Topline:
With 428 national parks in the country, it can be hard to find a national park to visit in the area.
We got your back: We have all heard of the big ones: Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Sequoia. But how about some that are not as top of mind that warrants a visit?
LAist spoke with experts from the National Park Services in SoCal to find out about some of these lesser-known gems.
Read on... to find out more about three recommended national parks to visit.
With 428 national parks in the US, it can be hard to determine which local one to visit.
We have all heard of the big ones: Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Sequoia. But how about some that are not as top of mind that warrant a visit?
I spoke with folks from the National Park Service to find out about some of these lesser known gems.
Here are three national parks, chosen in order of beginner-friendliness to ones that are for serious hikers.
Level: Easy
Factoid you can impress your friends with: Most people didn’t know there’s a national park in Greater L.A. So which is the closest one to the Los Angeles area? It’s the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
About the park: The park consists of 500 miles of trails, where visitors can hike, mountain bike, camp, and rock climb.
Traveling: The mountains have multiple entrances, but only a few where parking is free.
The Mishe Mowka entrance has free parking and is less than a mile walk from Sandstone Peak. There is also free two-hour parking at the Santa Monica Visitor Center.
Recommended spots for beginners:
For beginners, National Park Service regional public affairs spokesperson Ana Beatriz Cholo recommended the trail at Will Rogers State Historic Park.
“It has great views of the ocean and Santa Monica Mountains. It's called Inspiration Point,” she said.
The mountains drop down directly into the Pacific Ocean, and Cholo said there are 41 miles of coastline available for people to take part in activities.
Another recommendation for new hikers is Paramount Ranch. It’s currently being rebuilt after suffering damage from the Woolsey Fire, but Cholo said don't let that keep you from visiting. The site is open, with trails for both hikers and equestrians. If you are a pop culture junkie, you can take a selfie at the chapel where Westworld was filmed.
Bonus: If you are up for the challenge, Cholo said the Sandstone Peak hike is a rewarding trail for experienced hikers. It reaches the highest point in the Santa Monica Mountains at 3,111 feet and offers breathtaking views.
Level: Medium
Factoid you can impress your friends with: We all know that Joshua Tree National Park is where you can see its namesake plant. But did you know that the Mojave National Preserve was estimated to have over 1 million Joshua trees?
Those in Joshua Tree National Park consist of mainly Western Joshua Trees while Mojave National Preserve has mostly Eastern Joshua trees. Sierra Willoughby, public information officer at the Mojave National Preserve, said that while the visual differences are few, the two trees are different species.
“Here at Mojave, the spiky leaves are a little bit shorter. The bark has a slightly different texture in the way they branch out; they tend to branch out more on the eastern Joshua tree species,” he said.
About the park: Created on Oct. 31, 1994, after the passage of the California Desert Protection Act, the Mojave is the third largest national park in the country outside of Alaska, with a size of up to 1.6 million acres.
Traveling: Willoughby said that many of the roads require four-wheel drive, it was possible to travel to some locations with just a regular car.
He recommended beginners take Interstate 40 and then the Essex Road exit. This will lead visitors to the Hole-in-the-Wall Information Center (yes, that's the name!). While the center is only open four days out of the week, brochures and maps can be found to guide new travelers.
Be sure to “drive like a tortoise” Willoughby said. The long stretches of road in the area can cause people to drive at incredibly fast speeds that often lead to crashes.
“If you're coming in, and you're expecting a national park experience that has a lot of visitor centers and paved roads, and a lot of exhibits and museums — this really isn't the place for that. It's for folks that are really self sufficient [and] that plan ahead really well,” he said.
He warned about the lack of gas stations in the area, so be sure to bring plenty of food, water, and fuel.
Recommended spots: Willoughby suggested that beginners stick to the area near the Hole-in-the-Wall. The location not only has a water fountain and public Wi-Fi, but has easier hiking trails.
