Christopher Beam on how AI safety birthed a killing spree
Release Date: 07/10/2025
David McCuan on how California's county fairs became corruption hotbeds
California Sun Podcast
David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University, discusses the findings of a recent that showed how California's beloved county fairs, which generate $400 million annually, have become hotbeds of corruption where bookkeepers steal, officials rig bids, and governor-appointed boards feast on lobster and cabernet. With governance structures frozen since the 1880s and no state audits for years, one-third of these fairs are now plagued by fraud — even as they've become critical staging grounds for disaster response worth tens of millions in real estate.
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Laurie Lipton: An artist's insane technique for disturbing times
California Sun Podcast
The Los Angeles-based artist Laurie Lipton shares why she's drawn obsessively since age four, how she invented her "insane" cross-hatching technique studying Dutch Masters in Europe, and how waitressing paid the rent so she could draw. After 36 years abroad, she says she returned to Los Angeles to find America rolled back to 1955. She discusses why drawing is her drug, how stepping aside lets the work flow, and why political art struggles to find gallery walls.
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Esther Mobley on California's wine crisis
California Sun Podcast
Esther Mobley, a wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, talks about California's wine industry crisis — nearly 5,000 wineries competing for declining demand, 38,000 vineyard acres removed in 2025, mounting closures. She discusses why younger generations aren't drinking wine, what happens to tourism-dependent communities when vineyards close, and whether California wine's romance can survive its greatest challenge yet.
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Tom Freston on how MTV changed our music, our culture, and even California
California Sun Podcast
Last week, MTV officially shut down, ending an era that revolutionized music, video, and shaped California's youth culture. Tom Freston co-founded the television channel 44 years ago, building a creative empire on principles that seem impossible today: hiring people with no experience, protecting creatives from corporate pressure, valuing disorientation over data, and treating loyalty as strategy. His memoir "" chronicles how adventure became business, and what we lost when Silicon Valley replaced joy with efficiency.
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Scot Danforth on the fight for disability rights in California
California Sun Podcast
Scot Danforth, author of the new biography "," talks about the life of Ed Roberts, who founded the Independent Living Movement. In the revolutionary 1960s, Roberts and his fellow Berkeley activists pioneered the disability rights fight. He later led change in Sacramento as California's Director of Rehabilitation, advocating for state legislation years before the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But, as current threats show, hard-won gains like these can be taken away.
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Matthew Scott photographs L.A.'s hidden stories, from concrete rivers to palm-lined streets
California Sun Podcast
Photographer Matthew Scott captures Los Angeles through his lens, revealing stories hidden in plain sight. His projects include "," an ongoing exploration of the 51 miles of channelized waterway where nature stubbornly persists, along with intimate studies of L.A.'s palm trees and Normandie Avenue. His work asks what our built environment becomes beyond its intended purpose, and what it reveals about who we are. Find his work at .
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Gustavo Arellano on California families under siege
California Sun Podcast
Gustavo Arellano reports from California's ground zero of President Trump's deportation crackdown. The Los Angeles Times columnist explains why many Latino voters who supported Trump betrayed, how Southern California's "" toward immigration raids contrasts with Chicago's whistle-led resistance, and how the dynamics of 1994's the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 — which radicalized a generation of California Latinos — have echoed in current debates over immigration.
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Roddy Bottum: A queer rock pioneer remembers San Francisco's lost era
California Sun Podcast
Roddy Bottum, a founder of the alternative metal band Faith No More, chronicles 1980s and '90s San Francisco — a dark, overlooked era between the Summer of Love and the tech boom. His memoir, "" recalls a vanished city of bicycle messengers and punk rock in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. It's a poetic testament to community, loss, and the creative rebellion that defined pre-tech San Francisco.
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Ashlee Vance on robot gladiators and the future of AI combat
California Sun Podcast
Ashlee Vance from San Francisco's underground robot fight clubs, where humanoid machines controlled by virtual reality pilots battle in steel cages before roaring crowds. China dominates the hardware, America provides the spectacle, and artificial intelligence makes the robots increasingly lethal. The technology is advancing at breakneck speed — raising questions about entertainment, military applications, and what happens when these machines become truly intelligent.
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Todd S. Purdum: How Desi Arnaz invented modern television and lost himself
California Sun Podcast
Todd S. Purdum, veteran journalist and author of the new book "," explains how a Cuban refugee revolutionized Hollywood from his adopted home in Los Angeles. Though underappreciated as a showbiz entrepreneur, Arnaz pioneered the three-camera sitcom format, shifted television production from New York to Los Angeles, and created the business model that would sustain the industry and TV production for seven decades.
info_outlineChristopher Beam, in a recent New York Times investigation, reveals how a group of brilliant minds from Google, NASA, and the rationalist movement in Berkeley became part of a murderous cult-like group known as the "Zizians." He story recounts six deaths, from a blood-soaked Vallejo property to a fatal Vermont shootout. Unlike Charles Manson's dropouts, these tech elites weaponized artificial intelligence fears and rational thinking into deadly extremism, which was enabled by California’s tolerance for radical ideas.