“With memories still fresh of an unforgettable occasion for the Ashes Test, we’re delighted to be able to confirm a return to Hill Dickinson Stadium for the 2026 Super League Magic Weekend,” Rhodri Jones, Rugby League Commercial managing director, said.
“This will be the seventh venue to stage Magic since it was introduced as a new concept for sport in 2007 and our clubs, players and supporters are in for a treat.
“It’s a stunning stadium with outstanding facilities at all levels and also superbly located for summer on the waterfront, and with the many and varied attractions of Liverpool within easy reach.
“We continue to work with the Dragons and Toulouse on the feasibility of delivering a very special event in France too and we hope to be able to announce something in the near future on this.”
Welcome back to the Lakers newsletter, where we got plenty of rest while the team played pickleball.
A rare four-day stretch without a game may have done wonders for the Lakers’ small nagging injuries, but it interrupted the team’s rhythm going into Sunday’s game against the Utah Jazz. It showed in the clunky win in which the Lakers missed 28 three-point tries and let an 11-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to one.
Despite being quite literally one of the worst shooting teams in the league, the Lakers are still 12-4. Players credited the team’s resiliency and chemistry as reasons the Lakers are still winning, but how long can this team survive on pure vibes?
All things Lakers, all the time.
Don’t stop believing
Luka Doncic’s shot trickled over the front of the rim, bounced high above the basket and swished through the net. When the three-pointer finally fell, Doncic raised both arms in equal parts disbelief and relief.
He’s the NBA’s leading scorer, but Doncic is shooting a career-worst 31.1% from three on a career-high 11 three-point attempts per game. Austin Reaves, also enjoying a career season offensively, is shooting the same poor percentage from three-point range.
Almost every Lakers rotation player is shooting below his career average from three-point range through 16 games this season. Shooting 33.3% from three, the Lakers are 26th out of 30 teams. Their 10.9 makes a game are the fewest in the league.
“We’ve got to shoot the ball better,” coach JJ Redick said after the Lakers survived a comeback attempt against the Jazz on Sunday. “But it’s got to be a belief in each other and a belief in ourselves to knock down shots.”
Nearing the 20-game mark of the season, the Lakers are not fretting about their frigid outside shooting. Redick recalled how the Lakers shot 34.8% from three in the first two months of last season. Then after shooting 46.7% in a two-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Dec. 23, the Lakers made 37.7% of their threes for the rest of the regular season.
Part of the shift came after the trade that brought Doncic. He shot 37.9% from three while with the Lakers last season, and the team’s overall three-point attempts increased from 33.8 per game to 40.4 in the final two months of the season.
The Lakers are taking 32.4 three-pointers per game this season. Redick anticipated that the number would rise, but with the current shooting struggles, he wanted to focus more on simply maximizing what his players do well.
“We’re going to do the things that put our guys in a position to create advantages and generate good offense,” Redick said before Sunday’s game. “However that looks as it morphs and evolves throughout the year, that’s just going to be what it is, the philosophy behind it. And if it ends up being we shoot 40 threes a game, great.”
Redick celebrated the team’s otherwise effective offense that is second in true shooting percentage (61.5%) and first in points per shot (1.42). The other glaring issue is turnover percentage, where the Lakers rank 28th.
“If we were out there not creating great looks or we were not playing [the right way] and we were playing selfish basketball [it would be different],” said LeBron James, who has made two of seven shots from three in his two games since returning from sciatica. “That’s not our M.O. So you look at over half of the threes that we missed tonight, a lot of them were wide open, but a lot of them were just finding the right player. The ball has so much energy in it that we’re not worried about that.”
Of their 38 three-point attempts against the Jazz, 25 came with the closest defender six or more feet away. The Lakers made just six of those open shots, with Doncic, Reaves and Marcus Smart going four for 17.
“We’re definitely gonna shoot better,” Smart said. “We work too hard not to.”
What’s up with the NBA Cup?
Even Deandre Ayton didn’t know what was going on with the NBA Cup. The Lakers center absorbed a turnover late in a blowout against the New Orleans Pelicans on Nov. 14 instead of taking an easy shot. When he heard his teammates screaming at him to shoot, he admitted later he didn’t realize the potential importance of those two points.
Ayton instead intertwined his middle and ring fingers and held his right hand up toward the bench. The ‘W’ is all that mattered.
Entering the final week of NBA Cup group play, the Lakers need just one more W to clinch their spot in the quarterfinals. The winner of Tuesday’s game between the Lakers and Clippers at Crypto.com Arena officially claims West Group B.
The Lakers and Clippers are 2-0 in group play with two games remaining. The group also includes the Memphis Grizzlies, the Dallas Mavericks and the already eliminated New Orleans Pelicans. The Lakers finish group play with the Dallas Mavericks on Friday in a game that, even if the Lakers clinch the top spot Tuesday, could still matter.
The three group winners advance to the quarterfinals, and the top second-place team from each conference earns a wild card. The two teams with the best group play record in each conference will host the quarterfinal games. The No. 1 seed goes to the team with the best overall record, and if the records are even, then point differential will be the first tiebreaker for seeding.
Oklahoma City is also 2-0 halfway through group play and has a league-best plus-63 point differential, putting the Thunder in position to earn the No. 1 seed in the West quarterfinals.
The Lakers have a plus-19 point differential in group games and are in position to be the second-seeded team in the West, possibly playing against the West Group C winner.
The third group in the West is one of the most competitive in the league as Portland and Denver entered this week tied with 2-1 records. Portland has the first-priority head-to-head tiebreaker against the Nuggets, but Denver has a plus-26 point differential that positions it well as a potential wild-card team.
Top-seeded teams will host the quarterfinal games on Dec. 9 and 10. The losing teams in each conference’s quarterfinals will play each other in a regular season game on one of four dates: Dec. 11, 12, 14 or 15. The semifinals are in Las Vegas on Dec. 13, and the final will be on Dec. 16.
On tap
Records and stats updated entering Monday’s games
Nov. 25 vs. Clippers (5-12), 8 p.m., NBA Cup group play
Kawhi Leonard returned to the lineup on Sunday against the Cleveland Cavaliers, scoring 20 points, but he couldn’t rescue the Clippers, who have just two wins in November,
Nov. 28 vs. Mavericks (5-13), 7 p.m., NBA Cup group play
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Anthony Davis is injured. After missing his return to L.A. last year because of an abdominal strain, the former Lakers’ star has been sidelined for almost a month with a calf injury, potentially delaying his much-anticipated first game in L.A. since the infamous trade.
Nov. 30 vs. Pelicans (2-15), 6:30 p.m.
The Pelicans took a big swing to draft Derik Queen in the first round last April and the former Maryland star is starting to show some signs of promise. Queen averaged 23.3 points and 8.3 rebounds in three games against Atlanta, Dallas and Denver. He added 11 assists in a 118-115 loss to the Mavericks that eliminated New Orleans from NBA Cup contention.
Dec. 1 vs. Suns (11-6), 7 p.m.
Losing Kevin Durant to free agency made it seem like Devin Booker and Phoenix would be in rebuild mode, but they’re in the thick of the West. Booker leads the team with 26.9 points and 7.1 assists per game.
Best thing I ate this week
Thit nuong
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
While the Lakers played pickleball, I was soaking up my extended home time with loved ones. One of my easy crowd pleasers is thit nuong, which is Vietnamese grilled pork. Slices of pork shoulder are marinated with garlic, shallots, lemongrass, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar and oyster sauce, threaded onto skewers and grilled. (I, however, don’t have a grill so I bake mine on a rack in the oven.) They’re a great finger food eaten off the skewer or as a meal with rice or, in this case, rice noodles. And it’s not Vietnamese if there aren’t pickled carrots and daikon.
My dad once told me my thit nuong was better than my mom’s. It is my greatest culinary accomplishment.
Steve Cherundolo’s first season at LAFC ended in a penalty-kick shootout that decided one of the most compelling playoff games in MLS history. His final season ended in the same way last Saturday.
In between, Cherundolo proved to be one of the best coaches in league history, winning an MLS Cup, a U.S. Open Cup and more than 100 games in all competition in his short four-year stay. He took LAFC to a CONCACAF Champions League final and to the first round of the FIFA Club World Cup, compiling a resume no coach in MLS history can match.
And while his departure will clearly hurt, the club he leaves is in good shape with the core of its roster signed for next season. Of the 16 players Cherundolo used Saturday, just five — goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, defenders Nkosi Tafari and Ryan Raposo and midfielders Andrew Moran and Frankie Amaya — are out of contract.
General manager John Thorrington is expected to announce the club’s roster decisions later this week.
“Moving forward, we’ll see what it looks like for next season. I wish this club the very, very best,” said Cherundolo, who used 75 players, second-most in the league, during his four years in charge. “I can say with certainty it’s in a great spot for a very successful year again. And that would make me very proud.”
The coach, a Hall of Fame player who made three U.S. World Cup teams, announced last April he would be returning to his wife’s native Germany, where he spent the entirety of his 15-year club career, when LAFC’s season ended. That meant he entered the playoffs knowing his next loss would be his last one.
But he made clear last week he was just saying goodbye, not farewell.
“In four years I can be back here,” he said. “I am definitely not canceling that out.”
In the meantime, Thorrington is looking for a new coach for just the second time in franchise history. The first time he stayed in-house, replacing Bob Bradley with Cherundolo, manager of the club’s USL Championship affiliate.
That’s likely to happen again this time since two members of Cherundolo’s staff — Marc Dos Santos, a former Whitecaps manager, and former Galaxy and Chivas USA forward Ante Razov, an assistant with three MLS teams — are said to be among the favorites to take over and build on what LAFC has already accomplished.
“I think Steve himself would say that if he left and the culture crumbled, then he didn’t do a good enough job at building the culture,” defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “We know things are going to continue to chug along the right way and that’s partly because he’s helped make it that way. He put just the right spin on it and it’s created what has led to a bunch of success over the last four years.”
Results aside, if Cherundolo, 46, had been allowed to choose the explanation point to affix to the end of his MLS coaching career, it’s unlikely he could have selected a better one than Saturday’s game, one dramatic and entertaining enough to become an instant classic.
Playing before an MLS stadium-record crowd of 53,937, the Whitecaps took a 2-0 first-half lead and still led by a goal going into stoppage time. At that point first-year Vancouver coach Jesper Sorensen was so confident of victory, he subbed out captain Thomas Muller.
However, things quickly took a turn when defender Tristan Blackmon drew his second yellow card, leaving Vancouver with just 10 players. Son Heung-min needed little time to make the Whitecaps pay, bending in a spectacular free kick in the dying minutes for his second goal of the half — and his 12th in 13 games for LAFC — to send the game to extra time.
That’s when the game went from classic to epic, with Vancouver losing another player midway through that extra time after center back Belal Halbouni limped off with a leg injury. That allowed LAFC, which outshot the Whitecaps 26-9, to pepper the Vancouver goal, bouncing two shots off the posts and another off the crossbar.
Yet none found the back of the net, leaving the game to be decided on penalties, the cruelest, meanest, most unfair — and most exciting — way to determine a winner.
