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Soccoro Diaz is a single mom with seven kids. Just a few years ago her family was homeless and staying at a hotel. Now they live in a small, two-story, low-income apartment at the Jordan Downs Housing Projects in Watts in South Central LA. Three of her children suffer from acute asthma. Why are her kids — and a lot of other kids across …

Grammy’s deliver for CBS
The Music industry celebrated the Grammy’s Sunday making the music industry’s big awards night a very big win for CBS.  According to the L.A. Times 28.4 million people watched the ceremony which was less about awards — though there were some of those– and more about performances. Taylor Swift, LL Cool Jay, Carrie Underwood, and Justin Timberlake all got stage time. Big awards went …

Al Walser is a DJ who lives in Encino and may or may not be an heir to the Rothschild banking dynasty and the grandson of Congolese music superstar Franco Luambo. He’s also up for the best dance recording Grammy at this Sunday’s awards. Before the nomination, nobody in the electronic dance music world had heard of Walser. So how did this previously unknown, …

The idea began, as ideas so often do, by accident. The people on the production team of the movie “The Soloist” (based on the true story of a homeless man) were taken by the people they met on location on Skid Row. Many were employed on the film, as extras or as crew support, and the ensuing relationships have led to a new documentary …

I’ve always had an abiding interest in the history and culture of the Cold War, that nearly fifty-year span of the 20th Century when the United States and Soviet Union vied for global power and threatened each other, and the world ,with nuclear obliteration. It’s also chilling to learn how each country busily made plans to try to survive an atomic holocaust by creating civil …

This video is pretty cool! It was sent to us by Scott Herbert, son of KCRW engineer, Steve Herbert. He got to watch the Shuttle land at LAX from his nearby office building. News footage aside, this is the best phone-captured video we’ve seen so far!
But as it turns out, Scott has a brother named Samuel who shot this incredible video of the …

If you’re the nervous type, then you probably don’t want to hear about the innumerable things that could go wrong when NASA’s $2.5 billion Curiosity rover descends from the outer Martian atmosphere to the surface of our red neighbor in the late night hours of August 5th. NASA itself has dubbed the landing “Seven Minutes of Terror.” From a heat shield that will have …

While you were busy getting relationship advice from Fox’s new lifestyle magazine, Romney and Obama were talking immigration and Todd Palin was getting ready for a new reality show. Here are some political stories you may have overlooked this week.

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The web series “Sunset Junction” chronicles the lives of three of friends in L.A.’s hipster haven, Silver Lake. The catch: Characters Rosa, Phoebe and John aren’t skinny jean-clad, bicycle riding musicians or aspiring micro-brewers. They’re actual lake creatures — a duck, a snail and a frog, respectively — brought to life by stop-motion claymation in two-minute mini-episodes reminiscent of those “Penny” cartoons from “Pee …

Nearly $60 million has been spent to fund campaigns for and against Proposition 29, which aims to increase taxes on cigarettes by $1 per pack. The new tax revenue – expected to total about $735 million – would be placed in a fund to finance research of tobacco-related diseases and prevention programs. And the new fund would be administered by a nine-member committee.
While only …

The Los Angeles Ballet wraps up its latest show, “NextWave LA,” with three performances at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica this weekend. NextWave includes new pieces by four Southern California choreographers — Kitty McNamee, Sonya Tayeh, Stacey Tookey and Josie Walsh — and the company has posted nifty videos of each choreographer discussing her work. Here’s Tookey:

You can see all the videos on …

Update: LA metro has approved plans to dig a tunnel under Beverly Hills High School to accommodate an extension of the Purple Line subway Westward to Century City and Westwood. Beverly Hills High parents and officials had opposed the plan, saying it posed a danger for students. (You can see dueling videos on the extension below).
Transportation authorities want to extend L.A.’s growing subway system …

Los Angeles traffic authorities have unveiled a new pricing plan for street parking in nearly all of downtown L.A., one that uses “smart” street meters that change the cost of parking depending on demand. When demand is high, say in the middle of the day, you’ll pay more to feed the meter. When demand is lower, like on the weekends,  prices will drop. The …

While you were lining up to try to get your hands on some Facebook stock, Francois Hollande’s plane was struck by lightning. That and other stories you may have missed this week.

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Before our trusty Hunter Drohojowska-Philp regaled us yesterday with details about John Baldessari’s latest show for her weekly segment, we confessed that we’d not been clued in to this great artist until moving to LA– and even then, we copped to being fuzzy on the details of his work. KCRW producer, Avishay Artsy knew this salient fact: “He’s the one who puts dots over people’s …

Which song will you turn to in remembrance of the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, who died today at 63? A quick guide to a few of her hits:
If you know one Donna Summer song, it’s probably “Last Dance.” The song debuted in the 1978 disco movie “Thank God It’s Friday,” which has since faded into cinematic obscurity. But “Last Dance” lives on as …

When the Rodney King Riot broke out in 1992, Kai Ma was a teenager in LA with extended family in Koreatown. She was politicized by her community’s devastation  into becoming a writer and, more recently, a filmmaker. You can see a short movie that she wrote and starred in here (click on Love Lost on the 405). This film, about LA and traffic congestion as …

We recently posed that question on Facebook, as we prepared this week’s special coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King riots. Listeners responded with a slew of great suggestions that helped shape yesterday’s show about the riots and pop culture, as well as a few curve balls. Here’s what you said:
Lawrence Kasdan’s 1991 drama “Grand Canyon,” featuring Kevin Kline as an immigration …

KCRW listener and bassist Michael Blair shares his memory of the LA Riots on our Facebook page.

I was playing with Lou Reed when everything went weird. During sound check we could feel something happening around town. And we saw the news as well. Really frightening. And so sad. We were on the “Arsenio Hall” TV show the next day. Lou and Arsenio decided we …

The intersection of Florence and Normandie is considered a flashpoint of the 1992 LA Riots. People gathered at this corner to protest the acquittal of police officers who had beaten Rodney King. It was also on this corner that truck-driver Reginald Denny was dragged out of his cab and beaten, while Americans watched live on TV.
We ask, has the corner changed since 1992?

(Produced by …