The Brief

The L.A. Metro Board has advanced a plan for a water taxi service between Long Beach and San Pedro during the 2028 Olympic Games.

Metro's board has for months been considering investing in a service to ferry spectators along the harbor for the Olympics, positioning it as a way to reduce traffic and increase access to the Games in the South Bay. Long Beach will host more than a dozen Olympic and Paralympic competitions.

The motion, introduced by L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, asks the Metro CEO to start identifying private and public operators that could deliver the water taxi program. It also directs the county executive to assess funding options, including sponsorship models and public-private partnerships.

At Metro's meeting Thursday, Hahn said passengers would be able to use their TAP cards on the water taxis.

" Other cities already run successful water transit systems," she told the board, naming San Francisco, Seattle and New York City. "There's no reason why we can't do the same here, especially with weather as good as ours."

A model for this type of passenger ferry already exists. Long Beach Transit operates water taxis each summer. A 40-minute trip between Downtown Long Beach and Alamitos Bay costs $5.

A feasibility study submitted to Metro this fall found that Metro launching and operating its own service on the water by 2028 wasn't feasible, instead recommending it pursue private operators or public-private partnerships to pull off the plan.

The report, put together by the Metro CEO's office, outlined four possible budgets and plans for a ferry program, including one using hybrid-electric vessels and three others using diesel ships.

The expected cost of operating the boats during the Olympic and Paralympic Games ranged from $750,000 for two 75-passenger diesel vessels and $1.34 million for two 350-passenger hybrid-electric ships.

The report also found that local funds likely would be needed to cover the bulk of the costs of a short-term water taxi service but suggested grant funding might be available for a service that would extend beyond the Olympic Games.

The water taxi is just one of many transit plans Metro is working on to deliver a "transit-first" Olympic Games. It requested more than $2 billion in federal funding for a fleet of thousands of buses to help get spectators around Southern California during the Games. Whether the federal government will deliver on that ask isn't clear.

There's how old you are, and there's how old Spotify thinks you are.

That divide became clear this week with the release of Spotify Wrapped, the streaming platform's personalized year-end recap.

It walks listeners through their top artists, albums, genres and more in a self-reflective (and occasionally mortifying) interactive slideshow, based on data and delivered with sass. The decade-old tradition varies slightly in its aesthetics and substance every year, and this edition seems to have caught a lot of users off guard by bluntly informing them of their "listening age."

"Age is just a number, so don't take this personally," reads one of the slides, before proceeding to alternately humble, amuse and confuse.

Charli XCX, the 30-something electro-pop artist who invented "Brat," is spiritually 75, Spotify declared, because she listens to music from the late 1960s. The genre-defying, synth-savvy Grimes has a listening age of 92, while introspective singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams clocks in at 14, nearly half her real age. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, when asked by a reporter, revealed his comparatively youthful 44.

It's not just celebrities. Within hours of Wrapped dropping, social media was ablaze with screenshots and memes from listeners mostly either bragging or baffled about their listening age — particularly those many decades younger or older than their actual age. Jokes about "listening age gap relationship[s]," dinosaurs and psychiatric evaluations ensued.

It has become the norm for people to repost their top-five lists and listening-time tallies on social media — both giving Spotify free publicity and presenting a piece of themselves to their network. That was especially true in 2023, when Spotify assigned listeners to "Sound Towns," relegating them to places like Burlington, Vt., and Jakarta, Indonesia.

"[Spotify Wrapped] is a way by which we're able to project our identity based upon our cultural consumption," says Marcus Collins, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business (and an R&B fan with a listening age of 40, a few years younger than his real age).

Listening age, for better or worse, is another way to do that.

"It creates another identity project force, another … shock to the system for us to talk about," says Collins, who previously worked on iTunes initiatives at Apple and ran digital strategy for Beyoncé. "If you're 20 and your listening age is 70, what does that say about you?"

OK, so how did Spotify calculate this? 

Spotify did not respond to NPR's request for comment at the time of publication. But on a webpage explaining its process, the company says listening age is based on the idea of a "reminiscence bump," which it describes as the tendency for people to feel most connected to music from their youth.