When Son, who finished the game massaging a muscle cramp, limped to the spot to send his team’s first penalty try off the right post, LAFC was in trouble. When Mark Delgado sent the third try over the net and into the crowd, LAFC was done.
“Sometimes football is crazy like this. That’s why we love football,” Son said before closing with “see you next season.”
That was something Cherundolo couldn’t say. But he left with his head held high just the same.
“If you look at the sum of four years with LAFC,” he said “we have a ton to be proud of.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
For decades, the Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills has been a rarity — a globally known icon of Midcentury Modernism and Los Angeles glamour, still in the hands of the family who commissioned it in 1960. But now it’s for sale.
The asking price is $25 million, which might seem a startling figure for a two-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home on a snug lot. But that figure might not surprise lovers of modernist architecture who know it as Case Study House #22.
It was designed for the Stahl family by architect Pierre Koenig, captured on black-and-white film by photographer Julius Shulman and has been admired worldwide ever since.
The Architect’s Newspaper called it “one of the world’s most famous buildings.” Los Angeles magazine called Shulman’s image “perhaps the most famous picture ever taken of Los Angeles.”
“There are no comps for the Stahl house. It’s incomparable,” said William Baker, architecture director for the real estate firm the Agency Beverly Hills. The home was included in the company’s fall catalog Nov. 12.
By Friday afternoon, Baker said, he had received hundreds of inquiring calls. In considering offers, Baker said, the family is open to individuals or institutions — “someone who’s going to understand it, honor the house and the story about it.”
The Stahls purchased the lot in 1954 for $13,500 and enlisted Koenig to design the house after other architects were daunted by the slope of the lot. Koenig’s solution was a cantilevered L-shaped structure with walls of steel and glass, a pool and a free-standing stone-faced fireplace between the living and dining areas.
The second bedroom can only be accessed through the primary bedroom — “an efficient use of space” for a family of five, Baker said. The Stahl family has said the home cost $37,500 to build.
Shortly after the home’s completion, photographer Julius Shulman made a black-and-white photograph that became emblematic of the era. It shows the home at night, with two young women sitting inside in a cantilevered corner, its floor-to-ceiling windows revealing the lights of the L.A. Basin glittering in the background.
To bring up the lights, Shulman later told Los Angeles magazine, he used a seven-minute exposure. The resulting image, along with others Shulman made of the house, is now owned by the Getty Research Institute.
In years since, the home has served as a filming location for many TV and film productions, including the 1968 pilot episode of “Columbo” and the movies “Galaxy Quest” (1999) and “Nurse Betty” (2000).
“This home has been the center of our lives for decades, but as we’ve gotten older, it has become increasingly challenging to care for it with the attention and energy it so richly deserves,” the Stahl family announced on its website. Bruce and Shari Stahl, the surviving children of original owners Buck and Carlotta Stahl, added, “[O]ur tour program will continue unchanged for the time being, and we will provide ample notice before any adjustments are made.”
For the last 17 years, the house has been open for tours, most recently on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, starting at $60 per adult during the day, $90 in the evening, with advance booking required and tight limits on photography. However, the Stahl website indicates all tours are sold out through the end of February.
The real estate listing notes that the home is “a protected landmark and the only Case Study House with original family ownership.”
In nominating it for the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, Amanda Stewart of the Los Angeles Conservancy called it “perhaps the most iconic house constructed in the Case Study House Program.” That program, sponsored by John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture magazine from 1945 to 1966, yielded 25 completed homes, today considered top exemplars of Midcentury home design.
“There’s not a lot of these Case Study houses left. I think there are 19 now,” Baker said. (Baker also said he had recently handled the sale of Case Study House #10 in Pasadena to a buyer who lost a home in January’s Pacific Palisades fire.)
The Stahl home stands on Woods Drive just north of West Hollywood’s city limit, about a quarter of a mile from Chateau Marmont.
Many architecturally important Southern California Modern homes have landed in the hands of institutions, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (1921), owned by the city of Los Angeles; the Schindler House (1922), owned by the Friends of the Schindler House and operated by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture; and the Eames House (1949), owned by the nonprofit Eames Foundation. The Sheats-Goldstein Residence, designed by John Lautner in 1961-63 and renovated by Lautner in the 1990s, has been promised by owner James Goldstein to the L.A. County Museum of Art.
Defenders: Georgia Brown (Sporting Club Jacksonville), Jenna Clark (Liverpool), Nicola Docherty (Rangers), Leah Eddie (Rangers), Sophie Howard (Como), Emma Lawton (Celtic), Rachel McLauchlan (Brighton & Hove Albion), Amy Muir (Glasgow City).
Midfielders: Erin Cuthbert (Chelsea), Freya Gregory (Newcastle United), Sam Kerr (Liverpool), Kirsty MacLean (Liverpool), Maria McAneny (Celtic), Miri Taylor (Aston Villa), Caroline Weir (Real Madrid).
MIAMI — A statement issued by Cuban-American powerbroker Jorge Mas Canosa after a meeting earlier this week with Democrat Bill Clinton has caused a furor among Republicans here while fueling speculation that defectors from what was once considered the most solid of Republican voting blocs could help give Florida’s 25 electoral votes to the Democrats for the first time since 1976.
Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, went to Tampa on Tuesday to thank Clinton for his support of the anti-Castro Cuban Democracy Act. In a statement signed by Mas and three other CANF directors, Mas went on to say: “Any fears that the Cuban-American community may have had about a Clinton Administration with regard to Castro’s Cuba have dissipated today.”
Many interpreted Mas’ remarks as all but blessing Cuban-Americans who wanted to vote for Clinton. Republican stalwarts expressed surprise and dismay over what some characterized as a betrayal.
“I have a serious problem with (the statement),” said Alberto Cardenas, co-chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign in Dade County and a co-founder of CANF. “Advising the Cuban-American voter that Clinton is an acceptable choice is without merit, and at best premature, and doesn’t speak well for 12 years of Republican support. I told that to Mr. Mas.”
Democrats downplayed Mas’ influence, insisting a slight shift was under way long before the meeting.
“Cuban-American voters could make the difference, could be that swing vote,” said Grace Prieto, a coordinator with the Clinton-Gore campaign in Dade County. “Dukakis got about 7% of the Cuban-American vote in 1988. I am sure that this time the Democrats will get 25% to 30%.”
Statewide, the race between the Arkansas governor and President Bush is rated pretty much a tossup, and Cuban-American voters make up only 4% of the Florida total.
Still, according to a poll released Tuesday by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research, what was once an overwhelming majority for Bush among Cuban-Americans has begun to erode, from 73% to 55%. Meanwhile, Clinton’s support among the same group rose from 19% to 36%.
Those poll results were released about the same time that Mas was meeting privately with Clinton in Tampa, and do not reflect the subsequent political fallout from his statement.
Mas, along with several CANF directors, met with Clinton after the Democratic candidate addressed 18,000 people at a rally. Also present at the meeting were Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) and Maria Arias, Clinton’s Cuban-born sister-in-law.
Mas’ overture to Clinton was widely seen as a political hedge by an ambitious man who has made no secret of his intention to be a leading player–perhaps even president–in a post-Castro Cuba.
But his conciliatory statement caused such an uproar among so many Cubans here that Mas went on a Spanish-language radio station Thursday to affirm his support for Bush. “My affiliation is Republican, my vote is for President Bush, but my work for Cuba is much more important than my partisan preferences,” he said during an interview over radio station WQBA.
Mas’ political maneuvering “is the topic in the Cuban community,” said Los Angeles-based political pollster Sergio Bendixen, working here for the Univision television network. “Many people feel it was treason for (Mas) to suggest it might to OK to vote for Democrats, perceived for many years as next to Communists. Others accept that Mas’ one objective is the liberty of Cuba, and see it as a genius move.”
Prieto said she has been busy assuring Cuban-American Democrats that the controversial Mas “will not control the Clinton Administration.” Mas’ goal, added Prieto, “is to persist as leader if Bill Clinton wins, and keep power and control.”
Arias, a Miami attorney married to Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, said: “We welcome any statements from Mas or anyone else who says they believe in Bill Clinton. My reading is that he does have impact. I don’t think (his statement) can hurt.”
Tomas Garcia Fuste, news director of WQBA, said he believes that Bush’s son, Jeb, a Miami businessman, is the difference. “He is a good friend here. Cuban-Americans are Republicans, no matter what happens.”
In its report on the controversy, the Miami Herald mentioned rumors that before traveling to Tampa to meet with Clinton, Mas was confronted at his home by an angry Jeb Bush, who demanded that he not go. In the same account, Jeb Bush denied that any confrontation took place.
Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter, where USC’s loss to Oregon on Saturday has left me grappling with what it means to have a successful season in this day and age of college football.
USC will not be going to the College Football Playoff. It’ll be the fourth straight year under Lincoln Riley that USC is left out of the field. In that time, Indiana — which last won a conference title in 1967 — will have twice been a Playoff team. Assuming Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon all make this year’s field as expected, the Big Ten’s current membership will have accounted for 19 bids to the Playoff since it began in 2014 … none from USC.
There’s no getting around these facts. USC expects to compete for national titles every year, but in four seasons with Riley as coach, it hasn’t even made it to the dance floor. That’s not what USC was promised when it handed Riley a massive $110-million contract.
Fight on! Are you a true Trojans fan?
If USC beats UCLA next week, as expected, it will finish this season 9-3. That’s better than most rational observers would have expected — myself included. Oddsmakers had USC’s win total set at 7 1/2. I wrote in this space that I thought USC would win eight regular season games, but the best case was 10 and a Playoff bid. USC was within striking distance of that scenario. It fell just short.
Riley would like for you to focus on how narrow that gap is.
“We’re right there,” the coach said again Saturday. But no matter how many plays away USC might be from a Playoff bid in 2025 or four straight national titles in his tenure, Riley’s repeated assurances that this is the case have ceased to mean much to those he thinks he’s assuring. At some point, USC needs to stop being close and actually break through.
It took a step closer to that this season. There’s no shame in losing to three teams ranked in the top 21 of the CFP rankings. USC beat all the teams it was supposed to beat. It won on the road at Nebraska, Riley’s first road win over a .500 team since 2022. And it blew just one fourth-quarter lead, not five like last season.
In the 16 years since Pete Carroll left USC, the Trojans have reached the nine-win mark in the regular season just five times. With a win next week, Riley will have reached that mark twice in four years.
But without a Playoff bid, does a nine-win season really mean anything anymore? Is it possible for USC — or any Power Four team, for that matter — to miss the field and still view its season as a success?
If you thought that USC was going to make the College Football Playoff, you are no doubt disappointed. Most people, though, didn’t. And perhaps the fact that no one is surprised at the way this went is why it’s hard for anyone to feel excited about a 9-3 finish and a second-rate bowl game.
USC took a step forward this season. It wasn’t the leap many fans were hoping for. But it was a step. The reality is this was never a team that was going to seriously compete for a national title. It didn’t have enough talent.
Riley didn’t necessarily do USC any favors in that regard. Progress aside, he simply hasn’t done enough to make anyone, his bosses included, feel good about where next season might go.
