Podcasts about California, United States

The state's politics arrives on this page as argument rather than bulletin. Three shows work the same ground, the governor's race, Gavin Newsom, ballot fights, what a new law will cost, in three registers: Jon Fleischman talks it through with guests, Carl DeMaio delivers it solo and at speed, Phil and Camille of California Underground pull it apart as a two-hander. Around them sits a quieter California of water, dirt and fine print: groundwater boards, almond irrigation trials, HOA fines, power-shutoff hearings. True crime is largely one case, the Golden State Killer. Sports, the largest filing among shows about California, turns up here as one youth-rugby podcast; most of what is filed under the state is really about one of its cities and is heard with them.

What California is

California is the most populous US state, running down the Pacific coast from Oregon to Mexico. Sacramento is the capital, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area hold most of the people, and the Central Valley between the coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada is some of the most productive farmland anywhere. It is known for Hollywood, technology, wine, national parks, drought and wildfire.

Sacramento, argued

So, Does It Matter? - on CA Politics - Podcasts! is the interview-led one. Fleischman sounds like an insider talking to people who already follow this, and the clips belong to his guests: the Will Swaim episode, where the argument is that shutting refineries while importing gasoline means burning bunker fuel, worse than coal; Josh Rauh of the Hoover Institution working the billionaire wealth tax down from a claimed $100 billion to a $40 billion ceiling. Recent titles run through HJTA, a Prop. 13 loophole, the June 2 election and whether Tom Steyer makes the runoff.

Reform California with Carl DeMaio is the same politics without guests: fast, direct, indignant, part outrage monologue and part voter guide. DeMaio reads legislation aloud; on AB 2624, which he calls the Stop Nick Shirley Act, he quotes the amended Section 2 back and argues it could penalise journalists for posting public video after a written demand to remove it, when California already has laws against threats.

California Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics is the brisk two-hander, restating a point from a couple of angles before moving on; most of its clips are a sit-down with Tom Woodard, a Libertarian running for governor, who says his son's addiction and schizophrenia shaped his plan for 90-day mandatory detox. The ONME Network is the counterweight in register, community radio crossed with civic journalism and rooted in the Central Valley; its data-centre episode walks through a chart of where data centres get their power, noting they took about a quarter of Virginia's load in 2023.

Water, dirt and the fine print

The SGMA Weekly treats groundwater policy as market intelligence: Imperial Irrigation District's Colorado River inflow projections down nearly three million acre-feet since November, Lake Mead around 1,056 feet and not rising as forecast, golden mussels colonising canals, irrigation season starting March 12 in Turlock. Growing the Valley is the grower's end of the same water: Sam Sandoval Solis compares farm water planning to a family budget of groundwater, surface water, rainfall and crops, and points growers to the SAGBI soil map for ground that will take recharge; the rest is orchard trial science on pistachio pollen and almond irrigation timing.

HOA HELL and Attorney Dennis Block-Zoom Landlord-Tenant Talk Radio are property law from opposite doors. Michael Kushner takes the homeowner's side: what has happened since the AB 130 $100 fine law took effect, how unpaid fines past a threshold get an association delisted and push insurance rates up. Block works the landlord's side, from a rule dated July 1, 2025 requiring photographs of a unit before and after a tenancy to the difference between unusual wear and a 25-year-old carpet. The California Public Utilities Commission Meeting Podcast is the state itself on the record: 2020 power-shutoff hearings in which SDG&E projects 25 to 30 percent fewer customers affected, and a public forum in which Latashia Riles explains why, on a $16 hourly wage, any electricity increase is a household crisis.

One killer, told twice

Man In The Window: The Golden State Killer is Paige St. John's Los Angeles Times series, and its clips sit with the survivors after the arrest: a covertly collected tissue sample identifying Joseph James D'Angelo in April 2018, a woman named Phyllis whose nightmares return as she prepares to face him. EXPOSED, from the KTXL FOX40 newsroom in Sacramento, gets the same arrest by phone, Debbie Domingo on the midnight call from Ann Marie Schubert with the DNA match, and adds a Dorothea Puente strand. The Central Valley gets its own case in The Trials of Frank Carson, a Modesto defense attorney and the disappearance of Corey Kaufman, told like a reporter building a case in real time; the clips are the prosecution's witnesses, from Mike Cooley on stolen irrigation pipes to Robert Woody's evolving story of a body fed to pigs.

Inside, and on the ground

Ear Hustle is produced by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people connected to San Quentin State Prison, and it speaks calmly, as if you were in the room: Al Watson eats chicken on the bone for the first time in thirty years, steps outside and realises he has not seen the moon or stars in decades; a nine-year-old named Jalen writes in asking strangers to get his imprisoned father to write him more letters. The California Report Magazine, from KQED, is public radio with dust on its shoes, entering through a scene and widening out; its clips are from the fire zones, a cleared lot in the Palisades' Alphabet Streets where over a thousand houses were lost, and in Altadena Lori Scott turning her burned front yard into a free library for plants.

Smaller voices fill out the state. The California Community Colleges Podcast, hosted by Chancellor Daisy Gonzales, has Rafael Agustin on the Prague trip that forced him to tell Liesl Reinhart he was undocumented. Camp Hamilton Veterans Memorial Park, from Kern County, has Lon Chaney on what sounds like a taped letter home dated 29 October 1969. Keepin’ it Arcadia is student-produced from Arcadia Unified. California Now Podcast, hosted by Josh Meyers, is the travel show: scuba off the steps behind the casino in Avalon, Convict Lake's glacial basin. The Rugby NorCal Podcast, Nate Dalena's introduction to youth and high-school rugby in Northern California, plays as coaching philosophy, Nick Leah on the player who gives you 80 percent every week over the one who hits 90 once a season.

Where to start

• For politics with guests, So, Does It Matter? - on CA Politics - Podcasts! and its Josh Rauh clip on the wealth tax; for the same politics fast and blunt, Reform California with Carl DeMaio.
• For the state's documentary voice, Ear Hustle, then The California Report Magazine in Altadena.
• For the Golden State Killer, Man In The Window: The Golden State Killer; EXPOSED for the Sacramento newsroom's version.
• For the Valley's water, The SGMA Weekly for policy and Growing the Valley for the orchards.

The California feed on this page plays clips from these shows.