How To LA

#81: Today continues our Holiday week roundup of Cheap Fast Eats faves. Hungry for more summer excitement? This time, we've got one geared to those night owls among you... K-Town, After Dark. This episode originally aired on March 23, 2023.  Cheap Fast Eats is back with it's first ever late-night extravaganza. And where else but Koreatown? The historic neighborhood features delicious foods from a...

#21: This holiday week, we're re-upping some episodes from our fave HTLA series - Cheap Fast Eats! So sit back and keep feeding your summer excitement with this next installment: Long Beach. This episode originally aired on October 13, 2022.  HTLA host Brian De Los Santos and LAist food editor Gab Chabrán are back at it, searching for delicious (and affordable) grub. This time, they're featuring C...

#6: It's summer, time to get excited about all our favorite food. This holiday week, we're re-upping some episodes from our fave HTLA series - Cheap Fast Eats! This episode originally aired on September 8, 2022.  Hungry and looking for some inexpensive grub? Come along with HTLA host Brian De Los Santos and LAist food editor Gab Chabrán as they go in search of cheap, fast eats in communities all o...

#121: We’re back with How I Got Started, the segment where we highlight artists, movers, and shakers here in Los Angeles. From arts and entertainment to advocacy — we’re talking to people who we think you should know about.  James Ford came out to LA to work in construction, and ended up starting his own fashion brand, even joining a Netflix competition show for up and coming designers. That’s a p...

#120: Inglewood might be known for L.A. staples like The Forum, SoFi Stadium, the HBO show Insecure and Randy's Donuts. But with an equally Black and Latino population, the real magic of this place comes from a confluence of cultures..and of course the food that's born from that. Today, the HTLA team is eating their way through some iconic and lesser-known spots in Inglewood, joined by LAist's foo...

#119: The Los Angeles City Council has been through a lot of upheaval. In the past few years, there’s been corruption scandals, indictments, leaked tapes with racist language — all involving city leaders. The latest: Councilmember Curren Price has been charged with embezzlement of public funds, among other counts. It's rattled his largely Latino district, which came out (mostly) in his defense rec...

#118: The sun is coming out y'all and the temps are rising. Come August it is going to be HOT in L.A. with some of the most severe heat in the San Fernando Valley. We explain what is happening with our weather and why certain parts of L.A. become almost unbearable.  Guest: LAist Science Reporter Jacob Margolis  Some additional news you can use:  Why Does It Get So Hot In Los Angeles? https://laist...

#117: Before LA became the city of the car, we had one of the most robust public transit systems in the world. Well, that might not be coming back in the near future... But we DID just take a major step forward. LA's got some new train tracks, connecting the city from East to West and North to South through Metro's newly finished regional connector project. Now you can get from Azusa to Long Beach...

#116: Today, we dive deeper into the hurdles veterans face to secure housing in LA. Specifically, income limit restrictions, and how this leaves the most disabled veterans – those who need housing and services most – ineligible for most VA housing.   This is part two in a special two-part series about the veteran homelessness crisis in LA. We speak to Edward Sotelo, a 70% disabled veteran who was...

#115: In May, 179 new apartments opened up for unhoused veterans at the West LA Veterans Affairs campus. Some veterans who have been stuck inside the VA system for years to were finally able to secure housing. But the development is still years behind schedule and hundreds of units short, leaving roughy 4,000 veterans in L.A. County without a permanent place to live. This is part one in a special...

#114: Juneteenth — a shortening of June 19th — marks the day chattel slavery ended in the United States. On this day in 1865, nearly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to tell the last enslaved Black Americans they were free.  All throughout Los Angeles County, there are celebrations honoring this holiday. But one of the...

#67: This episode originally aired on February 16, 2023.  When people think Los Angeles, they don't exactly think soul food. But this city actually has a rich (and delicious) soul food scene mostly in South LA. In this episode, we explore the origins of this epic cuisine, and how it plays a huge role in preserving Black history and culture. We visit South LA soul food staples Serving Spoon in Ingl...

#57: We're about halfway through the year (can you believe it?). So we're re-upping our new year's resolutions to find more zen. This episode first aired on January 24, 2023. Whatever self improvement goals you've set for yourself this year, life is still stressful - work pressures, family commitments...not to mention natural disasters, political strife and world crises that you literally have no...

