino…

Jens Ibsen is a dynamic young composer putting his spin on classical music, infusing it with prog rock, heavy metal and Japanese video game music. Isben's bold and non-traditional style is getting a lot of attention from major institutions like the San Francisco Symphony. But it hasn't been easy. He has had to confront racism as he found his unique…

About a year ago, a conflict began in Manipur, a mountainous state in northeastern India. What set off the fighting was a dispute between a predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and a Christian minority called the Kuki. Aptos resident Niang Hangzo is originally from Manipur, but moved to California in the 1990s. Her family back home became refugees m…

Think about all the things you love about radio and podcasts: the suspense, the characters, the drama and humor — Back Pocket Media takes all of those elements and puts them live on stage. On today’s episode, Back Pocket Media co-founders McArdle Hankin and Ellison Libiran guest host the California Report Magazine and play three of their favorite s…

Back in the early 1900s, the burgeoning city of Los Angeles needed water, and the Owens Valley—more than 200 miles northeast—had plenty of it. Today, about a third of LA’s water supply comes from the Owens Valley and other parts of the Eastern Sierra. But the city got that water at the expense of the Nüümü people, who have been working to get it ba…

California's Central Coast is the ancestral homeland of indigenous California tribes including the Chumash and Salinan peoples. For years, the Northern Chumash have been working to create a new marine sanctuary. If the federal government approves that designation this summer, California would be home to the first national marine sanctuary nominated…

Famous for showcasing transgender performers for more than a quarter century, AsiaSF, the beloved San Francisco restaurant and club, closed its doors this week. Reporter Wilma Consul went to one of the final shows at AsiaSF, and tells us how the groundbreaking venue became a place where people from all over the world could find joy and authenticity…

We're in your feeds a little early this week, but for good reason: We're giving you a little peek behind the scenes! You'll be meeting some of the people who make The California Report Magazine, and we'll take you through the process of how a story gets made. If you like what you hear, please consider visiting donate.kqed.org/podcast and supporting…

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 now and tell us why they feel so misunderstood. And we visit the San Fernando Valley, where high school seniors have taken ove…

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 to turn his life around while he was behind bars. He thought he'd gotten that chance when he was granted parole, but up…

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 and military sites — some 10,000 of them — were forced to leave their homes and…