Miriam Pawel on the university that built California

Soleil Ho, a contributor to Alta Journal's recent exploration of 25 essential restaurants defining the new California cuisine, examines how immigration, global influences, and inventive young chefs are reshaping the way California eats. A former San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic, Ho explores the economic pressures threatening culinary creativity, the rise of pop-ups, and COYOTE, the worker-owned media collective she co-founded.  

Miriam Pawel, author of acclaimed books about Cesar Chavez and the Brown political dynasty, traces the University of California from its founding in 1868 to its role in transforming California into a global academic powerhouse. Her new book, "California Dreams," explores the extraordinary public vision behind UC, its battles over politics and access, and whether California still retains the ambition that built it.    

Aaron Horwath, director of AI operations at a creative technology company, joined us to talk about two essays he wrote for Noema magazine: "Why Is Everyone in Tech So Sad?" and "Now Entering: The Era of Bleh." Horwath explores what artificial intelligence in the workplace really means — the strange career dread it's stirring, the sameness it breeds — and why the future may belong to deliberately human work.

Nathaniel Philbrick, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer finalist, recasts the Gold Rush as the moment California — and perhaps America — learned to embrace greed and live at warp speed. His new book, "The Rush," explores instant wealth, immigration, slavery, and technological upheaval, then follows that same restless impulse through railroads and agriculture to Silicon Valley and the artificial intelligence boom.  

Michael Moritz, a former journalist, became one of Silicon Valley's most successful investors — and a philanthropist who has quietly backed the Booker Prize and San Francisco journalism. Yet he never escaped the terror of his family's past. The longtime Sequoia Capital leader's new book, "Ausländer," traces how his family's flight from Nazi Germany echoes in the lives of descendants who never lived it.    

David Perlis argues that a small, isolated county on the other side of the Golden Gate from San Francisco quietly helped invent modern America. Zen thinkers, the Grateful Dead, Star Wars, the loosening of the American mind, he says in his new book "Morning in Marin," ran through its foggy hills before reaching the rest of us. Then the outsiders became insiders.  

Joseph Ogilvy, an author and chef, argues that California began as a maritime frontier facing China long before it became the western terminus of the American story. In his new book "Tin Can Coast," he follows the otter, the abalone, and the sardine through three centuries of abundance and greed, and shows how even conservation became a way of deciding who belonged.

Rep. Jared Huffman, who represents Marin County and the North Coast, may be among the most unusual members of the House — and the only one who will say out loud that he doesn't believe in God. In his new book, "No Prophets," he argues that Christian nationalism has given up on democracy. He explains why he thinks the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a religious event, and what it means when a movement decides it no longer needs to win elections.  

The Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Shaikin unravels the story of Mark Walter, the billionaire who turned the Dodgers into champions and flipped the Lakers for $2.5 billion barely a year after buying them. Now his insurance-fueled sports empire faces federal scrutiny. What happens when franchises become financial instruments?  

Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University at the age of 17 wanting in. What he found, as he recounts in his new book "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University," was a machine: venture capitalists scouting freshmen, "pre-idea funding," yacht parties, and a secret elite — all riding on a culture of cutting corners that influenced everyone from his classmates to the university president.