Topline:
The Huntington has acquired its first ufology collection, tracing the Integratron's origins and the desert flying saucer movement that its creator, George Van Tassel helped lead.
Backstory: A pool contractor, a historian and a podcaster joined forces to help the archive find a home at the Huntington.
Long before it drew sound bath seekers from around the world, the Mojave Desert’s Integratron was one man’s bid to extend human life, guided, he said, by beings from Venus.
A collection tracing the history of the white-domed landmark built by George Van Tassel and the postwar UFO movement he helped lead has now found a home at the Huntington.
How a ufology archive reached an institution best known for its manicured botanical gardens and classical portraits is a story decades in the making, bringing together a pool deck contractor, a historian and a podcaster.
“This isn’t just a UFO collection,” said Jack Wagner, the L.A.-based host of Otherworld, a popular podcast examining the paranormal. “This is connected to the history of the desert, aerospace, and Southern California in general.”
In the 1950s, the Mojave was becoming an important gathering spot for those who claimed contact with extraterrestrials.
When: Oct. 30–31, 2026, 6–10 p.m.
Where: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Cost: $90
More info here
Van Tassel had left a career as a flight inspector in Southern California's burgeoning aeronautics industry for the desert community of Landers where his family operated the Come On Inn cafe by an airstrip, and he organized UFO conventions.
In a 1964 TV interview, he described a close encounter of his own with a crew of humanoids from Venus.
“They were about five foot six,” Van Tassel said. “They came about to my eyebrows, and they could have walked in our clothes down any of our streets, and we would not have paid any attention to it.”
Van Tassel said one of the beings, named Solganda, gave him the idea to bathe people in electromagnetic energy to recharge their cells and live longer.
He began building the Integratron a few miles from his home in the late 1950s, funded by proceeds from his publications and conventions, along with donations. It was rumored that Howard Hughes, for whom he worked as a flight inspector, had contributed $40,000 — worth about half a million in today's money.
The building took its unique shape over the desert but was not fully done by the time Van Tassel died of a heart attack in 1978, said La Crescenta-based architectural historian Daniel Paul.
“I sometimes wondered if he was starting to try certain things on himself, and maybe that messed up his heart a little bit,” Paul said.
Paul dug into Van Tassel’s life after the Integratron’s current owners — sisters Joanne, Nancy and Patty Karl, who transformed the dome into a destination for sound baths — hired him to secure a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
In his application to the National Park Service, Paul said he credited the Integratron design to the architect Howard P. Hesse, Van Tassel and, in parentheses, Solganda, “because that's what George Van Tassel always said where this guidance came from.”
The Park Service officially listed the Integratron in 2018. Afterward, Paul got a voicemail from a stranger complimenting him for citing Solganda.
The caller was Don McKinney, a contractor from Morongo Valley who resurfaced pool decks and, as a side quest, had amassed a vast collection of Van Tassel memorabilia.
“I thought that Van Tassel was the most colorful person that I ever knew,” McKinney said.
McKinney said he met Van Tassel in 1969 when he was 19 and, with friends, visited the older man’s home by a massive boulder called Giant Rock. They went to an underground room where Van Tassel said he received communications from outer space.
“I pulled a book off the shelf and saw a flying saucer in it and asked George if these were real,” McKinney recalled. “And he says, ‘Absolutely.’”
McKinney hasn’t seen a UFO in the years since, but believes those who say they have.
In the early 2000s, a potential pool job brought him back into Van Tassel’s world.
A Van Tassel associate named George Riddle was seeking construction quotes and, in the course of talking, revealed he had a trove of Van Tassel belongings, everything from a model of the Integratron to a photo McKinney remembered seeing at the Come On Inn cafe.
“I just fainted, practically, and bought as much stuff as I could," McKinney said.
By the time McKinney called Paul, he had spent a dozen or so years storing the items in the high-desert home he shares with his wife, Dayle. He later invited Paul to come see it all.
“I drove down there and met him, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh,'” Paul said. “I knew right away Don was the real deal.”
Several years later, Paul brought the story to a new audience.
On a May 2025 episode of the podcast Otherworld, he joined Wagner to talk about the Integratron. When Paul mentioned McKinney’s desert archive, Wagner wanted to know more.
After the taping, he called McKinney and found out that he had 120 reel-to-reel tapes of Van Tassel's channelings. Wagner was instantly worried about their survival.
“They don't have a huge lifespan, and the Eaton fires had just happened,” Wagner said. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, like, there should at least be a digital copy of these tapes.’”
Wagner headed to McKinney’s house to preserve the audio and flew in his producers Theo Schafer from New York and Theo Krantz from New Mexico.
The trio discovered much more than tapes. They also found Integratron blueprints and materials from Van Tassel’s career in aeronautics. They document their trip in a video posted on Otherworld's Patreon.
Wagner told Paul the collection belonged in a museum. Paul agreed and reached out to a friend at the Huntington, Anne Blecksmith, associate director of the library, who then told her colleagues.
A pair of Huntington curators went out to the desert to see the collection themselves. An appraisal followed, then a purchase for an undisclosed amount.
Erin Chase, the Huntington's associate curator of architecture and photography, said the collection has strong cross appeal.
“Maybe it's about cultural history. Maybe it's about desert ufology. And maybe it's about alternative spirituality,” Chase said. “The hope is that someone will find something in there that's meaningful to them.”
Today, the newly named McKinney Collection of George W. Van Tassel Papers is housed in climate-controlled rooms under tight security as staff prepares it for public access.
Selections, including the Integratron model, will be spotlighted at the Huntington’s Strange Science event on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31. Paul and Wagner will share the stage on both nights to talk about Van Tassel.
The Integratron’s current operators welcomed the archive’s arrival at the Huntington. They’ve worked to share the landmark’s history with visitors, but “we cannot be the museum,” said Kristine Atkinson, who helps run the Integratron for her mother, Nancy Karl, and aunts.
“We absolutely know that we couldn't possibly be the end-all, be-all about George Van Tassel,” Atkinson said. “It's too much. It's too big.”
As for McKinney, he got to visit the Huntington for the first time in March with his wife, along with Paul and Wagner, whom he now counts as friends.
The collection’s new home brings relief and joy.
“We can go to the store and not worry that there's going to be a fire or theft,” McKinney said. “It's just a major blessing all the way around because such good people have control over it.”
His own handiwork is now part of that history. A leather band that McKinney, a skilled leatherworker, crafted still wraps around the base of the Integratron model for visitors to see.
A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.
Why now: Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.
Read on to learn about options if your Medicare Advantage plan is ending.
A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.
Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.
Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.
But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.
Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.
Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.
According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.
KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.
If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.
If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.
Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.
Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.
The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.
Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.
Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:
Emily Pisacreta is the senior producer for An Arm and a Leg, a podcast about the cost of healthcare produced in partnership with KFF Health News and distributed by KUOW, Seattle's NPR member station.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
Why now: The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
The backstory: The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.
Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.
The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.
Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.
“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.
That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.
California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.
Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.
The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.
Topline:
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike.
Why now: This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
Why it matters: The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.
This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”
If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.
The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.
In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.
The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.
Topline:
There's an international club for tall people that started in Los Angeles. It's also a little bit of a support group. And yes, it can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
Why it matters: Complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly, but height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Why now: Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it'll survive to its 100th birthday is in question.
Read on ... to learn more, including how to join.
It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.
And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.
Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.
Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.
How to get involved
Tall Clubs International also does philanthropic work.
To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.
At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.
“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”
Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.
The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.
“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”
Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.
“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”
Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.
The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.
“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”
But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.
“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”
The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.
At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.
“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”
Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.
“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”
