The Finest

We're sharing an episode of the Voice of San Diego podcast that we think The Finest listeners will love. The VOSD team discusses HBO's "Neighbors," including an episode featuring a San Diego man whose front-yard workouts have raised concerns among his neighbors. The show also looks at how human behavior may have played a role in the orphaning of two bear cubs in Monrovia, California. Plus, The Finest talks with Voice of San Diego reporter Jakob McWhinney about his favorite grimy dive bars and how these spaces help build community.

Voice of San Diego team:

• Matt Skraby, podcast producer
• Jakob McWhinney, education reporter
• Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña, managing editor
• Bella Ross, social media producer
• Mackenzie Elmer, environment and energy reporter
• Scott Lewis, editor in chief

Taylor Guitars is one of the world's best-known acoustic guitar makers, with roots in San Diego and a history of changing how guitars are designed and made. But founder Bob Taylor's work has taken him far beyond the factory floor. A trip to Cameroon to investigate an ebony sawmill exposed a problem with wood used in his guitars and sent Bob on a decades-long journey involving forests, sustainability and some surprising research. We visit Taylor Guitars in El Cajon and talk with Bob about the company's evolution, his approach to guitar making and what happened when he started asking where the wood in his guitars actually came from. And that's where elephants come into the story.

Guests:

• Bob Taylor, co-founder and president of Taylor Guitars
• Craig Evans, director of marketing for Taylor Guitars
• Nick Kennedy, content writer and contributor for Taylor Guitars

Sources:

• Fifty Years of Feel (Jim Kirlin, Taylor Guitars)
• The Surprising Connection Between Elephants and Your Guitar (Scott Paul, Taylor Guitars, 2025)
• I traced my guitar company's supply chain upstream. It led to elephants. (Bob Taylor, The Washington Post via Taylor Guitars, 2026)
• Lacey Act Declaration Requirements (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2025)
• Rob Cavallo interview about "Excalibur" (Taylor Guitars via YouTube, 2012)
• Declines of ebony and ivory are inextricably linked in an African rainforest (Vincent Deblauwe, Matthew Scott Luskin, Serge Désiré Assola, Olivier J. Hardy, Simon Jansen, Céline Loubières, Gaston Guy Mempong, Jean Mathurin Ntsihe, Gilbert Oum Ndjock, Eric Rostand Onguene Kwecheu, Luke L. Powell, Bonaventure Sonké, and Thomas B. Smith, Science Advances, 2025)
• Scientists discover how elephant extinction threatens everything from rainforests to musical instruments (Alison Hewitt, UCLA Newsroom, 2025)
• Ebony Project (Congo Basin Institute)
• Taylor Transitions to 100% Employee Ownership Through an ESOP (Taylor Guitars, 2021)

Dianna Cowern, better known as Physics Girl, built a career explaining science to millions of people. But after a mild case of COVID, she developed debilitating symptoms that left her largely bedbound and unable to do many of the things she once took for granted, including sharing physics videos with her devoted fans. After struggling to find answers, she was diagnosed with ME/CFS and mast cell activation syndrome. Three years after she stopped making videos, Dianna recently returned to Physics Girl with a new science video. We talk with Dianna her husband, Kyle Kitzmiller, about the illness that changed their lives, the treatments that have helped her regain some abilities, the challenges of caring for someone with a poorly understood condition and what researchers are still trying to figure out.

Guests:

• Dianna Cowern aka Physics Girl, science communicator and physicist
• Kyle Kitzmiller, Long Covid and ME/CFS advocate and Physics Girl’s husband

Sources:

• The Surprising World of Local Twitch and YouTube Streamers (Julia Dixon Evans, Voice of San Diego, 2019)
• Community-Developed Resource Guide for Infection-Associated Chronic Conditions (IACC, 2025)
• ME/CFS Prevalence in the Long COVID Era: A Corrected U.S. Burden Estimate Using Infection-Associated Chronic Condition Modeling (Cynthia Adinig, CYNAERA Institute via SSRN, 2026)

San Diego musician Nicole Hernandez grew up in Tijuana with a Cuban father and a mother from Sinaloa, Mexico. The music she heard growing up, from salsa and reggaeton to hip-hop, now finds its way into her sound. After discovering Nicole through the NPR Tiny Desk Contest, we invited her and her band to perform at the KPBS San Diego Book Festival. After the performance, Nicole joined us in the studio to talk about her debut album, "Layers," writing in English and Spanish, the stories behind songs like "Viste" and "Rina," and how she brought together an all-women band of musicians from around San Diego.