Research shows that adults' brains especially hold onto memories from their teenage years, both generally and when it comes to music. One 2013 study, for example, found that young adults had strong positive memories of the music that their parents — and even grandparents — loved when they were that age.

"There's this idea that there are life stages … where we are receptive and open to new music, where music sort of shapes the experiences that we have, and as we get past those years, we kind of stay … in that moment in time," Collins says.

Spotify says it combs through a listener's songs to identify the "five-year span of music that you engaged with more than other listeners your age." It hypothesizes that this five-year window matches a listener's "reminiscence bump," assuming they were between 16 and 21 when those songs came out.

"For example, if you listen to way more music from the late 1970s than others your age, we playfully hypothesize that your 'listening' age is 63 today, the age of someone who would have been in their formative years in the late 1970s," it explains.

Collins says this approach not only plays into our sense of nostalgia but also helps "carve out where we sit in the timeline of our … social world." Our listening age tells us more about ourselves and gives us something new to talk about with our friends, especially if it's extreme or unexpected.

"We don't talk about things that are just boring — we talk about the things that are unbelievable," Collins says. "It gets our attention but also sparks this part of us that makes us want to engage."

What's the catch? 

Isn't this just a ploy by Spotify to get people listening and reposting? Is it turning our shock into free publicity? Are we being — the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year — rage baited?

Those are fair questions to ask, Collins says.

"What one may see as a productive way by which people can engage with people, one may also see it as a manipulative way of getting people to engage in consumption," he says. "The truth of the matter is, it's both of them at the same time."

Collins says it's a win-win situation because "the best marketing on the planet is us." Spotify is trying to get business for its platform, he says, but also helping people connect — which in turn helps it even more.

Collins says that he, like most people, learns that Spotify Wrapped is live from friends posting theirs on social media, rather than TV or online advertisements. That in turn makes him want to see and share his stats, "not because I love Spotify so much but because I want to participate in the social practices of my people."

"The best advertising isn't advertising — it's cultural production," he adds.

For its part, Spotify says that each of its slides is "made to be accurate, fair and reflective, while still keeping a sense of mystery and magic."

It's that mystery that some of us may find slightly maddening. Personally? As a fan of '70s music, I was pretty content with my listening age of 70 — until my much younger, cooler sister told me hers: 73.

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Why now: In an Instagram post, owner Sang Yoon cites the increasingly difficult operating environment for independent restaurants in Los Angeles, pointing to changed dining habits and economic pressures that have made it difficult to sustain the bakery in its current form. Yoon also owns Father's Office, the popular gastropub with locations in the Helms Bakery District on the Westside and Santa Monica. He closed Father's Office's Arts District location in September.

The backstory: The original Helms Bakery opened in Culver City in 1931 and became an L.A. icon, known for its fleet of yellow delivery trucks that brought fresh bread directly to Angelenos' doorsteps daily. The trucks became a fixture of the Southern California landscape before the bakery closed in 1969, unable to compete with rising costs and mass-produced supermarket bread.

What's next: Helms Bakery will serve its last customers Dec. 14. Yoon noted in the closure announcement that the team is "looking forward to what the future holds," though no specific plans for a reopening or new location have been announced.

Black people were “grossly overrepresented” in the overall total of those targeted by hate crimes last year in Los Angeles County and made up 51% of racial hate crime victims, according to a new report from the county Commission on Human Relations.

The annual Hate Crime Report, released Thursday, found there were 345 anti-Black crimes recorded in 2024 — the highest number ever recorded since the commission started reporting on hate crimes in 1980.

Last year also saw the largest number of anti-transgender crimes ever documented in the area — 102 — of which “a staggering” 95% were violent, the report states.

In all, there were 1,355 hate crimes reported in 2024, the second highest number of cases ever recorded, following the highest number of hate crimes the previous year prior.

“These numbers remain unprecedented, reflecting both the alarming persistence of hate and the Commission’s ongoing efforts to respond and take action against hate,” the report states.

Hate crimes and incidents

The report has numerous examples of hate crimes.

