Alissa Wilkinson explores Joan Didion's warning about America's entertainment politics

Scot Danforth, author of the new biography "An Independent Man," 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.

Photographer Matthew Scott captures Los Angeles through his lens, revealing stories hidden in plain sight. His projects include "Concrete River," 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 MathewScott.com.

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 now feel betrayed, how Southern California's "suburban apathy" 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.

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, "The Royal We" 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.

Ashlee Vance reports 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.

Todd S. Purdum, veteran journalist and author of the new book "Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television," 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.

John Freeman, author of "California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State's New Literature," talks about how California has become America's new literary center, challenging New York's dominance. He discusses the pandemic book club that sparked his journey, the state's evolving mythology, and how diverse voices are redefining what it means to imagine America's future.

Filmmaker Ari Gold turns the camera on his own family in "Brother Verses Brother," an ambitious one-shot musical that follows him and his identical twin brother searching for meaning through the streets of San Francisco's North Beach, alongside their 99-year-old novelist father, Herb. Gold explains how this experimental work, executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola and generating serious buzz on the festival circuit, blurs the line between documentary and fiction, asking uncomfortable questions about art, family, and what we're willing to expose in pursuit of truth.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of the new book "Who Gets to Be Indian?" explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood's early film lots to today's casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis. The state's confluence of entertainment industry, counterculture movements, federal relocation programs, and gaming wealth created perfect conditions for "Indianness" to become commodified, challenging authentic tribal sovereignty and belonging across the nation.

Mike Magee is the president of Minerva University, which has earned the No. 1 ranking in the World University Rankings for Innovation for four consecutive years. Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Minerva reimagined higher education — eliminating campuses, lectures, and tenure while sending students to live and study across seven global cities. Magee discusses how Minerva, with only a 4% acceptance rate and students from more than 100 countries, is preparing the next generation of leaders for an interconnected world.