Esotouric turns the notion of guided bus tours on its ear with excursions like Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles and Pasadena Confidential. Now you don't have to get on the bus to get the skinny. Each week on the You Can't Eat The Sunshine podcast, join Kim Cooper and Richard Schave on their Southern California adventures, as they visit with fascinating characters for wide-ranging interviews that reveal the myths, contradictions, inspirations and passions of the place. There's never been a city quite like Los Angeles. Tune in if you'd like to find out why.
• Episode #1: Hot Rods & Huell Howser (featuring a rollicking conversation about Hot Rods, Aerospace, High Performance and Rat Fink with legendary L.A. gearhead Gale Banks and Mike the Poet's tribute to the late, great Huell Howser).
• Episode #2: Orange Groves & Outer Space (Downey Space Plant history and demolition and early citrus industry stories from the proprietors of E. Waldo Ward farms).
• Episode #3: Bunker Hill & Bones of Contention (an interview with Gordon Pattison, whose family owned the last two mansions on old Bunker Hill, and a visit with our favorite forensic scientist, Professor Donald Johnson of the Criminalistics Department of Cal State Los Angeles).
• Episode #4: Swizzle Sticks & Secret Salons (Dwain Carlo Crum shares hidden gems of the San Gabriel Valley and curator Terry Ellsworth reveals secrets of the Arts District).
• Episode #5: Books & Bulldozers (featuring Michael Dawson, of the venerable Dawson's Book Shop on his new book of William Reagh's mid-century Downtown photographs, David Kipen of Libros Schmibros about his work fostering culture and community in Boyle Heights, and Susannah Gordon of the extraordinary house museum Casa del Herrero in Montecito).
• Episode #6: Steve Jobs' Great White Whale & Funky Folk Artists of Slab City (featuring tile expert Brian Kaiser on his salvage work at Steve Jobs' Jackling House, and artist Joe Holliday at East Jesus, an extendible, inhabitable art work in progress on the south eastern shore of the Salton Sea).
• Episode #7: Jazz Age Los Angeles: Haberdashers and Hermetic Rites (featuring Maja D'Aoust, the White Witch of Los Angeles, about the Southland's occult legacy, and Oviatt Building historian Marc Chevalier).
• Episode #8: Temperance Temple & Two-Lane Blacktop (featuring Marcia Harris on Fanny Bixby Spencer, an early 20th century suffragette, teetotaler and social reformer, and Dennis Justice about his wild life on the road managing for Stan Kenton, cross-country driving before the Interstate Freeway System, and his new food truck, Felony Franks).
• Episode #9: Fante & Hammett (interviews with poet, playwright, and novelist Dan Fante, the son of John Fante, and with Julie Rivett, granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett and keeper of his literary legacy).
• Episode #10: The Rank & The Charismatic (interviews with Gale Banks on kustom kar kulture and the evolution of California's creative engine, and Jackie Miller, curator of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's Parsonage and Heritage Center on Echo Park Lake).
• Episode #11: The Lugos & The Chandlers (interviews with Vince Lugo, direct lineal descent of 19th century Californiano Don Antonio Maria Lugo, and historian Darrell Kunitomi of the Los Angeles Times).
• Episode #12: The Maltese Falcon & A Landmark In Chains (interviews with Julie Rivett, Dashiell Hammett's granddaughter, and with architectural historian Kevin Bash on the rise, fall and strange fate of the astonishing Norconian Supreme Resort, a forgotten jewel of the Jazz Age).
• Episode #13: Cowboys & Barflies (interviews with filmmaker Alina Skrzeszewska about her work capturing a vanishing neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles' Skid Row and with Ruth Ann Dome, tour bus dispatcher, about her competing passions for fast cars and well-trained cowboys).
• Episode #14: From the Arroyo to the Riviera (interviews with Jessica Holada, curator of "Where Bohemians Gathered," about early 20th century literary culture in Northeast Los Angeles, and with distinguished thespian Jerry Taft about his decades tending bar at the Riviera Country Club).
• Episode #15: Preserving Historic Los Angeles: On the Streets and In The Archives (interviews with Jenny Watts, curator of photographs at the Huntington Library, about Southern California Edison archives, and with Ken Bernstein, head of Historic Resources for the City of Los Angeles, about historic preservation tools and challenges).
• Episode #16: Death & Art Deco (historian Marc Chevalier debunks myths about the Oviatt Building and its influence on the American Art Deco style, and Professor Don Johnson gives a guided tour of his apprenticeships in mortuary and forensic science).
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