Guest:

• Nicole Hernandez, musician

Nicole's band for the Sun Drenched Sounds live performance:

• Drums: Sarah Brew
• Congas: Sahar Malik
• Bass: Angelica Yumi Pruitt
• Guitar: Athalia Rodriguez

Sources:

• Nicole Hernandez's Tiny Desk Contest submission, "Viste" (2026)
• Nicole Hernandez, "Pa Ya" official music video), from "Layers"
• Daddy Yankee, "Gasolina" (2004)
• Havana D'Primera, "Pasaporte" (2013)
• How Tijuana Went From Stopover to Destination (Frankie Mills, New Lines Magazine, 2026)
• 10 standout San Diego artists from the 2026 NPR Tiny Desk Contest(Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS, 2026)

A viral beach meetup in Pacific Beach brought hundreds of remote workers together to work in the sun. It also raised a bigger question: If working from home gives us so much freedom, why are so many people craving connection?

" The costs of remote work are really subtle, and they are slow to take hold," says researcher Emma Harrington. "It takes a while to feel these accumulated effects of not having as strong connections to your colleagues. By contrast, not going on that commute, that happens immediately and is quite salient."

We take our laptops (and mics) to Petco Park for a remote work day and put the idea to the test. Can people actually get work done at a baseball game? And what happens when you replace the isolation of working from home with a crowd of strangers? We talk with Emma about the hidden downsides of remote work, from loneliness to missed opportunities for mentorship and friendship, especially for younger workers. Then, as the Padres game heads into the ninth inning, our experiment takes an unexpected turn.

Guests:

• Emma Harrington, researcher
• Scott Muirhead, Remote Worker Guy
• All the hard-working fans in the stands who took a break to talk to us

Sources:

• 'Bring Your Own Desk' | Remote workers set up office on Pacific Beach sand (Alex Lai, CBS 8, 2026)
• Remote workers return to Law Street Beach — this time with a city permit and cleanup plan (Thomas Murphy, Times of San Diego, 2026)
• The Number of People Primarily Working From Home Tripled Between 2019 and 2021 (United States Census Bureau, 2022)
• Hybrid Work (Gallup, 2026)
• Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026)
• We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data. (Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel, New York Times, 2026)
• Mistakenly seeking solitude (Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, National Library of Medicine, 2014)
• Remote work -- not AI -- has sidelined recent college graduates, research finds (Andrea Hsu, NPR, 2026)

The Kumeyaay have long told stories through rock art, vivid images carved into stone that preserved culture, memory and meaning. Today, that tradition continues in a new comic book created by Kumeyaay educators and historians to challenge the erasure of Indigenous history in California classrooms. Co-written by SDSU professor Ethan Banegas, a member of the Barona Band of Mission Indians, the book brings Kumeyaay life — from ancestral knowledge to colonization and resistance — into a format designed for students and teachers. Blending community memory, academic research and lived experience, the comic is both a resource and a tool of reclamation. It replaces silence with story, and invisibility with truth.

At the KPBS San Diego Book Festival, we brought together three organizers from very different book clubs to talk about the communities they've built around reading. Enid Sherman has been meeting with the same group of women for 25 years. Mimi Phung started the North County Vietnamese Book Club to connect with other Vietnamese people and better understand her own heritage. And Courtney Geilenfeldt's cookbook club brings people together around a different cookbook and a shared meal each month. Their stories get at a bigger question: What makes a group of people become a community? They talk about the friendships that have grown from their clubs, the conversations that happen around the books and the moments when a monthly gathering becomes something people can't imagine giving up. Plus, they share some favorite books and advice for anyone thinking about starting a book club of their own.

