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When Lies Spread Like Wildfire · Question Everything

0:08
Speaker 1: So here we are outside Good Neighbor Bar in West
0:10
Speaker 1: Altadena Wine and Spirits.
0:13
Speaker 2: 2311 Lincoln Avenue, Altadena, California. We are standing out front
0:19
Speaker 2: of the map that we made for people to see
0:22
Speaker 2: what actually happened on the night of the Eaton Fire,
0:25
Speaker 2: January 7th, 2025. Around this time.
0:30
Speaker 4: A year ago.
0:30
Speaker 2: That's correct.
0:36
Speaker 5: A year ago yesterday, Los Angeles started burning. One fire
0:40
Speaker 5: started right near where our producer Sophie Kaysis is standing,
0:43
Speaker 5: in Eaton Canyon, above Altadena, a residential community just northeast
0:47
Speaker 5: of downtown LA. And another exploded closer to the coast,
0:50
Speaker 5: in the Pacific Palisades. That one, authorities say, was started
0:54
Speaker 5: by an arsonist. Two different fires, both fueled by dry conditions,
1:00
Speaker 5: spread by hurricane force winds. The fires killed 31 people.
1:05
Speaker 5: They destroyed more than 16,000 buildings. They were the most
1:08
Speaker 5: expensive in history, adding up to some $ 65 billion in losses.
1:13
Speaker 5: Our producer, Sophie, is on the main drag of Altadena
1:17
Speaker 5: with Randy Clement, who owns Good Neighbor Bar and the
1:21
Speaker 5: wine shop it's attached to, West Altadena Wine and Spirits,
1:24
Speaker 5: with his wife. Good Neighbor Bar survived the fire and
1:28
Speaker 5: has become a nerve center of sorts in the years since.
1:31
Speaker 5: In the hours and days after the fire, Randy drove
1:34
Speaker 5: around in his pickup truck and sometimes even hiked into
1:36
Speaker 5: the evacuation zone using his wine shop's delivery software to
1:41
Speaker 5: help send updates to residents about the state of their houses.
1:45
Speaker 5: Now he and some others have put up this giant
1:47
Speaker 5: map right outside the bar of Altadena with every house
1:51
Speaker 5: in town depicted on it.
1:53
Speaker 2: And if you look on the map, The red houses
1:56
Speaker 2: denote the houses that were totally lost. The black are
1:59
Speaker 2: the houses that are still there. And then the black
2:02
Speaker 2: circles with the white houses inside, that's where the people died.
2:05
Speaker 5: This is unbelievable.
2:12
Speaker 3: Almost this entire map is red.
2:15
Speaker 1: This is an entire community nearly wiped off the map.
2:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it shows.
2:25
Speaker 5: From KCRW and Placement Theory, I'm Brian Reed. This is
2:28
Speaker 5: Question Everything. Today we have a special episode. We swap
2:33
Speaker 5: our regular wine shop in New York for Good Neighbor
2:36
Speaker 5: Bar in Altadena, California. A year after the costliest fires
2:40
Speaker 5: in U.S. history, a level of devastation Californians are still
2:43
Speaker 5: coming to grips with, we get together four L.A.-based reporters
2:47
Speaker 5: who covered the fires in the center of the destruction
2:50
Speaker 5: to talk about what it was like to suit up
2:52
Speaker 5: in gear and report on this tragedy today. as their
2:55
Speaker 5: own towns and neighborhoods and even houses they'd lived in
2:58
Speaker 5: burned to the ground. What was it like doing their
3:01
Speaker 5: jobs through all that? And what have they learned in
3:03
Speaker 5: the years since?
3:05
Speaker 4: I talked to firefighters who during the fire said, I'm
3:09
Speaker 4: probably going to get cancer. They knew we were going
3:11
Speaker 4: to be coughing up black shit. You could tell by
3:14
Speaker 4: the smell that it was clearly toxic and it was
3:16
Speaker 4: going to be living literally within probably all of us forever.
3:22
Speaker 5: Stick around.
3:28
Speaker 4: It's a cool space, man.
3:29
Speaker 5: It's such a cool bar.
3:31
Speaker 4: It's really good to hear.
3:33
Speaker 5: The reporters we brought together at Good Neighbor Bar on
3:35
Speaker 5: a Monday night a few weeks ago, they covered the
3:37
Speaker 5: blazes as they were happening in L.A., some very early
3:40
Speaker 5: on the scene. And they've continued to cover the aftermath.
3:44
Speaker 5: We're joined by Tony Briscoe, an environmental reporter for the L.A. Times,
3:48
Speaker 5: and Michelle Zacharias, a local reporter for Calo News, which
3:51
Speaker 5: covers Latino communities throughout California. Both Tony and Michelle are
3:55
Speaker 5: transplants to L.A., both by way of Chicago, actually.
3:58
Speaker 1: I moved to California about five years ago.
4:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, I lived there for eight years.
4:01
Speaker 5: I'm from Michigan originally. Our other two guests are longtime Angelenos.
4:05
Speaker 5: Jacob Soboroff is a senior political and national reporter for
4:09
Speaker 5: what at the time of the fires was still known
4:10
Speaker 5: as MSNBC. Now it's MSNow.
4:14
Speaker 4: I grew up in the Palisades, and my childhood home
4:17
Speaker 4: burned down during the fires. And it was, you know,
4:20
Speaker 4: probably the most personal story I've ever covered. And so
4:25
Speaker 4: because I had a hard time processing it in real time,
4:27
Speaker 4: I wrote a book this year about it.
4:30
Speaker 5: Jacob's book came out this week. It's called Firestorm, The
4:33
Speaker 5: Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster.
4:37
Speaker 5: And our final guest has been a local TV reporter
4:40
Speaker 5: for ABC7 Los Angeles for more than 20 years. Her
4:43
Speaker 5: name's Leanne Suter.
4:45
Speaker 3: I'm glad you said that about struggling with that because I, yeah,
4:48
Speaker 3: it's been hard for me to say that, but this
4:49
Speaker 3: has definitely impacted me. Yeah. Because it's my home too.
4:53
Speaker 5: Leanne lives right near here. From the moment we started talking,
4:56
Speaker 5: it was clear how few opportunities these reporters have had
4:59
Speaker 5: to talk about the effect the fires have had on them.
5:02
Speaker 5: They've just been heads down, working.