There are reasons for optimism. Riley will have the No. 1 recruiting class at his disposal, along with several young returners USC will be counting on to make a leap. But he’ll also have to contend with a schedule that includes Ohio State, Oregon, Washington, Indiana and Penn State.
The road to the Playoff will be as difficult as it has ever been. But that is the bar that Riley must now clear. And by this time next season, we should have a pretty good idea of whether Riley is capable of clearing it.
Going polling
I want to hear what you think about this season as a whole. Do you consider USC’s season to be a success, even without a Playoff bid?
Tanook Hines catches a pass thrown by third-string quarterback Sam Huard on a fake punt against Northwestern.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
—The leaping penalty was a major turning point in the loss to Oregon. But should it have been a penalty? The flag on linebacker Desman Stephens negated what would’ve been a key missed field goal by Oregon, and afterward, Riley explained that Stephens “panicked” and did something they don’t teach. But NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay, who you may remember from his disdain for USC’s fake punt ploy, posited on social media that it was actually a totally legal play. McAulay wrote that Stephens “leaps into the gap” on the play and “the fact that part of his body is over part of an opponent does not violate the rule,” which states that a player cannot leap into the plane directly above the frame of an opponent. We should note USC lost this game by two touchdowns, so reversing that one wouldn’t have made the difference. That said, I will be curious to ask Riley for his take on Tuesday.
—The offensive line injuries finally caught up to USC. When center Kilian O’Connor went down with what appeared to be another knee injury Saturday and returned to the sideline on crutches, with his leg mobilized, it felt like a foreboding sign. A hobbled J’Onre Reed struggled in his place. Up against a stout Oregon front seven, the Trojans’ line was facing an uphill battle, and it never made much headway. USC ran for just 52 yards, its worst mark in two years. Oregon barely had to blitz — it rushed with four on 27 of 31 dropbacks. This was simply a better defensive line beating up on a more limited offensive line. But USC’s offensive line showed a lot of heart over the course of the last six weeks, and there are plenty of reasons to feel optimistic. USC returns everyone in the room except for Reed and has several freshmen whose progress has impressed the staff this season.
—Tanook Hines can be a star as soon as next season. You saw once again what Hines is capable of as he leaped into the air to reel in Makai Lemon’s pass and tapped his toes in the end zone on the way down. The raw ability is apparent, and his propensity for big plays has been terrific for a freshman. The question now is whether he can emerge as a more consistent threat that’s leaned on to do more than just make highlight catches in traffic. Lemon is leaving for the NFL after this season, and while USC will surely try to convince Ja’Kobi Lane to stay, my guess is he’ll be ready to go, too, depending on his draft grade. That leaves Hines and whichever star transfer wideout(s) general manager Chad Bowden unearths in the portal to lead the receiving corps. Hines should be a big part of those plans, no matter what, and if he makes the leap, he could be in for a huge sophomore season.
—USC won’t be going to the Playoff, but there will be a consolation bowl appearance. Assuming the Trojans can win next week against UCLA, they’re most likely headed to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on Dec. 30. The Holiday Bowl on Jan. 2 is also in play. USC has played in the Holiday Bowl four times in the last 12 years. It has never appeared in the Alamo Bowl.
—After a brutal loss to Notre Dame, USC women’s basketball faces a critical stretch ahead. The Trojans had a chance to win in South Bend with a layup after a frustrating fourth quarter, but missed it, and Hannah Hidalgo ended the game on the other end. They have four games between now and a Dec. 13 matchup with Connecticut at Galen Center, and they’ll need that time to iron things out. Kennedy Smith needs to be more consistent on offense, and the frontcourt remains a mystery. The next two weeks should help answer some pertinent questions.
Olympic sports spotlight
With two games left in its regular season slate, USC’s women’s volleyball team matched its season-high for wins under coach Brad Keller with its 24th victory on Saturday. It should surpass that mark this week.
It’s been a stellar season so far for the Trojans, who are tied for fourth in the Big Ten. The question now is just how far they can go in the postseason. Right now, according to ESPN’s college volleyball bracketology, USC is predicted to be a fourth seed.
Will (Noah Schnapp) and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) come face to face in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.”
(Netflix)
We’ve waited over three years, if you can believe it, for a new season of “Stranger Things.” So long that none of the kids in the show are even kids anymore. (Two of them have actually become rock stars in the meantime.)
But I’m one of those who have been eagerly awaiting the series conclusion, and finally, that day has come. We still only get Volume 1 from Netflix on Wednesday. But that should be enough to hold us off until late December, when the remaining episodes drop.
Until next time …
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected], and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon last month in Los Angeles, excited fans opted for a dark studio at CBS Television City where a reunion with the beloved Barone family of “Everybody Loves Raymond” would take place. Devotees of the Emmy-winning sitcom gathered for a live taping of a 90-minute 30th anniversary special, airing Monday on CBS.
“This is a bucket list-type thing,” said longtime fan Kim Brazier, who flew in from Gulfport, Miss. “I only watch ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’ I have it on repeat. I watch it when I’m getting ready in the morning, and it’s kind of my lullaby when I go to bed.”
The popular sitcom, which ran for nine seasons from 1996 to 2005, was known for its hilarious depiction of family dynamics. Ray Romano starred as sportswriter Ray Barone, married to Debra (Patricia Heaton). The couple raised three young children while navigating marital squabbles, awkward parenting moments and constant meddling from Ray’s parents, Marie and Frank (Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle), who lived across the street with Ray’s jealous, downtrodden police officer brother Robert (Brad Garrett).
Inside the reunion, the atmosphere brimmed with nostalgia as Romano and the show’s creator, Phil Rosenthal, hosted the live taping from the living room they once brought into millions of households each week. The set was meticulously recreated for the occasion, including the Barone couch, which Romano now owns and had transported from his home for the occasion.
Cast members were brought out one by one throughout the afternoon, each remaining on stage as the panel grew, including Rosenthal’s wife, Monica Horan, who played Robert’s longtime love interest, Amy.
Ray Romano and Phil Rosenthal walking to the stage for the 30th anniversary reunion, which was taped before a live studio audience, just like the series.
(Matthew Taplinger / CBS)
The group reminisced about working with one another and shared their favorite episodes, accompanied by clips on surrounding screens that included a reel of outtakes of funny lines improvised by Romano and Garrett cracking up their fellow castmates. As each segment played, Rosenthal and the cast watched, fully absorbed with smiles across their faces, while the audience sat rapt, revisiting these cherished moments.
A week and a half later, in a Zoom interview with Rosenthal and Romano, the latter reflected on returning to the set. “It was emotional and surreal. At first it felt so strange to be back, like we went back in time,” Romano says. “And then after we were joking and comfortable for a while, it felt like we never left.”
Just like the reunion, the original series was filmed in front of a live studio audience, a conscious choice to capture the energy in the room. “We had me, a comedian, and comedy writers, and we wanted to hear the laughs,” Romano says.
And the laughs were plentiful. Rosenthal told the crowd at the taping that the cast often had to pause after punchlines to let laughter die down. Occasionally, he said, the laughter went on so long it had to be edited out of episodes. The only time the audience wasn’t in stitches was when Romano literally needed them. He once sliced open his hand during a scene where he was cutting cheese; Romano went to the hospital to be sewn up and then returned to finish the episode.
From the stage, Romano recounted the show’s origin story, which dates back to his 1995 stand-up comedy debut on the “Late Show With David Letterman.” His five-minute routine focused on parenting his toddlers and losing his perspective on adult-oriented humor. He noted that the last joke he’d written dated back to when his twin sons were babies — a bit about jingling his car keys to make them laugh — which he physically demonstrated during the appearance. After the “Late Show” crowd laughed, he pushed the bit one step further. “I’m glad you laughed at that,” he said. “If you didn’t, I would’ve had to come down there and rub my nose in your bellies.”
The cast of “Everybody Loves Raymond” during the taping of the finale episode of the series, which aired in May 2005.
(Richard Cartright / CBS / AP)
Meanwhile, Rosenthal, then a writer on ABC’s sitcom “Coach,” was at home with Horan watching Romano’s set. It immediately resonated with the couple. “It made me laugh so hard,” he says. “We had just had a kid, and the material was eminently relatable.”
Two weeks later, when Letterman’s production company offered Romano a development deal, he met with Rosenthal, and the two began shaping the sitcom, blending their sensibilities. Rosenthal says the resulting show became a hybrid of his sitcom experience with Romano’s sensibility that everything must be rooted in truth. “It had to feel real and honest,” Rosenthal says. “And you don’t do anything just to get a laugh. We had a rule in the writers room: ‘Could this happen?’ Are we stretching credibility so far that we break the bond of relatability with the audience?”
They developed the show around their own lives, modeling the Barone children after Romano’s, and incorporating material from his Letterman routine. The character of Robert was based on Romano’s real-life brother, a New York City police officer whose bitter quip when Romano won an award — “Everybody loves Raymond” — became both the show’s title and a line of dialogue his fictional counterpart delivered in the pilot.
Rosenthal contributed his own family inspiration too, basing Ray’s TV mom largely on his mother, with aspects of Romano’s. At the anniversary special, he told the audience with a wink that his mother had always insisted the character was “an exaggeration.”
Phil Rosenthal, left, and Ray Romano on the recreated set of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” (Sonja Flemming / CBS)
Brad Garrett, left, played Ray’s brother and Patricia Heaton, played Debra, Ray’s wife in the series. (Sonja Flemming / CBS)
When it came time for casting, approximately 20 women auditioned to play Ray’s wife, but Heaton nailed it, with a bold choice setting her apart. She was the only actor who actually kissed Romano during the audition, while the rest just mimed it. It wasn’t until the reunion, however, that Heaton learned onstage that she was the only one who’d done so.
The reunion also revealed that Garrett’s casting as Robert was a surprise to Romano. His real brother is shorter than he is, while Garrett is 6 feet 8, prompting Romano to joke that two brothers had been cast at once.
Rosenthal noted that to avoid the appearance of nepotism, he never suggested his wife for the role of Amy. Rather, it was a writer on the show who had put her name forward.
The reunion also honored Boyle and Roberts, who died in 2006 and 2016, respectively. The taping coincided with what would have been Boyle’s 90th birthday, and his wife, Lorraine, was in the audience. Romano shared that Boyle was nothing like his grumpy character Frank. During the first rehearsal, Boyle gave the nervous Romano advice: “It’s just like water. Just let it flow.”
Roberts, meanwhile, was the show’s matriarch on- and off-screen, known for making pots of soup in her dressing room and looking out for the cast. Horan recalled Roberts as professional and protective, pointing out whenever anyone was unwittingly blocking Horan’s light in a shot.
Frank and Marie, played by Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, were remembered during the reunion special. The taping coincided with what would have been Boyle’s 90th birthday.
(Robert Voets / CBS)
Later in the afternoon came another poignant moment when Madylin Sweeten and younger brother Sullivan Sweeten, who played Ray and Debra’s children, Ally and Michael Barone, joined the panel. Madylin was 5 when the show began, while Sullivan was 16 months old. His twin brother, Sawyer, who also appeared on the show as Michael’s twin, Geoffrey, died by suicide in 2015, just before his 20th birthday.