Guests:

• Courtney Geilenfeldt, University Heights Women's Walk Cookbook Club
• Mimi Phung, North County Vietnamese Book Club
• Enid Sherman, Books, Bagels and Broads
• Kristin and Nancy, Chapter Three Book Club
• Krystal, Silent Book Club, San Diego
• Chih, The Lemon Literary Society
• Joseph, book club member
• Stephanie, Mission Valley Reads and Bibliobibuli

Sources:

• Federal Data on Reading for Pleasure: All Signs Show a Slump (Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts, 2024)
• The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey (Jessica K Bone, Feifei Bu, Jill K Sonke, Daisy Fancourt, iScience, 2025)
• APA poll reveals a nation suffering from stress of societal division, loneliness (American Psychological Association, 2025)

What started as a few skits between friends has grown into one of San Diego's most talked-about independent creative projects. The creators of "End of the 8" take us behind the scenes of turning their love of Ocean Beach into a sitcom, casting friends instead of actors, filming in local businesses and discovering that one pilot was enough to bring their community together. They talk about learning as they went, keeping creative control and why the Ocean Beach neighborhood itself has become the show's biggest star.

Guests:

• Daniel M. Dyer, director and co-producer of "End of the 8," co-founder of Visual Candy
• John Cristini, co-producer of "End of the 8" and one of its stars

Ocean Beach spots mentioned in this episode:

• The Harp | 4935 Newport Ave.
• Hodad's | 5010 Newport Ave.
• Raglan Public House | 1851 Bacon St.
• Little Lion Cafe | 1424 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.
• Winstons Beach Club | 1921 Bacon St.

Sources:

• Sitcom based in OB makes its way around the indie film circuit (Tessa Balc, Times of San Diego, 2026)
• Help Us Create More "End of the 8" Episodes (GoFundMe)

Best of KPBS Podcasts brings the best of KPBS storytelling to our listeners. Each episode features curated highlights from across the KPBS podcast lineup, paired with conversations with the people who bring these stories to life. This episode features the podcasts Port of Entry & The Finest

Every new technology changes the way art is made. Generative AI is pushing those questions into the spotlight faster than many artists expected. As with other big leaps in industry and technology throughout history, it's not always as simple as being for or against it.

From animation studios and independent creators to Comic-Con panels and university labs, we follow the people navigating one of the creative world's biggest turning points. Some choose not to use AI. Others see it as another tool. Many fall somewhere in between. Their stories reveal that the real conflict isn't simply humans versus machines. It's about preserving imagination, protecting artists and deciding what role technology should play in creative work.

As AI becomes more capable, one question keeps surfacing: What makes a piece of art feel unmistakably human?

Guests:

• Jeaux Janovsky, animator
• Marc Biagi, voice actor and professor of Information Technology at San Diego City College
• Ben Zhao, designer of Glaze and Nightshade; professor of computer science at University of Chicago
• Taylor Johnson, founder of Mortis Studio, a San Diego animation and creative house
• Camille Jones, co-creator of "Middle of Everything" and a former CDC epidemiology expert
• Darby Vickers, philosophy professor at University of San Diego and advisory member of the Animation Guild AI Task Force
• Connie He, director of "Dear Upstairs Neighbors"
• Geoffrey Long, professor of Emerging Technology and Design at Miami University in Ohio
• Attendees of San Diego Comic-Con 2026

Sources:

• Critical Crossroads: The Impact of Generative AI and the Importance of Protecting the Animation Workforce (Animation Guild, 2024)
• Future Unscripted: The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Entertainment Industry Jobs (Animation Guild, 2024)
• Marvel faces backlash over AI-generated opening credits (Adrian Horton, The Guardian, 2023)
• Amazon MGM Studios Embraces AI: Greenlights Three Series for Prime Video Under New ‘GenAI Creators’ Fund’(Todd Spangler, Variety, 2026)
• Netflix will launch an AI animation studio — but 51% of people aren’t in favor of a future with generative AI content in it (Danni Santana, Moneywise, 2026)
• Death Threats, Doxxing and AI: How Animator Jorge Gutiérrez Killed His Own Show in 36 Hours (Clayton Davis, Variety, 2026)
• The Legend of John Henry: Talcott, WV (National Park Service)
• How Professional Visual Artists are Negotiating Generative AI in the Workplace (Harry H. Jiang, Jordan Taylor, William Agnew, Carnegie Mellon University, 2026)
• “iScream” Music Video (Deaton Chris Anthony, Mortis Studio, 2022)
• How animators and AI researchers made ‘Dear Upstairs Neighbors’(Cassidy Curtis, Sarah Rumbley, News from Google, 2026)

We’re revisiting a classic episode from Season 1, reported from Comic-Con 2025.

