A lifelong Southern Californian, Nathan Callahan was born in Hollywood, raised in the glow of Rocketdyne and ripened in Orange County during the halcyon days of John Schmitz.

Responsible for the initial creation of the Orange County Great Park, Callahan has inadvertently earned a reputation as a cynic, clairvoyant journalist, traitor, reverend, and bon vivant. According to Congressman, actor, talk show host and U.S. presidential candidate "B-1" Bob Dornan, Nathan Callahan is a cowardly pseudonym for a Marxist employed by the Democratic Party to run campigns for U.S. congressional candidates. In the real world, Callahan has been employed as a cook, an auto worker, a graphic designer, a musician, a municipal adminstrative aide, a xeriscaper, a window dresser, a bookseller, a political consultant, and a writer.

In 1988, Callahan teamed with Will Swaim — future founding editor of the OC Weekly — to publish The County, a short-lived zine of leftist political and social commentary that nowadays can be found in the University of California, Irvine Library archives.

In the early 1990s, Callahan co-wrote and edited "Shut Up, Fag!": Quotations from the Files of Congressman Bob Dornan with William Payton. With its unsettling title and contemptible subject matter, the book became a B-list cult success. TV and radio interviews followed. So did Dornan.

A contributing writer for the OC Weekly beginning with its premier issue in 1995, Callahan was recognized by The New York Times for helping break through Orange County's conservative media stranglehold. After an intense migraine, he left the Weekly in 2005.

Nathan Callahan's KUCI audio essay radio segment The SoCal Byte broadcasts every Friday morning at 9:00 Pacific Time from the University of California at Irvine, his alma mater. Callahan can also be heard from 8:00 until 9:00 am Pacific Time on Fridays with co-host Mike Kaspar on the program Weekly Signals. In addition to their offbeat commentary, Callahan and Kaspar have interviewed some of the world's most fascinating people including Seymour Hersh, Barbara Ehrenreich, Arianna Huffington, Joseph Wilson, Daniel Ellsberg, Errol Morris, Garrison Keillor, Helen Thomas, John Sayles, Lewis Lapham, Philip Glass, Frederick Wiseman, Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman, Terry Jones, Susan Jacoby, Chalmers Johnson, Haskell Wexler, Robert Fisk, Anne Lamott, and George McGovern. From 2006 until 2010, Callahan was the co-host of filmschool.

Outside the airwaves, Callahan collaborates with Bob Aul on the darkly humorous, internationally notorious comic strip Pet President.

Suburban Manners: An Irreverent View of Politics, Wealth and Culture in Orange County, California and Interviews are Callahan's latest published works. The Open Air Museum, a cultural travelogue from inside Carl Diedrich's transcendental Volkswagon van, visiting hyperreality, the Dancing Goat Society, and the spirit of art, will be published in the summer of 2011. When not walking, Callahan is an avid coffee drinker, reader, online junkie and corvid enthusiast.