In one documented case, a trans woman was standing outside her home with her boyfriend when an unknown assailant approached them and called them transphobic and homophobic insults, according to the report. The situation escalated when the attacker struck the victim with a rock on the neck, head and arms.

“Unfortunately, we live in a society where there is a lot of ignorance and a lot of resistance to accepting the fact that transpeople exist in this world,” said Bamby Salcedo, who is with the Trans Latin@Coalition.

She attended the news conference where the report was released.

“We also have a current administration that has been dedicated to targeting our community directly,” said Salcedo, referring to the Trump administration.

In another case, a school principal reported that a classroom was vandalized and ransacked. Inside the classroom, walls, ceilings and equipment were defaced with the word “NAZI” and the N-word racial slur written in pink marker, according to the report.

Second to Black people, the largest group targeted was the LGBT community. The report found 255 crimes motivated by sexual orientation, with nearly three quarters targeting gay men.

Religious groups were the third most commonly targeted by hate crimes. While religious crimes decreased 13%, they still accounted for nearly 260 incidents. Jewish people were the largest religious group to be targeted by far. They accounted for 80% of all victims.

In one case in the West San Fernando Valley, a 15-year-old girl at a high school got into a verbal altercation with a male classmate. He called her a religious slur and punched her multiple times, according to the report.

More on the data

Last year had the highest numeric increase of violent crimes in L.A. County from 464 to 508 — a 9% increase. Seventy-five percent of racial crimes were of a violent nature, according to the report.

The most common criminal offense was simple assault followed by vandalism, aggravated assault and intimidation.

Crimes in which anti-immigrant slurs and taunts were used decreased 31% to 85 last year, the report states. It does not capture hate crimes for this year, when the region saw widespread immigration raids and heightened anti-Latino rhetoric by President Donald Trump and others.

Officials predicted an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-Latino crimes this year.

“We’re probably, unfortunately, going to come out higher for Latino-based hate crimes in relation to the immigration issue that’s going on right now in the region,” LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said at the news conference.

Other takeaways from the report:

• Anti-Latino crimes decreased by 1% to 143.
  
• Crimes targeting Middle Eastern people sharply increased from 22 to 48, the highest count ever in this report.
  
• Crimes with evidence of white supremacist ideology decreased 42% to 123, comprising 9% of all hate crimes.
  
• Reported hate crimes taking place at schools grew 6% from 139 to 147. This is the highest count ever documented in the report. These hate crimes included those taking place in K-12 schools, as well as college and university campuses.
  
• Anti-woman crimes grew 75% from 20 to 35.
  

The Department of Justice has instructed inspectors to stop evaluating prisons and jails using standards designed to protect transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming people from sexual violence, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.

This population is uniquely vulnerable to attacks while incarcerated, data shows, and advocates say the change will put such people in even more danger.

The memo explains that DOJ is in the process of revising federal standards related to the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in order to align with President Trump's executive order on "gender ideology extremism." The Jan. 20 executive order asserts that the United States recognizes only two sexes: male and female.

According to the DOJ memo, while the revision process is underway, detention centers that undergo PREA audits will no longer be inspected using standards specifically designed to keep LGBTQ and intersex people safe. The facilities include federal prisons, state prisons and jails, juvenile detention centers and immigration detention centers. These inspectors, referred to as auditors, are not employed by the DOJ, but are hired by corrections agencies or by individual facilities. The DOJ certifies the auditors and can decertify them.

The DOJ did not respond to NPR's request for comment on the memo. But this is the latest policy move by the Trump administration that removes legal protections for trans people — particularly those who are incarcerated. In his first few days in office, Trump upended long-standing federal policies that would allow incarcerated trans women to be housed in a facility that aligns with their gender identity. Trump has also signed an executive order banning transgender troops from serving openly in the military and another restricting gender-affirming care for minors. These orders have faced a host of legal challenges and are still being fought in court.

PREA mandates regular audits for prisons and jails. Those audits are among the few oversight tools for evaluating whether detention centers follow laws meant to stop rape, harassment and retaliation.