5:04
Speaker 3: I can still cry so easily about it, but you
5:06
Speaker 3: realize that that's what it's impacted you so much and
5:10
Speaker 3: so deeply.
5:10
Speaker 5: What's been hard for you to say?
5:12
Speaker 3: Just to say that, you know, we're journalists, right? You know,
5:15
Speaker 3: you learn to put up a wall and separate yourself
5:18
Speaker 3: from the story so that I can tell the story
5:19
Speaker 3: and you don't get too personally invested in them. I'm
5:23
Speaker 3: a pro at that. But this one was different. This
5:26
Speaker 3: one was home. You know, seeing my friends' homes and
5:30
Speaker 3: seeing the place that I called home and it was
5:33
Speaker 3: all gone. It wasn't just like, you know, a house
5:36
Speaker 3: or two or a block or two. The entire community
5:39
Speaker 3: is gone. Just gone. knowing that it was your place.
5:44
Speaker 3: That's what's so hard, yeah.
5:46
Speaker 5: Am I right that you were one of the first
5:47
Speaker 5: journalists to respond to the Eaton fires, or the first,
5:49
Speaker 5: is that right?
5:50
Speaker 3: One of the first, I think, yeah. For television, we
5:52
Speaker 3: were here. We got here where it started at Eaton Canyon, right?
5:56
Speaker 3: So it comes up the canyon. There were homes that
5:58
Speaker 3: line the rim of the canyon. There were flames, you know,
6:02
Speaker 3: all the way up to the top of the trees,
6:04
Speaker 3: going over the houses. So I thought, okay, this is
6:05
Speaker 3: where it's going to start. This is going to be
6:07
Speaker 3: really bad. When those winds come in, you really have
6:10
Speaker 3: to hold yourself steady. And the winds were howling. I mean,
6:13
Speaker 3: it's howling. 80 mile an hour winds. Sounds like a
6:17
Speaker 3: freight train is coming through the trees here.
6:20
Speaker 4: Like here comes another one. You can hear it kind
6:21
Speaker 4: of building as it starts.
6:23
Speaker 3: That is the problem for all of these firefighters. You
6:25
Speaker 3: could see the embers being blown up into the air.
6:28
Speaker 3: So it literally is blowing higher than the houses. And
6:32
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden you realize it's down the street.
6:35
Speaker 4: What's it like to report in a fire?
6:37
Speaker 3: You know, we have our equipment we wear. We wear
6:40
Speaker 3: fire protective coverings and whatnot. We have a helmet we
6:43
Speaker 3: are supposed to wear.
6:43
Speaker 1: The winds were so strong, I couldn't keep it on
6:46
Speaker 1: my head.
7:03
Speaker 3: And I've been in fires before where I felt the
7:05
Speaker 3: embers and your hair starts to catch on fire. So
7:07
Speaker 3: I had a cotton hoodie on, which you got to
7:09
Speaker 3: wear cotton in these. You learn that in our fire training.
7:12
Speaker 3: I had it tied around my face. So like literally
7:15
Speaker 3: all that was available was my face. I had goggles
7:17
Speaker 3: on and I had on a mask. It's crazy. I've
7:20
Speaker 3: covered fires here in LA for almost three decades. And
7:25
Speaker 3: so I've seen it all, I would say. I've seen
7:27
Speaker 3: homes burn. I've seen neighborhoods. I've never seen or experienced
7:32
Speaker 3: anything like this ever in my life.
7:34
Speaker 5: And what was unique? The size of the embers?
7:36
Speaker 3: They were the size of, like, a tennis ball. I've
7:40
Speaker 3: never seen embers that big. It was the winds. I mean,
7:42
Speaker 3: I was in hurricane force winds.
7:45
Speaker 4: I was watching you. I mean, like, to have embers
7:48
Speaker 4: fly horizontally across your face, to have embers flying around
7:50
Speaker 4: like it's rain or hail.
7:52
Speaker 5: Again, this is Jacob Soboroff from MSNOW, a.k.a. MSNBC.
7:56
Speaker 4: What Liam is describing to me is... why I think
8:01
Speaker 4: what particularly local television news did was definitionally a public
8:05
Speaker 4: service during the fires. There are so many failures of
8:10
Speaker 4: governmental entities and the people that we normally rely on
8:13
Speaker 4: to provide us information and be a backstop or save lives.
8:18
Speaker 4: And to watch local news, it was unbelievable. Before the
8:21
Speaker 4: choppers were in the air and you could see the
8:23
Speaker 4: overlay of the streets and what streets were on fire
8:25
Speaker 4: and what streets weren't, reporters were on every street from
8:28
Speaker 4: every outlet And it's not just televisions, print reporters, radio reporters.
8:32
Speaker 4: I was in awe. And on the national news and
8:36
Speaker 4: on cable news, we're only on the air until midnight
8:39
Speaker 4: East Coast time. It's very East Coast centric. So we
8:41
Speaker 4: pack it up and we go home. You guys were
8:43
Speaker 4: on the air hours straight without commercial interruption. When does
8:47
Speaker 4: that ever, I'm getting the chills even talking about it.
8:49
Speaker 4: When does that ever happen?
8:50
Speaker 3: At one point we're standing there live on the street
8:52
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden I hear this noise. Oh
8:55
Speaker 3: my gosh, that's a steel barrel. And right next to
8:59
Speaker 3: us is this massive steel drum. Being blown all the
9:02
Speaker 3: way down the street.
9:04
Speaker 5: Like a big oil canister or something? Big oil canister.
9:07
Speaker 3: Blew through the air, landed with a bang next to
9:09
Speaker 3: us and just kept blowing down the street.
9:12
Speaker 1: Wow.
9:13
Speaker 3: And you think, That could have taken out any firefighter.
9:16
Speaker 3: That could have taken out, I mean, don't tell me
9:19
Speaker 3: we're in a hurricane. I mean, these are hurricane force winds.
9:22
Speaker 3: They nearly blew me over. They blew me into the
9:24
Speaker 3: camera several times. And yeah, we just kept going nonstop.
9:36
Speaker 4: I got there, I think, on the corner of Amalfi
9:38
Speaker 4: and Sunset and the Palisades.
9:40
Speaker 5: That's Jacob again.
