On Feb. 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping just hours ahead of the opening ceremony for the Beijing Winter Olympics. The meeting made headlines, and has people asking: Could China be the overlooked player in the Russia-Ukraine crisis? Today, we dive into the complicated history between the two countries — and whether Russia’s moves on Ukraine might serve as a template with China and Taiwan. More reading: Beijing may be tempted to side with Putin in the Ukraine...
Mar 02, 2022•24 min
Gun violence has killed more than 100,000 people in Mexico over the last decade. Yet most of the guns involved are illegal, smuggled into the country from the U.S. Now, the Mexican government has had enough. Today, we talk about a federal lawsuit filed by Mexico against American gun manufacturers that seeks to reduce the bloodshed. More reading: Column: Don’t shield U.S. gun makers from liability for Mexico’s gun violence There is only one gun store in all of Mexico. So why is gun violence soari...
Mar 01, 2022•18 min
As more and more workplaces have instituted COVID-19 vaccine mandates, a cottage industry has sprung up to help skeptics evade them. Today, we look into what constitutes a deeply held religious belief, how those beliefs can play out in the workplace, and what employers can do about shady religious exemption requests. More reading: Online pastors, form letters: The cottage industry helping workers avoid vaccine mandates New workplace mandate for COVID-19 vaccine pushed by California lawmakers Col...
Feb 28, 2022•19 min
In this crossover episode with “The Envelope” podcast, Maggie Gyllenhaal speaks about “The Lost Daughter,” her directorial debut. More reading: Review: ‘The Lost Daughter’ is quintessential Maggie Gyllenhaal, even though she’s never on screen Olivia Colman and Maggie Gyllenhaal dig into that ‘Lost Daughter’ ending Maggie Gyllenhaal is a natural-born director. Netflix gives her the spotlight...
Feb 25, 2022•33 min
Americans eat billions of dollars of Mexican avocados every year. Demand is such that drug cartels and other criminal elements have muscled in on the business, centered around the Mexican state of Michoacán. This reality got worldwide attention Super Bowl weekend, when the American government announced it was temporarily suspending any avocado imports from Mexico. Today, we talk about this development — and why Americans are so obsessed with avocados in the first place. Host: Gustavo Arellano Gu...
Feb 24, 2022•21 min
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his country would recognize the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine and send Russian troops there for “peacekeeping” purposes. The move immediately drew worldwide condemnation — but signaled the culmination of a decades-long desire by Putin to bring Ukraine closer to Russia’s control. Today, we talk to our reporter on the ground about this past, what’s happening now — and what’s next. More reading: Russian troops move int...
Feb 23, 2022•15 min
Uber’s under fire over its treatment of transgender drivers after the Los Angeles Times published a story about the alleged mistreatment. Today, we’ll hear from the L.A. Times reporter who broke the story. And we’ll also hear more from an Uber driver who hopes other trans people won’t ever have to go through what she went through. Host: Gustavo Arellano Guests: L.A. Times business reporter Suhauna Hussain More reading: Uber blocks transgender drivers from signing up: ‘They didn’t believe me’ Ube...
Feb 22, 2022•18 min
Marfa, Texas, is known internationally for its arts scene. But on the south side of the city, there’s this old school. It’s a school where teachers once paddled Latino students for speaking Spanish. Now, some of those same students — grandparents and retirees in their 80s — are working to save the long-shuttered segregated Blackwell School and make it a national historic site to teach the history of segregated schools for Latinos in the United States. This episode has been updated. An earlier ve...
Feb 18, 2022•16 min
A new podcast series from KPCC and LAist Studios called "Imperfect Paradise: Home Is Life" zeroes in on the battles over homelessness in suburban communities. Today, we air Episode 2 of this three-part series, which focuses on an effort in 2018 to build housing for unhoused people in the Orange County city of Fullerton. More reading: Listen to “Imperfect Paradise” Fullerton will start enforcing parking regulations on street where homeless live in RVs ‘No place to go’: Fullerton ordinance, on hol...
Feb 17, 2022•28 min
For decades, California voters and politicians have vacillated over the future of the death penalty. Currently, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put a moratorium on them and has ordered that death row at San Quentin State Prison — the largest in the United States — be emptied. Is this the end of the line for capital punishment in the Golden State — for real? More reading: California moves forward on plans to shut down death row California is closing San Quentin’s death row. This is its gruesome history Edi...
