History of California Podcast

In this episode, we return to our ongoing narrative on Chinese immigration to California, examining the pivotal economic role Chinese immigrants played in shaping the state during the 19th century. From manufacturing and textiles to mining, service labor, and large-scale industrial work, Chinese labor was central to California’s development. We look closely at the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, where Chinese workers carried out some of the most perilous tasks in the Sierra Nevada—carving tunnels through granite, enduring brutal winters, and risking (and often losing) their lives to push the railroad forward. Despite their contributions, Chinese immigrants faced widespread discrimination, wage suppression, and hostility from organized labor and white settlers who viewed them as economic threats during downturns. We also explore the 1867 railroad strike, one of the largest labor actions of its time, revealing how Chinese workers challenged racist stereotypes that portrayed them as passive or submissive. Their collective resistance reshaped public perception and helped redefine Chinese identity in America. This episode sets the stage for the rising anti-Chinese sentiment that would lead to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—one of the most consequential immigration laws in U.S. history.

In this episode, host Jordan Mattox speaks with Dr. Jennifer Holland, author of Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement, about how the politics of abortion took root and evolved in the American West. Holland traces the movement’s origins from 19th-century medical debates to the late 20th century’s culture wars, exploring the intersections of religion, gender, race, and regional identity. She discusses the unique dynamics among Catholics, evangelicals, and Latter-Day Saints, the rise of crisis pregnancy centers, and the influential role of figures like James Dobson and organizations such as Focus on the Family. The conversation also examines California’s complex role—as both a progressive symbol and a conservative incubator—and how Western ideas of individualism, faith, and family helped shape national abortion politics. Buy Dr. Holland's Book Here

Host Jordan Mattox sits down with novelist Shelley Blanton-Stroud for a wide-ranging conversation about Bakersfield, historical fiction, and the hidden corners of California’s past. They begin with stories of growing up in the Central Valley—the stereotypes outsiders project, the Bakersfield Sound, Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, and family traditions rooted in Dust Bowl migration. The conversation turns to Shelley’s work as a novelist. She explains the creative tension between history and fiction, the challenge of recreating the mental worlds of past characters, and how she used the erased record of the 1945 San Francisco “peace riots” as the foundation for her new novel An Unlikely Prospect. The episode also looks ahead to Shelley’s next project on Earl Warren, Bakersfield’s most famous son, whose father’s unsolved murder left a lasting imprint on his career and California history. Buy Shelley's Book Here

In this episode of The History of California Podcast, host Jordan Mattox discusses Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies by Lara Gabrielle, the definitive biography of film star Marion Davies. Long overshadowed by her relationship with William Randolph Hearst and the gossip that surrounded her, Davies’s true story reveals a woman of independence, resilience, and remarkable talent. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, Gabrielle shows how Davies overcame disability and social stigma to become one of Hollywood’s leading comediennes and a devoted philanthropist. This episode shines a light on a complex figure who lived life on her own terms and declared herself “the captain of her soul.”4

On this episode, Jordan Mattox is joined by journalist and author Catherine Nichols to dive into the wild and little-known true story behind her book Deep Water. The book traces the rise and fall of a sophisticated drug smuggling ring started by a group of high school swim team surfers on the island of Coronado in Southern California. Their story, filled with risk, betrayal, and ambition, opens up unexpected windows into California's social history, coastal culture, and global connections. They explore the deeper historical context of the 1970s and 1980s in California—from the beaches of Coronado to broader themes of youth rebellion, military secrecy, and underground economies.

In this episode of The History of California Podcast, host Jordan Mattox sits down with author Taylor Kiland to discuss her new book, Murder of the Jujube Candy Heiress: A Coronado Cold Case. Set on the idyllic Coronado Island, the book reinvestigates the unsolved murder of a young heiress, Ruth Quinn, of the Jujube Candy fortune. Kiland shares how she unearthed records, reexamined the evidence, and conducted revealing interviews in an effort to shine a light on a case that still needs a resolution. 

In this episode of the History of California Podcast, host Jordan Mattox welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Michael Hiltzik. Hiltzik is the author of Golden State: The Making of California, a fascinating survey of California’s history in the tradition of Kevin Starr’s acclaimed work. As a columnist and reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Hiltzik has written extensively about California’s political, economic, and cultural landscape, as well as authoring several books on the state’s history. Enjoy this fun and wide-ranging conversation exploring the forces that shaped the Golden State and the insights behind Hiltzik’s compelling storytelling.

