LAist Studios Podcast 'Imperfect Paradise' To Relaunch As Weekly Series

LAist Studios’ award-winning podcast Imperfect Paradise will relaunch in September as a weekly series.

Antonia Cereijido will serve as the regular host of the weekly show. New episodes will premiere every Wednesday with the broadcast version airing on LAist 89.3 the following Sunday.

Imperfect Paradise will relaunch with a stunning and unexpected perspective on the secret recordings of L.A. City Council members that unleashed one of the city’s biggest political scandals.

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Imperfect Paradise was originally released in January 2022. The first four seasons of the podcast tackled a diverse range of themes centered in California — a divisive housing issue in Orange County, the death of Chicano activist Oscar Gomez, the controversy around L.A. Sheriff Alex Villanueva, and the story of a former yoga guru falling into a conspiracy rabbit hole during the pandemic.

The show has won multiple awards, including a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and a Radio and Television News Association Golden Mic Award.

Previous seasons were covered by different hosts with varying numbers of episodes. However, as a weekly show this fall, each story cycle of Imperfect Paradise will consist of four episodes — three narrative-driven episodes and one interview-based episode with Cereijido that will provide additional context.

“I am so proud of the past Imperfect Paradise seasons that are marked by deep, thoughtful reporting, palpable emotions and access into fascinating subcultures. I am excited to bring that level of long form documentary audio on a weekly basis on podcast and on radio,” said Cereijido, who is a former executive producer for LAist Studios and hosted the 2021 LAist Studios podcast Norco ‘80.

Other shows in the new weekly series will cover a false accusation against a Latino couple by a white mom-fluencer, the unconventional push by strippers at a North Hollywood club to unionize, and a secretive private club for magicians forced to reckon with its problematic history. Correspondent Emily Guerin, senior producer Natalie Chudnovsky, and producer Emma Alabaster are each lead reporters on the various stories.

Alabaster, who is hosting the season about dancers at a strip club unionizing, said that she is excited to tackle this timely topic in a podcast format.

“In this moment where new industries are unionizing and there are progressive shifts in our cultural conversation about sex work, it’s no wonder that this story of a unionizing strip club has gotten a lot of buzz,” she said. “I’m excited to dig deeper into how these dancers did the difficult and strategic work of organizing their workplace.”

Catherine Mailhouse will serve as executive producer. The day-to-day operation of the podcast studio will continue to be led by Shana Naomi Krochmal, VP of Podcasts for LAist Studios.

“Relaunching the show as a weekly podcast and on-air broadcast with Antonia at the helm allows us to further deliver on what we know our listeners want more of: deeply-reported journalism on themes that our talented newsroom is uniquely positioned to explore,” said Krochmal.

New weekly episodes of Imperfect Paradise will premiere starting Wednesday, Sept. 27.