Feb 16, 2022•20 min
The U.S. labor movement has experienced a resurgence in recent years in sectors that historically have hired younger people. And one of the biggest battlegrounds is where you get your lattes. Today, we’re taking you to a Starbucks in Santa Cruz, where workers are demanding more from their corporate employer. This episode has been updated to clarify when the Starbucks store in Buffalo, N.Y. filed its union petition, who resigned at the Starbucks in Santa Cruz, Calif. and to include a response fro...
Feb 15, 2022•20 min
The Roots drummer and music legend Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson sifted through 40 hours of archival footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival for his documentary, “Summer of Soul.” It was a festival where legends like Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder performed in the same summer as Woodstock. The film is now in the running for Best Original Documentary at this year’s Oscars. So today, we’re airing an episode with Questlove from our sister podcast, “The Envelope.” More reading: Review: ‘Summer of S...
Feb 14, 2022•30 min
With more economic development and rents on the rise, Inglewood is struggling to meet its goal of encouraging more investment while trying to preserve one of California’s last remaining Black enclaves. Today, we examine this through the prism of SoFi Stadium, which is hosting the Super Bowl this Sunday. More reading: Op-Ed: For Inglewood, it won’t be a Super Sunday ‘A crisis for renters’: Football sent Inglewood home prices and rents skyrocketing Must Reads: One of California’s last black enclav...
Feb 11, 2022•27 min
Even if you don’t like football, you probably have opinions about the Super Bowl halftime show. Today, we look at the history of this curious spectacle, from its humble beginnings to the mega-star extravaganzas of today. And along the way, we’ll take a look at how this roughly 15-minute intermission became an unlikely reflection of American culture. More reading: At SoFi Stadium, Dr. Dre assembles a hip-hop dream team for Super Bowl halftime show Janet Jackson says she and Timberlake ‘have moved...
Feb 10, 2022•22 min
In a league where Black players make up 70% of active rosters, the NFL currently has only two Black head coaches. League officials and even fans have offered all sorts of excuses about this discrepancy for decades. But now there’s an explosive federal lawsuit about the matter. It was filed this month by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. In it, he puts this persistent and longstanding problem on stage. Today, we dive into why the NFL just can’t seem to hire Black head coaches. More r...
Feb 09, 2022•20 min
For the latest installment of our “Masters of Disasters” series, we talk tsunamis in the wake of a volcanic eruption near Tonga last month that caused waves felt across the Pacific. There was none of the devastation like the world saw in Fukushima in 2011, or across the Indian Ocean in 2004. But what happened in Tonga got us thinking: How are the effects of tsunamis so devastating, yet so little is known about them? More reading: The tsunami that battered Santa Cruz highlights the threat facing ...
Feb 08, 2022•22 min
Everybody is talking about the metaverse right now. But Times host Gustavo Arellano didn’t want to just talk about it; he wanted to experience it firsthand. And so off he went inside the metaverse with a guide. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? More reading: Explainer: What is the metaverse and how will it work? Want to glimpse our metaverse future? Theme parks are already on the case Op-Ed: Mark Zuckerberg makes a ‘mwahahaha’ metaverse move...
Feb 07, 2022•26 min
A first-of-it’s kind case in Los Angeles County is going to play a big role in determining culpability whenever self-driving cars get into accidents. Prosecutors have charged a driver with felony manslaughter after his Tesla crashed into a car in 2019, killing two people. The accused was in the driver’s seat, but prosecutors say his Tesla … was on autopilot. More reading: A Tesla on autopilot killed two people in Gardena. Is the driver guilty of manslaughter? Are self-driving cars safe? Highway ...
Feb 04, 2022•21 min
There’s a growing realization that the brilliance of the world’s best athletes isn’t enough anymore to cover some glaring problems that come with putting on the Olympics every two years. The International Olympics Committee has always claimed the Games are about promoting goodwill and celebrating the brotherhood of mankind. But as it turns out, not only do Olympics not do that, they tend to make democratic states… more authoritarian. So what does that mean for the Games coming to Los Angeles in ...
Feb 03, 2022•30 min
Mexico trails just Syria and Iraq as the deadliest country in the world to be a journalist. That’s according to data collected from 2000 through 2022 by the Committee to Protect Journalists. And the Mexican government has done little to stop it. But in the wake of the murder of four reporters so far this year — José Luis Gamboa, Margarito Martínez Esquivel, Lourdes Maldonado López and Roberto Toledo — Mexican journalists are openly criticizing President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador and government...