Today’s episode is the second part of a two-episode series on John Steinbeck’s novel To a God Unknown. I wanted to do two episodes on this because the novel is fascinating, complex, and at times mystifying—and I wanted to get a few different perspectives to better understand it. Today’s guest is Dr. Michael Boyden, a professor in both the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures as well as the Institute for Culture and History. His primary interest is in American literature, with a special focus on ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, and critical sustainability studies. I read a fascinating article he published on To a God Unknown, which examines the novel from an ecological perspective, and I was eager to talk with him about it. We cover a lot of ground—some topics echo my first conversation with Dr. Rivers—but we dive deeper into the ecological dimensions this time around.

Today we're continuing our series on John Steinbeck. This year, we've been reading through all of Steinbeck's major works. We started with The Pastures of Heaven, and To a God Unknown is the second book in the series. We’ll be doing two podcast episodes on this novel for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, it’s probably the strangest, most confusing, and most exploratory of Steinbeck’s works. I wanted to get a few different perspectives on the meaning of this book—the characters, the plot, the context, and some of the major themes. Our first guest is Dr. Daniel Rivers. Dr. Rivers is an associate professor of American Studies and Literature at San Jose State University and also serves as the director of the Martha Heesley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State. We had a great conversation. We talked about a lot of things, including Dr. Rivers’s own research and writing on this book. There’s a lot to learn from this discussion, and I know you'll enjoy it.

Today, we have Elaine Chukan Brown on the show. Brown is a writer, speaker, and global wine educator. Brown is the Napa Valley specialist for Wine Enthusiast and previously served as the Executive Editor US for JancisRobinson.com, a columnist for Decanter magazine, and a contributing writer to Wine & Spirits magazine. They contributed to both the fourth and fifth editions of the Oxford Companion to Wine, the eighth edition of the World Atlas of Wine, and the compendiums On Burgundy and On California from Académie du Vin Library. Indigenous (Inupiaq and Unangan-Sugpiaq) from what is now Alaska, Brown has dedicated their career to the intersection of sustainability, climate action, and reducing gatekeeping in the wine industry. They co-founded the Diversity in Wine Leadership Forum and have advised diversity initiatives in multiple countries. Brown serves as a judge for the Texsom Awards, head judge for the 67 Pall Mall Communicator Awards, and is a board member of the Wine Writer Symposium. Their new book is The Wines of California. Here’s a description of the book and click here to buy it:  A concise, complete, smartly delivered and cohesive book for serious readers and students of wine. Focusing on the world’s fourth largest producer of wine – California – the book takes readers on a journey through the Golden State’s wines, paying due attention to famous wine destinations such as Sonoma and Napa as well as introducing readers to exciting lesser-known regions to explore. The book is divided into three major sections. The first looks at California wine in the context of the history of the state as a whole. It addresses key issues in California wine growing such as Indigenous Peoples and land ownership, immigration and labour issues, the back-to-the land movement, environmental protest and innovations in sustainability. The second section takes each major region in turn and looks into its history, growing conditions and varieties, as well as discussing the most significant and interesting producers. A final section looks at current themes in Californian wine and discusses the future of the industry across the state.

Today, we have Dr. James Buckley on the show. Dr. Buckley is an Associate Professor and Venerable Chair in Historic Preservation and the Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Oregon, Portland. He has over twenty-five years of experience in the development of affordable housing in the Bay Area, including the adaptive reuse of several historic buildings for residential uses. Dr. Buckley previously taught at MIT and UC Berkeley and holds a Master’s degree in city planning and a Ph.D. in architectural history from UC Berkeley. He has been a member of the board of directors for the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) and the Society of American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH). City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry Dr. James Buckley Here’s a description:  California’s 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the “instant city” of San Francisco as a base to exploit the rich natural resources of the American West. City of Wood examines how capitalists and workers logged the state’s vast redwood forests to create the financial capital and construction materials needed to build the regional metropolis of San Francisco. Architectural historian James Michael Buckley investigates the remote forest and its urban core as two poles of a regional “city.” This city consisted of a far-reaching network of spaces, produced as company owners and workers arrayed men and machines to extract resources and create human commodities from the region’s rich natural environment. Combining labor, urban, industrial, and social history, City of Wood employs a variety of sources—including contemporary newspaper articles, novels, and photographs—to explore the architectural landscape of lumber, from backwoods logging camps and company towns in the woods to busy lumber docks and the homes of workers and owners in San Francisco. By imagining the redwood lumber industry as a single community spread across multiple sites—a “City of Wood”—Buckley demonstrates how capitalist resource extraction links different places along the production value chain. The result is a paradigm shift in architectural history that focuses not just on the evolution of individual building design across time, but also on economic connections that link the center and periphery across space.

