50 episodes listed below
Los Angeles history, gloriously off-course.
L.A. Meekly treats Los Angeles history as a pile of strange stories, bad ideas, civic fights, food stops, and haunted holiday detours. The tone is loose and comic, but the subjects keep landing in real neighborhoods, real archives, and real local arguments.
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L.A. Meekly is a Los Angeles history podcast that sounds like it was built out of old maps, neighborhood arguments, haunted holiday decorations, and two people daring each other to keep a bit alive too long. The show is funny first at the surface. Then the history sneaks in. Recent episodes range across activists, family businesses, lost cities, cars, hometown neighborhoods, local food, and a junk-drawer collection of strange L.A. stories. One moment might be a riff on old car movies or demolition derby videos. The next might be a 1935 rattlesnake murder plot involving Snake Joe, desert diamondbacks named Lethal and Lightning, and a grim turn into violence. That mixture is the show’s operating mode. It lets absurdity and archival detail sit at the same table without pretending they are the same thing. The city is treated as dense, funny, brutal, beloved, and constantly misremembered. Episodes mention El Monte, Highland Park, Garvanza, the Arroyo, Sherman Oaks, Echo Park, the Valley, Korean barbecue, donut shops, art history, fair housing, and neighborhood racism. The show is not polished civic tourism. It is more like overhearing informed locals chase a topic through every side door until the original point comes back wearing a different hat. The interview with Katherine Spiers about How to Eat LA and Smart Mouth Food shows how well that style works outside straight history segments. Food becomes geography. Donut shops become social spaces. A question about where to eat turns into a broader sense of how Angelenos navigate the city. The hosts also return often to their own show machinery: intros, outros, patron business, monthly themes, field trips, and running jokes. Those pieces do not feel separate from the history. They are part of the texture. L.A. Meekly is for listeners who want Los Angeles to feel specific rather than glossy, and who do not mind taking the scenic route through a joke before arriving at the facts.
Made for: For listeners who like local history with jokes, digressions, neighborhood specificity, and a tolerance for chaotic conversational pacing. It especially fits Angelenos, former Angelenos, and city-history obsessives who enjoy weird civic details over tidy tours.
What sets it apart: The show pairs real Los Angeles history with a rapid, associative comedy rhythm that turns place names, old media, restaurants, and civic scandals into running texture. It feels locally lived-in rather than broadly explanatory.
L.A. Meekly is a monthly comedy podcast about Los Angeles history put out by comedians Greg Gonzalez and Daniel Zafran that battles the idea that LA has no history by delving in the weird, unbelievable and, occasionally, haunted details from the past of their native city.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
L.A. Meekly turns Los Angeles history into street-level storytelling, with food, theater, activism, odd crimes, and local memory sharing the same map.
L.A. Meekly treats Los Angeles history as something found at street level: neighborhoods, family businesses, food places, art circles, strange crimes, and cultural institutions all get room to matter.
L.A. history, but rattlesnakes, donuts, and marionettes keep wandering into the room.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Car-movie chatter and demolition derby lore give way to darker Los Angeles history.
L.A. Meekly's Junk Drawer: Part V opens on car-movie talk, demolition derby obsession, Herbie, and Burt Reynolds before moving into the Mike Allman, Snake Joe, Lethal, and Lightning material.
Activism history, a house deal, and Almonte racism, tucked inside L.A. Meekly's usual sideways grin.
L.A. Meekly's episode on activists opens with a comic wobble and then settles into race, housing, and how people in Almonte learned to move together for safety.
Gas-leak banter and Garvanza history give LA Meekly a distinctly local, slightly shaggy start.
LA Meekly opens with Castaic gas-leak banter before settling into William Lees Judson, presented as the first of his line in Los Angeles. The episode keeps close to the sourced basics: Garvanza, with its garbanzo-bean link; the two-story stonework house he designed for himself;…
LA food history gets specific, hungry, and very Los Angeles.
This episode turns a virtual field trip into a loose conversation about Los Angeles food culture, with Catherine Spiers of How to Eat LA and Smart Mouth Food podcast talking through restaurants and food history in the city.
A field trip that turns a puppet theater into a vivid slice of Los Angeles culture and history.
This piece treats the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as part of Los Angeles culture and history, with Alex Evans tracing how he found puppetry, how he ended up at Bob Baker, and what kept the theater's community feel with him.
Gaming culture, derailed on impact.
Dark history, bad taste, live-wire banter.
Grief comedy with its heart still open.
Banter with bad ideas attached.
The episode opens by chasing racing-car-movie chatter through Herbie, Drive, Driver, and Baby Driver.
The episode opens with the host trying to remember a joke, looping through a Viva La John Belushi pun, a Darth Vader trip toward the bathroom, and a fake comedy special on Premium Blend, Netflix, and Tubi before settling on a lisp joke about The Transporter.
The year starts with gas.
A comedic and chaotic discussion blending holiday themes with horror, featuring wordplay and references to Mayberry and Frankenstein.
A humorous and nostalgic discussion about a scary night, skeletons, and the Los Angeles history podcast 'L.A.
A public service announcement about housing discrimination followed by a brief discussion about a character named Phantom.
They take a virtual field trip to Los Angeles with Catherine Spiers of the How to Eat LA website and the Smart Mouth Food podcast, talking about restaurants, food history, and the impossible idea of covering every donut shop in the county.
The hosts of a Los Angeles history podcast ramble about Heidi Fleiss and other topics before introducing the episode.
The episode leaves the studio for its first in-person field trip in the post-COVID world, heading to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater with Alex Evans.
The hosts of LA Meekly introduce a crossover episode from the Hollyweird Paranormal podcast to promote their upcoming live show.