“That's where there's a really beautiful one-mile loop trail that goes around and you can see some great petroglyphs and then go up a narrow canyon," he added. "And for folks that are agile enough, [they] can climb up a kind of a dry waterfall where these steel rings are bolted into the side of the mountain and the canyon.”
Bonus: For those looking for a more challenging workout, visitors can hike the Kelso Dune trails up the sand dunes.
Besides hiking, there are other popular activities, including camping, bird watching and stargazing.
Willoughby said there is currently a $12 camping fee that people can pay online, but there are no reservations except for large parties.
Willoughby said that one of the best experiences at the preserve is to see the sunrise or sunset.
“Those are really great life experiences to see a desert sunrise or a desert sunset,” he said.
Level: Hard
Factoid you can impress your friends with: The islands are also known as the “Galapagos Islands of North America,” according to Channel Islands National Park public information officer Jasmine Reinhardt.
“What makes them really unique is that there are nearly 150 endemic species found on the Channel Islands, [that] means they're found nowhere else on Earth,” Reinhardt said.
One such species is the Island Fox. The animal grows to be four or five pounds and about double the size of a house cat.
About the park: The islands are remote. To give you an idea, NPS’s Cholo jokingly calls it “Catalina Island with nothing on it.”
The archipelago consists of eight islands, but only five of the islands are protected as part of the Channel Islands National Park.
The islands are the ancestral homelands of the Chumash people, and home to more than 13,000 years of history.
Traveling: It can take between one to four hours to travel by boat each way, depending the the island you are visiting. Prices start at $66 roundtrip for adults. Check here for prices.
Reinhardt said conditions are constantly changing and that backpackers should make sure to check the weather before traveling.
Before visiting the island, visitors should clean their belongings to prevent the introduction of invasive species, like seeds and bugs.
Recommended spots:
For beginners looking to visit one of the five islands, Reinhardt recommended Scorpion, a site on Santa Cruz Island.
The location had bathrooms, potable water, and picnics with shade near the campgrounds.
There are also two one-mile roundtrip hikes that are not “too rigorous” according to Reinhardt. Plus, there's access to a variety of activities, from scuba diving, to snorkeling to visiting the sea caves along the island.
“It is also a world class destination for kayaking. So there's a lot of people who come out and they will bring their own kayaks, or the park also has an official kayak concessionaire,” Reinhardt said.
Bonus: More experienced travelers can try backpacking. One recommendation from Reinhardt is to visit the Painted Cave, one of the largest sea caves in the world.
“It's this really large and spectacular cave that when you are coming back from Santa Rosa Island, depending if the conditions are right, sometimes island packers will go close and into just the entrance of the cave,” Reinhardt said.
Reinhardt recommended visitors “dress like an onion” when visiting the islands, with an emphasis on bringing sun-protection.
“Most of the islands are pretty exposed," Reinhardt said. "There's very limited shade available depending on where you're at. So wearing a hat, wearing some type of long sleeve, and pants, that's lightweight, that's going to protect your skin is really important.”
For more information to plan out your next trip to a national park, visit the NPS website.
Topline:
The Washington Post's new offering, "Your Personal Podcast," uses artificial intelligence to customize podcasts for its users, blending the algorithm you might find in a news feed with the convenience of portable audio.
What critics are saying: The AI podcast immediately made headlines — and drew criticisms from people questioning its accuracy, and the motives behind it.
What the Post is saying: Bailey Kattleman, head of product and design at the Post, calls it "an AI-powered audio briefing experience" — and one that will soon let listeners talk back to it.
Read on ... for more details and answers to the biggest questions about this new experiment.
It's not your mother's podcast — or your father's, or anyone else's. The Washington Post's new offering, "Your Personal Podcast," uses artificial intelligence to customize podcasts for its users, blending the algorithm you might find in a news feed with the convenience of portable audio.
The podcast is "personalized automatically based on your reading history" of Post articles, the newspaper says on its help page. Listeners also have some control: At the click of a button, they can alter their podcast's topic mix — or even swap its computer-generated "hosts."
