Greetings from What is California? HQ, where I’m excited to share with you the trailer for Season 3 of your favorite podcast about the Golden State.

This season promises to be an enlightening, amusing, challenging, and all-around compelling set of conversations with notable Californians in our ongoing quest to understand this crazy, fascinating place. I’m thrilled about this season’s guest lineup to date, which includes some of our state’s most intriguing voices weighing in with their unique, thought-provoking perspectives about California.

You can look forward to hearing from (in alphabetical order)…

• Allison Arieff, the editorial director for print of MIT Technology Review and one of our foremost thinkers about urban design
• Anita Chabria, the California columnist at the Los Angeles Times
• Alicia Garza, the principal at Black Futures Lab and co-creator of #blacklivesmatter
• Franklin Leonard, the creator of the influential Hollywood industry website The Black List
• Greg Lucas, the California State Librarian
• Zeke Lunder, the creator of the California fire-tracking resource The Lookout
• Ellen Pao, the former CEO of Reddit and current co-founder of the tech-industry nonprofit Project Include
• Miyoko Schinner, the vegan food impresario behind Miyoko’s Creamery and the Marin County farm sanctuary Rancho Compasión
• Dr. Garen Wintemute, a UC Davis Medical Center epidemiologist who is one of the nation’s preeminent researchers of firearm violence

…among other excellent guests currently in the works.

Look forward to our annual Year in Review episode in December as well, when our blue-ribbon panel of experts will look back on the ups and downs of 2022 and the challenges and opportunities awaiting California in 2023.

Spread the word and save the date for Sept. 6! I’m so pleased to be back with you.

Keep your eye on the bear! 🐻 ❤️