Danny Trejo has lived a life worthy of a book. Addict. Prisoner. Actor. Owner of a donut and taco shop. And, now, author of a memoir. "Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood" tells his life story with many jaw-dropping anecdotes. Today, we pass the mic over to L.A. Times culture reporter Daniel Hernandez, who talks to Danny Trejo. Come for the "Machete," stay for the Edward James Olmos incident!
Landing a job at one of the prisons in the northeastern California town of Susanville has been a sure way to get a middle-class life for decades. Now, one of the prisons, California Correctional Center, is scheduled to close. And this charming town of just over 13,500 residents, roughly 40 percent of whom are incarcerated, must confront a truism of small-town American life: when you rely on one industry for your economy, you’re eventually going to get left with the bill. Today, we get the story of Susanville from L.A. Times reporter Hailey Branson-Potts. We also hear from residents and an advocate for prison closure who says there is a future after a lockup gets closed up.
Conviction overturned. Those words cut through social media last week after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court freed Bill Cosby from prison. He was there on a 2018 indecent assault conviction, a significant victory for the Me Too movement. Today, we check in with Nicki Weisensee Egan, host of the LA Times podcast “Chasing Cosby.” After Cosby’s release, she spoke with several women who’ve accused him of sexual assault in the past. We also talk to John Manly, a lawyer who has long gone after sexual predators and the institutions that protect them.
California's junior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, is used to making history. The son of Mexican immigrants was the youngest-ever president of the Los Angeles City Council, at age 26. He became California’s first Latino secretary of state in 2014. Then last winter, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Padilla to replace Kamala Harris as U.S. senator — the first-ever Latino to represent the Golden State in this role. Today, Sen. Padilla joins us to talk about his roots, his career, and how he’s using his California background to help chart a path forward for the United States.
Behold, a special episode of The Times. It’s a crossover edition with our podcast colleagues at The Envelope. We’ll hear the conversation that Yvonne Villarreal, who covers television for the L.A. Times and cohosts our Envelope podcast, had with Academy Award winning actor Kate Winslet. They talk film, TV — and all about Kate’s latest starring role in the critically-acclaimed HBO series “Mare of Easttown." Going to the popular convenience store chain Wawa for research was a requirement to prepare for the role, Winslet said: "It almost felt like a mythical place." Villarreal and Winslet also discuss the long-anticipated film “Avatar 2” directed by James Cameron and how to hold your breath underwater for seven minutes.
On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party kicked off its 100th anniversary by celebrating China’s economic success and ambitions to create a new world order. The festivities, of course, are carefully choreographed. For decades, the Communist Party has crushed any counter-narratives to promote a whitewashed version of Chinese history. Those who deviate from the party’s official narrative suffer retribution — and in recent days, records of that punishment have been expunged as well.
Today, we focus on a newly revised volume of Communist Party history that aims to airbrush its past for a younger generation who have come of age in a tightly controlled social environment. And we highlight the young activists who are trying to bring attention to this whitewashing — and are getting jailed or exiled for doing so. Our guest is L.A. Times Beijing bureau chief Alice Su.
Two years ago, the world watched as millions of people in Hong Kong marched in the streets to call for autonomy from China. Beijing responded by passing a national security law last summer that broadly defined acts of subversion, foreign collusion and terrorism. Critics say the law crushed civil liberties. Since it was enacted, many people have fled Hong Kong — some to neighboring Taiwan. Yet Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as its territory, is at risk as well.
Today, we start a two-part series on the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions as it celebrates its 100th anniversary. This episode gets into the continued crackdown on freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, where authorities have arrested thousands of pro-democracy activists and shut down a major daily newspaper. We’ll also discuss China’s growing threats to absorb Taiwan. Tomorrow, how the Chinese Communist Party is rewriting China’s history.
Today, we examine the Afghan Air Force — its history, its success, its tenuous future. We talk with two of my L.A. Times colleagues who went on a helicopter ride-along... that came under attack. Since 2010, the U.S. military and other allies have poured in $8.5 billion to support the Afghan Air Force, which dates back to 1918. In a long war characterized by inefficiencies and failures, it has proven one of the few success stories. Now, its days might be numbered.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón has a policing pedigree like few others. Army veteran. Patrol officer in Los Angeles. Police chief in San Francisco before becoming D.A. there. Now, he’s in charge of the D.A.’s office in L.A., one of the largest in the country. He’s part of a wave of progressive district attorneys who have won elections in some of America’s largest cities with a promise to radically reform their offices. And he’s currently the subject of a recall effort. Today, we tackle this blowback, talking to L.A. Times crimes and policing reporter James Queally, a member of the Recall Gascón campaign, and Gascón himself.
People expressing their sexuality in public by dressing up in kink fashions — leather, rubber, furry, dom and a whole other universe of expressions — have been mainstays of Pride parades and festivals since the earliest celebrations in the 1970s. But as these celebrations have slowly mainstreamed, some groups say the kink factor should go down, if not disappear altogether. And the attacks aren’t coming from the right. Today, we talk about kink — what’s its role in Pride, and how does its expression there benefit not just those who partake, but society in general? Our guests are Yale University professor Joe Fischel, who recently wrote an essay in the Boston Review advocating for kink to stay at Pride, and we also talk to the president of San Francisco’s Leather and LGBTQ District — yeah, it’s a thing.