The AI podcast immediately made headlines — and drew criticisms from people questioning its accuracy, and the motives behind it.
Nicholas Quah, a critic and staff writer for Vulture and New York magazine who writes a newsletter about podcasts, says the AI podcast is an example of the Post's wide-ranging digital experiments — but one that didn't go quite right.
"This is one of many technologically, digitally oriented experiments that they're doing" that is aimed at "getting more audience, breaking into new demographics," he says. Those broader efforts range from a generative AI tool for readers to a digital publishing platform. But in this case, Quah adds, "It feels like it's compromising the core idea of what the news product is."
On that help page, the newspaper stresses that the podcast is in its early beta phase and "is not a traditional editorial podcast."
Bailey Kattleman, head of product and design at the Post, calls it "an AI-powered audio briefing experience" — and one that will soon let listeners talk back to it.
"In an upcoming release, they'll be able to actually interact and ask follow up questions to dig in deeper to what they've just heard," Kattleman says in an interview with NPR.
As technically sophisticated as that sounds, there are many questions about the new podcast's accuracy — even its ability to correctly pronounce the names of Post journalists it cites. Semafor reported that errors, cited by staffers at the Post, included "misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source's quotes" as the paper's own stance.
In the newspaper's app, a note advises listeners to "verify information" by checking the podcast against its source material.
In a statement, the Washington Post Guild — which represents newsroom employees and other staff — tells NPR, "We are concerned about this new product and its rollout," alleging that it undermines the Post's mission and its journalists' work.
Citing the paper's standing practice of issuing a correction if a story contains an error, the guild added, "why would we support any technology that is held to a different, lower standard?"
So, why is the Post rolling out an AI podcast? And will other news and audio outlets follow its lead?
Here are some questions, and answers:
"The Post has certainly gone out on a ledge here among U.S. legacy publishers," Andrew Deck tells NPR. But he adds that the newspaper isn't the first to experiment with AI-generated podcasts in the wider news industry.
Deck, who writes about journalism and AI for Harvard University's Nieman Lab, points to examples such as the BBC's My Club Daily, an AI-generated soccer podcast that lets users hear content related to their favorite club. In 2023, he adds, "a Swiss public broadcaster used voice clones of real radio hosts on the air."
News outlets have also long offered an automated feature that converts text articles into computer-generated voices.
Even outside of the news industry, AI tools for creating podcasts and other audio are more accessible than ever. Some promise to streamline the editing process, while others can synthesize documents or websites into what sounds like a podcast conversation.
"It's cost-effective," says Gabriel Soto, senior director of research at Edison Research, which tracks the podcast industry. "You cut out many of the resources and people needed to produce a podcast (studios, writers, editors, and the host themselves)."
And if a brand can create a successful AI virtual podcast in today's highly competitive podcasting market, Soto adds, it could become a valuable intellectual property in the future.
Deck says that if the Post's experiment works, the newspaper "may be able to significantly scale up and expand its audio journalism offerings, without investing in the labor that would normally be required to expand."
In an interview, Kattleman stresses the new product isn't meant to replace traditional podcasts: "We think they have a unique and enduring role, and that's not going away at the Post."
For Deck, the level of customization it promises is an innovation. Being able to tailor a podcast specific to one person, he says, "is arguably beyond what any podcast team in journalism right now can produce manually."
In an example the Post published, listeners can choose from voice options with names like "Charlie and Lucy" and "Bert and Ernie."
Kattleman says her team was working from the idea that for an audience, there isn't a "one size fits all" when it comes to AI and journalism.
"Some people want that really straight briefing style; some people prefer something more conversational and more voicey," she says.
Quah says that adding an AI podcast is a bid to make stories accessible to a broader audience.
He says that with the podcast, the Post seems to be trying to reach young people who "don't want to read anymore, they just want to listen to the news."
A key goal, Kattleman says, is to make podcasts more flexible, to appeal to younger listeners who are on the go.
