The California Report Magazine

Latest Episodes:

Betty Reid Soskin at 100: The Life of the Nation's Oldest Park Ranger, In Her Own Words May 27, 2022

Show notes

This spring, the nation’s oldest park ranger, Betty Reid Soskin, hung up her hat and retired, at the age of 100. For years, she led tours of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. She played a major role in helping to establish the park and museum, which honors the women who worked in factories during wartime.

You’ve probably heard of Betty Reid Soskin. But what you may not know is that she’s also an activist, author, singer/songwriter, and a poet. Soskin’s life has so many chapters. The documentary duo The Kitchen Sisters bring us this tribute to Betty – a kind of mixtape of stories that drop in on her life of 100 years, gathered and preserved by producers and archivists over the years.

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When You Don’t Learn Your Parent’s Language, What Is Lost? May 20, 2022

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What happens when you don’t learn your “heritage language” — the language your parents or grandparents speak? Like many of us who are multiracial, or children of immigrants, our intern Izzy Bloom gets asked all the time why she doesn’t speak her heritage language, Japanese. She usually says she's not as good as she'd like to be because her mother didn't teach her older brother, and because he wasn't taught Japanese, neither was she. It sounds simple enough, but the story is actually much more complicated. We hear about Izzy’s journey to get to the real answer, and find out what she discovers about her family along the way.

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California Dreamers: Psych Ward Nurse Turned Bandleader; Waiting a Lifetime for a Green Card May 13, 2022

Show notes

Lately we've been trying to bring you more stories about people who are pursuing their passions and finding joy right now. A few months ago, KQED culture reporter Chloe Veltman went out with friends to a restaurant in the Sonoma County town of Guerneville. There was a cover band playing called Suzi’s Last Resort. The group's leader started her showbiz career when she was pushing forty and how, at nearly eighty, she’s still at it.

Plus...Turning 21 is a big deal! But for 200,000 young people, turning 21 catapults them into a bizarre legal limbo. That’s what happened to Eti Sinha, and her twin sister, Eva. The Sinha sisters grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. But as they got older, they discovered their right to stay there was conditional, temporary. That’s because they’ve aged out of their parents’ family immigration application. What do you do when circumstances beyond your control threaten to force you out of the only place you’ve ever called home? KQED’s Rachael Myrow of our Silicon Valley Desk tells us how Eti and Eva not only have managed to stay in the US, but help others do the same.

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Mapping a Radical Legacy of South Asian Activism in California May 06, 2022

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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 Kala Bagai and the fight against redlining? This week we dive deep into the hidden history of early South Asian activism in our state.How Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other South Asian immigrants and their children laid the groundwork for social movements that still resonate today in California. Host Sasha Khokha teams up with KQED politics correspondent Marisa Lagos, and they meet a couple who created the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour.

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Delicious Dishes: From a Sizzling Cross-Cultural Concoction to Hmong Home Cooking Apr 29, 2022

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One thing that’s helped some of us get through the last pandemic has been finding joy in food. This week, stories about dishes that bring us comfort and make us happy. From a kitchen in the back of a Hmong grocery store in Yuba County, to an Indian sizzler: a dish invented in California that’s a mishmash of ingredients from different countries. Plus, it's our annual Youth Takeover week, when we hand over the mic to high school students. We hear from Clara Chiu, a junior at Woodside High School, who explores what it's like to navigate imposter syndrome.

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Looking for Threads of Hope and Connection Apr 22, 2022

Show notes

This week we have two stories about Californians determined to look for threads of hope and connection right now.

We’ll hear about a new project to transfer farmland in San Mateo County to the indigenous people whose ancestors lived and thrived there. And we’ll meet a family from Placer County that's on a mission to rescue a young relative in Ukraine.

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Deep Roots: Home and History in the Golden State Apr 15, 2022

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This week, we have stories of home and history.

We start with novelist Susan Straight. She's a professor of creative writing at UC Riverside, and also grew up in the city. Her new book, Mecca, is a story of intertwined characters who all have deep roots in the mountains, deserts and canyons near Riverside and Coachella, and who are all in their own ways, looking for a version of the California Dream.

And KQED's Adhiti Bandlamudi takes us to San Jose to explain why the city has had five Chinatowns throughout its history, but doesn’t have one today.

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Revisiting Some of Our Favorite Hidden Gems Apr 08, 2022

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Many people have been hitting the road for Spring Break, so we wanted to reprise our Hidden Gems show from September 2021. Every year we go on a road trip highlighting some of our favorite secret spots. Come with us as we visit the prehistoric Fern Canyon, a funky beauty salon/museum in the desert, a San Jose shop making pillowy mochi, the majestic Burney Falls and a food truck featuring homestyle chicken and rice in the Central Valley.

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'There Is Anger. He Should Be Alive.' An Investigation Into Deadly COVID-19 Outbreaks at Foster Farms Apr 01, 2022

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In 2020, California’s Foster Farms became the site of one of the nation’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks at a meat or poultry plant. The California Report’s Central Valley reporter, Alex Hall, spent a year and a half talking to spouses and family members of workers who spent decades at the company’s chicken-processing plants. She found that hundreds of Foster Farms workers tested positive for the virus in 2020. 16 people died and at least 20 others were hospitalized.

In this episode that originally aired in October 2021, Hall’s investigation shows that as plants stayed open to maintain the food supply, and workers got sick from COVID-19, or even died, Foster Farms didn’t always give a complete picture of the problem to health officials, state regulators and their own employees.

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'I Will Always Continue to Be Her Voice.' Families Demand Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Mar 25, 2022

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Angela Lynn McConnell grew up in the forested hills of the Hoopa Valley reservation in Humboldt County. She was proud of her heritage. Angela, 26, was a budding journalist, committed to shedding light on important tribal issues. In September 2018, she was murdered. What happened to her is unfortunately too common in Indigenous communities: Indigenous women and girls disappearing or turning up dead. Most of these cases are never solved. But families of the missing and murdered have been coming together to demand justice, and their advocacy has led to a wave of new federal initiatives. Reporter Lee Romney tells us about the roots of this crisis – and how Northern California tribes are taking the lead to come up with solutions.

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