The Finest

What makes San Diego America’s Finest City? It’s the people, art and movements redefining the region’s cultural identity. The Finest is a podcast that highlights the emerging voices and dynamic forces reshaping community and expression.

The Finest is a arts podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 58 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts The Finest, a arts show with 58 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #29

  Physics Girl spent her life explaining science. Then science couldn't explain her illness

  Oct 1, 202637 minS2

  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 and Kyle 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)

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  Episode #28

  Nicole Hernandez's music crosses borders, languages and genres

  Sep 17, 202620 minS2

  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)

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  The Finest

  What we lose with remote work — and could working together (at a baseball game) fix it?

  Sep 10, 202630 min

  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)

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  The Finest

  A comic book challenges the way California tells its history (July 2025)

  Sep 3, 202633 min

  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.

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  Episode #25

  'End of the 8': How a group of friends made San Diego's newest sitcom

  Aug 13, 202624 minS2

  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)

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