This month, comedy legend Dave Chappelle released his latest stand-up Netflix special, called "The Closer." It immediately drew criticism for jokes widely viewed as transphobic, and it has created turmoil behind the scenes at Netflix. But there’s also been a backlash to the backlash, by fans who say social justice warriors just want to cancel Chappelle. One group is particularly well positioned to have insights on the controversy: LGBTQ comedians. Today, we hear from three. More reading: What LG...
Oct 19, 2021•25 min
Tall, bushy, spiny and fragrant, the pinyon pine is a beloved feature of the Mountain West — and not just for its beauty. The tiny piñon nuts in the tree’s cones are so good, people in the region have eaten them every fall for countless generations. But as climate change continues to affect the United States, something terrible is happening. The piñon harvest is getting smaller and smaller. Today we go to New Mexico, where the pinyon is the state’s official tree. We talk to Axios race and justic...
Oct 18, 2021•23 min
The Black Panther Party, a Black power political organization, was founded exactly 55 years ago in California’s Bay Area and grew into a nationwide group that pushed for housing, food equity, education and self-protection. Several famous figures emerged from the group, including Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis and Huey P. Newton. But history often overlooks those who do not serve in dynamic roles or who perform tasks away from public view. These people do the thankless but crucial work that keeps...
Oct 15, 2021•27 min
California requires each publicly traded company based in the Golden State to have at least one woman on its board of directors and, soon, at least one nonwhite or LGBTQ person. That’s because of a pair of laws mandating diversity at those high levels — laws that are having effects nationwide. Today, we examine the topic with L.A. Times national reporter Evan Halper. We also talk with Dr. Maria Rivas, who has served on several boards and frequently found herself the only woman or person of color...
Oct 14, 2021•22 min
Wildfires across the American West this summer spewed out smoke full of particulates that darkened skies, created unnaturally beautiful sunsets and boosted health risks far and wide. This problem has been getting worse as the years go by. So how will we move forward? Today, we convene our monthly Masters of Disasters panel — L.A. Times air quality reporter Tony Barboza, wildfire reporter Alex Wigglesworth and earthquake and COVID-19 reporter Ron Lin — to talk about what makes wildfire smoke spec...
Oct 13, 2021•26 min
It’s been about a week since a big oil spill hit the Southern California shoreline near Orange County. Tar sullied sensitive wetlands. Birds and fish died. Miles of beaches were closed. The L.A. Times newsroom has produced dozens of stories trying to understand what happened, and what we’ve found so far isn’t pretty: aging offshore oil platforms and pipelines — being bought up by companies that have a history of safety violations. Today, we speak to L.A. Times investigative reporter Connor Sheet...
Oct 12, 2021•20 min
Nearly a century ago, government officials pushed a Black family from their beachfront property in the Southern California city of Manhattan Beach. Now, in what could be a landmark in this nation’s efforts to correct past injustices to African Americans, the land is being returned to the family’s descendants. Today, we have an update to our June episode about the fight over Bruce’s Beach. And we hear from the historians, family members and grass-roots organizers who championed this cause for yea...
Oct 11, 2021•23 min
Milwaukee is in the grips of the worst violence in its modern history. There were 189 killings there last year — the most ever recorded, almost twice as many as the year before. It’s not just Milwaukee. The nonprofit Council on Criminal Justice looked at 34 U.S. cities and found that 29 had more homicides last year than in 2019. What has caused this surge? How is it affecting members of the hardest-hit communities? Today, Los Angeles Times national correspondent Kurtis Lee takes us to Milwaukee’...
Oct 08, 2021•21 min
Nursing is a tough job in good times, and the COVID-19 pandemic made it a lot tougher. Within a few months of the start of the pandemic, U.S. healthcare workers reported high rates of anxiety, frustration, emotional and physical exhaustion and burnout. Now we’re a year and a half in. We’ve got vaccines, but the Delta variant still poses a big threat. So how are nurses holding up? Today, nurses tell us about their experiences and how they’re coping, personally and professionally. Host: L.A. Times...
Oct 07, 2021•13 min
To Project Roomkey’s architects, the program was a no-brainer. Thousands of hotel rooms were empty because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And there were thousands of people who lacked homes and seemed especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. The plan to put the people in the empty rooms and pay the hotel owners seemed to solve two problems at once. Sounds easy, right? But in practice, not so much. The program helped some people but certainly not everyone. Today we examine Project Roomkey — its promi...