9:41
Speaker 4: I could see it burning from over Will Rogers State
9:43
Speaker 4: Historic Park. And I knew on the other side of
9:45
Speaker 4: the hill was literally my community, my neighborhood that I
9:49
Speaker 4: grew up in.
9:51
Speaker 5: What was it like to see your childhood home vanish?
9:56
Speaker 4: Not great.
9:58
Speaker 1: Not great.
10:01
Speaker 4: It was, I don't know, I've still fully wrapped my
10:05
Speaker 4: head around it.
10:06
Speaker 5: You did it on air. How did you think about it?
10:08
Speaker 4: I just said, let's go. I didn't even want to
10:10
Speaker 4: go see it first. I just said, let's go and
10:12
Speaker 4: see if it's still there. This is the first time
10:18
Speaker 4: that I've seen the house that I grew up in.
10:22
Speaker 4: I don't really know what to say. When I rolled up, honestly,
10:26
Speaker 4: the only thing I could think to do was FaceTime
10:28
Speaker 4: my mom. Mom, look at this.
10:32
Speaker 1: Zaffron Peril? Yeah.
10:35
Speaker 3: Yep.
10:36
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm so sad.
10:39
Speaker 4: It makes me sad, too. I moved out of that
10:43
Speaker 4: house probably when I was six or seven, but that's
10:45
Speaker 4: the house I was born into, and all my siblings
10:47
Speaker 4: other than one of us was born into that house.
10:51
Speaker 4: This was a really, really special place for the Sobrow family,
10:55
Speaker 4: and I'm very sorry to see it go. It wasn't
10:57
Speaker 4: just my house, it was the library. The Palisades Public Library.
11:04
Speaker 4: It's still on fire. This was like the pride of
11:06
Speaker 4: the community when this thing was built. It was the
11:08
Speaker 4: Palisades Park that my mom and dad raised money in
11:10
Speaker 4: 1986 to build a new playground, and there was still
11:12
Speaker 4: a plaque on the wall, the whole park burned down.
11:15
Speaker 4: All of the restaurants that I had gone to as
11:18
Speaker 4: a little kid This was the Ralph supermarket. It's awful.
11:23
Speaker 4: Look at all these terracotta tiles. These were a feature
11:27
Speaker 4: of a lot of the architecture here in Pacific Palisades.
11:31
Speaker 4: Virtually everything, other than sort of a new fancy shopping
11:35
Speaker 4: center that was protected by private firefighters, had burned down.
11:39
Speaker 4: I can close my eyes and walk around and tell
11:40
Speaker 4: you what this place used to look like. And it
11:43
Speaker 4: is no more. I still can't quite wrap my head
11:50
Speaker 4: around the fact that all of those memories are gone.
11:55
Speaker 4: Experiencing that, I think what everybody's experienced in some ways
12:00
Speaker 4: is we're all grieving in Los Angeles. This has been
12:05
Speaker 4: the worst year in a long time for people that
12:08
Speaker 4: live in this city, which is why I wanted to
12:11
Speaker 4: spend so much time actually talking to other people about
12:15
Speaker 4: what they had experienced too, because There are thousands of
12:17
Speaker 4: people who had similar situations and similar stories.
12:20
Speaker 5: What are you trying to figure out for yourself? I'm
12:22
Speaker 5: interested in the crossover here of like your work and
12:25
Speaker 5: this very personal thing that you're experiencing.
12:28
Speaker 4: Grief. What it is to experience grief, period, as a human.
12:35
Speaker 4: It's like I'm a human just like everybody else that's here.
12:39
Speaker 4: I just happen to be a reporter and I'm experiencing
12:41
Speaker 4: this together. And so I actually found shared experience with
12:44
Speaker 4: so many people. You feel sadness and you feel guilt
12:47
Speaker 4: and you feel regret that you haven't spent more time
12:51
Speaker 4: there or with your own family. It made me feel
12:54
Speaker 4: things about not being as connected as I want to
12:56
Speaker 4: be with one of five kids and my mom and
12:59
Speaker 4: dad and we don't spend a ton of time together.
13:02
Speaker 4: My brother and his wife were pregnant with their first
13:05
Speaker 4: kid and the house they were living in burned down.
13:07
Speaker 4: I think I was pretty depressed after the fire. And
13:10
Speaker 4: continuing to report on the fire afforded me a really
13:13
Speaker 4: amazing opportunity to connect with other people. in a really
13:15
Speaker 4: extraordinary way.
13:19
Speaker 1: You know, for me, I'm not born and raised in
13:21
Speaker 1: Southern California.
13:22
Speaker 3: I'm originally from Chicago.
13:24
Speaker 1: I'd never witnessed an environmental disaster at that magnitude.
13:29
Speaker 5: This is Michelle Zacharias. She reports for Calo News, which
13:32
Speaker 5: is a community-centered newsroom that covers stories affecting Latinos in L.A.
13:36
Speaker 5: and throughout the Southwest.
13:38
Speaker 1: And I remember when we drove up to the barricade
13:41
Speaker 1: where the general public was blocked off in the aftermath
13:44
Speaker 1: of the fire. There were so many people there that
13:47
Speaker 1: were just frantically trying to find out the status of
13:51
Speaker 1: their homes. And once they realized that I was a
13:54
Speaker 1: reporter and that I could get access to that, they were,
13:57
Speaker 1: I mean, just begging, like asking, please check my address.
14:02
Speaker 1: Just make sure my house is still standing. And. Like,
14:05
Speaker 1: I made some decisions for myself in that moment, and
14:08
Speaker 1: I decided I would go ahead and do that. And
14:11
Speaker 1: my colleagues and I got into a disagreement about it
14:15
Speaker 1: because I think in their thought process, that's not our job,
14:18
Speaker 1: that's not our duty as reporters. But I just kind
14:22
Speaker 1: of told them, like, at the end of the day,
14:23
Speaker 1: I'm a human being before I'm a journalist. And if
14:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't interfere with my story and if it brings
14:29
Speaker 1: these people the slightest semblance of peace, I'm going.
14:33
Speaker 4: To do it. I did it, too. I got no values.
14:35
Speaker 5: Well, no, I feel like I actually have more questions
14:39
Speaker 5: for your colleagues. What were they saying about why they
14:41
Speaker 5: wouldn't do that?