Feb 02, 2022•18 min
Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, is a national holiday, not just in Vietnam but all over the world wherever Vietnamese may be. And in the United States, red envelopes filled with money, special dishes and other traditions have become a part of life in major American cities such as San Jose, Houston and especially in Orange County, which is home to the largest Vietnamese expat community in the world. Today, we talk about Tet memories and its evolution with the authors of the recently released ...
Feb 01, 2022•21 min
In Santa Monica during the 1950s and ‘60s, city leaders evicted hundreds of Black families to build what ended up being the 10 Freeway. But now, in an act of civic penance, Santa Monica is trying to bring some of those families back. It comes at a time when municipalities across the United States are reckoning with their racist actions from the past. We’ll talk about Santa Monica’s attempt to redress a historical wrong. And we’ll also talk to a woman whose family was one of many Black households...
Jan 31, 2022•21 min
It was the Taylor Swift diss heard around the world. “She doesn’t write her own songs.” That’s what Damon Albarn, the lead singer for the British bands Blur and Gorillaz said to L.A. Times pop music critic Mikael Wood. The drama between Taylor and Damon got real. But it also hit on something really interesting — songwriting, and who gets the credit for it, is a thing … now more than ever. More reading: For Damon Albarn, modern life is still pretty much rubbish Column: Taylor Swift slapped back f...
Jan 28, 2022•20 min
Just when it seemed schools and parents and teachers were figuring out how to do in-person learning again, Omicron hit. The highly contagious variant really blew up while schools were on winter break in California. So when schools reopened and students returned, there were problems. Today, we hear from a parent and high school students who are trying to navigate their teenage years while worrying about COVID-19. More reading: California schools under intense strain, fighting to stay open during ...
Jan 27, 2022•23 min
On New Year’s Day, comedian Jen Murphy boarded a cruise ship out of Miami and got ready to perform for 1,800 people. She never did end up getting on that comedy stage, though. Instead, she ended up getting trapped in a COVID cruise quarantine. Today, Murphy gives us a hilarious and intense look into why she got on a cruise ship in the middle of the pandemic in the first place and what she learned from it. More reading: Shame and fish filets: Diary of a comedian trapped in COVID cruise ship quara...
Jan 26, 2022•23 min
Xiomara Castro is about to be inaugurated as the first-ever female president of Honduras. But la presidenta has a daunting task in front of her. Her countrymen continue to leave the nation, tired of poverty, government corruption and violence. And the legislative majority she was counting on to help her reform Honduras is now gone. Today, we’ll talk about how Castro promises to solve her country’s problems. But, in light of what’s happening right now in the National Congress of Honduras, will sh...
Jan 25, 2022•22 min
Native American culture and history have long been ignored or romanticized as vestiges of a lost people — or both. The Serrano people of Southern California have seen their Indigenous language nearly vanish. But tribe member Ernest Siva has been working to save it. Among his efforts: The octogenarian contributes to Cal State San Bernardino’s language program. Then, 25-year-old Mark Araujo-Levinson found the classes through a Google search — and started making YouTube videos of himself learning t...
Jan 24, 2022•17 min
Felicia Rangel-Samponaro used to live a fairly normal life as a suburban stay-at-home mom in the border city of Brownsville, Texas. But now the half Black, half Mexican-American mom crosses the border to help Black and Latino migrants, many of them asylum seekers stuck in camps in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico. Today, we hear her story. More reading: The woman defending Black lives on the border, including her own Podcast: Our nation’s Haitian double standard Podcast: Biden shut a migrant c...
Jan 21, 2022•19 min
For over 140 years, street vendors hawking Mexican food have been a staple of life in Southern California. Horse-drawn tamale wagons turned into taco trucks, turned into hot dog carts, turned into pop-up tents — …and, eventually, hipsters caught on and these trends went national. But even as SoCal has become famous worldwide for its street food scene, government officials have amped up their war on it. Today, we examine one city’s crackdown on street vendors. And we also talk to an East L.A. taq...
Jan 20, 2022•23 min
This past December brought record-high amounts of snow to the Sierra Nevada, California’s main mountain range. The state, of course, has suffered for years from bad, bad drought, so we should all be happy that the dry days are over with all this snow, right? In fact, those who monitor such things are saying we should be saving water more than ever. Because there’s a real possibility that one day, blizzards in the West might be gone. Today, our Masters of Disasters reconvene to talk about this po...
Jan 19, 2022•21 min