Speaking about his late brother, Sullivan said that he tries to stay positive by reflecting on his best moments with Sawyer, sharing that most of them happened on the set of the show. Madylin said that she and Sullivan work with the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, noting that most who seek help do survive.
Now 34 and a mom herself, Madylin reflected on growing up on a hit series. At the time, she was too young to fully grasp its importance, revealing that she remembers being upset one year when she couldn’t participate in a school play because she had to be on set. As scenes of the Barone children played above the stage, she wiped away tears at the sight of Sawyer as a child.
It was easy to see what made the cast feel like a real family. Their chemistry filled the studio once again, and their connection endures.
“Imagine spending nine years with people and then staying in touch,” Rosenthal says. “Phil and I see each other all the time,” Romano adds, before Rosenthal chimes in: “Our families vacation together.” They shared that they’d had lunch with the show’s writers earlier that day.
The affection among the cast is matched only by the devotion of the fans who filled the studio. Throughout the taping, the audience erupted in laughter, cheers and applause, a testament to how deeply the show remains embedded in people’s lives. Even 20 years after its finale, everybody still loves Raymond.
“It was the ultimate honor,” Rosenthal says of the enthusiastic fans who showed up for the reunion. “We can die happy that we made something of lasting value.”
Asked why they’ve never considered a reboot, Romano is clear. “This was our legacy, this was our baby, and we wanted to treat it right,” he says. “We wanted to leave on a high note and go out on top, and that’s what we did.”
Natasha Blanthorn had always wanted to visit Berlin, but did not want to spend a fortune on a weekend away – so she decided to go for the day
12:59, 24 Nov 2025Updated 13:00, 24 Nov 2025
A woman flew to Berlin and spent a day sightseeing for £100 – and she was back in bed for 10pm. Natasha Blanthorn, 26, always fancied a trip to Berlin to experience the rich culture and history.
She trawled the internet to bag some budget flights and flew out on November 8 on on a 6.20am flight, determined to stick to a budget of £100. Natasha, a college marketing manager from Macclesfield, Cheshire, spent the day sightseeing – joining a walking tour and visiting a history museum.
And 25,000 steps later she headed back to the airport to fly home – in time for 10pm bedtime. In total she spent just £102.07 for the budget day out – and said while its “not for the faint-hearted”, she loved every second.
Natasha said: “I had to get up at 3.30am for the flights – I only got about four hours’ sleep. But the second I got there, all the tiredness left my body.
“Because I joined a tour, I got to see a lot of the iconic sites. I didn’t have to use a single day of annual leave – and the whole thing cost just £100.”
Natasha had completed two ‘extreme day trips’ prior to booking her Berlin trip – and said she regularly trawled Skyscanner for reduced flights. When return flights from Manchester to Berlin dropped from around £80 to £38, she snapped them up.
Six weeks later she was on a flight, having set off early to drive to Manchester from Macclesfield, and rented a parking space on someone’s driveway, costing just £11.60 for the day.
Natasha took just one small bit of hand luggage – containing a portable charger, her passport, some breakfast bars, her headphones and her purse. They departed at 6:20am, and landed just before 9am.
She bought an £8.30 return train ticket to take her to Alexanderplatz and spent the morning wandering around the Topography of Terror exhibit. The free exhibit showcased some of the history of the SS in the Third Reich.
From there, Natasha nipped off to grab some lunch – swinging by a McDonalds for convenience – otherwise just fuelling herself on snacks. She said: “Maybe that wasn’t very culturally enriching, but time was of the essence, and there were queues at all the street vendors. I knew I needed something to keep me going through the tour.”
She had pre-booked a £14.17 walking tour starting at 1pm, which lasted three hours and included informational stops at Hitler’s Bunker (the Führerbunker), Checkpoint Charlie, and the Brandenburg Gate.
She got the same train back to the airport around 4pm, arriving at 5.50pm, and boarded her flight home at 8.20pm. Despite only spending a few hours in the iconic city, she felt she was able to cover a lot of the main historical landmarks.
She said: “The walking tour was best – Berlin is so rich in history. I would never in a million years have had time to research all the facts about the different sites on my own, but I got everything on the tour.”
Natasha said the price of the day was so reasonable that she’s already planning a return to visit the east side of the city to see the art at the East Side Gallery.
She said: “When I got back, I felt like I was high, just from the adrenaline of it all. It was a busy day, but you forget all the tiredness and just remember the memories.”
A train from London to Glasgow on Tuesday, November 25 at lunchtime costs £130.80p at the time of writing – £28.73p more than Natasha’s trip.
For Marina Lacerda, the upcoming publication of U.S. government files on Jeffrey Epstein represents more than an opportunity for justice.
She says she was just 14 when Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York mansion, but she struggles to recall much of what happened because it is such a dark period in her life.
Now, she’s hoping that the files will reveal more about the trauma that distorted so much of her adolescence.
“I feel that the government and the FBI knows more than I do, and that scares me, because it’s my life, it’s my past,” she told the Associated Press.
President Trump signed legislation last week that will force the Justice Department to release documents from its voluminous files on Epstein.
“We have waited long enough. We’ve fought long enough,” Lacerda said.
It isn’t clear yet how much new information will be in the files, gathered over two decades of investigations into Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of many girls and women.
Some of his accusers expect the files to provide a level of transparency they had hardly allowed themselves to believe would materialize, but the release of the documents will be a more complicated moment for others.
Two federal investigations cut short
The FBI and police in Palm Beach, Fla., began investigating Epstein in the mid-2000s after several underage girls said he had paid them for sex acts. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges including procuring a minor for prostitution, but a secret deal with the U.S. attorney in Florida — future Trump Cabinet member Alex Acosta — allowed him to avoid a federal prosecution. He served little more than a year in custody.
Jena-Lisa Jones says she was abused by Epstein in Palm Beach in 2002, when she was 14. She did not report the abuse to the police at the time, but she later became one of many accusers to sue the multimillionaire.
The Miami Herald published a series of articles about Epstein in 2018 that exposed new details about how the federal prosecution was shelved. A year later, federal prosecutors in New York, where Epstein owned a mansion, revived the case and charged him with sex trafficking.
Jones said she was interviewed during that federal investigation and was prepared to testify in court.
“It was very important for me to have my moment, for him to see my face and hear my words, and me have that control and power back,” Jones said.
But that day never came.
Epstein killed himself in a federal jail cell in New York City in August 2019.
In lieu of her day in court, Jones and others are hoping for a public reckoning with the publication of the government files on Epstein.
While the government only ever charged two people in connection with the abuse case — Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, who is in prison for her related crimes — at least one of Epstein’s accusers has claimed she was instructed to have sex with other rich and powerful men.
Jones didn’t make similar claims, but said she believes the documents could map out a “broad scheme” involving others.
“I’m hoping they’re shaking a little bit and that they have what’s coming for them,” Jones said.
Filling in the gaps
Lacerda, now 37, is also hoping the files will clarify her own personal experience, which is muddled by the pain she said she endured at that time in her life.
“I was just a child and it’s just trauma. That’s what trauma does to your brain,” Lacerda said.
An immigrant from Brazil, Lacerda said she was working three jobs to support herself and her family the summer before 9th grade when a friend said she could make $300 if she gave Epstein massages.
The first time she massaged Epstein, he told her to remove her shirt, she said.
Lacerda said she was soon spending so much time working for Epstein that she dropped out of school. The sexual abuse persisted until she turned 17, when Epstein informed her that she was “too old,” she said.
Lacerda wondered whether the files might include videos and photographs of her and other victims at Epstein’s properties.
“I need to know — for my healing process and for the adult in me — what I did as a child,” Lacerda said. “It will be re-traumatizing, but it’s transparency — and I need it,” she said.
Accusers wonder, why now?
For Lacerda, the elation around the upcoming release of the files gave way to familiar feelings for many women who survive abuse: fear and paranoia.
“In the heat of the moment, we were like, ‘Wow, this is like, everything that we’ve been fighting for.’ And then we had to take a moment and be like, ‘Wait a minute. Why is he releasing the files all of a sudden?’ ” Lacerda said.
The abrupt change in the political momentum made her uneasy. She wondered whether the documents would be doctored or redacted to protect people connected to Epstein.
Others echoed her concerns, and wondered if the government would sufficiently protect victims who have remained anonymous, who fear scrutiny and harassment if their names were to become public.
“For the rest of my life, I will never truly trust the government because of what they’ve done to us,” Jones said.
Haley Robson, who says she was abused by Epstein when she was 16, has the same concerns.
Robson was a leading voice in advocating for the Florida legislation signed in 2024 that unsealed the grand jury transcripts from the 2006 state case against Epstein.
She said the political maneuvering in recent months about the files led to nonstop anxiety, reminiscent of how she felt when she was abused as a teenager.
“I guess it really comes from the trauma I’ve endured, because this is kind of what Jeffrey Epstein did to us. You know, he wasn’t transparent. He played these manipulation tactics,” she said. “It’s triggering for anybody who’s been in that situation.”
Still, Robson said she is trying to savor the victory while she can.
“This is the first time since 2006 where I don’t feel like the underdog,” she said.
NEW YORK — A tax on tea once sparked rebellion. This time, it’s just causing headaches.
Importers of the prized leaves have watched costs climb, orders stall and margins shrink under the weight of President Trump’s tariffs. Now, even after Trump has given them a reprieve, tea traders say it won’t immediately undo the damage.
“It took a while to work its way through the system, these tariffs, and it will take a while for it to work its way out of the system,” says Bruce Richardson, a celebrated tea master, tea historian and purveyor of teas at his shop, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, in Danville, Ky. “That tariffed tea is still working its way out of our warehouses.”
While some bigger firms are behind the biggest supermarket brands, the premium tea market is largely the work of smaller businesses — family farms, specialty importers and a web of little tea shops, tea rooms and tea cafes across the U.S. Amid an onslaught of tariffs, they have become showcases for the levies’ effects.
On their shelves, selection has narrowed, with some teas missing because they’re no longer viable products to stock with the steep levies. In their warehouses, managers are consumed with uncertainty and operational headaches, including calculating what a blend really costs, with ingredients from multiple countries on a roller coaster of tariffs. And in backrooms where the wafting scent of fresh tea permeates, owners have been forced to put off job postings, raises, advertising and other investments so they can have cash available to pay duties when their containers arrive at U.S. ports.
“If I were to add up all the money I’ve spent on tariffs that weren’t there a year ago, it could equal a new employee,” says Hartley Johnson, who owns the Mark T. Wendell Tea Co. in Acton, Mass.
Johnson’s prices used to stay static for a year or longer. He ate the tariff costs before being forced to respond. His most popular tea, a smoky Taiwanese one called Hu-Kwa, has steadily risen from $26 to $46 a pound.
He knows some customers are reconsidering.
“Where is that tipping point?” Johnson asks. “I’m kind of finding that tipping point is happening now.”
That tipping point already came for one tea company in the City of Commerce.