14:42
Speaker 1: I think there was concern there. Some of my colleagues
14:47
Speaker 1: do come up in very traditional journalism kind of upbringings
14:50
Speaker 1: in schools, and I didn't go to– undergraduate school for journalism.
14:55
Speaker 1: So my, I think my personal values and rules around
14:58
Speaker 1: how to report are a little bit different. The reality
15:01
Speaker 1: is there's no such thing as objectivity in journalism and
15:05
Speaker 1: in such a human centered story, there really wasn't any
15:08
Speaker 1: space to stand rigidly in objectivity either.
15:12
Speaker 2: Right.
15:12
Speaker 1: And so we went in and I, every time we
15:16
Speaker 1: drove up to a new address, I would just, there
15:18
Speaker 1: was so much tension in my body. because I didn't
15:21
Speaker 1: know what I was going to have to tell people
15:23
Speaker 1: over text. And thankfully, in my case, every single one
15:28
Speaker 1: of the homes we drove up to was still intact.
15:29
Speaker 6: Wow.
15:30
Speaker 1: Wow.
15:30
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
15:32
Speaker 4: Nobody was there. Everybody left. It was us, other journalists, firefighters,
15:37
Speaker 4: first responders, but no residents. I mean, some people hung out,
15:42
Speaker 4: but then they had to go. And that's when you become,
15:46
Speaker 4: whether you like it or not, the eyes and the
15:48
Speaker 4: ears on the ground for everybody else. When I was
15:51
Speaker 4: able to get inside the Palisades and start reporting live
15:54
Speaker 4: on MSNBC, my phone was blown up. All my childhood
15:59
Speaker 4: friends and people who I hadn't heard from in years,
16:03
Speaker 4: carpool mates from driving.
16:04
Speaker 3: To high school. I, too, had the same thing. I
16:07
Speaker 3: had so many people, so many people that wanted me
16:09
Speaker 3: to check on their homes. I literally had a list,
16:12
Speaker 3: and I would just kind of drive around to find it.
16:13
Speaker 3: But I had the unfortunate or fortunate, however you want
16:16
Speaker 3: to look at it, of– letting a viewer know live
16:19
Speaker 3: on television what happened. It was crazy.
16:23
Speaker 5: How did that go down?
16:24
Speaker 3: 10 o'clock at night, and I had gotten into Dove
16:26
Speaker 3: Creek Townhomes, which is a large townhome complex just south
16:30
Speaker 3: of Eaton Canyon. And we were on live, just going nonstop,
16:34
Speaker 3: wall-to-wall coverage, as we call it, right? So I had
16:37
Speaker 3: heard someone had called in, and they said, hold on,
16:39
Speaker 3: we have a woman on the phone named Lisa, and
16:41
Speaker 3: she lives in the Dove Creek townhome complex. And I
16:45
Speaker 3: was listening to her and she kept saying, well, you know,
16:46
Speaker 3: I see your reporter, but I can't tell if my
16:49
Speaker 3: home is still standing. She needed an answer. And so
16:52
Speaker 3: while she was talking, I realized, okay, I gotta, I
16:56
Speaker 3: have to find a way to get around. So I
16:59
Speaker 3: managed to kind of sprint quick in. I looked, I
17:02
Speaker 3: came back and interrupted on the air. I just wanted
17:06
Speaker 3: to update Elisa. I apologize and I hate to say this,
17:09
Speaker 3: but we have been able to walk down and confirm
17:11
Speaker 3: everything on the street all the way down around the
17:14
Speaker 3: bend where her home is. I mean, it was a
17:18
Speaker 3: raging inferno on both sides of the street. Everything was gone.
17:21
Speaker 5: It strikes me to hear you guys talk like it's
17:23
Speaker 5: it's almost like the most pure expression of reporting that
17:26
Speaker 5: I can imagine. It's like. Talk about news you can use,
17:30
Speaker 5: like information, like is my house burned down? You're there.
17:33
Speaker 5: I can't go. Here's my house number. And you go
17:36
Speaker 5: look and tell them on the air. It's like the purest–
17:39
Speaker 5: that's why I'm– like I am hung up on your
17:41
Speaker 5: colleagues like not wanting to go tell people who are
17:44
Speaker 5: asking if their houses are there or not. It's like
17:47
Speaker 5: what's the unethical part of that? Isn't that exactly what
17:49
Speaker 5: we're supposed to be doing is providing information that people
17:52
Speaker 5: can't get?
17:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and– whether or not it was broadcasted, I felt
17:56
Speaker 1: it was really important to show these people that I
17:58
Speaker 1: wasn't just some journalist coming in to their community to
18:01
Speaker 1: extract a story to get my headline. I was going
18:05
Speaker 1: to be there to be a public servant as journalists
18:09
Speaker 1: were intended to be. And so the people that I
18:12
Speaker 1: met at the barricades, there was one person that specifically said, hey,
18:16
Speaker 1: my uncle stayed back. Can you make sure that he's alive?
18:20
Speaker 1: And I remember we pulled up to the house It
18:23
Speaker 1: was a beautiful home. And in front of the house
18:25
Speaker 1: is this little group of Latino men just standing out
18:28
Speaker 1: in front of the home.
18:29
Speaker 5: At this point, it.
18:30
Speaker 1: Was controlled, right? The fires had mostly been put out.
18:34
Speaker 1: And I was like, hey, I'm looking for this individual.
18:37
Speaker 1: And they all pointed to one guy. And he was
18:39
Speaker 1: kind of like this older or middle-aged Latino man. And
18:44
Speaker 1: I said, you know, your family member is looking for you.
18:46
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm good. I just stayed back with
18:47
Speaker 1: the home. And I was like, would you mind sharing
18:49
Speaker 1: with me a little bit about why you stayed back?
18:52
Speaker 1: And he actually directed me to his son who was
18:53
Speaker 1: standing next to him. maybe in his late teens or
18:56
Speaker 1: early 20s. And he basically said, this house that you're
19:01
Speaker 1: standing in front of is completely built and designed by
19:04
Speaker 1: my father.
19:05
Speaker 4: This is his dream.
19:06
Speaker 1: He put his everything into creating this home so that
19:10
Speaker 1: he could pass this down to his children. This is
19:13
Speaker 1: a Mexican immigrant from Jalisco. This is his version of
19:17
Speaker 1: the American dream. This is why he came here and
19:20
Speaker 1: this is the legacy that he's created and he built
19:22
Speaker 1: and he plans on leaving to his children.