#113: Foraging doesn't just mean hightailing it to the Santa Monica mountains and looking through brush and wood for mushrooms. There's a whole world of wild, and not-so-wild foods growing all around us — in our  Urban Forest. Los Angeles has so much to offer, whether you're looking for citrus or loquats or edible flowers. But it's a LOT to learn all by yourself. So today, HTLA newsletter writer A...

#112: On June 27, a special election will be held to choose the candidate who will replace former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez. You might remember that she resigned in the wake of a scandal last fall, having been caught making racist ands other ugly comments during a group conversation that was secretly recorded and made public. Imelda Padilla and Marisa Alcaraz are both going after h...

#111: Gloom or Glisten? It’s both... If you listen. The plants are loving these extra cloudy skies, even if some of us are missing that LA sun. And here's the question: is this SAD-inducing set of storms even that unusual for June, or is this the normal we've forgotten during these last years of drought?  We've got LAist science reporter, Jacob Margolis, to explain all that and more. And for more...

#110: River Garza creates fascinating art through the lens of his Tongva and Mexican heritage. HTLA host Brian De Los Santos and River recently spoke at the Autry Museum of the American West , where River's work is currently showing. They spoke about how their cultural identities shape and inform how they show up in the world.  If you want to check out any future events, make sure to hit up our ev...

#109: It’s Pride Month, y’all! Throughout June, the LGBTQ+ community has a plethora of parties to choose from in Los Angeles. But, this Pride is finding people at a crossroads. It should be a time to celebrate and dance, but anti-LGBTQ+ headlines and legislation are also weighing heavy on queer hearts. This episode: a roundtable. HTLA host Brian De Los Santos chats everything Pride related with th...

#108: It's no surprise that homeless is a top concern among Angelenos. The best-available info at this point says there are more than 69,000 people experiencing homeless in L.A. County – a 4% rise from the last time the survey was conducted in 2020. In a recent LAist survey of 4,339 people, two-thirds of respondents said it's the main thing L.A. Mayor Karen Bass needs to prioritize. One-third of f...

#107 In March the city of LA wrapped up its year-long guaranteed income program, Big: Leap. It's an acronym for Basic Income Guaranteed: L.A. Economic Assistance Pilot and it provided $1000 a month to 3,200 low-income families for a year, no strings attached. It modeled itself after other guaranteed income pilot programs — sometimes called Universal Basic Income , or UBI — in cities like Stockton,...

#39:  We're ringing in Memorial Day Weekend by getting outside. This episode first aired on November 25, 2022.  On this podcast, we love to discover new places and things …and that includes checking out outdoor spaces in LA. We know how some of you love to hike and bike and just hang out in nature so we asked YOU to recommend your favorite spots to break away and enjoy the outdoors. We got some go...

#106: We're back on our neighborhood grind! This time, HTLA host Brian De Los Santos is hanging out with a Downey pro – AND fellow LAist Studios host – Erick Galindo. Erick is the host of Wild , now in its second season with a fictional rom com based on his life growing up in Downey. Together he and Brian dive into the history of this gateway city... from its beginnings as an aerospace center to i...

#105: You've probably seen those "We Buy Ugly Houses" signs all around LA...and the country. They're part of an elaborate advertising strategy for a pretty ugly business: Patriot Holdings. It's a franchise of the real estate investment company, HomeVestors of America. A recent investigation by the non profit newsroom ProPublica found that a number of the company’s franchises ….including ones right...

#104: Gloria Molina was a trailblazing political figure and advocate for social justice. She made history as the first Latina to be elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and she represented so much for the Latino community, and for Los Angeles as a whole. She spent her career fighting for environmental injustice in East LA, for women who underwent unauthorized sterilization at th...

#103: Rafael Agustín wears a whole lotta hats in Hollywood. He's the CEO of the Latino Film Institute and oversees the Youth Cinema Project. He writes for TV and wrote a memoir, Illegally Yours, about growing up in L.A. and learning as a teenager that he was undocumented.  Rafael got into theater at community college and then UCLA, where he wrote a play with his friends that toured the U.S. Then h...