The Brief

The Toronto Blue Jays, with a 4-3 win in Monday night's American League Championship Series Game 7 over the Seattle Mariners, are headed back to the World Series for the first time in more than 30 years.

Their opponent: the $340 million buzzsaw known as the Los Angeles Dodgers.

With the biggest payroll in baseball, the Dodgers are baseball's most successful franchise in recent years, with two World Series titles and five National League pennants over the past nine seasons. Now, they are four wins away from becoming the sport's first repeat champions in a quarter century.

The Blue Jays emerged in July as one of the best teams in baseball and ended the season 94-68 on top of the AL East, a remarkable turnaround from 2024's last-place finish in the division. In the ALDS, Toronto's bats overwhelmed their division rival New York Yankees, pouring on 34 runs over four games.

Still, Toronto needed all seven games of the ALCS to return to the World Series. The Mariners took the Blue Jays to the brink with 14 home runs and some dominant pitching performances that helped them jump out to a 2-0 series lead.

But the Mariners, the only MLB franchise to have never reached the World Series, cracked as the pressure mounted late in the series. With a 3-2 series lead, needing just one win for their first-ever pennant, the Mariners committed three errors in a Game 6 loss, then, after taking a 3-1 lead in Game 7, allowed a late three-run home run by Toronto's George Springer to dash their hopes again.

"It was never a doubt that one of these guys was going to come through. It was just a matter of when," said Toronto pitcher Jeff Hoffman in a TV interview with Fox after the game. "We kept it close enough for long enough, and they did."

It is Toronto's first trip to the World Series since 1993, when the Blue Jays won back-to-back titles.

Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitches against the Milwaukee Brewers in game four of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium last Friday. Ohtani had ten strikeouts and hit three home runs in a legendary win.

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By contrast, the 93-69 Dodgers stumbled at times during the regular season, including several late-game collapses by a shaky bullpen and a humbling September sweep by the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates.

But in the postseason, Los Angeles has looked unstoppable. In the NLDS, the 96-66 Philadelphia Phillies managed only a single win over the Dodgers. And in the NLCS, Los Angeles swept the 97-65 Milwaukee Brewers.

The Dodgers' crown jewel, the two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, single-handedly powered Los Angeles to their Game 4 NLCS-clinching victory with three home runs as a batter and, as starting pitcher, 6.1 shutout innings with 10 strikeouts — a performance so herculean that it was instantly in the conversation for the greatest individual game of all-time.

In other words, the Dodgers are firing on every cylinder — and they will be an even bigger challenge for Toronto than Seattle. The Blue Jays excel at putting balls into play, which worked to their advantage in the ALCS. But Los Angeles is a better defensive team than the Mariners, and their starting pitchers are a level above, too.

But Los Angeles does have a weakness: their bullpen, which lost plenty of games for the Dodgers in the second half of the season. The Blue Jays could have an opportunity there if they can put more pressure on the Dodgers' starters than the Brewers did (just two earned runs over four games).

Game 1 of the World Series is set for Friday, Oct. 24, in Toronto.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The L.A. County Medical Examiner has released the cause of death for Emily Beutner, the daughter of former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner.

The 22-year-old died from the effects of a combination of drugs, including two linked to the opioid known as kratom — mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine — according to the statement released by the medical examiner on Friday.

A county health official told our partner CBS L.A. that kratom products are sometimes sold as natural remedies but are illegal and unsafe.

The other two substances cited as causes of death were quetiapine and mirtazapine — the former is an antipsychotic medication, and the latter is used to treat depression, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The former Loyola Marymount University student was found alone and suffering from medical distress by L.A. County Fire Department personnel shortly after midnight in a field by a highway in Palmdale on January 6. She was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead soon after.

After his daughter's death, Beutner dropped out of the L.A. mayoral race to unseat incumbent Karen Bass.

The Medical Examiner said the manner of death was ruled as suicide.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, you can dial the mental health lifeline at 988.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

There’s a familiar shorthand history of the L.A. band Los Lobos: four working-class Chicano musicians in their early twenties — David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano, Louie Pérez and Cesar Rosas — got together in 1973 and began playing traditional Mexican music. That’s the music they recorded for their first album, 1978’s “Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.).” 

