Welcome back to 10 blocks. This week's episode features Brian Anderson, our usual host, interviewing Christopher Rufo,

Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal

and journalist Abigail Shrier about their stories in the brand new California issue of

City Journal.

Can California be Golden again?

We hope you enjoy.

Very glad to be back in California and see some old friends here and a lot of new faces.

Chris and Abigail have both called California home at various times in their lives.

Abigail still lives here. Both have brought insightful analysis

to the state's various challenges. So Chris, I'm going to start with you. Your reporting

for City Journal has revealed a radical pedagogy that's increasingly commonplace in California's

public schools. So from Sacramento to San Diego, elementary, middle, and high schools

are advancing what we could call an identitarian creed

that sorts students based on skin color,

and that is validating a host of new genders, basically.

So could you describe the kind of underlying philosophy driving this trend

and how it is manifesting itself exactly in the classroom,

and how did California's political environment allow for this transformation to take place?

Great, yeah. Well, you know, I did a series of stories on critical race theory in K-12 schools and then gender ideology in K-12 schools.

And as I was soliciting sources and talking to many people all over the country, for better or for worse, California was at top of mind.

And I had developed many sources in

LA public schools, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco and elsewhere.

...