Life After the Eaton Fire; Kishi Bashi Embraces Imperfection; 19-Year-Old Bandleader Creates a Future in Norteño

For many Californians, winter means snow. But alongside the skiers, snowboarders and snowshoers awaiting the latest weather forecasts, there’s another group of snow obsessives in our state: snow scientists. They measure California’s snowpack every day in order to better predict our statewide water supply for the coming year. Some of the most cutting-edge work in this field is being done by a tiny lab hidden in a rustic cabin in the Tahoe National Forest, and it’s a place that also houses a big secret. KQED’s Carly Severn headed up there to see it for herself. And we meet the San Diego band Al Akhbar. The band combines instrumentation and rhythms of the Middle East with western jazz. And they’re not only preserving their Middle Eastern musical traditions, but also reinventing them. As The California Report Magazine’s intern Hussain Khan explains, they’re bringing audiences from diverse backgrounds together with their unique sound.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some of the homes lost in the Eaton Fire included fireplaces with distinctive hearths made of handmade tiles. These Arts and Crafts-era tiles were created by local artist Ernest Batchelder a century ago. For many Altadenans, these tiles are all that is left of their homes. Now a group of volunteers is working quickly to save as many of these tiles as possible before bulldozers clear the lots. They hope they can preserve history and provide their neighbors with a piece of the homes they’ve lost. And as part of our new series about resilience, we’re asking Californians who've been through difficult times about what resilience means to them. This week, host Sasha Khokha talks to author and poet Alicia Partnoy, Professor Emerita of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University, and former vice chair of Amnesty International. In the 1970s, she became one of Argentina’s “disappeared” for being a youth activist. She was held and tortured by the military for five months, and later jailed for over two years without being charged for a crime. She’s spent her career writing about exile and loss, as well as survival and courage.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

‘Buzzkill’ Examines the Crisis of Disappearing Honeybees and Other Pollinators  The Central Valley’s almond industry is hosting what some beekeepers call the Super Bowl. Commercial beekeepers from across the country take an estimated 90% of the nation’s honeybees and load them into trucks in time to make a narrow pollination window for those Central Valley almond trees. But it’s gotten harder and harder to keep those bees alive. All over the world, bees, butterflies, moths and flies are disappearing. Sasha Khokha sat down with Teresa Cotsirilos, host of Buzzkill, a new podcast that investigates the pollinator crisis. California Composers: Meet Lulu, Ambient Bird Composers Lulu and Wendy Reid make music in collaboration with the natural world. They don’t speak the same language, but composing and performing music together is how they connect. For our series on California Composers, reporter Julia Haney went to one of the duo’s performances in in Berkeley.  The Amateur Photographers Documenting Life In the Imperial Valley Juan Rodelo has spent decades as firefighter and turned to photography to help deal with stress and exhaustion. He appreciated the beautiful landscapes of the Imperial Valley but felt like there he didn’t see those images enough. So in 2024, he started a Facebook group called Imperial Valley Photography to find others documenting the area. The group gained 15,000 followers in less than a year. As part of KPBS’s ongoing series on volunteers, reporter Kori Suzuki caught up with Juan on an evening visit to the Salton Sea.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

