The Brief

Larry Mantle: conversations with my son

On a warm March night nearly 40 years ago, I was walking from the studios of KPCC to my car when I was approached with a question that would set my professional course for the next four decades. Our then-General Manager Bob Miller was also on his way to the parking lot. He offered kind words about my on-air work as the station’s News Director and anchor of KPCC’s newscasts. Bob asked if there was something more personality-driven I might want to do. I described a daily interview show I’d been thinking about with a call-in element that would allow me talk about the day’s news with our extremely informed and intelligent listeners.

A month later, AirTalk went on the air.

At that time, public radio leaders were rather dismissive of call-in shows. This was well before NPR’s Talk of the Nation came and went. The accepted model was closer to Fresh Air, with its focus on professors, journalists, and creatives. That model has, of course, produced greatness, even beyond the tremendously popular and important work of Terry Gross. Nevertheless, I really wanted listeners to be at the center of our program. I could’ve never foreseen the level of support we’ve received throughout Southern California.

Now, as I approach four decades as AirTalk’s host, I’ve been thinking about new opportunities, like podcasting. As more public radio listeners embrace the format, I’ve been wondering what it might allow me to do that AirTalk doesn’t. I asked myself a variant of Bob Miller’s 1985 question, “Would podcasting provide a platform to do work that’s more personal than what I do on the radio each day?” LAist management thought so, and suggested I team with my son, Desmond, to share the kinds of conversations that regularly take place in our home.

AirTalk host Larry Mantles "interviews" his young son Desmond who was a toddler at the time. Now father and son are co-hosting a podcast from LAist Studios, Passing the Mantle.

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Courtesy of Larry Mantle and family

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Courtesy of Larry Mantle and family

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It’s hard for me to overstate how much I’ve learned from years of talking with him. Many times I’ve brought into on-air conversations on AirTalk points that Desmond raised at home. I hope that his mother and I helped expose him to a world of nuance and complexity. Desmond certainly gave us an even wider range of questions to consider.

He just finished his first year of law school, and we’ve been able to continue our two decades of back-and-forth on politics, religion, language, law, sexuality and movies. We’re looking forward to bringing these freewheeling, highly personal, conversations to Passing the Mantle listeners.

Desmond Mantle: learning from my father

Growing up, I got two common questions when people found out that my father was Larry Mantle. The first was, “Who the heck is Larry Mantle?” But more frequently, I got this question: “What’s your dad like at home?” The answer is that he’s essentially the same at home as he is on air, so much so that my mom occasionally teases him for sounding like a live announcer when we’re just sitting in our living room. The next question folks would often ask me is, “What’s it like having him as your dad?”

That question was harder to answer because Dad is the only father I’ve had, and with no siblings or first cousins, I had very limited exposure to what another kind of childhood would look like. I went with my parents to jazz concerts, watched classic films with them and talked with them about the world. When Dad would pick me up from school, we’d talk in depth about the subjects he had covered on his show, the material I’d learned in classes and the current events of the day. I vividly remember my elementary school peers being shocked that I watched the news every morning with my parents. But to me, those moments are cherished memories of the only childhood I knew, unusual though it may have been.

Because my father and I are rather unique, it hasn’t always been easy being ourselves. We’re both only children, and although we’re both lucky to have many friends, we’re also well-practiced in the art of being happy while being alone. We both love the same styles of music, the same era of films, the same type of humor and the same kinds of foods. We had to change clothes quickly before one of our Passing the Mantle recordings because we had accidentally dressed identically without communicating beforehand. Though we’re grateful for the love and friendship we receive from those around us, it does sometimes feel like we’re two of a kind — and the only two of that kind.

Desmond Mantle and his father Larry sit in the AirTalk studio at LAist. They are co-hosting a new podcast from LAist Studios, Passing the Mantle

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Ashley Balderrama

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LAist

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With that realization has come a tremendous degree of mutual respect. Since I was an infant, my father communicated with me the same way he communicated with adults. Our conversations covered subjects from psychology to philosophy, economics to history and much, much more. I learned plenty of new things in school, and then in college, and now in law school. But to this day, the largest single source of my knowledge is simply asking my dad questions and having him know the answers. As I’ve collected more knowledge, I’ve increasingly been able to inform my father in return.

After so many years of having these conversations, we decided that sharing them with an audience is a great way for us to grapple with intergenerational trends and differences, and show listeners what my dad is like in a more intimate setting.

We’re very grateful for this opportunity. We hope you enjoy!

Passing the Mantle premieres July 8. Take a listen to our first episode. 