Oct 06, 2021•26 min
Rules against jaywalking are rarely enforced, but in many places, when someone does get a ticket, it's more likely than not a person of color — and the penalty is steep. Jaywalking tickets disproportionately affect communities of color in California’s biggest cities. Critics say that’s because of systemic racism, and state lawmakers want to address the disparity. A bill currently awaiting the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as the Freedom to Walk act, would get rid of penalties for pedestr...
Oct 05, 2021•21 min
We’re doing another crossover episode with our sister show, “Asian Enough.” Today, hosts Jen Yamato and Tracy Brown are joined by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the breakout star of Netflix’s hit coming-of-age comedy “Never Have I Ever.” She talks about her Tamil roots, her high school self, her bond with Mindy Kaling and what it’s like getting mega-famous overnight — during a pandemic. More reading: You’ll want to learn the name Maitreyi Ramakrishnan. She’s Netflix’s next teen star ‘Never Have I Ever’s...
Oct 04, 2021•42 min
Trust Women Wichita is a clinic in Kansas that has long been a lightning rod in the abortion wars. Its former director, George Tiller, was assassinated in 2009 by an antiabortion extremist, and the clinic closed for years because of that. Since it reopened in 2013, the clinic slowly became known as a place for people from across the Midwest and South who want to end their pregnancies and must travel hundreds of miles. Now, with Texas passing one of the most sweeping antiabortion laws in the coun...
Oct 01, 2021•22 min
Lighting, cameras, sound props, costumes, editing and so much more: About 60,000 workers with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — IATSE for short — are among the most forgotten of Hollywood’s magic makers. And now, citing unfair working conditions, they might go on strike. What does that mean for them? And what does it mean for people who like watching movies, TV shows and streaming services? Today we talk to L.A. Times entertainment industry reporter Anousha Sakoui, who h...
Sep 30, 2021•22 min
Bagels and lox, pastrami on rye and maybe a dollop of sour cream or applesauce on your latkes: The Jewish deli is a staple of American city life, and it’s delicious. But over the last decade, icons of the genre, from New York to Los Angeles, have shut down — even as the food itself has become more popular. So why are the delis disappearing? Today we’re looking at the Jewish deli. It’s always been a nexus of tradition and assimilation, old country and new, with rugelach for dessert. Our guests: T...
Sep 29, 2021•18 min
Pudgy Penguins, Bored Apes and CryptoKitties — a Noah’s Ark of nonfungible tokens — are the latest trend for people trying to get rich and engage with art in a new way. NFTs might be a fad, but there’s a multibillion-dollar market for them. Today, L.A. Times business reporter Sam Dean gives us a crash course in what exactly NFTs are and how to think about whether they’re worth your money. And NFT collectors Cooper Turley and Tim Kang tell us why they think the digital tokens could change our liv...
Sep 28, 2021•32 min
Today, a crossover episode with our L.A. Times cousin podcast “Asian Enough.” Hosts Tracy Brown and Jen Yamato interview novelist Min Jin Lee about leaving her legal career to write books, expressing Asian pride at a time of hate crimes, dealing with people whose stances you dislike, and working to change the world five minutes at a time. The author also blows the hosts’ minds with her perspective on dealing with the pain of casual racism. “Min Jin, you’re giving me, like, a lifetime of therapy ...
Sep 27, 2021•51 min
Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark was the granddaughter of a freed man who fought in the Revolutionary War. She grew up educated and refined in Concord, Mass. Her mother was friends with families of some of America’s greatest thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. So how did she end up in an unmarked grave near Los Angeles for 129 years? Today, L.A. Times features writer Jeanette Marantos brings you the extraordinary story of how amateur historians nationwide got together to...
Sep 24, 2021•18 min
Note: This episode mentions thoughts of suicide. Over the last month, the population of Del Rio, Texas, has jumped by half. The reason: refugees, many of them Haitian, have arrived and set up a tent city under a freeway overpass. They’re hoping for a chance to live in the United States, but the Biden administration isn’t so welcoming. This isn’t anything new for Haitians. For decades, the U.S. has treated them far differently than other migrants from the Western Hemisphere. Today, we go to the D...
Sep 23, 2021•28 min
Latinos have long hidden in plain sight in U.S. society. Some do it to lessen the racism they might face from non-Latinos. But there’s another type of whitewashing that’s even more disturbing. It’s when Latinos downplay their distinct identities among themselves or suppress the visibility of fellow Latinos. Today we talk about the phenomenon of Latino erasure, who does it, why it happens and how it persists. We’ll focus on Culture Clash, the pioneering Chicano comedy troupe. This summer, two of ...
