California Sun Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Los Angeles author Carol Mithers discusses her new book, "Rethinking Rescue," which explores a groundbreaking approach to animal welfare pioneered by Lori Weise, the founder of L.A.’s Downtown Dog Rescue. Known as the "Dog Lady," Weiss focuses on preventing pets from entering shelters by addressing the root causes of surrender, particularly in underserved communities. Mithers highlights the complex interplay between poverty, pet ownership, and animal welfare, challenging traditional rescue paradigms and emphasizing community support and education to keep pets with their loving owners.

Patt Morrison, a veteran Los Angeles journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, takes us on a journey through the city's ever-evolving landscape. With over five decades of experience chronicling L.A. across print, television, and radio, Morrison shares unique insights into the city's transformation, from its complex power structures to its diverse communities. She shares anecdotes about iconic figures, and discusses her role in reviving interest in the Los Angeles River. As the city prepares for the 2028 Olympics, Morrison's reflections on L.A.'s past and present offer an invaluable perspective on its future.

What were you doing at 22? Cecilia Lunaparra, a senior at UC Berkeley, was just elected to the Berkeley City Council at that age, making her the youngest and first undergraduate to hold the office. She's not new to activism and making a difference in her community, and thinks that the young people protesting on campus today may be at the forefront of a new revolution.238

Long-time tech journalist Tripp Mickle explains how Steve Jobs’s personality defined Apple. He was both a founder and a legend. But his successors, Tim Cook and Jonny Ive each had their own very different ideas about the company's future. Their battle was so fundamental that it deconstructed the company culture built under Jobs. Mickle tells the story in his new book "After Steve." However, the final story is still being written inside Apple’s $1 billion dollar headquarters in Cupertino.

Lettie Teaque, a longtime Wall Street Journal wine columnist, created a buzz recently with a column about how the Napa Valley may have jumped the shark with respect to pricing and gentrification. It's a look at $10,000 weekends, $1,700-a-night hotels, and $200 tastings that are becoming de rigueur. What might all this mean for our future perception of Napa Valley and its wines?

At 3:15 pm on April 29, 1972, as the verdict came down in the Rodney King beating, Los Angeles exploded with another in a long history of race riots. Everyone knew what might happen, but nothing prepared the city for what came next. Ryan Gattis captured the horror and power of that in his 2015 fictional account "All Involved." The award-winning Los Angeles author talks to us from the perspective of this 30th anniversary of what is still the apogee of domestic civil unrest.

Long Time Silicon Valley journalist John Markoff unearths the roots of a tree, whose branches include, among others, Ken Kesey, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. Markoff's new book, "Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand,” examines a Zelig-like character in both California's 1960s counterculture and the ethos of Silicon Valley. Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog remains a cultural bible, from which we are still singing hymns.

Thomas Walsh and Karen Maness are the co-curators of "Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema's Creative Legacy," an exhibit opening at Boca Raton Museum of Art on April 20. It showcases a collection of monumental scenic backdrop paintings that were an essential part of the filmmaking era that included movies such as "North by Northwest," "The Sound of Music," and "Singing in the Rain."

Vanessa Hua, a Bay Area native and graduate of Stanford and U.C. Riverside, has focused her extensive writing on issues of immigration, identity, diversity, and parenting. Moving seamlessly between short stories, novels, journalism, and her San Francisco Chronicle column, she offers important insights into the Asian American experience. The author of the forthcoming novel "Forbidden City" shared some of her own history.

Susan Sorrells has been called the “Queen of the Desert” and among a "shortlist of the most interesting people in California.” The Smith College graduate spent time in Liberia with the Peace Corps, worked for California Sen. Thomas Kuchel in Washington, D.C., and lived for four months in the Soviet Union during the Cold War while considering a career as a diplomat. She ultimately returned to California to claim her birthright, the entire town of Shoshone — a small, once-bustling mining town, whose cluster of historic buildings flanks two sides of a highway that slices through the Mojave on the way to Death Valley. Sorrells shared the story of her journey and how she is using the town to advance a new kind of ecotourism.