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Passing the Mantle is a new podcast from LAist Studios about family, curiosity and the things that change — and stay the same — across generations. In this first episode, Larry Mantle and his son, Desmond, 23, talk about their wide-ranging interests and shared drive to understand why things are the way they are, and discuss whether today's generation is as intellectually curious as Larry's peers in the 1970s.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

Is Gen Z less curious than the Baby Boomers?

Passing the Mantle is a new podcast from LAist Studios about family, curiosity and the things that change — and stay the same — across generations. In this first episode, Larry Mantle and his son, Desmond, 23, talk about their wide-ranging interests and shared drive to understand why things are the way they are, and discuss whether today's generation is as intellectually curious as Larry's peers in the 1970s.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

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Why now: Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends author McCabe joined LAist’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle to share her friend-making advice with listeners, and we heard from listeners on how they make friends.

The local angle: With geography, jobs and traffic all making the act of “hanging out” a challenge, listeners shared their friend-catching tips.

Matt in Eagle Rock said, “It takes two people to make that friendship work; you have to put the effort into it. That is the harder part as you get older. I started in an adult dodgeball league, which I had never done in my life. Now I’ve been doing comedy, it's really about getting to know the people.”

Priyanka in Orange chimed in, "As I have grown older and moved from college in training for so-called adult life, it’s become harder to find friends that you find relatable and who are as invested in the friendship as you yourself are. The new thing I have discovered is Bumble for friends… and so far it's been a good experience.”

Sydney in Koreatown said, “Transitioning from a gay male to a transwoman, I have lost some friends from transitioning, but I have also gained some deeper friendships. It has been a profound and absolutely amazing experience finding common ground, and finding other gay males that support my transition, and finding other trans women that I have a deepening relationship with too.”

Raul in Long Beach also weighed in, saying, “You don't need social media. No matter what anyone says, it really is not necessary to meet new people. When you’re not on it, it motivates you to talk to people in person, it commits your attention to them face to face.”

Listen to the full segment to hear McCabe’s advice on finding and maintaining friends.

Laura Terry dreamed of having kids — a family she could call her own. But there was one challenge: She wasn't interested in dating, marriage, or partnering up.

So, she came up with an idea for an unusual present to give herself.

"For my 39th birthday, I bought a vial of donor sperm," says Terry, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., and works at a top management consulting firm.

She started the process of having a baby via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, soon after. This path hadn't occurred to her initially, even though she has a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology. There just wasn't anyone in her orbit who had done it. Her epiphany came from a book in which the author described her own journey with IVF.

"I had never heard of being a single mom by choice before that," says Terry, who is now 44. "It was like a light bulb went off."

That light bulb is going off for a lot of single women. Today, 44% of women in America are unpartnered; finding someone and settling down has become less of a priority when they're in their 20s or even 30s. And when some of them are ready to have kids, they aren't letting singlehood deter them.

Who gets to be a parent is being reshaped by increased access to IVF

The nation's first IVF baby was born in 1981, when the process was such a novelty that she was referred to as a "test tube baby." Since then, its use has surged in the United States, and today, IVF accounts for almost 100,000 births each year. That's up 50% from 10 years ago.

With IVF, which accounts for around 2% of births in America, a woman's eggs are retrieved from her body and fertilized with sperm in a lab. The resulting embryo is then implanted in her uterus, with the hope it will lead to a pregnancy.

This process has opened the door for many people who couldn't otherwise conceive children and reshaped who gets to be a parent, including more LGBTQ+ couples.

It has also become a big driver in the number of older single mothers in the U.S. at a time when the country's overall birth rate is declining. The number of unmarried women in their 40s who are having babies has grown by 250% in the last 30 years, according to data from the government. A portion of these women have partners, but many don't.

There are many reasons for this rise, says Rosanna Hertz, author of the book Single By Chance, Mothers by Choice. Increasingly, she says, young women are pursuing higher education, focusing on their careers, or fulfilling personal goals such as traveling around the world or buying homes.

And when they're ready to partner up in their mid-30s, "there's no one to settle down with," says Hertz, a sociologist with a focus on gender and family at Wellesley College. "So, am I going to spend my time waiting for somebody to come along?"

Hertz says her research shows most women who want a family would rather do it with a partner. For them, IVF is Plan B. But as their reproductive windows narrow with age, some decide to move forward by themselves.

A framed photo of Laura Terry with her mother, Jo, holding baby Eleanor.

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Jessica Ingram

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Becoming a mother is a marker of adulthood for them, Hertz says.

"There is a sense that I'm now ready to do something that is selfless, that involves the care and nurture of another human being and be part of a broader community," she says. "What a child does is tie you into a community."

Do I really want to have a baby? How do I choose a donor?