19:25
Speaker 4: He stayed back.
19:26
Speaker 1: He kept his house hosed down the entire time. And
19:30
Speaker 1: there were multiple occasions when his neighbor's house directly to
19:33
Speaker 1: the left and the right of him caught fire, and
19:35
Speaker 1: he went and hosed them down.
19:36
Speaker 5: Just like a garden hose?
19:38
Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
19:40
Speaker 1: And so the school behind him, the elementary school, completely
19:42
Speaker 1: flattened by the fire.
19:44
Speaker 3: Right across the street, the house.
19:45
Speaker 1: Is completely flattened, his home and his two neighbors intact.
19:50
Speaker 4: Wow.
19:50
Speaker 1: There was so much history there. There was so many
19:53
Speaker 1: layers there as to why someone would risk so much
19:56
Speaker 1: to save their home.
19:58
Speaker 3: And so many, especially in the Eaton fire, so many
20:00
Speaker 3: were underinsured. The only thing they had, their only generational
20:05
Speaker 3: wealth was that house.
20:07
Speaker 1: And I have no doubt in my mind that this
20:09
Speaker 1: man saved not only his home, but his neighbor's home
20:12
Speaker 1: as well.
20:19
Speaker 5: After a quick break, one of our reporters gets a
20:22
Speaker 5: phone call from someone he did not expect to hear from,
20:24
Speaker 5: who was looking for help. The fires in Los Angeles
20:36
Speaker 5: burned for nearly a month. before they were fully contained.
20:40
Speaker 5: And then the attention turned to cleaning up, rebuilding. For
20:45
Speaker 5: nearly 20 years in California, the practice with fires has
20:48
Speaker 5: been that once the ash and debris are removed, the U.S.
20:51
Speaker 5: Army Corps of Engineers tests the soils at homes and
20:54
Speaker 5: schools for toxic contamination. If the results turn up dangerous
20:59
Speaker 5: chemicals or other material, the federal government pays to clean
21:02
Speaker 5: up the toxic soil to make sure those properties, where
21:05
Speaker 5: there are often kids, are safe to return to. This
21:09
Speaker 5: is what our guest Tony Briscoe, an environmental reporter for
21:12
Speaker 5: the LA Times, started investigating after thousands of homes burned down.
21:18
Speaker 6: Old homes really carry, unfortunately, toxic materials, and they're typically
21:23
Speaker 6: safe to live with. But, you know, when it all
21:25
Speaker 6: turns to ash, you're talking about leaded paint. Lead is
21:30
Speaker 6: a brain-damaging chemical. You have lumber, which is typically coated
21:33
Speaker 6: with arsenic, and that's a cancer-causing chemical. Then when that
21:37
Speaker 6: burns down... It's all suffused within the soil. And in
21:42
Speaker 6: all fires since 2007 in California, whether it was managed
21:46
Speaker 6: by the state or the federal government, they've done soil
21:48
Speaker 6: testing to ensure that these properties are cleaned up in
21:51
Speaker 6: a very safe way, removing ash, debris, and a layer
21:55
Speaker 6: of contaminated soil. In this case, they decided that that
21:58
Speaker 6: was not necessary and they didn't announce it publicly.
22:01
Speaker 5: And this is the Army Corps of Engineers saying this? Yes,
22:03
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
22:03
Speaker 6: The Army Corps of Engineers, they didn't volunteer this information.
22:07
Speaker 6: We had a lot of sources that were telling us,
22:09
Speaker 6: you know, you really need to look to what extent
22:11
Speaker 6: they are cleaning these properties up. You really need to
22:14
Speaker 6: ask about soil testing. It actually took me going to
22:19
Speaker 6: a news conference in February asking it in person to
22:23
Speaker 6: get them on the record. Will the Army Corps be
22:26
Speaker 6: returning to these sites to remove more soil if soil
22:29
Speaker 6: testing is conducted?
22:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you for the question. For this incident, we're
22:34
Speaker 5: not conducting soil sampling. What was the reaction in the
22:40
Speaker 5: press conference room when you asked this?
22:44
Speaker 4: Stunned.
22:45
Speaker 6: And looking at the faces of a lot of the L.A.
22:48
Speaker 6: County representatives who were standing next to them, they looked gobsmacked, too,
22:52
Speaker 6: like a lot of them did not know at that time.
22:55
Speaker 4: It's so unbelievable. Sorry, go ahead.
22:57
Speaker 1: Can I ask, though, what was the justification?
23:00
Speaker 4: They said, in their opinion, that it was unnecessary. I
23:03
Speaker 4: don't think anybody thought that we shouldn't be testing for
23:05
Speaker 4: toxic materials within the soil. It was so shocking that
23:09
Speaker 4: it took your question on a press conference for them
23:11
Speaker 4: to ever acknowledge it on the record for the first time.
23:15
Speaker 6: And it just raised so many questions about how could
23:17
Speaker 6: this happen? How could we get to a place where
23:20
Speaker 6: such a critical step was skipped? We're talking about California here.
23:24
Speaker 6: Everybody's outside in their yard. I mean, if you have
23:27
Speaker 6: children playing, that's something that they could be exposed to.
23:29
Speaker 6: If you're a gardener, you could possibly be exposed to
23:32
Speaker 6: these things that can cause lifelong harm.
23:35
Speaker 5: And what's the actual reason? Like, they're saying that they
23:38
Speaker 5: don't need to do it. It's OK. But like, what's
23:40
Speaker 5: actually going on?
23:41
Speaker 6: Do you know? It really boiled down to time and money.
23:44
Speaker 6: They said that that was going to take way too
23:46
Speaker 6: much time to get people back there and that it
23:49
Speaker 6: was going to cost too much money, I guess, more
23:52
Speaker 6: money than the federal government was willing to spend. That's
23:54
Speaker 6: what the statement that we got from FEMA, who was
23:57
Speaker 6: in charge of overseeing disaster response.
24:00
Speaker 5: But then you guys took it upon yourselves at the
24:03
Speaker 5: LA Times to go do the testing?
24:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:04
Speaker 6: So shortly after the federal government, FEMA, and the Army
24:07
Speaker 6: Corps of Engineers announced that they were not going to
24:10
Speaker 6: test us with our meager budget at the LA Times,
24:13
Speaker 6: pitched this idea of doing a very limited soil sampling
24:16
Speaker 6: project ourselves.
