Not Your Century

Not Your Century is a San Francisco Chronicle history show with the pace of a newsroom note and the curiosity of someone who has spent real time in the archives. Its center of gravity is San Francisco, but the route is never narrow. King Kaufman moves from Market Street sit-ins to Bay Area futurism, from Coit Tower ceremonies to the panic around War of the Worlds, from free speech battles to the newspaper industry’s own blind spots. The episodes are compact. They also carry a surprising amount of context. A 1963 front page about awful restaurant coffee becomes a story about Chronicle style, Scott Newhall headlines, newspaper rivalry, and civic self-image. A 1964 protest at the Sheraton Palace Hotel becomes a conversation about anti-discrimination organizing, arrests, hotel hiring practices, and what a leader later wished she had understood. The show is especially good at showing how the past talked about itself. People in 1933 were already nostalgic for old San Francisco. Writers in 1999 could imagine video calls and robot vacuums, yet miss how climate change and the internet would reshape California and newspapers. The tone is informed, amused, and concise. It can also turn sober quickly when the archive demands it. Episodes on FBI surveillance of gay organizations, Leonard Matlovich’s military discharge, Randy Schultz’s reporting, and the AIDS crisis place local journalism inside larger fights over rights, secrecy, and public memory. Not Your Century suits listeners who enjoy history through primary-source texture rather than grand theory. It favors headlines, dates, documents, and the occasional oddball detail. The show went on hiatus in March 2020 as Chronicle podcast work shifted toward coronavirus coverage, leaving about 250 back episodes of short historical dispatches. Its lasting appeal is the way it makes old media feel immediate without pretending the past was simpler than the present.