Terry saw that care and community in her own sister's family, when it drew her to Nashville to spend time with her nephews.

Once she knew she wanted to be a mom, she started mapping out her path through the language she understood, which is spreadsheets and PowerPoints.

"I made a decision tree," she says.

The root of that tree was a fundamental question: Did she really want a child? It branched from there to examine how she would become a mother and which path would give her the best chance of having a baby. It led her to IVF.

Soon enough, she was faced with another decision: choosing a sperm donor. Faced with an array of choices, she resorted to another spreadsheet "that was like 30 rows long and 30 columns wide."

In it, she started by listing factors like race, height, ethnicity and education. Then she narrowed it down to a few that really mattered to her: "I cared about some physical attributes to look like me. And I cared about family health history."

Terry was extremely lucky with her IVF process: She got pregnant on her first try. She gave birth to Eleanor in 2021 and Margaret came two years later.

"I should be quite grateful for what my process was," Terry says. "The results were beyond what you statistically expect."

Terry actively tries to find ways to engage her kids. Sometimes she buys a "decoy cucumber" so that when she's prepping dinner, 4-year-old Eleanor can peel it and feel helpful. Terry says, "It's a great use of 75 cents for an extra cucumber."

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Jessica Ingram

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She's right: The odds of conceiving a child with just one try of IVF are below 50% after a woman turns 35. And the chances drop rapidly each year after that. Many women try multiple cycles of IVF with no guarantee that they'll get pregnant.

Pregnancies at an older age can also carry health risks for both mom and child, with a high chance of miscarriage. All of this can take a huge physical and emotional toll.

Women with higher education are the top users of IVF

When Kate Snyder, who lives in northern New Jersey, was ready to have a kid, she looked for the right guy. "And, you know," she says, "it didn't happen."

Snyder was already in her 40s when she started thinking of IVF.

Kate Snyder and her 2-year-old daughter get ready for day care at their home in northern New Jersey. An interior designer and artist, Snyder made the decision to undergo IVF when she was in her 40s.

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Thalia Juarez

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"Once I came to terms with the fact that the father of my child doesn't have to be the person I end up with, and you separate the two, it's very freeing," she says. "And it just took the pressure off."

Now 48, she is the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who loves to talk and fills their home with chatter. "She comes home from day care with gossip," says Snyder, who is an interior designer and artist. "She's telling me who pooped their pants and how the teacher had a lollipop today and this person got out of her cot."

Snyder says Google, her former employer, covered a small portion of the cost of freezing her eggs. But she paid for the IVF process herself.

Each time a woman tries to get pregnant via IVF, the cost can range from $15,000 to over $30,000. It's why IVF is out of reach for many.

Snyder wasn't prepared in her mid-40s for the amount of carrying her baby needed in the first two years, whether it was up and down the stairs or getting her in and out of the car.

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Thalia Juarez

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It's gotten the attention of President Trump. In October, he announced proposals to help reduce the cost of the drugs necessary for IVF. He also encouraged employers to offer broader infertility coverage directly to workers.

Some people go into debt, while others like Snyder use up their savings. Some women, like Terry, have theirs covered by insurance. Even that is not common — only 1 in 4 companies with more than 200 employees pays for a part of the process.

Women with higher education — especially master's degrees, doctorates or professional degrees — are more likely to use IVF than those with less education, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

These women, on average, have higher incomes. All that gives them the agency to start and support their own family.

"My knees hurt"

Both Terry and Snyder were financially comfortable enough to step off the career treadmill and create time and space for their new families. Snyder now works four days a week. Terry took a pay cut for a different role that was less intense — it allowed her to work from home and requires less travel. Neither has qualms about it.

"It's so physical being a mom. I don't think I expected that," says Snyder.

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Thalia Juarez

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Still, parenting in your 40s is hard.

"It's so physical being a mom. I don't think I expected that," says Snyder, thinking back to her first two years of motherhood and carrying her daughter up and down the stairs or getting her in and out the car. "Motherhood in your 40s, you know, my knees hurt and there are things that are starting to fall apart."

For Terry, one of the hardest parts of being a single mom is not being able to take a break. "If I'm tired or had a rough day at work or I'm frustrated, I'm feeling overwhelmed and I want to step away from my kids, I often can't," she says. "I have to meet their needs first and meet my needs later. And that's hard."

And then there is the weight of decision-making. She discusses her choices with her friends and family, "but ultimately all of that rests on me and that feels really heavy," she says.

Saturday mornings are music class days. Being silly with her kids has helped Terry loosen up and relate to them in a different way. They sing all the time. Her kids make up nursery rhymes on their way to day care or bath time or even while brushing their teeth.