24:18
Speaker 4: Literally, we bought PPE.
24:20
Speaker 6: We got different coverall Tyvek kind of like suits, We
24:23
Speaker 6: got booties because we were going to a slate of
24:26
Speaker 6: homes that had already been cleared and then homes that
24:28
Speaker 6: had survived the fire but had a lot of ash
24:31
Speaker 6: and debris rained down on their property. And in Altadena, 20%
24:36
Speaker 6: of the properties that we had tested actually came back
24:39
Speaker 6: as having contaminants above the state limit, which is about
24:43
Speaker 6: what we would expect. I mean, that's what past testing
24:45
Speaker 6: has shown. that you're going to have some residual contamination.
24:49
Speaker 6: And for those that exceeded that, they should come back
24:52
Speaker 6: and clear away more soil so that people aren't exposed
24:54
Speaker 6: to this. The issue is we didn't do this comprehensively.
24:57
Speaker 6: So there's going to be so many more properties that
25:00
Speaker 6: are out there. And if you just kind of extrapolate
25:02
Speaker 6: that out, you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of
25:04
Speaker 6: homes that could be contaminated and people are returning and
25:07
Speaker 6: not knowing it.
25:08
Speaker 3: You guys have done some testing and others have done
25:10
Speaker 3: the testing in the houses that have been officially remediated.
25:13
Speaker 5: That's Leanne there, the LATV reporter.
25:15
Speaker 3: Now the concerning is that all these houses that have
25:17
Speaker 3: been remediated, they've come up positive, still having these high
25:20
Speaker 3: levels of contaminants.
25:22
Speaker 6: And there's no recourse for the folks who live there,
25:24
Speaker 6: which is really, really sad. It's like, you know, you
25:27
Speaker 6: find this contamination there and then people are like, okay, well,
25:29
Speaker 6: what now? I remember we talked with a woman who's
25:33
Speaker 6: not only a great-grandmother, and she used to have Easter
25:36
Speaker 6: each year at her home. And after us giving her
25:40
Speaker 6: her soil results and she had elevated levels of lead there,
25:44
Speaker 6: decided not to have her family over for fear of
25:49
Speaker 6: what it could do to her great-grandchildren. This was a
25:52
Speaker 6: really long tradition for her family. Just really heartbreaking.
25:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.
25:57
Speaker 5: That's Michelle with Calo News.
25:59
Speaker 1: Altadena has this history of being a place of Black
26:03
Speaker 1: home ownership. And so obviously we know that this is
26:05
Speaker 1: going to become also an issue that overlaps with race.
26:10
Speaker 1: When you said that they didn't, want to do the
26:13
Speaker 1: additional soil testing. Like, this feels so on track with historically, like,
26:19
Speaker 1: what the federal government is willing to do for marginalized
26:22
Speaker 1: communities or black and brown communities. You know, as a
26:26
Speaker 1: local news reporter, one of the things that I really
26:29
Speaker 1: wanted to do was look at the intersections of those
26:31
Speaker 1: communities that were most directly impacted. And it was clear,
26:35
Speaker 1: even in the immediate aftermath, that The folks who lost
26:39
Speaker 1: the most, whether it was like loss of homes or
26:41
Speaker 1: loss of life, were disabled, elderly, chronically ill. So I
26:47
Speaker 1: really think that like if we take nothing else away
26:50
Speaker 1: from our reporting, it's like we need better evacuation procedures
26:54
Speaker 1: and protocols in place for vulnerable populations.
26:58
Speaker 5: What are the best practices? Like what are you supposed
27:00
Speaker 5: to have in place? What's the dream scenario?
27:03
Speaker 4: I mean....
27:05
Speaker 3: Dream scenario, you get the alert on your phone. I mean,
27:07
Speaker 3: everybody has their cell phone. That's the number one way
27:10
Speaker 3: that everybody gets these alerts now. They didn't get an alert.
27:13
Speaker 3: West Altadena, largely minority, didn't get a single alert.
27:17
Speaker 1: Why?
27:17
Speaker 5: Do we know why?
27:19
Speaker 3: Lots of excuses, reasons, they say. You know, the system...
27:22
Speaker 3: didn't work properly. The map it was using to send
27:25
Speaker 3: out the alert, they say, didn't include this area because
27:27
Speaker 3: this wasn't a traditional fire zone. This isn't where the
27:30
Speaker 3: fire normally goes. It doesn't come this far south.
27:32
Speaker 5: And who's responsible for this? Who's they?
27:34
Speaker 1: L.A.
27:34
Speaker 3: County is. Yeah, yeah.
27:37
Speaker 1: L.A.
27:37
Speaker 3: County Office of Emergency Management. I think there's a whole
27:40
Speaker 3: bunch of things that failed and nobody ever took into
27:43
Speaker 3: account that We should look at what we should do
27:46
Speaker 3: if all of this fails. This was a fire of
27:48
Speaker 3: historic proportions. They didn't have enough deputies to go around
27:51
Speaker 3: going door to door to warn everybody. There was no
27:53
Speaker 3: way to do that. There was no power. So nobody
27:55
Speaker 3: was watching TV up in there because they had no electricity.
27:57
Speaker 3: There was no phone alert.
27:59
Speaker 1: They ran out of water at some point.
28:01
Speaker 5: Yeah.
28:01
Speaker 4: What's amazing is having grown up in L.A., as kids,
28:06
Speaker 4: they train you in school what to do when the
28:07
Speaker 4: big one strikes, the earthquake.
28:09
Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
28:11
Speaker 4: I think every child in Los Angeles that grew up
28:13
Speaker 4: here knows what a drill is to get under the
28:16
Speaker 4: desk at school, what to do if the entire city
28:19
Speaker 4: is on the verge of collapse. But nobody is ever
28:22
Speaker 4: trained what to do if the entire city is on
28:24
Speaker 4: the verge of burning down.
28:27
Speaker 3: The coverage you guys were doing when they're talking about
28:28
Speaker 3: soil testing, right? Everybody thinks about the fire zone. But
28:31
Speaker 3: you guys had the one that showed how far the
28:33
Speaker 3: ash went. I didn't think about the cloud of ash
28:37
Speaker 3: as to where it went because the wind was blowing
28:39
Speaker 3: so strongly. And so the testing that you guys did
28:41
Speaker 3: and no one else was doing showed that there was
28:43
Speaker 3: downwind in Pasadena had this huge pocket of lead and
28:47
Speaker 3: asbestos and arsenic, all this stuff.
28:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:50
Speaker 6: And a totally different block of folks who were outside
28:53
Speaker 6: of the fire zone were most affected by, you know,
28:55
Speaker 6: the deposition of all of this toxic stuff. But a
28:58
Speaker 6: lot of folks don't even realize that it's a lot
29:00
Speaker 6: of times it's the smoke that has a higher death
29:03
Speaker 6: toll than actually the fires themselves. It's All of these
29:07
Speaker 6: small particles, toxic particles that you're breathing in that can
29:09
Speaker 6: cause heart attack, stroke, all of these after implications.
29:13
Speaker 1: One of the things that I looked into that like
29:16
Speaker 1: blew me away was obviously the official death toll for
29:19
Speaker 1: the fires was essentially like 31 or something like that.
29:22
Speaker 1: And then I saw a follow-up report that was like, actually,
29:25
Speaker 1: the reality is that indirectly it was closer to like
29:27
Speaker 1: 400 plus people because airborne toxins and smoke and the
29:32
Speaker 1: ways in which it can directly impact our.
29:35
Speaker 5: Health And that's what accounted for the difference was the smoke.
29:37
Speaker 3: So many heart attacks and stuff. Yeah.
29:39
Speaker 4: I talked to firefighters who during the fire said, I'm
29:44
Speaker 4: probably going to get cancer from being in this fire
29:46
Speaker 4: and fighting it. Knowing what's burning right now, not just
29:49
Speaker 4: the old materials inside the houses, but the electric car batteries,
29:51
Speaker 4: thousand electric car batteries or more, something like that burning
29:54
Speaker 4: as those firefighters were out there. They knew we were
29:57
Speaker 4: going to be coughing up black shit, you know, for days,
30:00
Speaker 4: yet they did it anyways. And they knew that it
30:02
Speaker 4: was all about the house that was in front of
30:04
Speaker 4: them or the family that had evacuated. You could tell
30:07
Speaker 4: by the smell it was clearly toxic and it was
30:10
Speaker 4: going to be living literally within probably all of us
30:13
Speaker 4: who were in the fires forever.
30:16
Speaker 1: We know from history from, you know, even looking at
30:19
Speaker 1: the way that firefighters had long-term respiratory issues during 9-11
30:21
Speaker 1: and Ground Zero, like, This is going to be a
30:25
Speaker 1: long-term issue, and the best we can do is provide
30:30
Speaker 1: coverage of that, evidence of that, so that down the line,
30:33
Speaker 1: when that does get brought up, when those people are
30:36
Speaker 1: seeking out restitution, there is a paper trail.
30:38
Speaker 6: I still don't think that we fully realize the magnitude
30:43
Speaker 6: of the death toll.
30:53
Speaker 4: Having not understood what I've experienced firsthand as someone who
30:56
Speaker 4: watched my childhood burn up in front of my eyeballs,
31:00
Speaker 4: I went to Washington and I sat down with a
31:02
Speaker 4: senior emergency manager from HHS who I had known as
31:05
Speaker 4: a source from some other reporting on family separation. His
31:07
Speaker 4: name was Jonathan White. He was a captain in Health
31:10
Speaker 4: and Human Services. He's a senior career emergency management official.
31:15
Speaker 4: And so he said to me during the fire, we
31:17
Speaker 4: should talk about this. When I came to Washington, we met.
31:19
Speaker 4: And so we sat down for dinner at a Tex-Mex
31:21
Speaker 4: restaurant in Washington, D.C. and over queso and fajitas. He
31:26
Speaker 4: said to me, what you experienced was the fire of
31:28
Speaker 4: the future. And I said, well, why was it the
31:30
Speaker 4: fire of the future? And what he said is everybody's
31:31
Speaker 4: so desperate to figure out the proximate cause of this,
31:34
Speaker 4: whether or not it was we didn't have water or
31:36
Speaker 4: this electrical transformer exploded and created the fire or this
31:41
Speaker 4: politician's to blame. But he said to me, what you
31:44
Speaker 4: experienced was not some unique event. Give me your notepad
31:47
Speaker 4: because I was taking notes. And he drew an X
31:50
Speaker 4: on the page, and he said, obviously climate change on
31:56
Speaker 4: one arm of the X. Our infrastructure is falling apart.
32:00
Speaker 4: Change isn't the way we live, so polluting our environment.
32:04
Speaker 4: And then the final one was misinformation and disinformation. Literally
32:07
Speaker 4: during this fire, as homes were still burning, as people
32:10
Speaker 4: were evacuated, as people were dying still. The president-elect of
32:14
Speaker 4: the United States was just saying patently untrue things about
32:18
Speaker 4: what was happening in Southern California.
32:20
Speaker 5: Trump is like about to take office during this time.
32:22
Speaker 4: He's about to take office.
32:23
Speaker 5: And he's just talking about kind of different water routes
32:26
Speaker 5: and usages in California and how those choices by the
32:30
Speaker 5: governor basically like have made it so the fires aren't
32:33
Speaker 5: being put out.
32:33
Speaker 4: That there was water that could quote-unquote flow down from
32:37
Speaker 4: the Pacific Northwest that he was saying could stop the
32:39
Speaker 4: fire or prevent the fire. Or that in some way,
32:44
Speaker 4: you know, releasing literally billions of gallons of water out
32:47
Speaker 4: into farm fields in the Central Valley would protect the
32:50
Speaker 4: residents of Southern California. It was all bullshit.
32:54
Speaker 5: Jacob told us this pretty surprising story. As the fires
32:57
Speaker 5: were burning and Trump, along with Elon Musk, were spreading
33:01
Speaker 5: lies about it online, Jacob was on the ground trying
33:04
Speaker 5: to get out trustworthy information. And he got a call
33:06
Speaker 5: from Trump's inner circle that he did not anticipate.
33:10
Speaker 4: Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, called me.
33:14
Speaker 5: Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top advisors, the architect of
33:17
Speaker 5: his anti-immigration agenda. He's from Southern California. His wife, Katie,
33:21
Speaker 5: was an advisor to Elon Musk when Musk was part
33:23
Speaker 5: of the administration.
