Dr. Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her influential research examines the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. An award-winning author, teacher, and mentor, she has written three acclaimed books: How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts; Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940; and, most recently, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community. The Los Angeles Times called A Place at the Nayarit an “essential Los Angeles book.” It was a finalist for a James Beard Award and received 14 awards and honorable mentions from various organizations. The book chronicles the lives of immigrant workers, including Molina’s grandmother, who became placemakers, nurturing and feeding their communities at restaurants that served as urban anchors.

Professor Molina is currently working on a new book, The Silent Hands that Shaped the Huntington Library: A History of Its Immigrant Workers. Named a USC 2023 Communicator of the Year, she has written for the LA Times, Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, and elsewhere. In 2020, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Before we begin our next major thematic section of the podcast on railroads, we will be looking at the life of Leland Stanford who serves a bridge between the Gold Rush era, the Civil War Era in California government, and the Transcontinental Railroad.

Dorothy Lazard is an American writer, librarian, and public historian based in Northern California.

Her new book is What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World. Click here to buy it!

Dorothy grew up in the Bay Area of the 1960s and ’70s, surrounded by an expansive network of family, and hungry for knowledge. Here in her first book, she vividly tells the story of her journey to becoming “queen of my own nerdy domain.” Today Lazard is celebrated for her distinguished career as a librarian and public historian, and in these pages she connects her early intellectual pursuits—including a formative encounter with Alex Haley—to the career that made her a community pillar. As she traces her trajectory to adulthood, she also explores her personal experiences connected to the Summer of Love, the murder of Emmett Till, the flourishing of the Black Arts Movement, and the redevelopment of Oakland. As she writes with honesty about the tragedies she faced in her youth—including the loss of both parents—Lazard’s memoir remains triumphant, animated by curiosity, careful reflection, and deep enthusiasm for life.

Today we have Benno Herz on the program. Benno Herz was named Program Director at the Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles in spring 2022 and was previously Project Manager at the House. Prior to this, he studied theater, film, and media at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he completed his M.A. with a focus on digital aesthetics and interface theory. Since 2009, he has been creatively engaged in several music and film projects as a writer and instrumentalist.

Thomas Mann’s Los Angeles: Stories from Exile 1940–1952, edited by Nikolai Blaumer and Benno Herz / illustrations by Jon Stich, is an amazing collection of essays and illustrations discussing the contributions of the many emigres and exiles who made it to and contributed to Los Angeles in and around WWII.

Buy the book here

Thomas Mann House

Today, we have Randy Dotinga on the show. Randy has been a freelance writer since 1999 and specializes in health/medicine, politics, books, and the odd and unusual. We discuss the state of journalism, the many "San Diegos," the military industry, political history, the Mission period, the Civil War, graveyards, political scandals, and much more. Please enjoy our conversation.

Randy's Articles at the Voice of San Diego

Today we have Andrew Alden on the show. Alden is a geologist and geoscience writer who has worked for the US Geological Survey and reported for KQED and Bay Nature. Long fascinated with rocks and landscapes, Alden found inspiration for his debut book, Deep Oakland, in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which, as he writes, “ripped the city open and revealed to us its heart and character.” Through his writing Alden raises awareness for what he calls the deep present: the appreciation of the ancient underpinnings that shape the modern-day surroundings of daily life.

Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City book link

In this final episode, we discuss the end of the Civil War, and I recommend some further reading.