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Jessica Ingram

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NPR

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"Was he sorry I didn't have a husband?"

Even though there are more families like Terry's and Snyder's today, they're still rare. And society hasn't quite caught up with them.

Like when Terry moved to her new home in Nashville, she introduced herself and the girls to a neighbor, who asked what her husband did for work. Terry explained that they were a "mom and kids family" with two cats. The response took her aback.

"He said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry,'" she recalls. "Was he sorry I didn't have a husband? I still don't know to this day. But there is very much like a moment of feeling other and different — and that's often an uncomfortable feeling."

Terry worries about how her daughters will handle such questions. She prepares her oldest child by role-playing with her. But even then, sometimes it doesn't quite play out the way they've practiced.

Recently, she recalls, one of her daughter's classmates said, "'Hey, Eleanor, is that your mom?' And she said, 'Yes.' And they said, 'Well, where's your dad?' And Eleanor just froze in that moment."

But more often than not, the tenderness of motherhood triumphs over such unsettling interactions. Terry treasures the sweet moments she shares with her kids, like when they climb onto her bed in the morning to wake her or when they sit next to each other on the couch to read before bedtime.

"I love moments where they say, 'Mama, I need a snuggle.' Just holding them for a minute or two and seeing how that calms them is really, really powerful."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Terry reads to her daughters as they snuggle with her on the couch.

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Jessica Ingram for NPR

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Over his nearly 50-year career, Burbank-based attorney Dennis Block has built a reputation as a fierce advocate for Southern California landlords seeking to evict their tenants.

But disciplinary charges filed against him last month by the California State Bar raise questions about his treatment of clients.

Block faces charges involving a series of clients over a span of years. According to the 10 counts against him, Block allegedly collected payments wrongly described as “non-refundable,” failed to account for his fees and didn’t return a client’s property in a timely manner following termination of his employment.

In one case, Block allegedly failed to pay court sanctions on time. In another, he allegedly created a conflict of interest by representing both a tenant and her landlord.

When LAist asked Block how he responded to the charges, he told us to reach out to his defense attorney Erin Joyce. In a statement, Joyce said, “While we cannot comment on the specifics of the case, we believe the matter will be resolved in Mr. Block’s favor prior to trial at the settlement conference.”

The ultimate penalty in California State Bar Court is disbarment, which would prevent Block from continuing to practice law. Lesser punishments could involve a brief suspension or an order to complete an ethics exam.

Should fees have been ‘non-refundable’?

This isn’t the first time Block has faced repercussions for alleged ethical lapses in recent years.

In 2023, LAist reported on a filing Block’s firm submitted in an eviction case that contained multiple references to fake case law. Legal experts told us the filing, which led to court sanctions, was likely produced through misuse of AI.

Legal ethics experts said the new charges against Block are serious.

“The worst thing a lawyer can do is steal a client's money,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at UCLA. “This is effectively what the bar is saying Mr. Block has done here in roughly half a dozen cases.”

Many counts involve Block allegedly charging up-front fees described by his firm as “non-refundable.” Bar rules state such fees must constitute a “true retainer,” meaning money paid to reserve an attorney’s availability for a specific case or period of time.

LAist previously reported that former clients have complained about poor communication and a lack of availability from Block and his associates.

Richard Zitrin, an emeritus lecturer with UC Law San Francisco, said the rules may sound esoteric, but the bar takes violations seriously.

“When you get right down to what's going on under the surface, it looks like the accusations are that this guy could not do the work for these various clients,” Zitrin said. “If it's one time, it could just be an honest mistake. But if he's doing it repeatedly, serially, of course that's of more concern.”

Representing both sides?

In one case, Block’s firm is accused of taking on a tenant who was in a dispute with her roommate. A few months later, while still representing the tenant, Block’s firm allegedly took on the tenant’s landlord. Block’s firm then sent a letter threatening to evict his own client, according to the charges.

“Lawyers cannot represent opposite sides of a particular case because they owe their duty of loyalty and confidentiality to each client,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School. “It's very likely that one side or the other will feel that the lawyer sold out to the other client.”

Despite the severity and the number of allegations, UCLA’s Cummings said Block’s disciplinary record — which shows no infractions so far — could help him avoid disbarment.

“Suspension seems like — if these facts were all proven to be true — definitely an appropriate sanction in this particular case,” Cummings said.

It’s not yet clear what the charges could mean for Block’s firm, which prides itself on handling a high volume of cases at any given time. Block once reportedly described himself as “a man who has evicted more tenants than any other human being on the planet Earth.”

A status conference in Block’s case is set for Feb. 9.