Brandon R. Reynolds is a cultural spelunker living in California & writing on how culture, science, art and politics all find one another in the way-down dark.
Virtual holiday parties may be disasters. But they’re also learning experiences for 2021
This pandemic year meant confronting much of the country’s dysfunction and flaws. There’s one final reckoning to end the year: the holiday party.
A highway project potentially threatening hundreds of homes follows a different script in 2020 LA
Expanding highways and removing homes is one of the great creation myths of Los Angeles. The theory: Where the highways grew, progress would follow. But often that expansion came at the cost of homes in working-class neighborhoods like Boyle Heights. “Getting there” was more important than the actual “there.”
Church versus state: A First Amendment fight in the middle of a pandemic
It’s a Sunday morning in September, and members of Grace Community Church are happy to be here. Before the service starts, they’re standing under the morning sky, where the sun would be if not for the wildfire smoke.
A Nextdoor fight about masks reveals pitfalls of the human brain
KCRW wanted to understand how online conversations can go sideways when the subject is difficult. We dig into the neuroscience, and create a staged reading of a particularly brutal Nextdoor post.
From escape rooms to Galaxy’s Edge, immersive art is all around us
How theater, video games, and virtual reality play together.
Can the Los Angeles We Know Survive the Death of Its Trees?
L.A.’s 6 million trees keep us healthy—and they are all in jeopardy.
Web comedy gets its big break — in weird ways — during COVID-19
Comedians adapt to performing from their living rooms to invisible audiences. Cue laughter?
Video calls are a nightmare of bad angles and unfortunate backgrounds. We asked Hollywood to make it beautiful.
Talking to four experts -- a cinematographer, a set designer, a makeup artist, and an actor -- about creating a better movie of You.
Everything Gone but the Water
What survived, and what didn't, when a wildfire tore through an ancient hot springs.
Ghosts in the Ghost Ship
A fire in an Oakland warehouse space killed dozens and forced a rethink of Bay Area housing.
David Lynch on Twin Peaks and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
David Lynch talks about everything ... except for Twin Peaks.
Breaking the Ice for Polar Science | KQED Science
An account of my journey to Antarctica with the Coast Guard's old semi-reliable icebreaker, Polar Star.
‘The Well of the Scribes’ Sculpture Resurfaces
An Alta magazine story leads to the discovery of a section of the "The Well of the Scribes" sculpture, which went missing 50 years ago. It was returned to L.A.'s Central Library. The search for the rest of it heats up.
Alta Helps Recover L.A. Library Sculpture Missing for 50 Years
The Well of Scribes resurfaces! (Part of it, anyway.)
The Voice Actors Behind Video Game Characters Are Famous, but Also Nearly Invisible
This is what it’s like to have thousands of fans who don’t recognize you.