International Tea Importers, already under financial strain from climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, said that tariffs were the final blow, creating an untenable cash flow crunch and forcing its closure after 35 years in business.
“We just became over-leveraged financing — not just the inventory, but also the tariffs,” says the company’s chief executive, Brendan Shah.
Despite the other financial challenges, if not for the tariffs, Shah says, it may have survived.
“Unpredictable tariff policies,” he wrote to customers in announcing the company’s closure, “have created the final, insurmountable barrier.”
Though Trump backed off some tariffs on agricultural products last week, many in the tea trade are wary of celebrating too soon and caution tea drinkers shouldn’t either. Much of next year’s supply has already been imported and tariffed, and the full impact of those duties may not have fully spilled downhill.
Meantime, other tariff-driven price hikes persist. All sorts of other products tea businesses import, such as teapots and infusers, remain subject to levies, and costs for some American-made items, like tins for packaging, have spiked because they rely on foreign materials.
“The canisters, the bamboo boxes, the matcha whisks, everything that we import, everything that we sell has been affected by tariffs,” says Gilbert Tsang, owner of MEM Tea Imports in Wakefield, Mass.
Though globally tea reigns supreme, imbibed more than anything but water, it has long been overshadowed by coffee in the U.S. Still, tea is entwined in American history from the very beginning, even before colonists angry with tariffs dumped tons of it in Boston Harbor.
Boston may run on Dunkin’ today, but it was born on tea.
The 1773 revolt that became known as the Boston Tea Party rose out of the British Parliament’s implementation of tea tariffs on colonists, who rejected taxation without representation in government. After an independent United States was born, one of the new government’s first major acts, the Tariff Act of 1789, ironically set in law import taxes on a range of products including tea. In time, though, trade policy came to include carve-outs for many products Americans rely on but don’t produce.
For more than 150 years, most tea has passed through U.S. ports with little to no duties.
That began to change in Trump’s first term with his hard-line approach to China. But nothing compared to what came with his return to the White House.
In July, the most recent month for which the U.S. International Trade Commission has tallied tariff numbers, tea was taxed at an average rate of over 12%, a huge increase from a year earlier when it was just under one-tenth of a percent. In that single month, American businesses and consumers paid more than $6 million in tea import taxes, amassing in just 31 days more tariffs than any previous full year on record.
“All over again, taxation without representation,” says Richardson, an advisor to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. “Our wants and needs and our voices are not being represented because Congress is avoiding the issue by simply allowing the president to act like George III.”
All told, tea importers paid about $19.6 million in tariffs in the first seven months of 2025, nearly seven times as much as the same period last year.
It’s all been confounding to those steeped in the world of tea, on which the U.S. depends on foreign countries for nearly all of the billions of pounds Americans brew each year. Though a number of small tea farms exist in the U.S., they can’t fill Americans’ cups for more than a few hours of the year.
Said Angela McDonald, president of the United States League of Tea Growers: “We don’t have an industry and we can’t produce one overnight.”
Last year, I was fortunate enough to travel to Naples, Italy for the first time.
One of the many reasons to visit this historical and culinary diamond is to experience the famed Margherita pizza, invented there in the late 19th century.
My wife, a group of travelers and I caught a break when a table opened at 50 Kalò, a pizzeria lauded in Italy’s Michelin guide and known for its amazing doughs.
We ordered a variety of Neapolitan pizzas, including a pair of the tomato, mozzarella and basil-based Margheritas. How fortunate we were.
One person at our table, however, refused to try them. Her name is Jan and she’s from New Jersey.
“It’s not better than New York style,” she told a stunned table. “I’m sure it’s fine, but my guy is better.”
We all know a Jan in our lives — or sometimes, it’s us. We all have our favorites, whether it’s pizza, tacos, draft beers or wines. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying something different.
Harris takes readers from Hermosa Beach to Eagle Rock, and from Santa Monica to Los Feliz in search of a lovely pie.
Let’s jump into a few selections from Harris’ list — and remember, don’t be a Jan.
A pepperoni pizza from Sonny’s in Hollywood.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Sonny’s (Hollywood)
I have seen all the social media influencers proclaiming Sonny’s to be the best new pizza in Los Angeles. It’s a giant pizza, with a diameter that seems like the size of a semi-truck tire. The crust is so crisp, the crackles are audible in every video of people munching on it.
A layer of bronze oil sits atop the pizza and settles in the many cups of pepperoni. It creates a sheen over the cheese. My fingers were shiny. The oil dripped down my chin. The cheese, sauce and crust coalesce into a slender slice that’s sturdy enough, but flops at the tip.
Some of the crust was cracker-like and golden. Some of it was burnt. It’s not a perfect pizza, but I appreciated the thin crust and the flavor of the grease-streaked mottled cheese. And if someone else is offering to go through the trouble of ordering the pizza, I’ll happily eat it.
The D-Fresh pizza from Redwood Pie in Hermosa Beach. The pizza is topped with pickled serrano chiles and spicy sausage.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Redwood Pie (Hermosa Beach)
I first encountered Erik Vose’s pizza when he was operating Vivace Pizzeria, a food truck that housed a 5,500-pound Acunto Mario oven. He made some of the best bubble-flecked Neapolitan pies in the city. Now he’s creating his own category of pizza at Redwood Pie in Hermosa Beach.
He’s making a sourdough crust with a blend of five flours from Central Milling. It’s bready and wonderfully chewy, a sheath of amber orbs and tight, tiny bubbles that create the ideal crunch.
The slice of pepperoni is textbook perfect from Redwood Pie, with a well-balanced sauce, a blanket of cheese and pepperoni cups that transform into blistered meat candy in the oven. For the white pie fans, there’s the “D-Fresh.” A rugged landscape of hot Italian sausage crumbles, frizzled basil and pickled Serrano chiles tops the mozzarella base — and leaves your lips humming with heat.
Pork-and-beef bolognese pizza at Bub and Grandma’s Pizza in Highland Park.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Bub and Grandma’s Pizza (Highland Park)
If you’ve been following Andy Kadin’s career, you know that his breads can be found at restaurants around the city. So it should come as no surprise that his sourdough pizzas possess a wonderful tang and a durable crust that cracks with each fold and bite.
Kadin developed his pizza dough alongside chef Jeff Whittaker, who previously cooked at Hippo and Bar Monette. For the Bolognese pizza at Bub and Grandma’s Pizza, they slather the crust in a robust, meaty pork and beef ragu, with big boulders of meat protruding from the melted mozzarella.
The porchetta pie is painted with a decadent garlic cream and cloaked in ribbons of porchetta, charred broccolini and plenty of pepperoncini. It’s finished with a drizzle of garlic oil and a sprinkle of fennel salt. Imagine all the makings of a stellar porchetta sandwich in pizza form.
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With searches for ‘avoid jet lag’ soaring, travel experts have revealed the perfect time to fly
Isobel Pankhurst Audience Writer
09:29, 23 Nov 2025
This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more
Fly at the right time to avoid jet lag(Image: Thicha Satapitanon via Getty Images)
Anyone heading off for some winter sunshine this festive period might find themselves fretting about jet lag – particularly if you’re travelling somewhere quite distant. According to Google Trends data, searches for ‘avoid jet lag’ have rocketed by 9,900% over the past month, with holidaymakers worried this could ruin their break.
But dodging jet lag could be as straightforward as picking the ideal departure time, according to specialists at Go2Africa. They recommend booking your flight to arrive at a local time between 2pm-5pm, which means you’ll touch down in optimal conditions with plenty of daylight exposure and the chance to remain alert until bedtime. This sets you up for a properly synchronised body clock throughout your getaway.
Circadian rhythm alignment
One explanation for why your arrival time can help prevent jet lag is that it allows your body’s circadian rhythm sufficient time to adjust to external signals like light and darkness.
Any sudden shift, such as crossing time zones during air travel, can throw this alignment off balance and trigger jet lag symptoms.
Strong reset signal
“Light is the strongest signal to the body that it needs to reset”, the specialists explain. “Strategic exposure or, of course, avoidance, changes your circadian phase, supercharging the reset of your internal body clock.”
Daylight and wakefulness
The experts add: “Getting to your destination between the hours of 2pm and 5pm local time is perfect as you have enough daylight to reset your body clock, but it’s not so late that you will struggle to stay awake until bedtime. Arriving too early (morning) risks falling asleep prematurely or being awake for too many hours before night, confusing your clock.”
Other ways to beat jet lag
If you can’t manage to touch down at the ideal time, there are still plenty of methods to reduce your chances of suffering from jet lag.
The first approach is to slowly modify your sleep pattern at least three days before you travel. Achieve this by hitting the hay 30 to 60 minutes earlier each evening.
Another suggestion is to maximise your light exposure by stepping outdoors into natural sunlight as quickly as possible once you’ve landed.
Though if you touch down during the evening hours, experts recommend steering clear of harsh lighting (particularly screens) for an hour or two before your local bedtime.
During your first complete day at your destination, synchronise your meals, wake-up time and sleep schedule with the local timezone, as your body’s digestive rhythm also plays a crucial part in your circadian system.
I have to give it to Bill Plaschke when he’s right. UCLA moving to SoFi Stadium is about as smart as a typical UCLA coaching hire.
This month I was able to attend the Steelers-Chargers game at SoFi on a Sunday, followed the next Saturday by the USC-Iowa game at the Coliseum. Everything about those two places is different and only one of them feels like the college experience.
SoFi crams tailgaters in like sardines. There is no room to enjoy the experience.
The fresh air and scenery at the Rose Bowl are the best maybe in the country. People don’t show up at the Rose Bowl for a very simple reason: The program stinks. Not the venue. This proves the old adage, “the fish stinks from the head down.” Thousands of fans sat in the rain last weekend for a Trojans game because the product on the field was worth it. Simple.
Jeff Heister Chatsworth
Who can blame UCLA for wanting to play at SoFi Stadium, the ultra-modern sports palace, not to mention great recruiting tool, a mere 15 minutes from campus? As Bill Plaschke waxes nostalgic, the rest of us slog down the 10 Freeway from Westwood, through downtown, up into the far northeast corner of L.A., to the antiquated monument that is the Rose Bowl.
Afterward, those of us sitting on the east side of the stadium, staring into the setting sun until the fourth quarter, stumble with burned-out retinas to the muddy golf course that they call a parking lot, to wait in our stack-parked cars, until everyone else is out, so we can leave, an hours-long ordeal just to get home. My only question is, what genius at UCLA signed a long-term contract to play at a place that was obsolete long before the ink dried?
Art Peck View Park
UCLA will pay attorneys millions of dollars endeavoring to extricate the university from the ironclad Rose Bowl lease it pledged to honor. Beyond those fees, they’ll pay tens of millions more to Pasadena in order to get out of the deal.
If UCLA takes those same many millions, invests in a top-tier coach, enhances its football programs and facilities, and fills their NIL coffer, that should lead to a winning, sustainable program that brings more fans to the games. Rose Bowl revenue goes up.
Pasadena may get a one-time windfall, but over time without an anchor tenant, revenue will shrink and the stadium’s luster will fade.
Where are the sensible, honorable folks who possess the smarts and the backbone to craft a fair deal?
