Hear In LA

Zan Dubin and I met in Frogtown beside the LA River and quickly dove into her long history of activism, journalism, and life hear in LA. Born Alexandra, she was nicknamed after a character from The Little Foxes.

Zan arriving in Westwood in 1966 at age nine — and she’s remained committed to both the city and the causes close to her heart ever since.

Her dedication to electric vehicles began in 2002, when she and her then-husband bought a Toyota RAV4 EV. They became active in saving leased EVs from being crushed, founding Plug In America.

“We were able to save about 800 cars that would have been crushed,” she said, and her activism hasn’t stopped. Wearing a T-shirt that reads “Question Internal Combustion,” she embodies a lifetime of environmental commitment.

But what of the posterboy of modern EV vehicles: The notorious Elon Musk?

“I abhor Elon,” she said plainly. “I’m really sad and angry at everything that he’s doing. However, I think an even greater and more imminent threat is climate change.” While she criticizes Musk’s politics and behavior, she praises Tesla’s engineering and the ever-growing charging network’s reach.

Zan Dubin and I met in Frogtown beside the LA River and quickly dove into her long history of activism, journalism, and life hear in LA. Born Alexandra, she was nicknamed after a character from The Little Foxes.

Zan arriving in Westwood in 1966 at age nine — and she’s remained committed to both the city and the causes close to her heart ever since.

Her dedication to electric vehicles began in 2002, when she and her then-husband bought a Toyota RAV4 EV. They became active in saving leased EVs from being crushed, founding Plug In America.

“We were able to save about 800 cars that would have been crushed,” she said, and her activism hasn’t stopped. Wearing a T-shirt that reads “Question Internal Combustion,” she embodies a lifetime of environmental commitment.

But what of the posterboy of modern EV vehicles: The notorious Elon Musk?

“I abhor Elon,” she said plainly. “I’m really sad and angry at everything that he’s doing. However, I think an even greater and more imminent threat is climate change.” While she criticizes Musk’s politics and behavior, she praises Tesla’s engineering and the ever-growing charging network’s reach.

Peter Viles is a brilliant journalist, terrific family man, and the next door neighbor you could only dream for. After years of renting, he and his wife moved from Mar Vista to a townhome in the Palisades and thanks to a robust real estate market were able to sell that home for a dream house up the hill. Sadly when the fires hit in January it blazed through his neighborhood destroying many of the homes on his block, but someone up there likes Pete and his family and his home was spared. Unfortunately, like lots of families in Altadena and the Palisades, the smoke damage was so intense, it's unsafe for he and his family to stay there and they were forced to rent a home in the South Bay for a year. We'll talk about his escape, how his kids are adjusting to their new life, and what life was like for him before the blaze.

AVN Special Episode: In this edition we talk with four people in Las Vegas about various aspects of the adult video world. First we talk with Jason Luv, one of the most sought-after and popular male mainstream porn actors. He tells us which part of LA he loves to hang out in when he's hear in LA for work. Then we chat with the beautiful Bailey Rayne who moved hear from Indiana and has made a home in the Valley while being an MFC model for 11 years. Next we talk with Paragon a fan of MFC model Rorrie Gomez who flew from Buffalo to meet and support her. Finally we talk with Rorrie herself about her unusual path of being a successful nude model on the web channel and then finding greater success when she stopped getting naked. Along the way we learn why Sylmar has a tasty sushi joint that won't cost a ton of tokens.

Steve is a veteran LA Times writer and editor who for the last five years has been the distinguished Column One editor. In this episode we talk about the paper's coverage of the most recent LA Fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the dynamic between good editors and writers, his early days covering crime in The Valley, and some facts about Silver Lake that rarely get talked about when outsiders simply dub it the home for hipsters.

Sherman Gray and his longtime girlfriend have both struggled with drugs but are now clean and sober and have been for a year and a half. They both have jobs, but they are low-paying and they're on Food Stamps. What they need is a place to live. Currently they are couch surfing and sleeping on floors, and sometimes they have to sleep outside, something they did for years in Lake Elsinore. LA Mayor Karen Bass has been boasting of late that her Inside Safe program is just what people like Sherman was meant for. We will see. If this podcast can help one person, let's hope it can help this couple get off the streets.

Sherman Gray and his longtime girlfriend have been clean and sober for a year and a half. They have been homeless for a while, they both have low-paying jobs and food stamps, but what they really need is a roof over their head. Mayor Bass boasts that her program, Inside Safe, can get our poorest Angelenos off the street. Meanwhile the LA Controller says 1 out of every 4 beds that have been set aside for homeless people are not being used. Hear Sherman tells his story about drugs, jail, and living outside. If this humble podcast can help one person, let's see if it can help Sherman and his girlfriend.

The last six years have been an emotional rollercoaster for Albert Corado and his family after the LAPD senselessly killed his sister Mely at the Silver Lake Trader Joe's. The City of LA tried to gaslight the Corado initially trying to convince them that it wasn't their two officers' fault when they fired into the crowded store and fatally shot the young woman. Instead they blamed the suspect they were chasing. Then they tried to lowball the family by offering them $500k to make it all go away. But right before the case was going to go to trial, the city got serious and when they offered a record $9.5 million settlement, the Corados reluctantly agreed. But the pain has not gone away. Albert explains what they went through and what's next for he and his father.

Now that Paul Haddad has moved on from discovering the likes of Brooke Burke and teaching us about the freeways of LA, he's now ready to educate us on the six movers and shakers of the late 1880s who turned LA from a dusty town to the second-most populous city in America,

In his new book, Inventing Paradise, Paul teaches us of the likes of the men behind the names Angelenos see on street signs everywhere: Huntington, Mulholland, Chandler, Sherman, Banning and Otis.

Amy Shratter is a Human Resources expert and veteran who created the new company, Real-Salary, that sorts millions of verified salaries and job titles and locations and puts them in an easy-to-use database.

This way if you want to know if you’re being underpaid, for example, at your current gig, you do a search for your job title, city and state, among other options.