A few years later, they moved on to the other music they grew up listening to — rock, R&B and blues. After adding saxophonist Steve Berlin and releasing two critically acclaimed albums in the mid-1980s, they were tapped to perform Ritchie Valens’ songs for the hit 1987 film, “La Bamba.” The soundtrack album topped the Billboard charts and catapulted the band to rock star status. 

But instead of continuing along that gilded path, they reverted to the traditional sounds — both in Spanish and English — that meant so much to them. Fifty-plus years after starting out, Los Lobos are still at it, and now a new documentary is digging deep into their ups and downs — and how they always stayed true to their East L.A. roots.

“Los Lobos: Native Sons” — co-directed by Doug Blush and Piero F. Giunti — had its world premiere on Sunday at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas. The band was in attendance, proudly walking the red carpet in front of the historic Paramount Theatre. The film, which took 4 ½ years to complete, combines archival photos and film/video footage (17 boxes of material from Pérez alone), alongside contemporary interviews with the band members, their families and a host of admirers, including Linda Ronstadt, Rubén Blades, Dolores Huerta, Cheech Marin, Edward James Olmos, George Lopez and others.

“I thought the film was great,” said Pérez, speaking from his home a few days after the premiere. “There were tears, cheers … I was moved.”

The new documentary “Los Lobos: Native Sons” was 4 1/2 years in the making.

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Pérez said he was particularly touched by a part in the film when his wife talks about the song, “A Matter of Time,” off the band’s album, “How Will the Wolf Survive?” from 1984. Pérez noted that he and Hidalgo wrote the song about a Mexican migrant worker who has to part ways with his family:

In the film, Mary Pérez becomes emotional as she describes how the song was just as much about the band members leaving their families behind when they went on tour, the kids waking up to find their fathers gone.

“That song became our narrative,” Louie Pérez said in our interview. In the film, he bluntly states that the band “wouldn’t exist without the women in our lives.” Those women were the den mothers of the wolfpack, holding down the fort at home, accompanying the band on tour when possible, with some of the kids eventually jamming with their dads onstage.

Personal stories aside, the documentary also poetically frames the band’s — and the country’s — evolution over a half-century. “I saw the face of America change,” Pérez says in the film. “And that face is brown.”

Days after the premiere, Pérez reflected on the band’s journey. “All our success, all our hard work — we’re fortunate to be where we are considering where we came from.”

Los Lobos continue to perform after 53 years as a band.

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From Garfield High School to playing at weddings and quinceañeras to performing in the Obama White House and winning four Grammy Awards, Los Lobos has exemplified — indeed, helped define — what it means to be Mexican American.

“We set out to de-mystify what a Mexican was, what a Chicano was,” Pérez said. “We needed to let people know who we were.”

And that they did, and continue to do — for 53 years and counting. 

“At this point in my life,” said the 73-year-old Pérez, “I’ve never been more proud to be who I am.”

On Friday, K-pop's biggest group, BTS, released its highly anticipated new album, Arirang. It's the first project featuring all seven members of the boy band in nearly four years, following a hiatus for mandatory military service in South Korea.

Individual members — particularly Jimin and Jung Kook — have achieved significant solo success since then, but the return of BTS in full force signals a massive moment for the genre the group helped turn into a global powerhouse. In 2018, BTS' album Love Yourself: Tear became the first K-pop album ever to top the Billboard 200 chart. The band would go on to reach that milestone five more times in four years.

Since BTS' hiatus, K-pop has reached unprecedented heights in mainstream culture, largely thanks to groups like Blackpink, NewJeans, and of course, the artists behind Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters (which led to the first Grammy win for a K-pop song). But even during their time out of the spotlight, BTS' impact — and the promise of its return — has lingered over the genre.

"It's interesting to me because a lot of people are crediting 'Golden' and KPop Demon Hunters with bringing people into K-pop," Billboard journalist Tetris Kelly told NPR's Morning Edition. "But I don't think that the success of even 'Golden' would've happened if BTS didn't already push that door open for this kind of moment."