David Griffin Westwood
UCLA likely leaving the historic Rose Bowl, home of a million team memories and successes, for the sterile confines of SoFi Stadium is abhorrent to any longtime Bruin fan. Terry Donahue, you have our sincerest apologies.
I was a bit skeptical when an emailer suggested touring Torrance as a way to appreciate this South Bay hidden gem. As a San Gabriel Valley product, I’ve enjoyed excursions to the iconic Rose Bowl or the historic San Gabriel Mission.
But Torrance? Really?
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I’m a fan of the divine paradise cakes baked at two King’s Hawaiian locations in Torrance and am aware that Compton-based hip hop group N.W.A recorded “F— tha Police” in a city music studio.
Yes, that’s all fine and notable, but is this city of 140,000 actually tour worthy?
Debbie Hays, a resident and Torrance Historical Society docent, was up to the challenge of proving it certainly was when we met for a tour this week.
History meets Hollywood
We started at the Torrance Historical Society. Inside, visitors receive a quick lesson about the city’s creation, from a Spanish land grant to its founding by financial broker Jared Sidney Torrance in 1912.
A good portion of the talk centers on one of the city’s heroes, Louis Zamperini, known as the “Torrance Tornado.”
The Olympic and USC star, who competed in the famed 1936 Games, was a larger-than-life pillar captured in book and film, the latter the 2014 movie “Unbroken.”
“Louis was a bit of a misfit in his early days and his story is one of redemption and finding his purpose,” Hays said. “It started with track and of course he’s most known about his role in the war.”
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays says.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Zamperini was a U.S. Army Air Force bombardier in 1943 when his B-24 Liberator went down in the Pacific on May 27 with 10 additional crew members.
Zamperini floated on a life raft for 47 days, battling sharks and hunger before being picked up by a Japanese patrol boat.
He was tortured for two years before he was finally freed.
Hays showed off heirlooms, trophies and files donated by the Zamperini family, including more than 60 pounds of notes and awards, used in production of the movie.
“No other place in the world has more information and pieces of history tied to Louis than we do,” Hays said.
The ‘Ramen Capital of Southern California’
One of the more surprising details about Hays’ tour was the number of excursions the city offers.
You can take one of several self-guided tours of the city’s dozen or so microbreweries and craft beer tasting sites that highlight a burgeoning craft industry.
The most delectable tour, however, may be shown on the city’s Ramen Trail map, which declares Torrance the “Ramen Capital of Southern California.”
As for locales, the film and television map tour denotes more than 200 locations where movies like “Scarface,” “Boogie Nights” and “Horrible Bosses” and television sitcoms like “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Barry” were filmed.
“We aren’t Hollywood, but we have many spots worth visiting,” Hays said. “All they’re all relatively close together.”
The Buffy home
One of her most popular excursions is the Fall Tour of Old Torrance, held annually in October.
Hays offers architectural and historic showings of Tudor, Mission and Spanish Colonial revival homes often butting up against each other. Most homes are over 100 years old.
“It’s a very eclectic tour that you don’t see every day in every town,” Hays said. “We’re not a cookie-cutter neighborhood.”
Yet, it’s the No. 4 spot on that tour, a 1914 Craftsman-style home at 1313 Cota Ave., that draws a pilgrimage year round.
The 2,296-square-foot home is forever known as “the Buffy home,” where the popular television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was filmed.
The four bedroom, two bathroom home served as the home of main character Buffy Summers, played by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“I’ve led private tours to the home, with sometimes as many as 80 people,” Hays said. “Fans come to the house, they cry, they take pictures, they hug the tree. They love it.”
Paradise cakes, ramen noodles, craft beer and Zamperini memorabilia. You don’t have to love Buffy to appreciate Torrance.
The week’s biggest stories
A pedestrian braves the rain in Venice Beach.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
SoCal’s stormy weather
Olympic updates
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That performance, one of five games Mayfield started to finish that historic Super Bowl-hangover season for the Rams, jump-started Mayfield’s then-stalled career.
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Gary Klein previews Sunday’s game between the Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers at SoFi Stadium.
In 2023, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed him to a one-year contract, and he led them to the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. In 2024, he signed a three-year contract that includes $55 million in guarantees and could be worth as much as $100 million, according to Overthecap.com.
And on Sunday, he returns to SoFi Stadium to face a Rams team that is 8-2 and looks very much like a Super Bowl contender.
“There is no way for me to sugarcoat it. … It was pivotal in my career and in my journey,” Mayfield, speaking about his time with the Rams, told Tampa Bay reporters this week, adding, “It helped me find the fun in football again. … It was instrumental in my career, something I am forever grateful for, and it will be fun to go back and see some familiar faces.”
During his short stint with the Rams, Mayfield brought “a spark” and displayed “pretty impressive mental stamina” to process and put into action so much information, Rams coach Sean McVay said.
“It’s one thing to absorb it, it’s a totally different thing to be able to bring it to life when the enemy has a say,” McVay said. “It was impressive. I think when you watch what he’s done and who he is, I think it’s probably more on par for what we expect of Baker than the outlier when you look at the totality of everything he’s done.”
Mayfield, 30, has passed for 17 touchdowns, with three interceptions this season for the Buccaneers (6-4), who lead the NFC South.
The game matches Mayfield, the top pick in the 2018 draft, against Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, the top pick in 2009.
“His ability to come in and play pretty darn well on a shortened timeline was really awesome,” Stafford said, adding, “He’s been through a lot and came out on the other side playing about as good as ball as anybody.”
The Rams are coming off a 21-19 victory over the Seattle Seahawks, a victory that extended their winning streak to five games and gave them sole possession of first place in the NFC West.
Stafford has passed for a league-leading 27 touchdowns, with only two interceptions. Davante Adams has a league-best 10 touchdown catches.
The Rams will be without three veteran starters — tight end Tyler Higbee, right tackle Rob Havenstein and safety Quentin Lake — who were placed on injured reserve this week.
To get it out of the way: Yes, Tobias Jesso Jr. has heard about gooning.
“Somebody put me up on it and said it was about masturbation?” says the 40-year-old singer and songwriter, which is about half-right: As detailed in an essay in Harper’s that went viral last month, to goon — a term heretofore associated with Jesso thanks to his cult-fave 2015 album “Goon” — means in Gen Z parlance to masturbate at such great lengths that the act leads to a kind of trance state.
“Well, I’ve never done that,” Jesso says. “‘Goon’ I got from ‘The Goonies’ — it’s just a brilliant movie.” He laughs. “But I don’t care. If it sells more records, sure.”
That Jesso has a record to sell at all might take some by surprise. Though “Goon” thoroughly charmed critics and fellow musicians with its early-’70s-balladeer vibe — many said he evoked the glory days of Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and beard-and-shearling-coat-era Paul McCartney — Jesso didn’t cotton to the life of a sort-of-famous performer and almost immediately walked away from his solo career to write songs for other singers instead.
He’s thrived in that role, penning hits for the likes of Adele, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. In 2023, he was named songwriter of the year at the Grammy Awards; this month he was nominated for that prize for a second time, with the Recording Academy citing his work with Justin Bieber (“Daisies”), Haim (“Relationships”) and Olivia Dean (“Man I Need”), among others.
Yet now he’s back with an unexpected follow-up to his debut called “Shine,” which came out Friday. Stripped back for the most part to just voice and piano, it’s an earnest work of introspection from a guy who knows how to make tenderness feel like strength.
Jesso, who grew up in Vancouver and lives in Los Angeles, announced the album just last week with a music video for his song “I Love You” that features the actors Riley Keough and Dakota Johnson, with whom he’s been close since he first touched down here around 2008.
“I hit them up and was like, ‘You girls think it’s about time I use your fame to get some extra clicks?’” he says on a recent morning at his place in Silver Lake. “The video opens up on them, then it pans away and it goes to me and you never see them again.”
Says Keough, a former girlfriend: “It was a very Tobias ask.”
So why return to the spotlight? According to Jesso, he wouldn’t have had it not been for a breakup that left him “the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, by far.” We’re sitting in a cozy den that looks out over a lush hillside garden; a bowl of persimmons sits on a coffee table while a copy of “McCartney II” peeks out from a stack of LPs.
Jesso, whose mop of curly hair has begun ever so slightly to gray, says that when he enters a songwriting session with another artist, “I leave my worries and woes outside the door. I’m there to serve you — to write the song you want to write.” It’s an approach that’s endeared him to his star collaborators and yielded songs as deep as Adele’s “To Be Loved,” a stunning meditation on the costs of divorce from her 2021 album “30.”
But earlier this year, for the first time in Jesso’s decade of behind-the-scenes work, he found himself struggling to deliver. “I was feeling so in the dumps that I’d be choking on a line that I didn’t even want to say because if I say it, I’ll start crying,” he recalls.
He cleared six weeks from his busy schedule to process his emotions; the result was a set of songs for himself about heartache — “I can see the love leaving from your eyes in the form of a tear,” he sings in “Rain” — but also about his mom’s experience with dementia and about the young son he shares with his ex-wife.
To record the music, Jesso’s instinct was to go big. “I’m a dreamer, so I was like, ‘Imagine all the people I could have help me now that I didn’t have 10 years ago,’” he says. “I went from so-and-so to so-and-so, trying out studios, making promises I couldn’t keep. But all that stuff over the weeks just kind of flaked away.”
What remained was the beautifully mellow sound of a vintage Steinway piano he’d had restored after buying it on Craiglist for $800. He keeps the piano in a small, uncluttered studio upstairs from the den at his house; that’s where he cut “Shine,” singing live as he accompanied himself in real time.
A small handful of other players appear on the album, most prominently in “I Love You,” which erupts near the end with a wild drum fill performed by Jesso’s old pal Kane Ritchotte. The idea for the percussive outburst came to Jesso after he’d consumed “a s— ton of mushrooms,” he says. “I turned to my assistant at the time — I wonder if I have it — and I said, ‘Record me right now.’ She started recording me, and what came out was that fill.”
He picks up his phone and scrolls for a moment. “Look at this,” he says, turning the screen my way: There’s Jesso in the same room we’re in right now, staring wide-eyed into the camera as he mouths the drum sounds Ritchotte would later replicate exactly.
“That song is about somebody’s inner child being in the middle of a labyrinth, and you’re trying to find them so you can convince them that you’re in love,” Jesso tells me. “You can’t get there and you’re wishing that the whole labyrinth would just be destroyed. So when it gets to that part — ‘Shatter the cracks wide open / And say, “I love you”’ — the drums are the walls coming down. That’s the shattering.”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Drum theatrics aside, Jesso’s singing is the album’s clear focal point; his pleading, slightly unsteady tone gives the music an emotional intimacy that makes you feel as though you’re sitting right next to him on the piano bench.
Jesso describes his voice as something of a liability, which Keough says has been true since he was ducking the frontman’s job in the various bands he played in when he was in his early 20s. “I always loved his voice, and he just didn’t feel that way for whatever reason,” she recalls. “I don’t know if he felt a sort of shyness, which is really interesting because as a person he’s not shy whatsoever.”
