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Latest Episodes:

Mariachi San Jose Performs Live in Studio Jul 25, 2025

Show notes

For people of Mexican descent, mariachi music is synonymous with milestones such as weddings, birthday parties, funerals or maybe just Saturday-morning chores. The genre, which originated in the 18th century in the western state of Jalisco, has morphed into one of Mexico’s most beloved styles of music that is now popular worldwide. In California, more high schools and colleges such as San Jose State have added mariachi music programs. Mariachi San Jose, an ensemble of college students, joins us in studio for a special live performance ahead of the Fourth Annual Fiesta del Mariachi. We’ll talk about mariachi’s growing popularity and the local ensembles that keep the genre strumming in the Bay.

Guests:

José R. Torres-Ramos, assistant professor of ethnomusicology, San Jose State University; director, Mariachi San Jose

Debra Barrera, violin, Mariachi San Jose

Anthony Cera, trumpet, Mariachi San Jose

Abril Dorado, violin, Mariachi San Jose

Jorge Dovalina, vihuela, Mariachi San Jose

Thomas Hernández, harp, Mariachi San Jose

Cameron Samayoa, guitarrón, Mariachi San Jose

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How to Create a Family Archive Jul 25, 2025

Show notes

The photograph of your grandmother that’s at least a century old, yellowing at the edges. An embroidered handkerchief that’s crossed the globe. The family Mahjong rules. We might want to pass certain items down to subsequent generations, but may not know how to keep them in usable condition. And with so much of our lives happening digitally, how can we ensure the tender voicemails, photos and emails kept safe on our phones won’t be lost in the online void? We’ll hear librarians’ and archivists’ best tips for digitizing, storing and preserving letters, photographs and ephemera. And we’ll talk about how to conduct oral histories to pass down the stories — and voices — of those who’ve come before.

Guests:

Nisa Khan, audience news desk reporter, KQED

Shanna Farrell, oral historian, UC Berkeley's Oral History Center

Jackie Forsyte, audio-visual archivist, Teach Archive Preserve Exhibit (T.A.P.E.) Los Angeles

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What A.I. Means for College Writing Jul 24, 2025

Show notes

The arrival of tools like ChatGPT has changed how college students write. Some use A.I. to organize ideas or fine-tune phrasing; others rely on it to complete entire assignments. Professors are adapting in turn, trading take-home essays for blue books, experimenting with oral exams or rethinking their pedagogy to include A.I. from the start. We talk with New Yorker staff writer and Bard College literature professor Hua Hsu about how artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education and what a new generation of students might be losing, and learning, as a result.

Guests:

Hua Hsu, staff writer, The New Yorker; professor of literature, Bard College

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Alcatraz’s Cultural Legacy Extends Beyond Its Prison Past Jul 24, 2025

Show notes

The Trump administration is pushing to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison, requiring the repeal of National Park protections and ending its six-decade transformation from America’s most notorious penitentiary into one of its most popular tourist sites. Throughout its long history, Alcatraz has served not only as a prison, but also as a military base, a site of Native American unity and resistance, a bird sanctuary, and a tourist site for 1.4 million of visitors who journey to it every year. Critics contend that the effort to convert it back into a prison is a wasteful folly. While others decry the loss of the site as a national park and museum, which offers a historical perspective into the American carceral system. We talk about the unique space that Alcatraz occupies in Bay Area cultural history, and its lasting legacy.

Guests:

Michele Gee, deputy chief executive officer, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Kent Blansett, associate professor of Native American studies and history, University of Kansas; author, "Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement"

Jolene Babyak, former resident of Alcatraz; author, “Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz”

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What California’s Billboards Say About Us Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

Billboards promoting movies “for your consideration” take over Los Angeles freeways every award season, while San Francisco’s drivers are inundated with tech jargon. But billboards do more than promote the industries that power our economy. Up and down California, they serve as cultural touchstones, calls to action and reflections of local values and beliefs. We talk about California’s unique culture and history with billboards. What’s a billboard you remember?

Guests:

Wendy Liu, author, writes about billboards for Bay Area Current

Catherine Gudis, professor in the departments of History and Society, Environment, and Health Equity, University of California, Riverside

Matt Stevens, arts and culture reporter, New York Times

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What Happens to the Department of Education After Trump’s Cuts? Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

The Supreme Court has given the Trump Administration the greenlight to gut the workforce of the Department of Education. The move isn’t just about reducing the government’s payroll; it’s part of a much larger attack on public education according to some education advocates. Critics of the department, which the Republican Party has attempted to shut down since it was created 45 years ago, say the federal government should leave state and local agencies to manage schools. While the agency can’t be shuttered without congressional approval, the significant job losses put into question how effective it can be and how it will oversee student loans, research, and civil rights violations among other responsibilities. We talk about what is next for the department and what it means for students.

Guests:

Jill Tucker, K-12 education reporter, San Francisco Chronicle

Noliwe Rooks, professor and chair of Africana Studies, Brown University

Michael J. Petrilli, president, Thomas B. Fordham Institute - a conservative education policy think tank; visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution

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President Trump Tries, Fails to Stem Epstein Files Controversy Jul 22, 2025

Show notes

Questions continue to mount about President Trump’s connection to the deceased, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The president’s MAGA base — and now some congressional Democrats — are demanding to see more files, including a so-called “client list” belonging to Epstein. We look at how we got here, and the political impacts of the growing controversy. What do you think the Epstein fallout will be, if any?

Guests:

Luke Broadwater, White House reporter, New York Times

Ankush Khardori, senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice; his recent articles include “Playbook: Trump’s Epstein evolution” and “3 Scenarios That Explain the Epstein Debacle: All reflect poorly on the Department of Justice”

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Working Yet Homeless in America Jul 22, 2025

Show notes

What constitutes homelessness? In his new book, “There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America”, author Brian Goldstone documents the stories of five families in Atlanta that despite having full time work are living unhoused. We talk with Goldstone and Margot Kushel, Director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, about the circumstances that render unhoused people invisible in terms of statistics and resources, the experience of having a job but not housing, and the many implications of undercounting unhoused people, especially families, in America.

Guests:

Dr. Margot Kushel, director, Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative; professor of medicine at UCSF

Brian Goldstone, journalist, author of “There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America”

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ICE’s Budget Just Tripled. What’s Next? Jul 21, 2025

Show notes

President Trump’s recently passed megabill allocates $75 billion in extra funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tripling its budget and making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Historian and journalist Garrett Graff has covered law enforcement and democracy for the last 20 years and says it’s hard not to see the funding increase as “turbo-charging an increasingly lawless regime of immigration enforcement.” We talk to him about the implications of a radically expanded ICE.

Guests:

Garrett Graff, journalist and historian

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The Threat to California Public Lands Jul 21, 2025

Show notes

You’ve probably been to a national or state park in California. But have you ever hiked in BLM land? 15% of California – 15 million acres – is public land operated by the federal Bureau of Land Management. This is land that no one wanted: not beautiful enough to be deemed a national park and too remote to be developed. As such, they are under threat of being exploited for their resources or sold off, which Republicans have threatened to do. In his new book, “The Enduring Wild: A Journey into California’s Public Lands,” Josh Jackson shines a light on the beauty of these “common grounds” that belong to all of us and the perils that they face.

Guests:

Josh Jackson, author, "The Enduring Wild: A Journey into California's Public Lands"

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