Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films. In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas. In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state. Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story. If California were a country, it would ran...

Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films. In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas. In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state. Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story. If California were a country, it would ran...