Asked whether Jesso’s decision to follow up “Goon” surprised her, she says, “I was surprised he released ‘Goon’ to begin with.”
The way Jesso sees it, “My voice isn’t good enough for the songs I write, which is why I’ve chosen to work with all these other people.” What he’s comes to realize, though, is that “my voice is perfect for my songs.”
Which doesn’t mean it’s easy for him to hear it. Once he’d finished recording, Jesso asked his friend Shawn Everett to mix “Shine”; what he got back — with every imperfection of his voice under a virtual magnifying glass — terrified him. “It felt way, way, way too vulnerable,” Jesso says.
He texted Everett and said he was sorry but that he couldn’t put out the record like this. “I told him, ‘You just brought out more of me than I’m willing to share,’” he says now. “Then I got home, I smoked a big fat joint and I sat on the couch. I was like, I’m gonna wait until I’m high enough that I can press play and pretend this isn’t me.” He laughs. “I put on the headphones, and I have never in my life had such a profound experience with music.”
Who’d you imagine was singing? I don’t know — like a 50-year-old dude or maybe a 20-year-old girl who’s got a low voice? It didn’t matter — it wasn’t me, so I wasn’t listening with judgmental ears.
The paradox is that “Shine” feels like the you-est possible album. There’s no tricks. I didn’t auto-tune, I didn’t cut anything together, I didn’t do any of that. It’s me singing a take, and it’s the best take I got. Whereas with “Goon,” there were a lot of elements that maybe weren’t possible for me to do.
“Goon” was a little more elaborate — more players and producers. Which was tortuous because I’m like, “How do I recreate this thing that I didn’t even fully make myself?”
Given the unhappiness of your experience after “Goon” came out, I wondered whether this time you’d put certain restrictions on what you’re willing to do. I’ll say right off the bat: I’m not touring — no way. I’ve met enough artists who say, “I feel totally myself onstage,” to know that there’s a natural state in which people feel comfortable up there. And I’ve tried every which way — by which I mean drinking and not drinking — and I just can’t. It’s not me.
Maybe this is something I still need to work on in therapy, but by being onstage and singing, I’m basically saying, “I’m a singer,” and I’m not comfortable saying that. I’m comfortable saying, “I’m a songwriter.” So there’s this weird shame that comes in where I’m presenting myself beyond what I know my ability to be.
One of the benchmarks I needed to hit on this record was to be comfortable that I’m not misrepresenting myself, which is why I’m OK if there’s an out-of-tune note here and there or if it’s a little bit fast or slow. But even knowing that I can perform it exactly like it is on the record, there’s nothing drawing me to the stage. I don’t really want to have a relationship with fans in that way. I feel very privileged that this is not my main job.
Between “Goon” and now, songwriting became your main job. So I don’t have to take this as seriously. The parts I do take seriously — the art — I’m willing to put in the work for.
But not for success per se. Exactly. This is weird to say, but there were moments where I was toiling over this record — listening to Take No. 73 and being like, “Wait, what was the other one?” — and the thought would occur to me: I could go to work today instead of do this and potentially create much more wealth for myself than this album could ever do.
I mean, that’s almost certainly the case. In comparison, “Shine” is meaningless in terms of success and potential. And yet I was still drawn to doing it, which made me feel like I was making the right choice for myself. But when it comes to the stuff I don’t think is important, just try to get me to do it. It ain’t happening.
I went back and looked at something I wrote about a show you played at South by Southwest in 2015 where you had to start your song “True Love” five times. Oh God.
But it’s not like anybody in the crowd was mad about it. People thought it was cute. I feel like if I was onstage now — and everything’s pointing to I probably should play a show or two — I’d be able to see the value in vulnerability. It’s human, and I like that about it. But at the time I wasn’t able to cope with the people who wouldn’t see it that way. Because I wasn’t seeing it that way. I was seeing it as: I’m trying to pretend I’m OK with this, but I’m actually forgetting my song because I’m such a s— performer. Yeah, the crowd loves it, but I go offstage and I’m not looking for the comments saying, “It was so funny.” I’m looking for the ones that are like, “This guy’s a joke.” And I’m like, f—, I knew it.
Keough shares Jesso’s assessment of what’s put him in a different position today versus 10 years ago.
“With ‘Goon,’ he would have put pressure on himself” to jump through the hoops required of a performer, she says. “He was a barista straight out of the coffee shop. ‘Shine’ is straight off all his Grammys and his big songwriting career. He’s able to be more free as an artist now because the stakes are lower.”
Yet not so long ago Jesso reckoned he might be close to burning out in the pop realm. “I was kind of getting ready to dip,” he says, “because I don’t like going into a room and saying, ‘Oh, this song is blowing up — let’s do the same thing.’”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at home in Silver Lake.
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
He clarifies that he’s not talking about working with an artist like Dua Lipa, who recruited him as a writer for her 2024 “Radical Optimism” LP. “Dua was great,” he says. “I’m talking about going into pitch sessions and sitting with a bunch of writers and figuring out how to get a song pitched. That’s never really worked for me, and the higher you get with producers, the more into that formula you’re putting yourself.”
What he found with Bieber earlier this year was nothing like that. “It was balls to the wall, ideas just flying around,” Jesso says of the roving sessions for the pop superstar’s experimental “Swag” and “Swag II” albums, which took Jesso and the rest of Bieber’s crew to France and the Bahamas and Iceland before Jesso began work on “Shine.”
“I nearly wept on more than one occasion because of how moved I felt about what Justin was doing,” Jesso says. “It was raw emotion without any tricks, without any wordplay, without any of the stuff that I’d been so jaded by in the industry.” The experience, he adds, “reinvigorated my belief in pop music.”
Which makes it an interesting time to move to Australia, as Jesso plans to do soon in order to be close to his son, Ellsworth, who’s there with Jesso’s ex-wife, the Australian singer and songwriter Emma Louise.
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E, you know — it’s always give and take to meet each other’s needs,” he says. “And one of the things was Australia. She really wants Ellsworth to go to school there, which makes sense in one sense — and professionally makes no sense at all. But I committed to it, and I want to at least give it a try and see it through.
“This album coming out and moving to Australia within the same couple months — it feels like a big moment of change,” Jesso continues. “Maybe I’m letting go of some old things, like music being scary, and embracing some new scary things. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do over there. Hopefully I get busy doing something. Otherwise I’ll be pitching the groundskeeper ideas for TV shows the whole time.”
Ahead of his final season under club control, and with his 2026 salary expected to top more than $6 million through arbitration, reliever Evan Phillips was not tendered a contract for next year by the Dodgers on Friday, but president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the team is still interested in re-signing him as he recovers from Tommy John surgery.
“We had a number of back and forth discussions with Evan and his agent,” Friedman said via text. “It is challenging with him coming off surgery, so he is going to take some time and look to sign after he throws off the mound when his rehab allows. Evan has been a big part of our past success and we will continue the conversation about bringing him back. We respect that he is taking this time to decide what is best for him and his family.”
Friday’s decision — which will make Phillips a free agent — reflects the uncertainty around the pitcher’s status for next season, following the Tommy John procedure he had last June.
Phillips’ recovery process is expected to stretch at least into the early part of next year. How much he will be able to pitch in 2026 remains unclear.
Because of that, the Dodgers faced a decision ahead of MLB’s non-tender deadline Friday: Keep Phillips on the roster and pay him the $6.1 million or so that MLB Trade Rumors projected he would receive through the arbitration process. Or cut him loose and attempt to re-sign him (likely to a lesser salary) this offseason.
The club picked the latter. Now, only time will tell whether Phillips’ productive tenure in Los Angeles will continue.
Phillips, 31, has been a key part of the Dodgers’ bullpen since the team plucked him off waivers near the end of the 2021 season.
In 2022, he was one of the top relievers in baseball, posting a 1.14 ERA with 77 strikeouts in 63 innings. He had a 2.05 ERA and 24 saves the following season, before regressing to a 3.62 mark in 2024.
Despite that decline, the right-hander still played a crucial role in the club’s 2024 World Series run, pitching 6⅔ scoreless innings that postseason before missing the World Series with a shoulder injury.
That injury, which Phillips later said included a tear in the back of his rotator cuff, caused him to miss the early weeks of this past season.
Phillips eventually made his 2025 season debut on April 19, but logged only seven appearances (all of them scoreless) before going on the injured list in early May with forearm discomfort. At the time, Phillips’ hope was that the IL stint was only a “precautionary” measure and that he would be able to return later in the season.
Instead, his forearm pain lingered. And by the end of May, the full severity of his injury had become frustratingly clear.
Phillips underwent his Tommy John procedure, which typically comes with a 12-18 month recovery timeline, on June 3.
“[His arm] wasn’t really responding,” general manager Brandon Gomes said at the time. “We felt like this could be a possibility. So as he got deeper into the process and it wasn’t really getting better, the decision to do it was pretty much evident with our information.”
Phillips did begin throwing again on Nov. 5, he announced on Instagram. The Dodgers would still like for him to be part of the mix in their bid for a World Series three-peat in 2026.
Now, however, it will take a new contract to get that done.
In addition to Phillips, the Dodgers also decided not to tender a contract to 27-year-old pitcher Nick Frasso on Friday. Frasso, a former top prospect who struggled in triple-A in his return from a shoulder surgery this past season, had yet to make his MLB debut.
There was a time when KevOnStage was a very literal description of comedian Kevin Fredericks as a hungry comedian looking for stage time. These days, he might as well be called KevOnEverything. You can find him cracking jokes on live comedy tours, TV sketch shows, books, podcasts and just about every social media platform you care about. From books like his 2025 New York Times bestseller “Successful Failure” to his latest podcast, “Not My Best Moment,” the idea has always been about forward momentum to breed a funny brand that, just like his name, continues to stick with a sense of humor that ultimately succeeds at being relatable.
Moving from Washington state to L.A. with his wife and kids to fulfill his comedy dreams, he focused his comedy on the Black church and family life in a way that hadn’t been done before. The result was his breakout success with the show “Churchy” that started as a self-funded series that was picked up by BET and recently ran through its second season. It created a lane for him to expand his content universe with sketch shows like “The Hospital” and “Safe Space” on Tubi that allows him to retain creative control and put on more comedians working with veteran stand-ups like Tahir Moore and Tony Baker. The latter is his podcasting partner in crime whom he’s been touring with on the Bald Brothers comedy tour which wraps up in L.A. at the Wiltern on Sunday. Recently we spoke to KevOnStage about the secret to building his comedy brand — by being everywhere.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
I love that this is a year where so much is happening for you from so many angles.
When did you decide to go from being Kevin Fredericks — working a regular job and doing comedy on the side — to becoming “KevOnStage”?