Outlining the process behind the Post's AI podcast, Kattleman says, "Everything is based on Washington Post journalism."
An LLM, or large language model, converts a story into a short audio script, she says. A second LLM then vets the script for accuracy. After the final script is stitched together, Kattleman adds, the voice narrates the episode.
Soto, of Edison Research, says that 1 in 5 podcast consumers say they've listened to an AI-narrated podcast.
But, he adds that for podcast listeners, "many prefer the human connection, accepting AI tools to assist in creating the content, but not in executing or hosting the podcast."
The new AI podcast reminds Deck a bit of the hyper-personalized choices for users offered by TikTok and other social media.
"There is a level of familiarity
and, arguably, comfort with algorithmic curation among younger audiences," he says.
But while younger audiences tend to be tech savvy, many of them are also thoughtful about authenticity and connection.
"Community is at the core of why people listen to podcasts," Soto says.
Then there's the idea of a host or creator's personality, which drives engagement on TikTok and other platforms.
"These creators have built a relationship with their audience — and maybe even trust — even if they haven't spoken to sources themselves," Deck says. "This type of news content is a far cry from the disembodied banter of AI podcast hosts."
One big potential consequence is the loss of jobs — and for companies, the loss of talent.
"The automation of it kind of erases the entire sort of voice performance industry," Quah says. "There are people who do this for a living," he adds, who could "produce higher quality versions of these recordings."
There are also concerns that, if AI chooses a story and controls how it's presented, it might create an echo chamber, omitting context or skepticism that a journalist would likely provide.
"AI-based news personalization tends to land firmly in the camp of delivering audiences what they want to know," Deck says.
Deck says he's willing to give the Post's AI podcast a bit of time to see how it plays out. But Deck does have a chief concern: "I can say point blank, generative AI models hallucinate."
And when AI models are wrong, he says, they're often confidently so.
Blurring boundaries between human and AI voices could also raise questions of trust — a critical factor for a news organization.
As Soto puts it, "What happens when your audience expects content from the real you and ends up finding AI instead?"
Topline:
Sad news for pretty much anyone who went out to see bands big and small over the past few decades. A storied Orange County indie venue is closing down after some 30 years.
Why it matters: Over the years the venue has hosted budding local bands and big acts alike, including No Doubt and Turnstile.
Last shows: Chain Reaction in Anaheim announced on their Instagram that their final shows will be on Dec. 18 and Dec. 19. The Rancho Santa Margarita band Movements will headline.
No word on why the venue is shutting down.
"This call wasn't made quickly. We wrestled with it and have ultimately made the decision to close our doors," said Chain Reaction management on Instagram.
"We want to thank you for the friendships and memories made in our special club. Thank you for supporting us through the years and when we needed it most," the post continued.
Topline:
Storylines about abortion and conversations about it showed up on television 65 times this year, on prestigious dramas like The Pitt and Call the Midwife, on reality shows such as W.A.G.s to Riches and Love is Blind and on lowbrow animated comedies like Family Guy and South Park. That's about the same as last year. In 2024, TV shows featured 66 such plotlines.
Why it matters: "I think there still is a lot of stigma, even in allegedly liberal Hollywood," says researcher Steph Herold. She says the report, which has come out for about a decade, reflects a profound lack of accurate representation of abortion use in America.
Read on ... for more details from the annual Abortion Onscreen report.
Storylines about abortion and conversations about it showed up on television 65 times this year, on prestigious dramas like The Pitt and Call the Midwife, on reality shows such as W.A.G.s to Riches and Love is Blind and on lowbrow animated comedies like Family Guy and South Park. That's about the same as last year. In 2024, TV shows featured 66 such plotlines.
But in the past few years, there's been a significant drop in the number of characters who actually went through with an abortion. 37% obtained an abortion in 2025, a 14% decline since 2023.
That's according to the annual Abortion Onscreen report. It comes from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research program on abortion and reproductive health based at the University of California San Francisco.