Romantasy has become one of the fastest-growing book genres in publishing — a blend of epic love stories and magical stakes that's capturing the imaginations of readers. Once dismissed as unserious or overly indulgent, the genre is now being embraced by a new wave of fans, thanks in part to #BookTok, viral buzz and social commentary that touches on real-world issues through fantastical stories.

On this episode of The Finest, we explore romantasy's rise, with roots in fan fiction, online communities and personal storytelling. We talk with San Diego authors, booksellers and fans, and hear from a professor who studies popular romance and romantasy fiction to understand what makes the genre so powerful — and why it's resonating so deeply across the culture.

"This idea that romance trivializes is not new," says Netta Baker, an advanced instructor of English at Virginia Tech. "All the way back in the 18th century, Ann Radcliffe novels were thought to stir improper passions in young women."

We also take you inside Comic-Con 2025, where romantasy panels drew some of the longest lines of the weekend, and unpack the genre's biggest misconceptions — that it's unserious, overly steamy or somehow not "real" fantasy. What we found instead was a powerful form of storytelling — one that reflects the real world, often giving women power and agency they don't always feel in daily life, and bringing thousands of people back to books.

Romantasy might just surprise you.

Guests:

• Netta Baker, Advanced Instructor of English at Virginia Tech
• Adalyn Grace, #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling fantasy author of the "Belladonna" series
• Kaylie Smith, #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling dark fantasy romance author of the "Wicked Games" series
• Comic-Con 2025 attendees we met during romantasy panels and signings, including Autumn Mitchell and Julia

Books mentioned in this episode:

• "Flame and Thorns" by Marion Blackwood
• "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas
• "Fourth Wing" by Rebecca Yarros
• "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas
• "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
• "A Curse Carved in Bone" by Danielle L. Jensen
• "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James
• "Belladonna" by Adalyn Grace
• "Phantasma" by Kaylie Smith
• "A Hunger Like No Other" by Kresley Cole
• "Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

Mentioned in this episode:

• Brandon Sanderson | Bestselling fantasy author whose influence helped shift perceptions around genre fiction
• Anne Radcliffe | 18th century gothic novelist whose work sparked early moral panic about women reading romance
• Harlequins | Mass-market paperback romances, known for being inexpensive, widely available and foundational to how romance has been consumed and critiqued
• Fabio Lanzoni | Male model who became the iconic face of steamy romance covers in the '80s and '90s

Sources:

• What Is Romantasy, Anyway? (M. K. Lobb, Writer's Digest, 2024)
• Print Book Sales Fell 2.6% in 2023 (Jim Milliot, Publishing Weekly, 2024)
• Print Book Sales Saw a Small Sales Increase in 2024 (Jim Milliot, Publishing Weekly, 2025)
• These were the bestselling books of 2024. (Emily Temple, Lit Hub, 2025)
• Romantasy and BookTok driving a huge rise in science fiction and fantasy sales (Ella Creamer, The Guardian, 2025)
• How Dragons, Magic and Steamy Sex Took Over the Book World (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Ellen Gamerman and Isabella Simonetti, The Wall Street Journal, 2024)
• The Power of BookTok: Why TikTok's Book Community Is Driving a New Era In Publishing (TikTok via Forbes, 2025)
• Erotica and Pornographby: A Clear and Present Difference (Gloria Steinem, Ms. magazine, 1978)
• Dragons and Sex Are Now a $610 Million Business Sweeping Publishing (Ella Ceron, Bloomberg, 2024)
• Federal Data on Reading for Pleasure: All Signs Show a Slump (Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts, 2024)
• What Helps Stress, Your Mood and Brain Health? Books (Ari Cofer, Right as Rain by UW Medicine, 2024)
•