Sep 22, 2021•32 min
Right now, migrant camps are popping up on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re filled with people who escaped dire circumstances in their home countries and seek a chance at officially living in the United States. But the Biden administration is telling these people, much like in the Trump years: Better luck next time. Today, we launch the first in a two-part series on these camps. We start in Reynosa, Mexico, where about 2,000 Central Americans wait for their U.S. amnesty cases to be ...
Sep 21, 2021•20 min
This month, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in the country. Argentina legalized abortion last December, becoming one of just three countries in Latin America to fully allow it. Today, we talk about the slow liberalization of abortion rights in Latin America at a time that state governments in the United States have chipped away at access. It’s a dramatic flip of circumstances. L.A. Times Mexico City bureau chief Patrick McConnell and L.A. Times Latin America correspondent Kate Lin...
Sep 20, 2021•17 min
No state has lost as much as California in the war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; 776 men and women who called the Golden State home have died — that’s 11% of the nation’s total casualties from the war. Nearly 20% of those Californians who perished were old enough to die for their country but too young to buy a drink. They left behind 453 children. For the families — and the state — the loss from the war on terror is incalculable. We spoke to three families about loss, grief and th...
Sep 17, 2021•20 min
We're delving into the term “Latinx.” Whom does it refer to? Who uses it? And why do people on both the left and the right, Latino and not, get so worked up about it? Fidel Martinez, who writes the Latinx Files newsletter for the L.A. Times, breaks it down. We’ll also hear from folks who identify as Latinx, and from L.A. Times columnist Jean Guerrero. She used “Latinx” in a tweet recently and has been weathering a backlash ever since. More reading: Sign up for our Latinx Files newsletter Why we ...
Sep 16, 2021•25 min
The polls have closed, and even though the votes are still being counted, but the California gubernatorial recall election results seem decisive: Voters said no to recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom. If the results hold — and it sure looks like they will — Gov. Gavin Newsom will remain in office. Voters rejected the idea that his progressive policies on COVID-19, on climate change, on everything, were ruining the California dream and that someone else on the ballot could do a better job. So ... what’s ...
Sep 15, 2021•20 min
Over the past couple of years, a slew of weather disasters afflicting the United States have shown how fragile our energy system truly is, from electrical grids to solar panels, wind farms to coal. Add aging infrastructure and a clapback by Mother Nature, and zap: No power. For days. Today, we convene our monthly Masters of Disasters panel — earthquake and COVID-19 reporter Ron Lin, wildfire reporter Alex Wigglesworth and energy reporter Sammy Roth — to talk about the future of energy in a rapid...
Sep 14, 2021•20 min
Packed stadiums. Hard-fought games. Boisterous, mostly maskless fans. The National Football League kicked off its season this past weekend almost as if the coronavirus had never existed. But it didn’t get to this point by ignoring the pandemic — far from it. With careful planning and close attention to who in the league was getting sick, the NFL helped advance science and show us all how to live in a world with COVID-19. Today, as the 2021 football season begins, L.A. Times reporter Sam Farmer d...
Sep 13, 2021•20 min
Twenty years ago, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on United Airlines Flight 93 killed nearly 3,000 people. It’s a day that launched wars and shifted politics in the United States forever. It’s also the day that pushed the U.S. Muslim community under a microscope — and has kept them there ever since. Today, we focus on how 9/11 and its aftermath continue to loom over their lives. More reading: 20 years after 9/11, an American Muslim recalls the costs of war ...
Sep 10, 2021•23 min
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, became a household name as lead impeachment manager against former President Trump. Now the Southern California-based congressman is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. It’s been an unlikely career path for Schiff. When he began his first term in the House of Representatives in January 2001, his big issue was U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide. Then came Sept. 11. Today is Part 1 of our series on the leg...
Sep 09, 2021•19 min
In 2018, Gavin Newsom was elected California’s governor with nearly 62 percent of the vote. It was the largest margin of victory in a California gubernatorial election in nearly 70 years and cemented Newsom’s reputation as the state’s marquee Democrat. But now Newsom faces a recall election, and all of liberal America is asking: What happened? Today, in the second part of our series on California’s recall election, we examine the rise and potential fall of Newsom. The former lieutenant governor ...
Sep 08, 2021•22 min
