Have you been to every one of California’s 58 counties? Reporter Lisa Morehouse has. For more than ten years, she’s travelled around the state, profiling people at the heart of food and agriculture for her series California Foodways. On this week’s show, for Lisa’s 58th and final story, she takes us to her home county, Santa Clara, to visit a local Chinese restaurant. Over its 55-year history, Chef Chu’s has witnessed fast-paced change in Silicon Valley, and has been visited by luminaries in entertainment, politics and business. Both the family behind it, and the community it feeds, can’t imagine life without this beloved institution. 

And it's crunch time for the crews building floats for Pasadena’s annual Tournament of Roses Parade. But out of the dozens of massive, ornate, flower-covered floats, only five are built by volunteers from the communities sponsoring them. One of those communities is the foothill town of Sierra Madre, just north of Pasadena. It’s been building floats for 108 years, and 2026’s theme is special: it celebrates the first responders that helped protect Sierra Madre from the deadly Eaton Fire. Reporter Steven Cuevas gives us a sneak peek as the group races to meet their New Year's Day deadline.  

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San Jose is home to the largest Sikh temple – or gurdwara – in the U.S., and for decades, it has been a place of sanctuary and refuge. But lately, another feeling has settled in for worshippers: fear.ICE enforcement has ramped up over the past year, with some of the sharpest increases in California. And Sikhs, many who are from the Indian state of Punjab, worry their sacred spaces could become targets. South Asians aren’t always the first group that comes to mind when we talk about undocumented communities. But according to U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement, 35,000 people from India were apprehended at the border this year.  Journalist Tanay Gokhale has been out reporting in the South Asian community, and joins host Sasha Khokha to talk about what he’s been hearing from Sikh worshippers at gurdwaras and those who’ve been detained by ICE. 

And we visit CJ's BBQ and Fish in Richmond. Owner Charles Evans calls himself a "World War II baby." He was born in Richmond to parents who moved to the Bay Area from Arkansas, part of a migration of African Americans west to work in the shipyards. His dad created BBQ pits out of washing machines and refrigerators in their backyard. His mom insisted all of her kids learn to cook, clean, and sew. After driving AC Transit buses for many years, Charles opened CJ's BBQ and Fish 30 years ago, putting his own born-in-California spin on the barbeque and soul food recipes his parents taught him. For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse discovered CJ’s is not just a celebration of Richmond’s Black history and Southern roots, but also a place of refuge and delicious comfort for everybody.

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This year, for the first time since it was established in 1988, the U.S. did not commemorate World AIDS Day on December 1. That’s despite more than 630,000 deaths from HIV-related illnesses in 2024, according to the World Health Organization.

This week, we’re traveling back in time, to visit a queer church that provided refuge and support to San Francisco’s gay community during the height of the AIDS crisis. We’re bringing you the first episode of a new podcast called We All Get To Heaven, which draws on sound from 1,200 cassette tapes – recordings of songs, memorials, and sermons from the Metropolitan Community Church.  It brings to life voices of loss, and of faith, of people who refused to abandon their spirituality or their queerness, and who built a community that could hold both.

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The fierce Santa Ana winds that whipped the Palisades and Eaton fires into deadly infernos also spared precious things you’d think would have been the first to burn: old family photos, children’s art work, postcards, even pages of old sheet music. Those things sometimes blew across neighborhoods, and people are still finding them as fire cleanup continues. Reporter Steven Cuevas introduces us to an Altadena resident who has made it her mission to return these fragile paper keepsakes to their owners.

And we got to the Andrerson Valley to visit a Grange hall. These community gathering places have been around for more than 150 years. Today there are more than 100 in California alone. The Grange began as a fraternal organization for farmers. Even though farming and Grange membership are down to a fraction of what they were decades ago, many rural towns still rely on Grange halls as community centers. For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse visits the Anderson Valley Grange, where many residents credit this place for bringing together groups of people that were once divided.

This episode orginally aired on June 13, 2025.

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For the last few weeks, The California Report Magazine has been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called Love You for You.

As we enter Transgender Awareness Month, we shift the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.

These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity and self-expression.

This week’s story brings together Zen Blossom, a 26-year-old Black transgender rights activist at the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project in San Francisco, and Andrea Horne, a San Francisco-based actress, model and jazz singer who once performed with Sylvester, the legendary disco artist, in the 1970s.

Now a historian working on her forthcoming book, How Black Trans Women Changed the World, Andrea reflects with Zen on those who came before them and those who will come after.

Read the transcript for this episode.

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For the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called Love You for You.

As we enter Transgender Awareness Month, we shift the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.

These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity, and self-expression.