"I think there still is a lot of stigma, even in allegedly liberal Hollywood," says researcher Steph Herold. She says the report, which has come out for about a decade, reflects a profound lack of accurate representation of abortion use in America. For example, she points to research showing that about 60% of real life Americans who seek an abortion deal with some sort of barrier.
"But only about a third of people who are characters on screen face any kind of barrier to abortion," Herold said. "Whether it was not being able to come up with the cost of the abortion, not having somebody to watch their kids or cover for them at work, having to deal with clinics that are miles away, or in other states having insurance that wouldn't cover the cost." Most TV shows in 2025 depicting women struggling to get abortions focused on legal obstacles in the past and present.
On TV, 80% of characters seeking abortions are upper or middle class, but in real life, most abortion patients struggle to make ends meet. "This [disparity] obscures the role that poverty plays in obstructing access to abortion, and perhaps explains why we so rarely see plotlines in which characters wrestle with financial barriers to abortion access," the study says.
This year, a teenager on The Pitt sought abortion pills to end her pregnancy — one of only three stories depicting medication abortion out of 65 plotlines about abortion this year. That's another disparity between representation on-screen and real-world numbers: research shows that abortion pills account for the majority of abortions in the U.S. Another difference: only 8% of people seeking abortion on TV are parents. In real life, most abortion patients have at least one child.
It is unrealistic, says Herold, to expect TV to perfectly reflect current abortion use in the U.S., but she said she was disappointed by certain trends. Fewer characters this year received emotional support around their abortions, and more shows, she said, including Chicago Med, 1923, Breathless and Secrets We Keep featured plotlines that emphasized shame and stigma around abortions, especially because of religion. These storylines, the report says, "both obscure the diversity of religious observance among people having abortions, portraying religious patients as exclusively Christian, and also only associating religion with prohibiting abortion, instead of being a meaningful or supportive part of someone's abortion decision-making and experience."
But even though abortion has long been a hot-button political issue, Herold says millions of Americans have had some sort of experience with abortions. "Whether it's having one themselves or helping a daughter or a friend," she said, adding that stories that reflect a diversity of abortion experiences will be familiar to many viewers.
One bright spot, she added, was that television is doing a better job of reflecting the racial realities of abortion. A slight majority of characters in abortion plotlines are people of color — and although they are by far the majority of abortion seekers in real life, this marks a notable improvement from a decade ago, when TV shows more often portrayed women seeking abortions as wealthy and white.
Topline:
Geminids, the strongest meteor shower of the year hit their peak this weekend.
Why it matters: Over 150 meteors per hour are expected to burn through the night sky tonight and Sunday.
Read on ... to find the best places and learn the best time to watch the celestial phenomenon.
Geminids, the strongest meteor shower of the year, hit a peak this weekend, sending over 150 meteors per hour through the night sky tonight and Sunday.
Vanessa Alarcon, an astronomical observer at the Griffith Observatory, says despite being the best and brightest every year, these meteors don’t tend to get many fans.
" It's usually not as heavily attended, I think because it's a lot colder in the winter. So it's definitely a deterrent, but technically, it's more meteors per hour than the Perseids are," Alarcon said.
The Perseids are typically visible between July and August, but this summer, they were mostly drowned out because of light pollution from the full moon.
Alarcon says it will be a different story this weekend.
" The Geminids ... there's about a 25% crescent moon. So it's actually going be even better than the Perseids," Alarcon said.
For the best viewing experience, you'll have to brave the cold of the deserts and mountains at night, but it should be worth the trip.
"You should go to a darker sky," Alarcon said. "And basically, you just want to get away from the city lights — anything away from the city lights is going to be an improvement from trying to watch it at home."
The Geminids are notable for being exceptionally bright, burning like fireballs for several seconds. The meteors can be seen after 8 p.m. tonight, Alarcon said, peaking between 1:20 and 2:20 a.m. and visible until 5:20 a.m.