February 19 is the Day of Remembrance, the anniversary of when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Some survivors of those prison camps are feeling like the rhetoric about immigrants and mass deportations today is hitting too close to home. In response, some survivors are mobilizing to protect vulnerable immigrants. Reporter Cecilia Lei spoke to a group of them in the Bay Area about how they’re fighting to keep history from repeating itself.  One of the members of that Japanese American survivors group is author and Satsuki Ina. Nine months into her parents’ marriage, Pearl Harbor was bombed. Their life was totally upended when, along with 125,000 other Japanese Americans, they were sent to incarceration camps. After unsuccessfully fighting for their civil rights to be restored, they renounced their American citizenship. That meant the US government branded them as “enemy aliens.” Ina was born in a prison camp at Tule Lake, but didn’t know much about that difficult chapter in her parents’ life. Then she discovered a trove of letters that they sent to each other while they were separated in different camps. Now, at close to 80 years old, Ina – who spent most of her career as a trauma therapist — has published a memoir about how her parents’ relationship survived prison camps, resistance and separation. The Poet and the Silk Girl is a rare first-person account of a generation-altering period in Japanese American history. Sasha Khokha sat down with Satsuki Ina to learn more about her parents’ story and how it shaped the course of Ina’s own life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following the Eaton Fire, tens of thousands of people are suspended in a state of shock and grief, even as they have to make life-changing decisions about where to live now, and whether to rebuild. KQED’s Rachael Myrow shares the story of one mother and daughter navigating this new normal. Plus we visit the Santa Cruz studio of Kishi Bashi. The 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 recent shows to see if they could figure it out. And we take a trip to the Central Coast to hear the band Loz Rayoz de Guadalupe. The group is part of a growing and thriving norteño music scene there. The band’s frontman, Chencho Perez, is just 19 years old. Reporter Benjamin Purper says Perez is part of a new generation of norteño musicians embracing and evolving this traditional Mexican sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, we visit the Freedom Community Clinic which provides free herbal remedies, massage services and healing workshops at their two apothecaries in Oakland. And just outside the city, they recently launched the Ancestral Healing Farm, where people of color are encouraged to learn about ancestral practices and reconnect with the land. The goal of founder Dr. Bernie Lim is to reach people who might mistrust the mainstream medical system because of racism or cultural incompetency. KQED Arts & Culture Editor Nastia Voynovskaya brings us this profile. Plus a new documentary profiles Sally Gearhart, a radical lesbian feminist whose fight for equality and change sparked movements that still continue today. But unlike her friend and contemporary, Harvey Milk, there are no airport terminals or schools named after her.  Instead, she has been largely erased from history. Deborah Craig, a filmmaker and professor at San Francisco State University, wanted to change that. Craig spoke about her film, Sally!, with The California Report Magazine’s Bianca Taylor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People affected by the wildfires in Los Angeles are only just starting to get a handle on what it’s going to mean to rebuild their lives and mend their broken communities. And it’s going to take a long time. We spend time with neighbors in Altadena and Pasadena who are coming together and relying on each other. One of those neighbors is Steven Cuevas. He’s The California Report’s former LA Bureau Chief, and he lives in Altadena. Thankfully his house survived, but he’s been talking to folks in his community every day since the fire broke out about healing, helping and moving forward.   And one of the first executive orders Donald Trump signed this week could radically transform who gets to be a U.S. citizen. It would deny birthright citizenship to anyone who doesn’t have at least one parent who is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident. But California is fighting back. State Attorney General Rob Bonta filed our state’s first lawsuit against the new administration to challenge that order. And on Thursday, a federal judge in Washington State temporarily froze that executive order. But that’s only short-term, and the legal battle between the states and the federal government will continue. The government recognizing that all babies born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens runs deep in our history. One hundred and twenty-nine years ago, a Chinese American man who was born in San Francisco took the U.S. government to court after officials denied him entry into his own country. His name was Wong Kim Ark, and as KQED’s Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí explains, his victory back in 1898 might make it much harder for Trump to win this legal battle.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It will take months to clean up all the debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires. Some community members in Pasadena decided to start the work immediately, led by a group of day laborers who saw a need and rushed to fill it. KCRW’s Megan Jamerson reports. And even as as restaurants burned down and Los Angeles residents fled the Palisades and Eaton fires, LA’s food community was stepping up to feed people in need. Those efforts continue, as KCRW’s “Good Food” producer Elina Shatkin explains. Scores of people in Los Angeles have turned out to volunteer to help people in their communities. And it turns out, science shows we humans are actually wired for kindness, connection and empathy. Dr. Jamil Zaki runs the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, and has studied the need for this kind of connection. He’s a professor of psychology and the author of “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.” As a part of a new series we’re launching on resilience, Dr. Zaki sat down with host Sasha Khokha to explain the data-driven reasons why we shouldn’t be cynical,  even in really hard times.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are not enough words to describe the impact of the wildfires in Los Angeles – one of the most destructive and costly firestorms in our state’s history. Whether we’ve lost our homes, are fleeing for safety, or desperately worried about people we love, so many people in California are grieving. Tens of thousands of residents have evacuated, leaving everything behind. We bring you some voices of people who are living this nightmare right now. Plus, we talk with the California Report's Saul Gonzalez about Pacific Palisades, and journalist Steven Cuevas about the videos he's been making to document the destruction in his own neighborhood in Altadena. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We start in Los Angeles with emerging composter Derrick Skye, whose fascination with the cosmos is woven into his music. When Skye began composing “Prism, Cycles and Leaps,” he watched YouTube videos about Jupiter and was captivated by the way the planet moved at different speeds. As a mixed race person, he resonates with musical traditions from across the globe and blends genres and forms. Music from India, the Balkans and West Africa form the building blocks of Sky’s music today. Reporter Clare Wiley tells us about Skye’s musical process and what he hopes people will take away from his work. Then, we're traveling up to the Bay Area to meet another California composer. Destiny Muhammad was nine years old when she first saw Harpo Marx playing the harp in an episode of “I Love Lucy.” She immediately knew she wanted to play the mesmerizing instrument. It took over two decades for the Oakland-based artist to start learning how to play the harp, but it set her on a path to pursue her unique “Celtic to Coltrane” genre, as she calls it. Today, Muhammad works as a composer, teacher and performer in the Bay Area, and writes original scores for her group, The Destiny Muhammad Trio. KQED’s Bianca Taylor brings us Muhammad’s story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices