The Brief

A rich trove of Asian American and Pacific Islander history lives in academic journals and university library stacks that many students don’t know how to tap into.

A new multimedia textbook developed out of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center is trying to change that.

Called Foundations and Futures, the online platform combines written chapters, archival documents and artwork with videos and podcast clips, geared at students in high school and up, along with their teachers.

“It’s the largest collection of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories in one location — free and open access for anyone with an Internet connection,” said Karen Umemoto, director of the UCLA center and one of the project’s co-editors.

The Foundations and Futures platforms allows users to engage with AAPI history in a multimedia way.

(

Foundations and Futures

)

The textbook officially launched this month — Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — after some six years of development with contributions from more than 100 authors and curriculum developers from across the country.

Designed with the TikTok generation in mind, the platform is optimized for phones and tablets for easy scrolling.

“A lot of young people, of course, are really into TikTok videos and Instagram posts,” Umemoto said. “So we thought, 'Let’s leverage that.'”

Responding to invisibility 

The project was seeded in 2020 when Umemoto and co-editor and fellow UCLA professor Kelly Fong began drafting proposals chapter by chapter.

At the time, California was moving toward implementing an ethnic studies graduation requirement. The professors worried AAPI histories could still be sidelined without dedicated resources.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents.

“There’s so many people who have no idea who we are, where we come from, how we got here,” Umemoto said.

The textbook grew into a $12 million project, supported through a mix of state funding, grants and private donations.

A major boost came in 2022, when the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus helped secure a $10 million state allocation.

Much of the textbook does focus on AAPI history in California, like the Filipino farmworker movement and Vietnamese refugee communities in Orange County.

But other modules cover Chinese immigrant garment workers in New York and Asian American communities in the South.

Getting into schools

Umemoto said the textbook is for anyone to use as needed, but a major goal is helping educators incorporate AAPI perspectives into existing courses.

“We’re so woefully invisible and underrepresented in educational curricula,” she said, noting that there are few teachers to instruct from lived experience. Just 2% of public school teachers in the U.S. are AAPI.

The Foundations and Futures website is at 42 chapters — and growing.

(

Foundations and Futures

)

The plan is to offer everything from two-day in-person teacher workshops to national webinars in partnership with teachers unions.

Even with the project’s launch, organizers say their work continues with raising funds for teacher training, as well as outreach and operations.

The team is seeking another $5 million for the next three years.

"I'm a professor not trained in doing startups or ed tech projects, and so I didn't realize how much it would take just to keep the lights on," Umemoto said.

All the while, the team is building the textbook to 50 chapters. It's currently at 42.

Learning amid polarization

The project arrives amid charged political debates over how race and identity are taught in schools.

Umemoto acknowledged that some critics view ethnic studies as divisive, but she said the goal of the textbook is the opposite.

“We need to learn about each other’s history so that we can build an inclusive society,” she said.

For Umemoto, the work is deeply personal.

She said she grew up knowing her parents and grandparents had been forced into camps during World War II, but did not fully understand the broader history behind the incarceration of Japanese Americans until later in life.

“I grew up thinking everybody was in camp,” she said.

Ultimately, she hopes the textbook helps students better understand both themselves and one another.

“In all my years of teaching, there has not been a student who has left the classroom unchanged,” Umemoto said. “If we want to deal with the problems of polarization, we need to start in the classroom."

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory may run the second-longest study of  individually identifiable mammals in the world, but they’re not afraid of trying something new.

The lab is launching a bracket-style competition, Fat Marmot Week, for people all over the world to vote for their favorite chunky ground squirrel.

The UCLA researchers who work there have faced a loss of federal funding in recent years, so they’re now pursuing creative fundraising efforts, including a (G-rated) OnlyFans account for marmot content called OnlyMarms and a meme coin created by supporters of the project.

Where the idea came from

Dan Blumstein, a UCLA ecology and evolutionary biology professor who came up with OnlyMarms, said he’s wanted to do a Fat Marmot Week ever since the success of Fat Bear Week, in which the public votes on grizzly bears bulking up for the winter in Alaska. But it took two of his graduate researchers, Katie Adler and Emily Renkey, along with another volunteer who helps with logistics, to see it to fruition.

“ Science isn't just writing the papers, it's also the communication side of things,” said Adler, who’s also the lab’s field team leader.

Like bears, marmots prepare for the winter by fattening up, with some more than doubling in weight from about 5.5 pounds to as much as 13. But unlike bears, marmots are true hibernators. For months, their body temperature drops very low, and they breathe and have a heartbeat about once a minute. (Blumstein described a hibernating marmot as “sort of a fuzzy stone.”)

These two specimens are called Dawn and Dan's Hat.

(

Courtesy Dan Blumstein/UCLA

)

 Adler, who's on her third year of marmot field observations, said the individual marmots are consistent enough that she can "see what they're doing a little bit and then know exactly who it is."

“I think it’s fun to think of this from an outside perspective – why do we like marmots and how can we share that with other people?” Renkey said.

About the marmots

The marmots are all given names to help tell them apart based on markings the researchers dye on their fur.

Their names range from Dawn, who is reportedly a “a very special boy who enjoys the taste of rocks,” to a “proud mama” named 1 and a “girl boss” with no mate named Open Kite.

“Our parties are quite boring to other people because all we do is talk about the marmots,” Blumstein said. “It's a soap opera.”

Funding troubles

Faced with federal funding cuts, Blumstein realized he had to get creative, starting with the OnlyMarms account.

But he said he wasn’t expecting the “extraordinary” response – the $OnlyMarms meme coin has made more than $100,000 in transaction fees, though it’s still short of the $225,000 to $300,000 they need to fundraise to bring in more graduate student research.

Blumstein said while all funding is welcome, including the OnlyMarms subscriptions, it’s much easier for them to accept direct donations for tax purposes. The money will go to support researchers like Renkey and Adler’s contributions to the nearly 65 years of marmot research at the lab.

The tournament

Eight competitors will face off — five females and three males. There’ll also be a “true” winner announced at the end based on the lab’s measurements on which marmot gained the most weight this spring and summer.

The first round of voting will be Monday, Aug. 24, followed by the semifinals on Wednesday, Aug. 26, and the final showdown on Friday, Aug. 28. Voting runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT.

“Everyone should vote. It's very exciting,” Renkey said. “They're huge this summer.”

The younger bald eagle that Shadow has been seen hanging out with around Big Bear’s famous nest lately has a new name.

The bird, which is believed to be a female, is banded as KD1. Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream, has dubbed her Kaydee.

The organization generally doesn’t name visiting eagles, but Kaydee is sticking around so far and could become a new online star after Shadow’s long-time mate Jackie died last week.

So, who is this new eagle in the nest?

One expert told LAist that Kaydee is more than 4 years old and was probably wandering much further than Big Bear before it was spotted on camera.

“This is kind of the banders dream, right? You put bands on a bird so that you can possibly get … a one-off observation of where it is at some point in its life, and we're getting way, way more than that,” said Jenna Carpenter, a field biologist and environmental specialist with the Orange County Water District.

“In this instance, we're getting 24/7 views and people are so tuned into it that they're keeping really good track of where KD1 is, and it's really awesome.”

Meet Kaydee

Kaydee was first recorded on the livestream cameras in the Big Bear habitat on Aug. 6 — a few days before Jackie died — according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The nonprofit said the eagle started to perch by Shadow in several trees, which it has continued to do in the weeks since. The group recently referred to Kaydee as Shadow’s “shadow.”

Kaydee is from the Prado Basin area, where its parents Ricky and Lucy nest nearby. Carpenter said Ricky and Lucy have raised around a dozen eaglets since 2021, when they first started setting up shop in the area.

The eagle wears two bracelet-like bands on its legs, including a lavender-colored one, which can be used to track Kaydee in different areas.

“If someone sees [the color band] with a scope or binoculars or a zoom camera, it can be reported and put into a research database, which adds to the opportunity to progress conservation for raptors and eagles,” Carpenter said.

You can learn more about reporting a bird with a federal band or color marker here.

Will Kaydee stick with Shadow?

Kaydee is what's known as a subadult eagle, a stage in which Carpenter said raptors are still trying to figure out what they want to do and where they want to be.

“Big Bear’s a nice habitat, obviously they've been visiting this nest, you know, there's some interest there whatever it may be,” she said. “So it's possible that they stick around and find a mate, whether that be Shadow or another adult eagle.”

But it’s also possible Kaydee moves onto another habitat after the off-season. Whatever happens, Carpenter said us humans get to go along for the ride through the livestream, which she described as a privilege.

“We get this chance to witness something that we would not normally get to witness, because we know exactly who this bird is and we happen to have cameras in the area,” she said. “It might be everything and it might be nothing, and either way, I think that's really exciting that we get to have a little peek into this world.”

The Esquivel family opened their first taqueria at Playas de Tijuana 15 years ago, with a focus on individually crafted tacos, each with its own pairing of salsa.

Since then, Taqueria Tijuanero — formerly Tijuanazo — has become an increasingly popular SoCal taco chain.

Owner Aria Esquivel sat down with AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross to talk about how it all started from a humble Tijuana brick-and-mortar and how they stay true to their distinct North Mexican menu.

The art of the taco

Esquivel’s father and mastermind behind Taqueria Tijuanero, Antonio Esquivel, began working in kitchens when he was 16 years old, working his way up from dishwasher to cook at French restaurants in Beverly Hills.

“What he really loved about the taco and the art of the taco in Tijuana is how these ingredients mesh so well together,” Esquivel said.

That’s when the family opened up their own restaurant in Playas de Tijuana in 2011.

Mexico's taco diversity

Because of Mexico’s diverse landscape of crops, history and even weather patterns, taco styles can actually vary quite a bit depending on where you are in the country.

“ The tacos in Mexico City are different," Esquivel said. "The tacos in Sonora are different. The Tijuana tacos are different."

Fresh al pastor

(

(Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

)

Al pastor taco

(

Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

)

Bill Esparza, the James Beard Award-winning food writer who's spent the last two decades chronicling L.A.'s taco scene, helped curate Taqueando After Dark, a new food festival that will feature eight L.A. taco vendors, including Taqueria Tijuanero.

“When I see theirs, I see what I see in Mexico,” Esparza said of Taqueria Tijuanero’s tacos, adding, “It’s a taco that really has a lot of intentionality behind it.”

How to experience Taqueando After Dark festival

Taqueando After Dark takes over Level 8 for two nights, Aug. 27 and 28. (Courtesy of Level 8)

(

Courtesy Taqueando After Dark

)

Read more: LA taqueros meet Baja’s best for two-night DTLA taco festival

New location coming:

• The family is in the process of opening its third SoCal location in Echo Park.

How to visit:

• Address: 355 S Atlantic Blvd., East Los Angeles
• Hours: Closed on Mondays | Tuesday-Sunday, open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Costs: Tacos are $3.95 each