Tony Platt is the author of thirteen books and 150 essays and articles on race, inequality, and social justice in American history, among them Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States; Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, from Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial; and The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. In addition to scholarly books and publications, Platt has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Truthdig, History News Network, Z Magazine, Nation, Salon, Monthly Review, and the Guardian, and his commentaries have aired on National Public Radio. Now a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society, Platt taught at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and California State University where he received awards for teaching and scholarship. The focus of our conversation is Tony's new book The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley.  Here's a description of the book:  The University of California, Berkeley—widely known as “Cal”—is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university’s roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley’s history. Platt looks unflinchingly at the university’s desecration of graves and large-scale hoarding of Indigenous remains. He tracks its role in developing the racist pseudoscience of eugenics in the early twentieth century. He sheds light on the school’s complicity with the military-industrial complex and its incubation of unprecedented violence through the Manhattan Project. And he underscores its deliberate and continued evasions about its own wrongdoings, which echo in the institution’s decision-making up to the present day. This book, above all, illuminates Cal’s culpability in some of the cruelest chapters of US history and sounds a clarion call for the university to undertake a thorough and earnest reckoning with its past. It is required reading for Cal alumni, students, faculty, and staff, and for anyone concerned with the impact of higher education in the United States and beyond.  

Today's episode is the first in a series of episodes on the history of Chinese Americans in California. We are beginning the series by discussing push and pull factors, immigration and legal status, mutual aid organizations, and more. 

Today, we have Gary Krist on the show. Gary has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is the bestselling author of the acclaimed narrative nonfiction books The Mirage Factory, Empire of Sin, City of Scoundrels, and The White Cascade.  He has also written five works of fiction. Krist has received the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Public Scholar fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and other awards. The subject of today’s episode is Gary’s new book Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco.    Here’s the description of the book:  Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veil, she drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. “I did it and I don’t deny it,” she said when arrested shortly thereafter. “He ruined both myself and my daughter.” Though little remembered today, the trial of Laura D. Fair for the murder of her lover, A. P. Crittenden, made headlines nationwide. As bestselling author Gary Krist reveals, the operatic facts of the case—a woman strung along for years by a two-timing man, killing him in an alleged fit of madness—challenged an American populace still searching for moral consensus after the Civil War. The trial shone an early and uncomfortable spotlight on social issues like the role of women, the sanctity of the family, and the range of acceptable expressions of gender, while jolting the still-adolescent metropolis of 1870s San Francisco, a city eager to shed its rough-and-tumble Gold Rush-era reputation. Trespassers at the Golden Gate brings readers inside the untamed frontier town, a place where—for a brief period—otherwise marginalized communities found unique opportunities. Readers meet a secretly wealthy Black housekeeper, an enterprising Chinese brothel madam, and a French rabble-rouser who refused to dress in sufficiently “feminine” clothing—as well as familiar figures like Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, who become swept up in the drama of the Laura Fair affair.  Krist, who previously brought New Orleans to vivid life in Empire of Sin and Chicago in City of Scoundrels, recounts this astonishing story and its surprisingly modern echoes in a rollicking narrative that probes what it all meant—both for a nation still scarred by war and for a city eager for the world stage.