33:25
Speaker 4: And to be honest, I didn't know what she was
33:26
Speaker 4: calling about.
33:27
Speaker 5: So wait, you just saw like Katie Miller pop up
33:29
Speaker 5: on your phone?
33:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.
33:29
Speaker 5: Where were you exactly when this happened?
33:31
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. It said Katie Waldman, which was her old
33:34
Speaker 4: name before she married Stephen Miller. I met her when
33:37
Speaker 4: I was covering the family separation crisis in the first
33:39
Speaker 4: Trump term. And we really hadn't talked much since then
33:43
Speaker 4: because we did have an adversarial journalist source relationship after
33:46
Speaker 4: that because I don't think she was a fan of
33:48
Speaker 4: the reporting that I was doing. And I told her
33:52
Speaker 4: I had to call her back and she texted me
33:55
Speaker 4: and said, you're the only person I know that's there.
33:58
Speaker 4: Stephen's parents live there. Can you go check on the house?
34:01
Speaker 4: And just like I did for my carpool mate and
34:04
Speaker 4: just like I did for my little brother, I drove
34:07
Speaker 4: up to Stephen Miller's parents' house and it had burned down.
34:12
Speaker 4: I told her and I felt as awful for her
34:14
Speaker 4: and them as I did for anybody else. At the
34:17
Speaker 4: same time that Katie Miller was calling me to check
34:20
Speaker 4: on Stephen Miller's parents' house, her boss, Elon Musk, was
34:23
Speaker 4: amplifying lies being told by the president-elect of the United States.
34:27
Speaker 4: So when we talk about the fire of the future,
34:30
Speaker 4: the natural disaster of the future, I think that there
34:32
Speaker 4: is no way to disconnect the fact that with the
34:34
Speaker 4: polarized politics that we have, there's an incredible amount of
34:38
Speaker 4: misinformation and disinformation seeping into not only recovery, but the
34:43
Speaker 4: response to the fires in real time.
34:44
Speaker 5: Those lies or any others, did you see them kind
34:48
Speaker 5: of reverberate in real time or affect how things operated
34:52
Speaker 5: on the ground?
34:53
Speaker 4: I mean, I spent hours with Gavin Newsom at his
34:55
Speaker 4: office in Sacramento. This liberal Democratic governor, former mayor of
34:59
Speaker 4: San Francisco here in California was hearing from his own
35:03
Speaker 4: friends that were basically blaming him for the fires because
35:06
Speaker 4: of what Donald Trump was saying. You know, they were
35:08
Speaker 4: buying into the messaging.
35:09
Speaker 3: They want an answer. I feel like everybody just wants
35:12
Speaker 3: one person. There's one bad guy, right? Every story has
35:15
Speaker 3: the nemesis, the bad guy.
35:17
Speaker 5: They want a villain.
35:18
Speaker 3: They want one thing, and these aren't. These are multi-layered
35:21
Speaker 3: as to what's causing this and all lending to this issue.
35:24
Speaker 4: Even ourselves, for living in these places.
35:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just going to say.
35:27
Speaker 4: And choosing to have the trade-off of living in the most...
35:33
Speaker 4: Beautiful city and the most beautiful county, I think, in
35:36
Speaker 4: the United States. One of the most diverse cities in America,
35:38
Speaker 4: the most populous county in America. You have the snow
35:42
Speaker 4: and the beach within a couple hours drive of each other.
35:45
Speaker 4: But that comes at a cost. And as we continue
35:49
Speaker 4: to develop and to build and as inequality gets worse
35:53
Speaker 4: and worse here, it's worse in this state than anywhere else.
35:56
Speaker 4: We've got more homeless people that live in Los Angeles County,
35:58
Speaker 4: unhoused on the streets than anywhere else in the United
36:00
Speaker 4: States of America. All of these things contribute. Capitalism contributes.
36:06
Speaker 4: Who we are and where we live and how we
36:08
Speaker 4: live our lives contribute. And until we understand that, we'll
36:13
Speaker 4: never understand why we're going to continue to experience something
36:15
Speaker 4: like this.
36:29
Speaker 5: That was Tony Briscoe, Michelle Zacharias, Leanne Suter, and Jacob Soboroff.
36:33
Speaker 5: Jacob's book, Firestorm, is available now. Michelle and Leanne are
36:37
Speaker 5: continuing their coverage of the effects of the fires locally.
36:40
Speaker 5: Leanne recently followed up with that woman who called into
36:43
Speaker 5: ABC7 asking Leanne to check on her house live on
36:46
Speaker 5: air and found out some pretty moving details about the
36:49
Speaker 5: woman's story, which Leanne's doing a report on. And Tony
36:53
Speaker 5: just had a story in the LA Times where he
36:55
Speaker 5: uncovered a federal report that alleged contractors and disaster workers
36:59
Speaker 5: may have illegally dumped toxic ash during the cleanup. I
37:06
Speaker 5: really want to thank Randy Clement and April Langford for
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Speaker 5: letting us use Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine
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Speaker 5: and Spirits, and to the rest of the staff there, too,
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Speaker 5: who helped us out, gave us drinks. They were wonderful hosts,
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Speaker 5: and it was just really inspiring to meet them and
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Speaker 5: be there. Please rate and review our show wherever you listen.
37:26
Speaker 5: And just as important, share Question Everything with a friend.
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Speaker 5: Every little recommendation helps. I really appreciate it. Today's show
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Speaker 5: was produced by Sophie Kazis and Brendan Baker, edited by
37:36
Speaker 5: Kevin Sullivan, and live engineered by Phil Richards, the lead
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Speaker 5: technical director at KCRW. Robin Simeon and myself are the
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Speaker 5: executive producers of Question Everything. Our team also includes producer
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Speaker 5: Zach St. Louis, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney,
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Speaker 5: and associate producer Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact-checked by
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Speaker 5: Annika Robbins, mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our
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Speaker 5: music is by Matt McGinley. Our partners at KCRW include
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Speaker 5: Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. And
38:05
Speaker 5: special thanks to Sarah Sweeney and Hope Rush, also at KCRW,
38:08
Speaker 5: for their help on this episode, and Cecile Rosette, whose
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Speaker 5: idea it was. It's good to be back after the break.
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Speaker 5: We'll see you next week.