• Does reading fiction make us better people? (Claudia Hammond, BBC, 2019)

How can we speak up in a way that feels authentic? How can we build something instead of just reacting? Whether it's marching in the streets, advocating for our collective rights or making art, protest and resistance have always been a part of the American story. Recorded live during "KPBS Podcasts Live: The Art of Protest," sign painter and content creator Koy Sun doesn't simply offer a blueprint for protest. Instead, he shares how creativity, craftsmanship and community have become his own forms of resistance. From helping his parents' restaurant through social media to championing local artists and businesses, he explains why slowing down, making things by hand and investing in others are deeply intentional choices. He also talks about the decline of traditional sign painting, the pressure to create in an era of algorithms and AI, and why authenticity — not perfection — is what people connect with most.

Guests:

• Koy Sun, sign painter and content creator

Mentioned in this episode:

• Forge Creative | The design firm behind Zohran Mamdani's 2025 New York City mayoral campaign
• Koy Sun's video about Mamdani's campaign design | " For me, being a sign painter means showing the world that there's power in hiring artists and doing things the slow, traditional way."
• Thai Test Kitchen | Koy Sun's parents' Thai restaurant in Sorrento Valley
• Libélula Books & Co | An independent bookstore in Barrio Logan with a hand-painted sign by Koy Sun
• Mazikaa | A San Diego organization dedicated to celebrating and preserving Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) music and culture

Downsizing is rarely just about getting rid of stuff. It's about grief, family, identity and deciding what parts of a lifetime move into the next chapter. In this episode, we visit Next Step Treasures, where Rose Rugama guides older adults through those deeply personal decisions every day. From finding new homes for treasured possessions to helping people avoid scams and preserve their independence, her work goes far beyond running a business. Along the way, we hear from clients whose lives have been changed by her work. We also talk to anthropologist Yohko Tsuji, who explains why Americans often struggle to embrace aging. Together, their stories reveal how the objects we leave behind preserve our memories. They also show why growing older deserves more dignity than our culture often allows.

Guests:

• Rose Rugama, owner of Next Step for Downsize Living and Next Step Treasures
• Cambria Martinez, writer and thrift shopper
• Mia Rugama Kemp, Rose's daughter, who works at Next Step Treasures
• Lenny Brzezinski, Next Step client
• Yohko Tsuji, cultural anthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University
• Brianna De Los Santos, worker at Next Step Treasures

Sources:

• I'm Wearing Your Grandmother's Kitten Heels (Cambria Martinez, Substack, 2025)
• Older Population and Aging (United States Census Bureau)
• Study identifies countries and states with greatest age biases (Caroline Brooks, MSU Today, 2020)
• Scammers stole more than $3.4 billion from older Americans last year, an FBI report says (Alanna Durkin Richer, AP News, 2024)
• Home Equity Theft Scams—An Old Problem Takes on New Forms(Geoff Walsh and Sarah Bolling Mancini, National Consumer Law Center, 2026)
• CFPB Accuses Nation's Largest Reverse Mortgage Lender of Deceptive Marketing (Susan J. Wells, Investopedia, 2021)
• The Best Years of Your Life Are Probably Still Ahead (Angela Haupt, TIME, 2025)
• Everyday Ageism and Health (Preeti Malani, M.D., M.S., M.S.J., Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation University of Michigan, 2020)

Twenty years after coining "nature-deficit disorder," author Richard Louv is still asking a simple question: What happens when we lose our connection to nature? On a hike through Volcan Mountain Preserve near Julian, Richard shares why he believes "deep noticing" is one of the most important practices we can reclaim in an increasingly screen-centered world. From mountain lion scat and buzzing bees to the latest research on attention, imagination and our senses, he explains how slowing down outdoors changes the way we experience the world. This episode also revisits how Richard's ideas have shaped a generation of parents and kids, and what those early efforts to get children outside look like years later.