This week, we meet Donna Personna, a 79-year-old transgender Chicana artist, activist, and playwright who grew up in San José and now lives in San Francisco. A longtime drag performer and advocate, Donna has devoted decades to uplifting the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, she was named Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade. She also co-wrote Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, an immersive play that brings to life a 1966 uprising in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District — when trans women and drag queens stood up to police harassment, three years before Stonewall.

In this episode, Donna speaks with Quetzali (who also goes by “Q”), a 23-year-old Latinx nonbinary organizer from Sacramento who uses they/them/elle pronouns and who is using only their first name to protect their identity. Together, they reflect on how Latinx gender-expansive identities have evolved across generations, from quiet survival in the shadows to living freely. Donna also shares how she continues to cultivate self-love and resilience in a world that still tests both — grounding today’s struggles in a lifetime of resistance, care, and optimism.

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Our Love You for You series features conversations between trans and nonbinary youth from across California and the people in their lives who love and mentor them: parents, grandparents, siblings and others.

This week, we’ll explore how parents stretch, adapt, and grow alongside their children, learning in real time what it means to support their trans and gender-expansive kids. 

We’ll hear a conversation between a 12-year-old transgender girl and her mom, that ranges from the joys of dancing and shopping, to confronting the current anti-trans climate. We’ll also meet two gender-expansive siblings, who talk to their dad about what it’s been like to support one another, and reflect on how well their parents navigated their identities. 

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Our Love You for You series features conversations between trans and nonbinary youth from across California and the people in their lives who love and mentor them: parents, grandparents, siblings and others.

This week, we’ll hear how grandparents' hearts can be moved by having a transgender grandchild, and how that can expand the worldview of someone who may not be connected to the LGBTQ+ community. We’ll hear from a 10-year-old transgender girl in conversation with her older sister and their grandfather. He lives in a rural California county, where many of his neighbors and hunting buddies don’t have much exposure to the transgender community. 

We’ll also meet a 14-year-old nonbinary kid whose grandmother lives in India, where she’s become a fierce advocate for transgender and nonbinary youth. She’s taken on the challenge of explaining her grandchild’s gender to her relatives who are 90+ years old.

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Part 1 of our new series Love You for You features trans and nonbinary youth in conversation with people in their lives who love, support, and mentor them. Gender-expansive kids have been in the headlines a lot lately, but we rarely hear them tell their own stories. Our series highlights kids who are thriving, with complex, multifaceted identities that go beyond gender. This week, we’ll hear from an 8-year-old in conversation with their mom, and a 16-year-old talking to his “Aunty,” his mom’s best friend, who came out as a lesbian at his age.

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Election Day is almost here, and in most of California, there's just one measure on the ballot: Proposition 50. Backed by Governor Gavin Newsom, Prop 50 aims to create more Democratic-leaning districts. It's a move to counter Texas's redistricting plans favoring Republicans. And  some heavy hitters are lining up on both sides, including former President Barack Obama, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. KQED Politics and Government Correspondent Guy Marzorati joins us to talk about some of the finer points of the ballot measure.

Plus we meet vocalist and musician Khatchadour Khatchadourian. He plays an ancient double reed woodwind carved from apricot wood called the duduk that has cultural ties to Armenia. Khatchadourian is one of the few in the Bay Area who plays the instrument, and his followers call him the “Duduk Whisperer.” Our producer Elize Manoukian brings us this profile of Khatchadourian, who uses the duduk to push the boundaries of traditional Armenian music, and along the way, is helping to preserve cultural identity through sound.

And we head to Altadena where the the first handful of new homes are under construction in parts of fire ravaged city. Most people won’t be moving back in for several months. But some neighborhoods that were completely wiped out in the Eaton Fire are already being resettled by property owners living in trailers and RV’s. As reporter Steven Cuevas discovered, these residents could be key to restoring the spirit and resilience that’s defined Altadena for decades.

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The California Report just turned 30! On November 4, we’re throwing a party to celebrate, at KQED in San Francisco, with special guests whose stories we’ve featured on our show. This week we’re reprising two of those stories.

⁠How Experimental Composer and Performer Kishi Bashi Brings New Ideas to Life⁠⁠

Kishi Bashi has been releasing music for over a decade. The Santa Cruz-based musician and composer defies genre, and it’s hard even for his fans to describe his work – yet they feel deeply connected to his music. For our series on California Composers, we sent reporter Lusen Mendel to one of his shows in San Francisco to see if they could figure it out.

⁠This Stockton Park Is a Weekend Haven for Hmong and Cambodian Bites⁠

On the northern end of Stockton, you'll find Angel Cruz Park. Most weekends it's lined with food vendors, many of them Hmong and Cambodian immigrants. For more than 30 years, this has been a destination for made-to-order dishes, where locals argue over who has the best beef sticks or papaya salad. For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse spent a day at the park, learning about the people behind the food.

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