Western Edition

As an idea, as a place, even as a single structure, Chinatown has meant and means different things to different people at different times. The first episode of L.A. Chinatown explores these multiple meanings across time and space.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

L.A.’s Chinatown is a bustling cultural and business hub, legendary in cinematic history and popular with tourists and locals alike. Yet below its surface lies a challenging history – of racial discrimination as well as community resilience – going back more than a century and a half. And it’s a history still being uncovered, as explored in the second season of Western Edition: L.A. Chinatown. This season explores the past, present, and future of one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods and one of the first Chinese American cultural centers in the U.S. Expanding on the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West's multi-year Chinatown History Project, the new episodes build on the Institute’s work digging into archives, collaborating with community partners, and talking to longtime residents to reflect on, remember, and celebrate a neighborhood and its people.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Western Edition -- a new podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and hosted by its director William Deverell, historian of the American West -- seeks to engage Angelenos, Californians, and Westerners as critical thinkers, conscious consumers, and informed community members. The podcast seeks to tell the fascinating stories of the people and communities of our region, connecting the past to the present, and demonstrating the tightly woven fabric of history. The first season, The West on Fire, explores the West’s relationship with fire, and how it has shaped both our past and present. Topics will include fire practices in Indigenous communities, the history of Black firefighters in Los Angeles, smoke and urban air quality, farmworker community health during wildfires, post-wildfire debris flow, the origins and endurance of Smokey Bear, incarcerated firefighters, and more. Western Edition is produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim and Elizabeth Logan. Our music was written and recorded by I See Hawks in L.A. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

A year ago, the second season of Western Edition focused on the past, present, and future of Los Angeles Chinatown. As part of that fascinating exploration, we investigated the horrific 1871 massacre of Chinese and Chinese Americans in downtown Los Angeles. In October of that year, a mixed-race mob of approximately ten percent of the resident population of Los Angeles killed 18 Chinese men and boys, or about ten percent of that ethnic and national group’s population at the time.Though the event has burned in the memory of the Chinese and Chinese American community for 150 years, the rest of Los Angeles, people who live or who visit here, generally know nothing about it. But thanks to the collaborative efforts of grassroots organizations and institutions, working in concert with the city of Los Angeles, a fitting and powerful memorial to the victims of the massacre is now well underway. It made sense to us at Western Edition to add this final episode to our “Memorializing the West” season, as it offers a coda to what we’ve done and where we’ve gone this season and, we think, a bridge to last season’s Chinatown investigation.Following a summer 2022 public call for ideas and a competition, artist and photographer Nicolás Leong and writer Judy Chung were selected from nearly 200 submissions and, eventually, five other finalists, all of whose thoughtful work sought to redress our city’s amnesia about this event.Western Edition  host William Deverell spoke with Nicolás and Judy about their design and their process.To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Moving from removal to renewal, many communities are not just calling for dismantling problematic monuments but also creating new layers of historical memory. This episode explores grassroots and public-driven projects in San Antonio, where students use digital technologies to reshape understandings of the city’s communities of color and ongoing struggles for civil rights and recognition.To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Denver, Colorado has seen highly public reckonings with historical markers referencing moments or people from the frontier past. Some actions seemed spontaneous and episodic: a statue of a Union soldier came down for its ties to a notorious massacre of Native peoples. Following the removal of another monument, the city's mayor publicly acknowledged and apologized for Denver's history of anti-Chinese violence.To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Not far from the USC campus sits the home of the ONE Archives, one of the world's greatest repositories of historical material pertaining to LGBTQ people and institutions. The mid-century building once housed a USC fraternity and is now part of the USC Libraries. Today, the ONE Archives stand as an evolving memorial itself, with a mission to promote public conversation and scholarship about queer histories and cultures.To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Additional histories are hidden behind the laconic language etched into markers across the West. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers Marker 123 in the center of Jackson, Wyoming celebrates the arrival of Mormon families in 1889 while eliding important context, including deeper histories of settler colonialism and violence against Native peoples. Why did Anglo Americans in the mid-20th century produce particular narratives about pioneers and settlement in the West?To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

