Conversations about the future of the Golden State.
Roughly once a week · Listen on RSS.com
We work through what's actually happening in California — the headlines and policy fights, and underneath them the harder questions about governance, federalism, and how much of its own future this state really controls.
It's an ongoing dialogue between two people who work inside California politics — and, increasingly, the guests they bring on — thinking out loud. Serious but accessible, skeptical of easy answers, and interested in how California got here and where it could go next.
It isn't punditry and it isn't outrage radio. If the only thing to say about a story is that it's outrageous, we'd rather talk about something else.
Episodes
Listen on RSS.com or in your podcast app. From episode 5 on, each has a facts page: what was said, checked, right or wrong, with sources.
-
Ash Seiter — Lone Pine fire captain and vice chair of the California National Party — is back for a second conversation, recorded two days after the President told a cheering crowd in Nebraska that Iran could "take out" Los Angeles and San Diego.
-
Sean and Charles are joined by Ash Seiter — captain and public information officer with the Lone Pine Fire Department in Inyo County, and vice chair of the California National Party — for an episode about who fights California's fires, who pays for it, and what happens when Washington stops showing up.
-
Sean and Charles are joined by Maya Ram — a registered nurse for 13 years, and the California National Party's Northern California secretary and chapter coordinator — for an episode about what the decline of American healthcare looks like from inside an East Bay safety-net hospital, and why she believes California has to leave to escape it.
-
Sean and Charles are joined by Hal Lohr — a California independence veteran since 2014, founder of the Red Star Report, and a producer on Working Voices at KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles — for an episode about why working within the system keeps failing, and what acting like a nation would actually look like.
-
Independence is the easy part to argue about; this episode is about the morning after — what California would do with the keys, and how much of it could be done right now, without leaving anything. Sean's answer is a tripod: a basic income paid out of a permanent fund on the Alaska model, universal healthcare underneath it, and something on rents, or the landlords simply collect the difference. Charles adds the leg it falls over without — you have to build the housing — and tells the story of bribing his way into a Manhattan apartment, one hundred-dollar bill at a time, back when rent stabilisation was supposed to be protecting him.
-
If California leaves, it leaves by negotiation — both hosts say so at the top — so the episode is about what could put California on the other side of that table with something to trade. Sean's starting point is that the Civil War has badly distorted what Americans think secession looks like: the Soviet Union came apart by accord, Czechoslovakia separated peacefully, and Singapore didn't even ask — Malaysia threw it out, then watched it become an economic engine.
-
The first episode. Sean Forbes, Chair of the California National Party, and Charles McGuinness, the party's Secretary for IT, introduce themselves and the show — and then spend an hour on the question underneath everything else: what is California actually getting out of this arrangement?
The hosts
-
Sean ForbesChair, California National Party
-
Charles McGuinnessSecretary for IT, California National Party
Get in touch
-
General
[email protected] -
Corrections
[email protected]