Jack Gedney is the author of The Private Lives of Public Birds: Learning to Listen to the Birds Where We Live and a compact field guide to the trees of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2018, he has written a column on local birds, “On the Wing,” for the Marin Independent Journal. Jack currently co-owns a wild bird feeding and nature shop in Novato, California. The focus of our conversation today is Jack's new book The Birds in the Oaks: Secret Voices of the Western Woods which his wife Angelina beautifully illustrated. Here’s a description of the book:  The first book on the birds of California’s oaks, from our most lyrical and observant wanderer of the woods. With charm and delight, The Birds in the Oaks introduces us to the birds who burrow, forage, and soar among California’s keystone trees. The mighty oak hosts a multitude of avian denizens—from canopy hoppers to ground nesters to short-billed surface pluckers—who rely on the trees’ well-stocked pantry of acorns, insects, and flowers for sustenance and shelter. Spunky kinglets, crimson-eyed towhees, cuddle-craving bushtits, intrepid nuthatches, and impudent wrens are among the many memorable cast members in this pageant of oak-allied birds. Jack Gedney lyrically conveys the beautiful, comic, and endearing qualities of over fifteen bird species, each profile paired with an illustration by Angelina Gedney. His bird-filled tales of adaptation, ingenuity, and sheer persistence also bring to light the warp and weft of cross-species interdependence. The Birds in the Oaks reveals to us the utter joy of birds, the superabundant world of the oaks, and the innumerable interconnections these living beings create. Buy the book here

 Today we have Dr. William Deverell on the show. Dr. Deverell is a professor of History, Spatial Sciences, and Environmental Studies at USC. He's an American historian with a focus on the 19th and 20th century American West. He has written works on political, social, ethnic, and environmental history, and is the founding director of the Huntington USC Institute on California and the West. This was so much fun to record. Bill has written books across an array of areas and subjects. We just had a great time exploring different facets of California history. We cover a broad range of subjects. We do spend time on his most recent book on Kathy Fiscus, which is a fascinating story about reality television and its origins, but, more broadly, this is a podcast about California history at large, and there's a lot to be learned through this conversation. Buy William Deverell's New Book Here

Today, we have Dr. James Tejani, Associate Professor of History at Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo, on the show. We will be discussing his new book A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America.  Here’s the description of the book:  The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobiles, and much more. The busiest container port in the Western hemisphere, it claims one-sixth of all US ocean shipping. Yet despite its centrality to our world, the port and the story of its making have been neglected in histories of the United States. In A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth, historian James Tejani corrects that significant omission, charting the port’s rise out of the mud and salt marsh of San Pedro estuary―and showing how the story of the port is the story of modern, globalized America itself. By the mid-nineteenth century, Americans had identified the West Coast as the republic’s destiny, a gateway to the riches of the Pacific. In a narrative spanning decades and stretching to Washington, DC, the Pacific Northwest, Civil War Richmond, Southwest deserts, and even overseas to Europe, Hawaii, and Asia, Tejani demonstrates how San Pedro came to be seen as all-important to the nation’s future. It was not virgin land, but dominated by powerful Mexican estates that would not be dislodged easily. Yet American scientists, including the great surveyor George Davidson, imperialist politicians such as Jefferson Davis and William Gwin, and hopeful land speculators, among them the future Union Army general Edward Ord, would wrest control of the estuary, and set the scene for the violence, inequality, and engineering marvels to come. San Pedro was no place for a harbor, Tejani reveals. The port was carved in defiance of nature, using new engineering techniques and massive mechanical dredgers. Business titans such as Collis Huntington and Edward H. Harriman brought their money and corporate influence to the task. But they were outmatched by government reformers, laying the foundations for the port, for the modern city of Los Angeles, and for our globalized world. Interweaving the natural history of San Pedro into this all-too-human history, Tejani vividly describes how a wild coast was made into the engine of American power. A story of imperial dreams and personal ambition, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth is necessary reading for anyone who seeks to understand what the United States was, what it is now, and what it will be.   Dr. Tejani was a joy to talk with. Please enjoy our conversation. 

