Podcasts about Los Angeles, California

Someone is always arguing about the Lakers here. Before a listener gets to anything else about Los Angeles they will hear a postgame verdict on a blowout of a Warriors team missing Steph Curry, or a solo host reeling off Luka Doncic's numbers over a 13-and-2 stretch. That one basketball team is the largest single subject on this page, with the Dodgers some way behind and the Rams and Chargers behind them. The shows filed outside Sports, on architecture, local history, a rescue mission's testimonies and a police radio drama, are a small part of the listening, but they are where the city itself, rather than its teams, gets described.

What Los Angeles is

Los Angeles is the largest city in California and the second-largest in the United States, spread across a coastal basin and the valleys behind it. It is the center of the American film and television industry, a major port, and a city defined by freeways and a sprawl of distinct neighborhoods, with more major-league teams than almost any other American metro.

The Lakers, in several registers

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers is the most structured two-hander of the group: its clip on the Warriors blowout grants every caveat (no Steph Curry, no Jimmy Butler, no Kristaps Porzingis) before insisting the Lakers won the way they needed to, decisively, and another explains why a DeAndre Ayton locker-room complaint about being turned into Clint Capella is getting him hammered. Lakers Nation Podcast does the same job with the scoreboard closer. The Lakers Legacy Podcast is a solo, fast-talking stream that never quite separates mood from basketball logic; its case for a deeper playoff run rests on Luka Doncic's 37.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 7.1 assists over a 15-game stretch. Lakers Lounge is the loosest of the room: Irwin arguing the 82-game season is the root problem behind injuries and tanking, and a host drawing the line between fans disagreeing with his takes and fans questioning whether he is a real Laker fan at all.

Jello Jigglin - A Lakers Podcast with Ryan Ward brings the business side, 300-level season tickets rising from $6,192 to $9,035 under Mark Walter and whether the new owner will push for Giannis, and Lakers Talk with Andy Kamenetzky, from ESPN Los Angeles, has a player on tape, a sit-down with Jake LaRavia about being praised unprompted by J.J. Redick and LeBron. The July titles on Lakers Lounge and The Lakers Legacy Podcast carry the same news, "FULL: BREAKING: LeBron James signs with 76ers" on one and a clip reacting to Shams's report of a two-year, $8 million Philadelphia deal on the other.

Dodgers: the front office is the story

On the baseball side the conversation is less about the last game than about what Andrew Friedman does next. On Dodger Talk, Greg Amsinger says he woke up in cold sweats imagining Ken Rosenthal breaking a Tarik Skubal trade to the Dodgers: Friedman could simply decide to win the World Series, and Amsinger hopes he refuses to overpay. The same show sizes up a seller's market with eighteen teams in the hunt and argues the returning injured Dodgers work like five acquisitions on their own. All Dodgers chases the same rumors from the other direction, with Jeff Snider confirming Byron Buxton was the top trade target before the Twins' announcement and a clip asking why the Skubal story will not die. Three-Inning Save: A Los Angeles Dodgers Podcast is the game-by-game corrective: Tanner Scott's middle-middle fastball turning into a three-run homer, Teoscar Hernández missing a fly ball against the Rockies, Yoshinobu Yamamoto going seven innings as often as the rest of the staff combined. LTBU: A Los Angeles Angels Baseball Podcast is the outlier; its clips are mostly the hosts themselves, Kurt launching an episode live while Pete admits they may not have fans anymore.

Rams and Chargers, mostly in draft mode

The football clips are heavy on April. In "Ep.594: Downtown Rams Mock Draft 1.0", Alexis stays at 13 and takes Makai Lemon while Jake notes the Rams never take the consensus favorite mocked to them: everybody had JuJu Smith-Schuster going there and they took Gerald Everett. Locked On Rams - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Rams sits on the far side of the NFC Championship loss, treating it as failure rather than success because the Super Bowl window is closing and pinning it on special teams and the secondary; by September the DOWNTOWN RAMS PODCAST titles are on the 49ers game in Australia. Chargers Podcast Network is the team's own production, and its Colts-week clip puts the offense at 35% in the red zone against 55% a year earlier despite all the added weapons. Guilty As Charged: An LA Chargers Podcast is the draft-nerd companion, counting fifteen ways one target beat offensive linemen in a single game and noting that 27 of the top 30 edge rushers last season went in the first two rounds.

The city outside the stadiums

Design and Architecture, from KCRW and hosted by Frances Anderton, is where Los Angeles gets treated as a built place. Its clips find social history in objects: Roy Choi looking at rare 19th-century menus and asking where everybody else ate; Henry Huntington building trolleys to empty land not for fares but to drive up land values. Its titles, "Dodger Stadium upgrades; an ADU is born", "Hollyhock House; Space Age Design; Guo Pei", reach across the city in the composed register of a public-radio magazine.

L.A. Meekly: A Los Angeles History Podcast is local history that keeps derailing itself on purpose. One clip follows Robert S. James, who allegedly built a career marrying women, insuring them and collecting, and a visiting nephew in 1935 whose death notice reached his mother before he died; others have Massena Gump turning a $300 cesspool business into Another Andy Gump after the housing boom, and Alex Evans calling the Bob Baker Marionette Theater a sanctuary of sweet.

Stories From Skid Row is Union Rescue Mission's own program, hosted by Kitty Davis-Walker and Frank Motek, and its clips are testimonies. In "Becky Yarrow shares her URM story", she talks through childhood molestation, methamphetamine, a son who finally said he could not help her anymore, and the year-long Damascus program she credits, along with God, for what came after. The register is steady and devotional, closer to talk radio than to podcast-casual.

Dragnet Daily, credited to Jack Webb, is radio crime drama built from Los Angeles police procedure: "Dragnet - Big Dare", "Dragnet - Big Will", "Dragnet - Big Hate". Its clips are interrogations and identifications, a kid coaxed into describing Betty Dixon on the bedroom floor and a blood-covered bolo knife, and Joe Friday using tire tracks to confront Margaret Becker after she insists Charles Stahl was a good boy.

Where to start

• For the Lakers argument in its most structured form, Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers; for it at full emotional volume, The Lakers Legacy Podcast.
• For the Dodgers as a front-office story, Dodger Talk; for the game-by-game version, Three-Inning Save: A Los Angeles Dodgers Podcast.
• For Los Angeles as a place rather than a fan base, Design and Architecture, then L.A. Meekly: A Los Angeles History Podcast for the history with the brakes off.
• For something heavier and quieter, Stories From Skid Row.

The Los Angeles feed on this page plays clips from these shows.