Headlines From The Times

Latest Episodes:

The pickleball pickle May 31, 2022

Show notes

It’s pitting neighbors against neighbors in suburbs across the United States. Tempers are flaring. Tension is high. And nope, all the drama has nothing to do with politics or COVID or any of the usual suburban suspects. The culprit now: pickleball.

Today, we serve you the rapid rise of a sport whose popularity boomed during the pandemic and the intense backlash rising right alongside it.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guest: L.A. Times investigative and enterprise reporter Connor Sheets

More reading:

Pickleball noise is fueling neighborhood drama from coast to coast

Pickleball is a godsend for older players. L.A. needs to fund new courts

Pickleball is a smash hit in SoCal. Now younger players are picking up the paddle

A visit to Vancouver's safe injection site May 27, 2022

Show notes

Overdose deaths in the United States have risen rapidly during the pandemic. It’s a trend driven largely by the spread of fentanyl.

In California, the push to save lives and stop the fallout has led some activists and politicians to propose safe injection sites — places where people can take drugs with clean needles, without fear of arrest. There’s already one site like this operating in San Francisco.

But in Vancouver, Canada, there’s a neighborhood that has hosted a safe injection site for almost 20 years. In today’s episode, we go visit it.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guest: L.A. Times columnist Anita Chabria

More reading:

Column: Vancouver’s safe drug-use sites are wrenching to see. California should open them anyway

In a bid to stop overdose deaths, California could allow drug use at supervised sites

With overdose deaths rising, here’s how to test drugs for fentanyl

California’s gun control wars sway the U.S. May 26, 2022

Show notes

Today we talk about California’s huge role in influencing gun control laws in the U.S. and about the backlashes. We discuss the state’s historic 1989 ban on assault weapons and why a federal judge issued an order to overturn that ban. And we talk to the mayor of San Jose, who wants his city to be the first in the United States to require gun owners to buy liability insurance.

Read the full transcript here.

An earlier version of this episode was published Aug. 23, 2021.

L.A. mayoral candidates debate homelessness May 25, 2022

Show notes

Last week, we partnered up with KCRW for a live mayoral debate with some of the city’s top candidates for the top job.

It was the final group debate before the primary on June 7. And in it, three candidates talked a lot about a housing-first approach and took progressive stances on the issue of homelessness.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano and KCRW housing reporter Anna Scott

Guests: Rep. Karen Bass, L.A. councilmember Kevin de León, and activist Gina Viola

More reading:

With Caruso absent, L.A. mayoral candidates argue for progressive moves on homelessness

L.A. on the Record: Renters are getting short shrift in the mayor’s race, advocates say

L.A.’s mayoral candidates agree homeless encampments need to go. The question is how

Tijuana's toughest time May 24, 2022

Show notes

In this episode of the “Border City” podcast from our sister paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, longtime U.S.-Mexico border reporter Sandra Dibble brings us to an awful time for Tijuana: the three-year window from 2008 to 2010. Cartels ramped up violence to horrifying levels, targeting cops and doctors. Police tried to purge traitors from their ranks — and went too far. But through it all, the spirit of Tijuana stayed alive. In the darkness, there were still sparkles of music and art and joy.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Sandra Dibble

More reading:

Must Reads: Meth and murder: A new kind of drug war has made Tijuana one of the deadliest cities on Earth

Images from the front lines of Tijuana’s deadly drug war

Reporter’s Notebook: Behind the story: How The Times reported on Tijuana’s massive rise in homicides

Desperately seeking restaurant workers May 23, 2022

Show notes

The pandemic has made a lot of us rethink a lot of things. On the forefront of that existential rethink: restaurant workers.
This realignment of priorities and personal interests drove lots of restaurant workers to quit. Now, two years after COVID-19 upended the restaurant industry, so many food spots are still short-staffed and help-wanted signs are seemingly everywhere. That's motivating employers to offer better pay, conditions and perks.
Today, L.A. Times business reporter Samantha Masunaga discusses why the labor shortage is still a big problem for restaurant owners across the country and how they can persuade workers to come back. Read the full transcript here.

ICE released dying detainees, avoiding responsibility May 20, 2022

Show notes

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detains hundreds of thousands of people nationwide, typically says fewer than a dozen detainees die in its custody each year. But if the agency releases a person in dire health, they're not in custody when they die — so ICE doesn't need to count that death.

Today, L.A. Times immigration reporter Andrea Castillo tells the stories of two people who were abruptly released by ICE just days before their deaths and pulls back the curtain on the system that allows this to happen. Read the full transcript here.

Cryptocurrency's addiction problem May 19, 2022

Show notes

The ups and downs of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin can bring quick wealth — or quick bankruptcy. It's the hope for a huge payoff that keeps people hooked on these fluctuations, to the point where their attention turns to addiction.

Today, in the wake of the crypto market's recent crash, we look at how obsessing over digital currency can affect people and their lives.

Read the full transcript here.

How California popularized the Great Replacement May 18, 2022

Show notes

On Saturday, a heavily armed 18-year-old white man rolled up to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y., and killed at least 10 people. The suspect is said to have committed the act to stop the so-called “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory that gained popularity among the far right across the world in recent years.

Its premise says that a secret cabal of elites are supposedly helping people of color take the place of white people. In the United States, the great replacement theory was turned into political strategy and policy long ago. And it started here, in California.

Today, we hear how the Golden State helped the fringe conspiracy go mainstream. Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: L.A. Times columnists Erika D. Smith and Jean Guerrero

More reading:

Column: I’m part of the ‘great replacement.’ It’s not what believers say it is

Column: Buffalo shooting is an ugly culmination of California’s ‘Great Replacement’ theory

Column: How the insurrection’s ideology came straight out of 1990s California politics

Tijuana in the time of opera and cartels May 17, 2022

Show notes

In the late 1990s, a turf war between the Arellano-Felix and Sinaloa cartels in Tijuana led to mayhem and corruption. But as the cartel-fueled violence continued, residents in the city lived their lives.

Sandra Dibble was a reporter for the San Diego Union-Tribune at the time, and she treated her visiting mom to handmade corn tortillas, Cafe de la olla, and eggs drenched in mole in Tijuana’s upscale neighborhood. She took her brother to Tijuana’s famous Mercado Miguel Hidalgo to buy tamales. And she got on stage to play a noblewoman in a Tijuana Opera performance of “Romeo and Juliet.”

During the day, though, she reported on the mayhem. She talks about this dichotomy in Episode 5 of “Border City.” Read the transcript here.

Host: Sandra Dibble

More reading:

The collapse of Mexico’s ‘invincible’ drug cartel

Los Tucanes de Tijuana: Banned in their namesake border city

Arts are beginning to blossom in Tijuana