Guests:

• Richard Louv, author of "Lost Child in the Woods" and "Noticing"
• Oliver Evans, student and Julia's son

Sources:

• Exercising is good for the brain but exercising outside is potentially better (Katherine Boere, Kelsey Lloyd, Gordon Binsted & Olave E. Krigolson, Scientific Reports, 2023)
• Humans could have as many as 33 senses (Barry Smith, The Conversation, 2025)

What can a warehouse store tell us about community? At UC San Diego, the Costco Club has become one of the campus’ most recognizable student organizations, bringing people together through shopping trips, a rotisserie chicken tradition and a shared appreciation of Costco. As graduating club president Jacob Hoang prepares for his final Costco run in the role, we examine the company’s surprising history, its roots in San Diego and the loyalty it inspires among customers. From retail innovation to college friendships, this episode looks at how a wholesale warehouse became the center of an unlikely community and what that says about the people who gather around it. We join the students on a Costco run, moving from samples to snacks — and even an unexpected sauna along the way.

Guests:

• Jacob Hoang, outgoing UCSD Costco Club president
• Molly Fischer, staff writer at The New Yorker

Sources:

• Can the Golden Age of Costco Last? (Molly Fischer, The New Yorker, 2025)
• How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psyche (Ben Ryder Howe, The New York Times, 2024)
• Top 100 Retailers 2025 List (National Retail Federation)
• Costco's New CEO Started Out As A Forklift Driver Making $3 An Hour (Danielle Harling, Delish, 2024)
• Did Costco Founder Say 'I Will Kill You' to CEO Who Wanted To Raise Hot Dog Prices? (Alex Kasprak, Snopes, 2021)
• Say no to the changing corporate culture at Costco (Costco Teamsters Union)
• Costco to raise hourly pay for most US store workers to over $30 (Reuters, 2025)
• Welcome to Costco, I Love You: Idiocracy 10 Years Later (Clint Worthington, Consequence, 2016)
• Costco 2025 Annual Report
• Costco CEO shares the job that ‘really developed my leadership skills’—even though he only did it for a year (Tom Huddleston Jr., CNBC, 2025)
• McDonald’s CEO History (Tyler Muse, History Oasis, 2025)
• Costco CEO Ron Vachris rose from forklift driver to the C-suite without a college degree: ‘Don’t chase a title’ is the career advice that got him there (Preston Fore, Fortune, 2026)
• Jim Sinegal (University of Portland)
• Costco Wholesale Corporation Annual Report On Form 10-K For The Fiscal Year Ended September 1, 2024

At a live taping of KPBS' Sun Drenched Sounds music series, three San Diego artists share music and the stories behind it. Divina talks about building her own sound through live looping and production, and how a song she heard as a child helped shape her artistic path. James Spaite reflects on growing up in the church, wrestling with faith and channeling philosophy and psychology into his songwriting. Shua discusses gospel music, human connection and the dangers of waiting until you're "fixed" before fully participating in life. Recorded at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park, the performances and conversations reveal how artists from different musical backgrounds find common ground in questions of identity, belief, responsibility and what it means to keep growing.

Guests:

• Divina
• James Spaite
• Shua

Why is everyone suddenly playing mahjong? From neighborhood meetups to viral social media posts, interest in the game is growing fast. This episode explores mahjong's history, its roots in the Chinese diaspora and the ways families and communities have carried traditions across generations. Through a night of learning Filipino-style mahjong in San Diego, we look at how the game has become a way for people to make friends, connect with culture and spend time together away from their screens.

Guests:

• James Gutierrez, No Ambition Tile Club co-founder
• Nicole Wong, creator and founder of The Mahjong Project, author of "Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora"

Sources:

• History is repeating itself (Nicole Wong, The Mahjong Project, 2026)
• What the Surprising History of Mah-jongg Can Teach Us About America (Cady Lang, TIME, 2021)
• Mahjong, American Modernity, and Cultural Transnationalism (Annelise Marie Heinz, Stanford Digital Repository, 2015)
• Some Gen Z American can't stop 'Chinamaxxing' (Ashish Valentine, NPR, 2026)

Pokémon started as something simple: trading cards on the playground, Game Boys passed around between friends and the dream of catching 'em all. Thirty years later, it's the highest-grossing media franchise in the world — and Pokémon cards have become big business.

