California City
פרטי ערוץ
California City
Deep in the Mojave Desert, there is a little town with a big name and a bizarre history: California City. For decades, real estate developers have sold a dream here: if you buy land now, you’ll be rich one day. Thousands of people bought this dream. Many were young couples and hard-working imm...
פרקים אחרונים
26 פרקים
Imperfect Paradise: Meet the filmmakers who love AI (Redux)
This episode originally aired on March 19, 2025.
It’s hard to find people in Hollywood who are willing to speak publicly about their enthusiasm...
Imperfect Paradise: How AI became a Hollywood villain – especially for animators (Redux)
This episode originally aired on March 12, 2025.
Hollywood taught us to be afraid of a super powerful artificial intelligence that will one day...
Imperfect Paradise: Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission for a new home and space exploration
Los Angeles is an integral part of space shuttle Endeavour’s journey. The California Science Center is building a new, larger home for the shuttle, wh...
Imperfect Paradise: Residents left behind at elder care facilities in LA raise serious questions about evacuation preparedness
In the early morning hours of January 8, the Eaton Fire raced closer to the MonteCedro retirement community in Altadena, California. Nearly 200 of the...
Imperfect Paradise: Altadena childcare providers' struggle to rebuild raises questions about government disaster response
At least 280 childcare spaces were affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires in January. LAist reporter Libby Rainey and early childhood senior report...
Imperfect Paradise: Gender-affirming care for transgender youth is at risk in LA and nationwide
Nearly 3,000 patients have been forced to find gender-affirming care elsewhere after the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles closed their LA Center for Tr...
Imperfect Paradise: Health workers say ICE agents at hospitals are compromising patient care
Amid the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, there’s been an uptick in ICE presence in hospitals across the country. At Adventist Health...
Imperfect Paradise: California's new free public preschool program for 4-year-olds
All four-year-olds in the state of California now have access to a free preschool program in their local school district. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a p...
Imperfect Paradise: The historic and financial stakes behind the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
In less than a thousand days, Los Angeles will be hosting the summer Olympics. Many cities worldwide have been put into debt by the games, so what cou...
Imperfect Paradise: Why the site of the largest methane leak in US history still hasn’t been shut down
Regulations on gas storage facilities have been tightened since the detection of the Aliso Canyon leak, which started in 2015 and lasted nearly four m...
Imperfect Paradise: How becoming a US citizen just got harder under the Trump administration and what it means for Angelenos
The Trump administration’s immigration policies have resulted in raids and protests in Southern California and across the country, and the administrat...
Imperfect Paradise: Prop 50: Is California’s redistricting push a threat to democracy or a defense of it?
Proposition 50 is part of a nationwide battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Californians are being asked to take a side: Shou...
Imperfect Paradise: An LA Commission created to tackle city government scandals is being stymied
A charter reform commission was created in 2024 in response to multiple Los Angeles city government scandals, including the leak of a racist tape feat...
Imperfect Paradise: Reports about failures in response to the January LA fires and a 2018 fire have striking similarities
A new report details the Eaton and Palisades fires, including failures in the emergency response. But this report bears striking similarities with ano...
Imperfect Paradise: How union organizing is being upended by private universities in Southern California
Big companies like Amazon and SpaceX are claiming that the National Labor Relations Board – an independent federal entity in charge of overseeing unio...
Imperfect Paradise: Why California's protest law is flawed and the consequences to protesters
After the George Floyd protests of 2020, California took steps to rein in violent policing of protests by passing laws restricting how law enforcement...
Where Dreams Go To Die
Silver Saddle Ranch gets sold, and the people who still believe it’s worth something stage a protest. Plus, a former employee comes forward with a dis...
Bonus Episode: Cashing In On The Desert
For decades, Californians have been obsessed with trying to profit off desert land. In this bonus episode of California City, host Emily Guerin, the D...
The Reckoning
Silver Saddle gets shut down and accused of fraud. Will the company - and the dream Ben Perez believed - survive?
California City is a limited s...
Open Secret
Fear, rumors, and looking the other way. How salesmen have sold the fantasy of California City for so long.
California City is a limited series...
The Hunted Becomes The Hunter
Emily confronts the owner of Silver Saddle and walks away doubting herself. Plus, Ben becomes part of Silver Saddle's sales machine.
California...
The Tragedy That Occurred
Ken Donney is a hero to some, but most people would call him a villain.
California City is a limited series with 8 episodes. Show support by su...
Soldiers of the Sale
Nat builds an army of salespeople to sell his dream. And then, then Ralph Nader intervenes.
California City is a limited series with 8 episodes....
A Man with a Dream
The vision that Ben Perez was sold in 2017 began in 1958, with one man's dream to build a utopian desert city from scratch.
This LAist Studios p...
Turning Desert Dust Into Gold
In 2017 Ben Perez goes to a Mojave Desert resort for a free vacation and ends up signing away his life savings. Turns out Ben is one of tens of thousa...
How I Found Out About California City
It was supposed to be a simple story about the California drought. Instead, reporter Emily Guerin became obsessed with the bizarre history of a sprawl...