K-pop may have grown (and Westernized) during BTS' time away — but if the preliminary numbers for their comeback are any indication, pop culture (and their fervent fanbase, known as the "ARMY") has been eagerly awaiting the band's return. Here are just a few ways to measure how enormous the impact is expected to be:

Arirang album presales

In January, South Korean news outlets reported that presales for Arirang — advance orders ahead of the album's release — had likely surpassed 4 million copies within one week of the album being announced. In the U.S., BTS' last release, the 2022 compilation Proof, sold 314,000 copies in its first week. Arirang seems likely to eclipse that mark.

Concert in Seoul

On Saturday, BTS will perform a free concert in Seoul's Gwanghwamun Square. Although about 22,000 fans secured tickets to the show, authorities expect closer to a quarter of a million people to show up to the event. Billboard journalist Tetris Kelly told NPR's Morning Edition that the anticipated crowds have activated security concerns, leading authorities to seal off around 30 buildings in the surrounding areas. According to the BBC, Army members had already started gathering on Friday afternoon, and the city of Seoul had deployed thousands of police officers to monitor the area.

Luckily for fans around the world, Netflix will also be live-streaming the performance in 190 countries at 4 a.m. Saturday. It will be the streaming giant's first time globally broadcasting a concert, and tens of millions of viewers are expected to watch. In interviews with the press, Brandon Riegg, Netflix's vice president of nonfiction series and sports, suggested the show could be part of a longer-term investment in South Korean culture.

"We have high expectations with this inaugural concert, but it certainly should signal a greater appetite that we have to work with other artists and labels throughout Korea and Asia in general," Riegg told Reuters.

On March 27, Netflix will also release a documentary about the making of Arirang and the band's blockbuster return.

Sold out tour

After Saturday's concert, BTS will keep the momentum going — first at an intimate performance hosted by Spotify in New York City, and then on a sold out global tour that kicks off in South Korea on April 9.

The Arirang tour, or at least this initial leg, which spans across multiple continents and more than 70 shows, will extend into the spring of 2027. Within just a few days of tickets going on sale, all of the North America, Europe and U.K. stadium dates sold out. The total number of tickets sold, according to Live Nation: close to 2.4 million. The first two dates of the tour will also be screened in movie theaters around the world. Bloomberg projects that BTS' tour could rival Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which is the most successful tour of all time.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Curious gardeners have been noticing more grasshoppers — a lot more. And inquiring minds want to know why — and what can be done about these insects with a reputation for destruction.

" So what happens is the standard grasshopper that we think of can become a locust if the weather conditions are right," said Lynn Kimsey, a distinguished professor emerita at UC Davis who specializes in bugs.  "In a true outbreak, they would be, you know, crossing roads by the thousands."

We are nowhere approaching outbreak proportions in Southern California.

But Eric Middleton, an entomologist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources who works in pest management, can answer the why.

Big shocker: It's the weather

"For a grasshopper population to grow, you need a wet winter or spring so there's a lot of vegetation growing," said Middleton, who is based in San Diego. "Then you need warm conditions, which allow the young grasshoppers to emerge."

Think back to the intense bouts of rain Los Angeles received over the last months, the green hillsides and recent heatwave — these are the exact conditions for a grasshopper explosion.

"It's the same thing that triggers locust outbreaks in the Middle East and North Africa, or North Dakota, places like this," Kimsey said. "It's pretty common."

Many species of grasshopper skip and scatter around Southern California. Probably the most common, Middleton said, is the gray bird grasshopper. They're 2 to 3 inches long, with larger wings, and  their populations start peaking around now.

Another common species is  the valley grasshopper, which is about an inch long.

What you should do? Less is more

Depending on the species' life cycle, both Middleton and Kimsey said they expect this overpopulation to taper off by summer.

"It's not going to be a permanent thing," Kimsey said. " Usually they become bird food or mammal food because everything likes to eat them."

If they pose a threat to your garden, don't go reaching for insecticides, the experts said.

 "Usually, they don't do a ton of damage to your garden," Middleton said.

So try catching them by hand or using temporary netting.

" This too shall pass," he added.

Alternatively, Kimsey said, they make a killer snack.

"They really are quite tasty. I highly recommend it," she said. "Like French fries, especially if you fry them."