There are many places and sites in California that, if we listen closely, still echo with the angst of the Civil War past. Or if they don't, they should. Take, for example, the Broderick-Terry monument in Daly City. This plaque and two obelisks mark the end of dueling in the state but omit the critical context of the battle over slavery in California.To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Starting on Catalina Island, just off the coast of Southern California, this episode of Western Edition zeroes in on a Civil War barracks that is now a private yacht club. The site played a curious role during the war and in the violent campaigns against Native peoples. Who is invested in the memories and histories of this site?To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Given the nation’s widespread and often heated reckoning with sites of memorialization and commemoration in recent years, the new season of Western Edition – the podcast from the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW) – questions six such sites across the American West. Who put that plaque there? Who decided that a statue needed to be fixed on a plinth in that space or on that street corner? And when? Why was it worth marking or remembering? Is it still important or significant, perhaps now maybe for different reasons? Do community members, people who walk by, or those who make an effort to visit, find these places and the words written about them meaningful? Launching on May 2, 2023, Western Edition: Memorializing the West explores historical memory, commemoration, and memorialization from Catalina Island to Daly City, California; Jackson, Wyoming to Los Angeles; Denver to San Antonio. 

What’s next for Chinatown? What challenges does the community face in the era of Covid, of the Stop Asian Hate movement, of gentrification, and the ever-rising cost of living in Los Angeles?Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Spanning multiple generations across Los Angeles history, the See family takes focus in episode five. Novelist and historian Lisa See narrates her family’s rich history, as does Leslee See Leong, whose antique and furniture store has long been a fixture of the See family’s life and work.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

In the early 1930s, the old Chinatown of Los Angeles disappeared to make way for the new Union Station Passenger Terminal. This episode examines the history of that eradication and displacement alongside the rise of “New Chinatown,” the adjacent community that arose through the vision of Chinese American entrepreneurs and community leaders.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

California played a fundamental role in legislating Chinese exclusion in the last decades of the 19th century. This episode explores the history of such exclusionary racism, as well as the ways in which Chinese attorney Y.C. Hong worked on behalf of his thousands of clients trying to return to, or stay in, the United States.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

A dark stain on Los Angeles, the horrific massacre of Chinese men and boys in Chinatown still reverberates across community and memory. A movement to memorialize the victims has taken root through civic activism, community organizing, and partnerships with the City of Los Angeles.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Greg Hise, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, Olivia Ramirez, Li Wei Yang, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

For over a century, the U.S. Forest Service has posted fire lookouts at the tops of mountains and trees: men and women who gaze out at the horizon, watching and waiting for signs of smoke, and serving as the eyes for the fire crews who go out to battle the blazes. In this episode, we talk to Philip Connors, who keeps watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country: the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. Every summer, for nearly two decades, he sits in a tiny cabin at the top of a fire lookout tower, with his binoculars, maps and notebooks, standing guard. That experience formed the subject of his book, "Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout." We also talk to science historian Jameson Karns about the origins of fire towers and their place in American culture; and to Vincent Ambrosia, a research scientist who works with NASA to improve wildfire monitoring.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim and Elizabeth Logan. Our music was written and recorded by I See Hawks in L.A. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

There’s a good chance that the firefighter saving you from a wildfire is actually an incarcerated person. As of summer 2021, about 1,600 work at conservation camps, also called fire camps, in California. These are minimum-security facilities staffed by incarcerated people who both volunteer and then qualify for the program based on their conviction offenses and behavior in prison. Other incarcerated persons serve at institutional firehouses. Once they finish serving their sentences, some might continue on to a training and certification program at the Ventura Training Center in Ventura County, or the The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program. In this episode, we consider how much we all owe these firefighters and hear about two programs to help them find work – and a renewed sense of purpose – in fighting fires after they finish their sentences. We also speak with Jaime Lowe, author of Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Frontlines of California's Wildfires.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim and Elizabeth Logan. Our music was written and recorded by I See Hawks in L.A. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Wildfire smoke can spread far beyond the fire itself, and the toxic pollutants carried in the smoke can be deadly. In this episode, we investigate the harm posed by wildfire smoke and exactly what happens to our bodies when we’re inhaling wildfire smoke, including triggering or worsening other health problems. We’ll also learn about how migrant farmworkers are especially at risk -- due to the nature of their outdoor work, pesticide exposure, and lack of Indigenous language translation -- and the efforts to reduce their vulnerability.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim and Elizabeth Logan. Our music was written and recorded by I See Hawks in L.A. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

The gospel of fire safety in the Western U.S. has long been one of suppression: fires are bad and they should be avoided at all costs. But Indigenous communities in the West see things differently. In this episode, we talk to Indigenous tribal leaders who engage in controlled burns: carefully controlled fires intentionally set as a way of managing ecosystems, by burning the undergrowth and dead trees that would otherwise fuel wildfires. It’s become a sensitive debate, in which fire management officials have often gone up against Indigenous practices. We’ll also explore how our current views of fire were formed in the West.Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim and Elizabeth Logan. Our music was written and recorded by I See Hawks in L.A. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.