Auditors visit facilities regularly to ensure the staff and officials are doing everything they are supposed to under PREA to prevent sexual abuse and harassment. They interview staff and inmates, tour the facilities and check existing procedures.

Linda McFarlane, executive director of Just Detention International, said this rollback "will immediately put people in danger." JDI is a human rights group dedicated to ending sexual abuse in detention. McFarlane also was involved in advocating for the passage of PREA in 2003.

"It's going to make people less safe," she said. "And when facilities are less safe for the most vulnerable and marginalized, they're less safe for everybody."

In practice, the memo says auditors will no longer review whether facilities house transgender people based on their gender identity and on a case-by-case basis. Among other changes, the memo also says auditors should no longer consider whether sexual assaults were motivated by gender-identity bias.

A major 2015 survey from the criminal justice group Black and Pink found that LGBTQ prisoners were over six times as likely to be sexually assaulted as the general prison population. This is based on survey responses from more than 1,110 inmates. According to Brenda Smith, a professor at American University Washington College of Law and director of The Project on Addressing Prison Rape, the available data doesn't show the whole picture and that rate could be higher.

(In 2003, Smith was appointed to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, which helped develop these very standards.)

She said the current changes laid out in the memo ignore this grim reality.

In the spring, the DOJ made massive funding cuts to crime-victim advocacy programs across the nation, including the National PREA Resource Center — the organization that trains auditors, tracks the outcomes of investigations and provides resources to victims and auditors. More than 360 grants were cut in April, but funding was reinstated for many of them following media reports of the cuts.

The DOJ at the time told NPR that it was "focused on prosecuting criminals, getting illegal drugs off of the streets, and protecting American institutions from toxic DEI and sanctuary city policies. Discretionary funds that are no longer aligned with the administration's priorities are subject to review and reallocation."

The standards designed to protect inmates from sexual violence were developed after years of bipartisan work. They were created in response to overwhelming data, anecdotal evidence and a landmark Human Rights Watch report that showed sexual violence was, and continues to be, a serious problem behind bars.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in 2020, correctional administrators reported 36,264 allegations of sexual victimization in prisons, jails and other adult correctional facilities. The allegations included incidents of sexual violence, harassment and misconduct carried out by inmates against other inmates and by staff members against inmates. The report said 2,351 of those allegations — a rate of 1.2 incidents per 1,000 inmates — were substantiated after investigation.

Lingering confusion

McFarlane's group, Just Detention International, says the DOJ memo lays out the government's plan to permanently revise the PREA standards and marks the first time the administration has publicly indicated what requirements it aims to remove.

But until the revisions are finalized through the ongoing rulemaking process, the memo instructs auditors to mark those standards as "not applicable" during audits — even though the rules technically remain in effect, according to the memo.

In a statement, the National Association of PREA Coordinators, a professional organization for coordinators who ensure agencies' compliance with the law, said that since the DOJ has not finalized any new regulations related to PREA, the current standards remain unchanged.

In the absence of a separate state or municipal law, the statement said, the DOJ memo allows each corrections agency or detention facility "to continue following the regulation or, if they choose, to ignore it."

The memo allows the DOJ "to implement the President's policy while allowing state and local governments to determine how to best meet the needs of incarcerated people who are transgender and gender diverse," according to the statement.

"Whether a system adopts a binary sex approach or one that recognizes a spectrum of gender, we cannot forsake our primary responsibility to keep the most vulnerable individuals in our care safe from those who present a threat of sexual abuse or sexual harassment," the statement said.

It's unclear how the DOJ plans to enforce the memo, and it's already sparked some confusion for at least one auditor.

Kenneth L. James, a PREA auditor for detention centers in multiple states, told NPR in an email that the memo makes the auditors' jobs "both more confusing and more difficult."

He said it will affect how the auditors are trained. "Some auditors have been auditing for over 10 years and conduct audits systematically," James said. "By removing these elements, auditors will have to reevaluate how they are auditing and may miscalculate compliance due to these unexpected changes."

But because PREA has been in place for more than 20 years and the prevalence of sexual abuse within the prison system is well-known, James said, "I believe and trust" that facilities "will do what is best for the incarcerated population."
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