Los Angeles–based public radio powerhouse KCRW has been broadcasting in Santa Barbara at 88.7 on the FM dial since 2014. Although KDRW, as it is known to the FCC, began as a repeater station principally responsible for amplifying the KCRW signal so that people in our region could listen to such popular shows as Morning Becomes Eclectic, a small staff works every day in a studio at Antioch College to give Santa Barbara its own hosts for NPR’s flagships, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, along with other local news content.
It wasn’t until the pandemic hit in March of this year that KCRW Santa Barbara finally became a source of nationally oriented public radio programming. That ceiling was broken by Jonathan Bastian, the live host of Morning Edition in S.B., who now produces another show at the studio here called Life Examined. This new one-hour program is devoted to finding meaning in the modern world through discussions with distinguished guests from the sciences, philosophy, and religion, and it airs on all KCRW affiliates during the enviable 9 a.m. Saturday morning time slot between Weekend Edition and This American Life.
Bastian had a proposal for the program sitting in a folder on his hard drive when, in response to the initial phase of the governor’s stay-at-home order, KCRW program director Paul Bennun sent the staff an email looking for ideas about how radio might address life’s biggest questions — who are we, what are we doing here, and why? Meditating on his experience living in Carpinteria, Bastian realized that our region had an identity that was both underappreciated and a potential source of great radio. “Santa Barbara is known for certain successful exports,” he told me, “such as the food and wine, and of course surfing, but I think we sometimes forget that one of the great components of this community is its philosophical, spiritual core.” Citing the Vedanta Temple in Montecito, Ojai’s historical connection to Krishnamurti, and the wealth of sophisticated thinkers associated with UCSB, Bastian claims that Santa Barbara makes the same kind of sense as the home for his show that Chicago, land of Studs Terkel and Ira Glass, does for This American Life.