I am so excited to share today’s episode with you. For those of you who follow my substack, you may know that I have decided to make my way through Steinbeck this year. We started with Pastures of Heaven, a short story cycle that comes a few years after his first publication, called Cup of Gold, which is a historical novel set in Mexico. I decided to skip that first book as Pastures of Heaven turns our gaze to California. I was blown away by this cycle and wrote out my initial reactions to it on the substack. After finishing each volume in Steinbeck’s oeuvre, I will plan to have a podcast discussion with experts about the book, providing the readers and myself the additional context and analysis to make the reading experience richer. And we are fortunate enough to begin this podcast series with a titan of Steinbeck scholarship: Dr. Susan Shillinglaw. Born in Iowa, raised in Colorado, Susan Shillinglaw graduated with a B.A. in English and Art from Cornell College and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a Professor Emerita of English at San Jose State University, where she was Director of the University’s Center for Steinbeck Studies for 18 years. In 2012-13 she was named the SJSU President’s Scholar. She was also Director of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas from 2015-2018. Dr. Shillinglaw has published widely on John Steinbeck, including Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage (U of Nevada P, 2013) and On Reading The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin, 2014); and A Journey into Steinbeck’s California (3rd edition, 2019) She also wrote introductions to several of Steinbeck books for Penguin New American Library editions. Her most recent title is "Steinbeck’s Uneasy America: Rereading “Travels with Charley,” which she edited with Barbara A. Heavilin. This collection puts together critical scholarship on John Steinbeck’s best-selling, late-career travel memoir. In 1960, Steinbeck was a renowned man of American letters. Many considered him America’s troubadour of ordinary people, the conscience of the country. But weakened by two small strokes and anxious that he had lost touch with America, he embarked on a cross-country road trip accompanied by his wife’s standard poodle, Charley. Two years later, he published Travels with Charley to popular acclaim and robust sales. In this episode, Dr. Shillinglaw and I discuss Steinbeck’s continued relevance, pertinent biographical information that informs our reading of his text, themes and the structure of Pastures of Heaven, character analysis, and interpretative tools needed for an enriched reading experience. I hope you enjoy this conversation and it encourages you to book up this great short story cycle. 

Today, we have Dr. Brittany Friedman on the show. Dr. Brittany Friedman is a sociologist and expert on cover-ups, politics, and the dark side of institutions. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Friedman's research has appeared in the Washington Post, NPR, The Nation, Jacobin Magazine, and the Associated Press, among others. She is co-founder of the Captive Money Lab and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation.  She has come on to discuss her new book Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons. Here’s the description: It is impossible to deny the impact of lies and white supremacy on the institutional conditions in US prisons. There is a particular power dynamic of racist intent in the prison system that culminates in what Brittany Friedman terms carceral apartheid. Prisons are a microcosm of how carceral apartheid operates as a larger governing strategy to decimate political targets and foster deceit, disinformation, and division in society. Among many shocking discoveries, Friedman shows that, beginning in the 1950s, California prison officials declared war on imprisoned Black people and sought to identify Black militants as a key problem, creating a strategy for the management, segregation, and elimination of these individuals from the prison population that continues into the present day. Carceral Apartheid delves into how the California Department of Corrections deployed various official, clandestine, and at times extralegal control techniques—including officer alliances with imprisoned white supremacists—to suppress Black political movements, revealing the broader themes of deception, empire, corruption, and white supremacy in American mass incarceration. Drawing from original interviews with founders of Black political movements such as the Black Guerilla Family, white supremacists, and a swath of little-known archival data, Friedman uncovers how the US domestic war against imprisoned Black people models and perpetuates genocide, imprisonment, and torture abroad. Buy her book here Dr. Friedman's Website

Rob Crisell is an author, poet, actor, winemaker, and teacher in Temecula, California. For the past eight years, he has taught poetry and Shakespeare with the Murrieta Valley Union School District. He has been a Shakespeare lecturer with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He has acted in The Merchant of Venice, Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), Baskerville, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tempest (Prospero), Macbeth, Othello (Iago), and others. He has written and regularly performs several one-man plays featuring Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Shakespeare in America. He’s the author of the children’s novel The Zoo of Impossible Animals (De Portola Press, 2016), Shakespeare’s Book of Wisdom: Advice on Living a Wiser, Happier Life from William Shakespeare & Friends (DPP, 2018), The Fantastic Fables of Aesop (DPP, 2023), Temecula Valley Wineries (Arcadia Publishing, 2023).  His 2016 TED Talk is “How NOT to Hate Shakespeare” can be found on You Tube. His poetry has been published in The Lyric Magazine, the Society of Classical Poets, among other venues. He is a graduate of Yale University and George Mason University Law School. The focus of our conversation is Rob's newest book is California Avocados: A Delicious History, a fantastic exploration of avos rich and vibrant history.  Buy Rob's books here.