The Times: Daily news from the L.A. Times

Our guest host Faith E. Pinho, a Metro reporter at the L.A. Times, speaks with Times culture writer Daniel Hernandez about the cast of characters and cars that have been lining the wide boulevards of Southern California for decades. They look at who is embracing cruising culture and its uneasy relationship with law enforcement.

An earlier version of this episode was published May 28, 2021. 

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The lowrider is back: The glor...

Alison Roman is a chef, food writer, cookbook author and video maker whose unfussy recipes pack a punch. Those recipes, along with her fun persona, made her a bright spot for many fans especially as the pandemic began taking hold. Then Roman, who is white, lobbed some criticism at celebrities Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo — women of color — and controversy engulfed her. Roman was canceled. Or was she? What exactly does being cance...

Sohla El-Waylly is famous for her cooking videos for outlets like the History Channel’s “Ancient Recipes,” Bon Appetit’s “Test Kitchen,” and so, so much more. She also writes a column at Food52 and contributes to the cooking section at the other big-time Times newspaper (the one on the East Coast).

Today, we do another crossover episode with our sibling podcast “Asian Enough,” where El-Waylly talks about food appropriation, her insp...

This story of Los Angeles’ 1930s era of gambling boats — and Tony Cornero, the underworld boss at the center of the action — is a portal to another version of the city, one that’s glamorous and seedy. Business reporter Daniel Miller spent months chasing down the tale, poring over FBI records, reviewing newspaper accounts and interviewing the few people alive who remember when barges bobbing off the coast of Santa Monica offered the...

Last month, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen revealed she had released thousands of documents that showed how the company knew yet did little to curb harmful content for its billions of users. Those documents also showed that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, knew disinformation on its platforms was particularly corrosive to Latino communities — yet the company did little to stop it. Today, we talk about the damage and what a...

When it rains, it pours, and when it pours after a long dry spell, water can become dangerous. Fire-scarred lands see mudslides devastate homes. Parched soil can’t absorb the rain that comes. Water, water everywhere, and California is still on the brink.Today, we reconvene our Masters of Disasters to discuss how too much rain after a drought can be bad. And who knew the term "mudslide" could be so controversial?

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Last month, In-N-Out Burger made national news when health officials in San Francisco shut down one of its restaurants. The company’s sin: refusing to comply with a law that requires restaurants to ask customers for proof of COVID-19 vaccination. An In-N-Out spokesperson described the mandate as “intrusive, improper and offensive” — and suddenly, the burger chain became a flashpoint in the country’s culture wars. Today, we talk abo...

Over the last few years, Leyna Bloom has been the first in many categories. In 2017, she became the first trans woman of color to grace the pages of Vogue India. In 2019, she became one of the first trans women to walk Paris Fashion Week. And most recently, she broke barriers again as the first trans cover model for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

On this crossover episode with our sister podcast “Asian Enough,” Bloom talks abo...

In 2011, a group of Muslims in Orange County sued the federal government, alleging that the FBI violated the constitutional rights of Muslims by spying on them solely because of their religion. The feds denied the allegations, but they also said they couldn't disclose why they had spied on this community. To do so, according to the government, would reveal state secrets. Now the lawsuit is before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the...

This fall, a commemoration in downtown Los Angeles marked the 150th anniversary of when a mob lynched 18 Chinese men and boys — one of the biggest such killings in American history. The recent memorial comes in a year when many similar remembrances have bloomed across the United States. Anti-Asian hate crimes have soared during the pandemic, but that has also spurred an interest in learning the long, and long-hidden, history of suc...

Marijuana use is now ubiquitous in mainstream culture — even Martha Stewart’s into CBD products thanks to her good pal Snoop Dogg. Despite this, the federal government classifies basically all cannabis-related products as illegal. That stands in the way of things like medical research. Can California, which sparked a revolution 25 years ago with the legalization of medical marijuana by voters, push the federal government to legaliz...

At USC, hundreds of students have been protesting university officials and so-called Greek life itself over the last month after a series of drugging and sexual assault allegations that the school kept quiet about for weeks. It's the latest scandal to hit the school, and some of the loudest criticism has come from an unexpected source: fraternity and sorority members. Today, we talk to L.A. Times higher education reporter Teres...

In this crossover episode with our cousin podcast “Asian Enough,” hosts Suhauna Hussain and Johana Bhuiyan speak with sociologist Anthony Ocampo. He’s spent his career studying the intersection of race, gender and immigration, which guided his groundbreaking book “The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race.”

Today, Ocampo also speaks about another facet of his work: what it means to be brown and gay in Los A...

Skateboarding is a mainstay of California street culture, from San Diego to San Francisco and beyond. It’s so popular that L.A. County filled outdoor skateparks with sand earlier in the pandemic so no one could grind on them.

But during the pandemic, skateboard sales surged — and communities long marginalized from the sport are now making their own spaces.

Today we talk to reporter Cerise Castle, who’s covering and participating in t...

Less than 4% of Los Angeles’ firefighters are women — a number that, despite the mayor’s goals, has inched up only slightly in recent years. Many of the female firefighters say their ranks are so small because of a hostile, sexist culture pervading the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Today, we talk about what women in the LAFD have been dealing with, including trash in their lockers, feces on bathroom floors and nasty remarks from co-w...

Every year, people in the American West die from scorching temperatures. Experts fear that the number of deaths is undercounted — and, that as the climate continues to heats up, the death rate is going to rise.

Officially, California says 599 people died due to heat exposure from 2010 to 2019. But a Los Angeles Times investigation estimates the number is way higher: about 3,900 deaths.

Today we talk to Tony Barboza and Anna M. Philli...

The Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California is Mexico’s premier wine country, a lush valley that makes Napa seem as gorgeous as a parking lot.

But a lot of development is coming to the Valle — and many locals aren’t happy.

Today, we travel to this beautiful, contested space with two experts. Javier Cabral is the editor of LA Taco and wrote about a recent anti-development protest there. Javier Plascencia, a pioneering chef, has seen Val...

Over the next two weeks, leaders from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Glasglow, Scotland, for a United Nations climate summit known as COP26. They’ll tell us what we’ve heard before: that scientists have warned about rising oceans, sinking cities, famines and millions of refugees if we don’t dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Officials will tell us we all need to act ASAP. But the fate of humanity really rests with a handf...

For decades, late October meant one holiday in American popular culture: Halloween. But over the past couple of decades, more and more people are also marking another fall festival: Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

Today, we get into how this Mexican holiday took hold in the United States: its history, its customs, how it’s different here from the way it’s observed in Mexico. We talk to L.A. Times culture reporter Daniel Hern...