In this episode, collectors, card shop owners, Pokémon Go players and lifelong fans reflect on what Pokémon means to them and how the culture around it has changed. From crowded Pokémon Go meetups at parks to local card shops struggling with scalpers and rising prices, this episode looks at how scarcity and speculation transformed Pokémon cards into valuable commodities. Along the way is a bigger question: Can a franchise built on adventure, friendship and connection hold onto those values in a billion-dollar marketplace?

Guests:

• Steven Chung, lifelong Pokémon fan
• Courtney Mifsud Intreglia, writer
• Oliver Soufi, Pokémon Master
• Jake Federicks, manager at Supreme Card Shop
• Jason Huggins, co-owner of Tito Rick's Garage

Sources:

• LIFE Pokémon: 30 Years (Courtney Mifsud Intreglia, LIFE, 2026)
• How Pokémon Conquered America (Courtney Mifsud Intreglia, TIME, 2024)
• How Pokémon became the biggest media franchise on Earth (Lucy Tobin, The Times, 2026)
• 'Kids can't buy them anywhere': how Pokémon cards became a stock market for millennials (Daniella Lucas, The Guardian, 2025)

Long before San Diego became defined by freeways, parking shortages and long commutes, electric streetcars connected the region's urban core to beaches, business districts and growing neighborhoods more than 100 years ago.

In this episode, KPBS metro reporter Andrew Bowen talks with The Finest about how the streetcar system helped shape neighborhoods that remain some of the city's most walkable and desirable today. The conversation traces the rise and fall of the rail network, how San Diego became shaped around cars and the lasting impact those decisions still have on the way people move through the city.

We also look at why conversations around public transit are shifting again and meet the people trying to bring the streetcar system back to life.

Guests:

• Andrew Bowen, KPBS metro reporter and Freeway Exit host
• Ethan Elkind, Climate Program director at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley
• Michael Donovan, co-founder of Vibrant Uptown
• Monica De La Cruz, car-free San Diegan

Sources:

• The enduring legacy of San Diego's streetcars (Andrew Bowen, KPBS, 2026)
• Amid San Diego's high transportation costs, some manage to find relief (Andrew Bowen, KPBS, 2026)
• ASU study finds Americans' attitudes toward car-free living are changing (Delores Tropriano, ASU News, 2026)

San Diego skateboarder Brandon Turner moved up quickly in the sport, moving from local skate spots to major sponsorships and world tours. From skateboarding prodigy to rock bottom, now he's redefining addiction recovery and constantly evolving his understanding of control, identity and success.

Long Description/Show Notes:

In the '90s, Brandon Turner was a skateboarding prodigy, landing major sponsorships and touring the world with big-name skate teams. What looked like momentum from the outside often meant constant motion, pressure and independence arriving long before most people reach adulthood. And he ended up in prison.

In this episode, he revisits that period and the skateboarding culture around him during his rise, from the energy of the scene to the decisions he made as things moved quickly. Today, not only does he operate his own addiction recovery center — he's skating better than he ever has before. He reflects on the highs and the dark moments that followed and how those years shaped his sense of identity and his approach to responsibility and control.

" Skateboarding is just like life. It's not if you will fall, it's when you'll fall. But the more important thing of it is what you're going to do when you pick yourself back up," Brandon said.

He also shares what it means to learn through experience, how to foster that evolution in other people — and how his perspective continues to shift. It's a conversation about growth, accountability and moving forward when life doesn't follow a straight path.

Guests:

• Brandon Turner, professional skateboarder and founder of Westside Recovery

Sources:

• Brandon Turner: The Prodigy Returns (Michael Burnett, Thrasher Magazine, 2020)
• Fulfill the Dream, Shorty's skate film (1998), Brandon Turner segment
• Guilty, Shorty's skate film (2001), Brandon Turner segment
• 90s Skate Prodigy Brandon Turner on Addiction and Recovery (Miss Rosen, Huck Magazine, 2023)
• The Second Coming of Brandon Turner (Jenkem Magazine, 2021)