A junk snack may not seem like a big deal, especially in this current world. But the story of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — a gnarled, messy, crunchy, bright-red corn puff that debuted in the early 1990s — and its creation has long been told as an inspirational fable from classrooms to boardrooms because of one man: Richard Montañez. His tale was irresistible: he was a former janitor at a Frito-Lay plant who became a high-ranking executive. That is all true. But he credited his rise to his creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Now, an L.A. Times investigation has cast doubts on those claims, and the internet is, well, aflame. We get some insight into the matter from Times business reporter Sam Dean and our very own senior podcast producer Denise Guerra.
Headlines From The Times - Killings of transgender people in U.S. on track to top last year’s record
Just five months into the year, the U.S. is on track to break a troubling record. Last year, 44 transgender people were killed in the U.S. and its territories. So far this year, the count is close to two dozen, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Those are just the cases that we know of. More than half the victims were Black trans women, and the region with the highest rate is Puerto Rico. Today, we’ll speak with Marc Ramirez about the rise in transgender violence in Puerto Rico and across the U.S. He’s a USA Today national correspondent who covers identity and inclusion issues. We’ll also speak to Maria José, a trans woman who heads a safe space in Puerto Rico for LGBTQ folks.
Headlines From The Times - Baseball, the Iranian hostage crisis and Barry Rosen
Four decades ago, Barry Rosen was one of 52 Americans held hostage for 444 brutal days in Iran. After their release in 1981, Rosen and the other hostages received a rare gift from Major League Baseball: a "golden ticket." Signed by then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn under the words “In Gratitude And Appreciation,” the lifetime pass entitled each hostage and a guest admittance to any regular-season game. But when Rosen tried to attend a game this year, the New York Mets said they were no longer honoring his pass. What happened next showed just how much baseball continues to mean to Rosen.
Headlines From The Times - Meet our Masters of Disasters
The California dream comes with more than its fair share of disasters — earthquakes, wildfires, fire tornadoes, eroding coasts, and so much more. The L.A. Times has a disasters unit to cover them, and our reporters are some of the best in the business. So we invited three of them — Rong-Gong Lin II, Rosanna Xia, and Alex Wigglesworth — to talk about how to prepare for the unpreparable. Think of this as a regular monthly series about calamities, with our Masters of Disasters as your guides.
Headlines From The Times - A look at El Salvador’s meme-loving, press-hating autocratic president Nayib Bukele
A populist becomes his country’s president with a historic win. He’s a brash outsider, a relative newcomer, and he promises to drain the swamp. No more politics as usual, he says, because his country is under attack — and he’s here to save it. But this new president begins to upend democracy. Ousts his opponents to consolidate power. Declares he wants to change the country’s constitution to suit him. And trolls his haters on social media all along the way. These are the hallmarks of Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador. If Bukele succeeds in his power grabs, it has big implications for the United States. Today, L.A. Times Latin America correspondent Kate Linthicum and El Faro reporter Jimmy Alvarado take us into the current crisis in El Salvador and explain how we got here. Author Roberto Lovato also talks about how Bukele’s actions affect the Salvadoran diaspora in the United States.
Headlines From The Times - What California’s high school athletes can teach us about coping with COVID-19
California's high-school athletes were bona fide ballers during the pandemic. They trained alone or over Zoom during lockdowns and are now facing off against each other on the field. How these student athletes coped with COVID-19 this past year offers lessons in resilience and ingenuity that all of us can learn. Today, we learn how the football team at Loyola High School in Los Angeles came together to help teammate Josh Morales and his family survive COVID-19. Then, we’ll chat with L.A. Times’ longtime high school sports columnist Eric Sondheimer about the bigger challenges ahead for young athletes.
Headlines From The Times - The origins of California’s recall fever
Over the next couple of months, media from across the world will descend on California to cover the possible recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. There have been only two successful recalls of governors in U.S. history — including the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. Why is this famously liberal state so prone to conservative voter uprisings? It’s part of a decades-long trend that has rocked local and state politics, a trend that’s gone on to influence the rest of the U.S. Today, we examine the roots of the upcoming recall election against California Gov. Gavin Newsom with L.A. Times politics columnist Mark Z. Barabak and Randy Economy, one of the architects of the Recall Gavin 2020 campaign.
Further reading:
How three political novices with turbulent pasts helped spark the Newsom recall
Column: Good news for Gavin Newsom — California is no longer the place it was in 2003
Headlines From The Times - How one mom learned to stop worrying and love video games during the pandemic
Video games have always been a point of division between L.A. Times science reporter Deborah Netburn and her 12-year-old son. Then the pandemic hit, and the gap between them seemed to widen. In today's episode, Netburn takes over the mic to share her journey from ignorance to understanding. And she does it all by playing video games.
More reading:
Video games came between me and my son in the pandemic. Could they bring us back together?
Headlines From The Times - One final reckoning for the Golden Globes
Stacy Perman and Josh Rottenberg cover the film industry for the L.A. Times. In February, just a week before the annual Golden Globes ceremony, they published a bombshell investigation about the operations of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The findings were ugly: Self dealing. Ethical lapses. No Black members. And the HFPA continued to make a series of missteps. Now, a group of powerful publicists in Hollywood have declared that they’ll keep their clients away from the Globes -- unless the institution announces real reforms. And this week, the HFPA finally did. We’ll hear from Perman, Rottenberg, and Kjersti Flaa, the Norwegian reporter who took the HFPA to court.
More reading:
Golden Globes leaders propose major reforms after Times investigation
Golden Globes organization vowed to change. Then came turmoil. What went wrong?
Headlines From The Times - The forgotten, radical roots of Cinco de Mayo
Few take Cinco de Mayo seriously. For many of us, today is about restaurant specials on nachos and margaritas. Too many white people wearing sombreros and fake mustaches. But for Axios reporter Russell Contreras, May 5 takes him back to growing up in Houston, where a forgotten riot over the police death of a Mexican American in 1978 turned Cinco de Mayo from farce to reflection. He talks about the forgotten, radical roots of the holiday loved by few and celebrated mostly with drinko.
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