I was working at the Spanaway [Washington] branch of Key Bank and I was on Twitter. This must have been 2009 — very early on Twitter. And people were just making jokes and people were getting fired [from their jobs over their jokes on Twitter]. People would not like a joke you said, search your name, Google you, find out where you worked and email like your boss, and people were getting fired. And I was like, “I can’t afford to lose my job over some ports take.” So I’m gonna take my full actual government name out of my handle, which was just Kevin Fredericks at the time. And I was like, “I’m Kev and I be on stage.” And that was literally as much thought as I put into it. I was just not trying to be easily found and fired. So I switched my handle to KevOnStage because I was doing stand-up all the time at that time and it stuck. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have just kept Kevin Fredericks, which was my Facebook name, but I think KevOnStage is cool as a moniker. I’m trying to be like Beyoncé, Bono, Sting, Oprah, KevOnStage — one name. People think my actual name is Kevon because of that. If they think that, then I know they found me because of the internet. Which is also fine. As long as people know me, it doesn’t bother me.
KevOnStage with Tony Baker on the Bald Brothers comedy tour.
(Joshua Gonzales )
When did you really find your tribe of comedians in Washington state that you still hang out with today?
In Washington state there was only really like Nate Jackson, he was the only working comedian who was working nationally. In Washington it was me, Nate, Big Irish Jay, a comedian named Terrence — those are the only people that were kind of doing comedy consistently. And then we had the Bay Area Black Comedy Competition, I don’t remember what year it was, and I met Lance Woods, who I’m still cool with. But then when I moved [to L.A.], that’s when I met Tony Baker and Tahir Moore through All Def Comedy. Because I didn’t really do stand-up on stage that much when I first moved to L.A. My wife was like, “we’re not gonna move to L.A. and then you’re on stage four or five nights a week.” And it was hard to get on stage … you have to go and hang out, go to Denny’s and like hang out all night. And [my wife] was not going for it and I had small children who had to go to school. So the majority of the people that I know I met through All Def.
You brought up an interesting point about the lifestyle of comics because it is a lifestyle that doesn’t really agree with everything else for most of the 9-to-5 working world — especially being married and having kids. So how did you then decide to focus more on content creation as a means to perform?
Well, interestingly enough, it started before I moved to L.A. There’s hardly any entertainment opportunities in Washington. There’s very rarely a TV show, even shooting there, much less a show you can actually audition and be on. So what happened was we were doing plays. We’re trying to be like Tyler Perry, David E. Talbert or Je’Caryous Johnson. And we were on our way, but there weren’t enough people in Washington to mount a successful black play — or “urban plays” as people called them. So we did our best, but even if we got 3,000 people, that was only for one night. And we weren’t doing that, by the way. We’re getting like 68 people. So I was watching a lot of YouTube at the time and I was realizing these people have fans everywhere. So I was like, we can do internet comedy and make people laugh on the internet and hopefully we get fans all across the United States. And from the first two videos we did, I was like, forget the play thing, I think the internet is the thing. Just like focus on that. I think we do that, we will build our own audience, and everything will be easier for us.
As far as the ability to own your content and guide however you want, how has that been important for your comedy career?
For me it’s been like, “He who pays says.” Like if you pay for it, you get the final say. So for a long time, it was by default because nobody’s getting paid. I’m just making it and posting it. The first big thing we did that was like really expensive was “Churchy” [on BET]. And there was a lot of [money from previous brand deals] that I saved, a lot of [money from doing] Spectrum commercials that I saved. I made eight episodes of “Churchy.” And shout-out to Jamal Henderson, he helped us meet executives at BET and they bought it. And they couldn’t have any creative control because it was already done.
So that’s kind of a process that we’ve repeated with [my sketch shows] “The Hospital” and “Safe Space.” We pay for it and then license it or partner with a company and make it now. And with Tubi, they’re a little bit different. They let you have creative control, even if they pay for it. They’re like “hey, we trust that you built your audience, you know your audience.” They’re the only platform that I’ve worked with that’s completely like, “we don’t have any say-so, no notes, you don’t have to send us a script, you don’t have to send an edit for approval, we trust you.” And that’s fantastic for me because you get to make it as close to [the original vision] without any impurities as possible.
Now I gotta be honest, when I work with BET, we had amazing executives and they’ve given us a lot of great notes, but they also give you some notes that you don’t agree with that you have to take. And that’s also part of just making things. It’s not a full negative. They also made [the show] better in a lot of different ways. And the one thing that I’m very grateful for with our partners at BET is every note they gave was to make the overall project better and for more people to enjoy it. I am a comedian at heart, so sometimes I’m loyal to the joke to a fault. The executive is like, we gotta tell the best story — so it’s not all bad. A lot of times we hear people bemoan partnering with people, and it has its negatives, but also my TV exec was more experienced than I was at making good TV, so some of their notes were really helpful, and I can carry those with me when I’m making other projects.
“The Hospital” and “Safe Space” are both like sketch shows. What was important about the formats for both shows — one at a hospital, the other on a therapist’s couch — that allow you to find the funny?
Richard Washington, who is a creative exec at KevOn Stage Studios, head of T V and film, and I built the systems and then we allow the people to work within the systems to the best of their personality. So I think the great part about “Safe Space” is the talent. Like you give them a premise, you find the right people, and then they take it and make it funny. “Safe Space” was really the same with “The Hospital.” Like, you know, we hired more sketch writers for the hospital, but Safe Space was more improv than even “The Hospital.” We had some fully written sketches for “The Hospital,” but we didn’t stick to everything exactly. Some are almost all improv. Like comedian CP’s episodes, he’s just riffing. So it’s as close to a stand-up version of content as you can get. And what I mean by stand-up is the audience is sitting there not knowing what the person’s gonna say. And that’s why I think it works.
KevOnStage recording a podcast.
(Mike Folabi)
As a creator of these shows, you often hold the door open for new talent to shine. How does that help your own vision of allowing there to be space for new actors and comedians to come up?
I grew up playing sports and then I went into plays. And with both of those elements, it’s it’s a team environment. You need other people to be successful and you gotta rely on other people to do their thing. With plays, you wanna have the best show possible. And then you put it all together and it’s the best product. And I think that’s the same approach that I take to creation. A lot of comedians, I’ve been told, they won’t take the best comedians. They’ll take people who are OK, but nowhere near as good as them.
Considering you post three to five videos a day, how do you find the time to produce as much content as you do?
So the thing is like this is my job. And I work really hard. I think people compare themselves to me, but they also have a job. Like you’re thinking of “how does he do this?” because you’re thinking of your actual day job. For the most part, I get up and think of funny things to say all day. And the other thing is I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m gonna do or editing it at all. If something funny happens right now, if I walk out of here and I trip and fall, I’ll probably make a video immediately and within five minutes that video’s gonna be on seven different platforms. So I’m not really precious about what I make. And I feel like people think it’s hard, but this is not hard for me. It’s something I love to do, I create freely out of joy. The guy who runs my doughnut shop who hasn’t taken a day off in 20 years, literally I was talking to him about this. He never takes a day off. Twenty years he’s at that doughnut shop, every night at 8 p.m., he makes doughnut, preparing for the day. Every day at 4 a.m., he comes and bakes them. That is hard. Not to say what I’m making is not hard. It is, but it’s not hard like that. People have hard jobs. I just be silly for two minutes and post it within five minutes. That’s not really hard for me.
“For the most part, I get up and think of funny things to say all day,” says KevOnStage.
(Joshua Gonzales )
I guess you’re not getting cellphone calluses.
Not at all [laughs] … I kind of designed my content to be able to make it easily because I feel like my approach is just inundating you with Kev. Like I want to be unavoidable. Yeah. I want to make content on so many different topics. It’s not even always comedic. I want people to just share you and or have a thought or make you have a thought. Right now I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts. So if you don’t follow me, but you follow for example “The Pivot,” which I did last week and they collab with me, now you’re seeing me on “The Pivot” or Funny Marco or I interviewed Issa Rae for the first episode of [my new podcast] called “Not My Best Moment.” And Issa Rae doesn’t do a whole whole bunch of interviews if she’s not promoting something. So if you’re interested in what Issa has to say, you got to hear me because I asked the question. So people rip my stuff, I’m like, “this is great!” They rip it and post it on threads. This is like as close to getting bootlegged as possible.
That’s what you want.
Yeah, bootleg me! Obviously I’d love to make the money, but it’s like the exposure will become capital or currency later. I just want to be out here so much that you’re eventually like, “All right, what is he talking about?” Because think about how many videos do you see in a day now. Back in the day, we used to have to be like, OK, I want to watch the videos. I’m gonna go to my computer and go to like, I remember before YouTube, I used to go to Break.com and watch videos. It was a thing I did for some time and then I went on about my day. Think about how many videos you consume on a daily basis. … So you gotta really hit ‘em over and over before they make a decision. So that’s why I just wanna flood you. I want you to be like, “Oh, my God, enough!”
Well, add one more to the pile right here.
Yeah, absolutely. Once I saw cameras here [at the L.A. Times studio], I was like, “Yeah, baby, I thought this was just an interview, we got video content, baby. Let’s go!” So yeah, it’s like that’s my approach. Just keep going — a lot.
Hundreds of thousands of times each year in California, farmers and their contractors spray pesticides on fields and orchards in the state’s agricultural heartlands.
Farmworkers young and old can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals if they are not properly trained, left uninformed about when they can safely enter sprayed fields or exposed to pesticide applications — because of factors such as wind drift or operator error.
Yet California’s system of protecting farmworkers from pesticide dangers is anything but a tight safety net. Through interviews, public records and data analyses, an investigation by Capital & Main has found that:
Enforcement of pesticide safety rules is splintered among dozens of county agriculture commissioners, resulting in piecemeal citations. Companies that operate in multiple counties were not fined for hundreds of violations — many of them pertaining to worker safety.
County inspections to enforce pesticide safety are minimal in the state’s farm belt. In 2023, there was one inspection for every 146 times that pesticides were applied in eight of California’s top 11 producing counties, according to data provided by those counties.
In interviews, more than two dozen underage farmworkers and parents described feeling sick and dizzy or suffering from skin irritations after being exposed to pesticides. Although state law requires illnesses resulting from pesticide exposure to be reported to the state, experts and labor advocates say the number of cases is surely undercounted, in part because laborers fear retaliation from employers if they report unsafe working conditions.
Asked about these findings, state officials said the data does not reflect some of the broader actions they have taken to protect farmworkers. County regulators contend that their enforcement has improved safety conditions for laborers and noted that use of toxic pesticides has decreased significantly over the last decade. Yet groups that have researched pesticide enforcement say the state of California is not using its powers to fine repeat offenders for safety violations — and hold them accountable.
“It’s especially troubling because it means workers aren’t being protected,” said Anne Katten, director of the Pesticide and Work Health and Safety Project for theCalifornia Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Exposure to pesticides and laboring in extreme heat are problematic for all farmworkers, but the long-term effects on the neurological system and vital organs can be more pronounced for younger laborers, according to medical experts.
“Children are still developing, and so we don’t want to mess with that development,” saidDr. Jose Suarez, a physician and associate professor of public health at UC San Diego, who has researched the effects of pesticides on adolescents.
Araceli, who started working the fields of the Santa Maria Valley four years ago when she was just 13, said that some of her most disturbing experiences involved planting vegetables in fields that reeked of chemicals.
“Sometimes, it would be really, really pungent,” she recalled, adding that she’d get headaches and feel like throwing up.
At times, Araceli said, skin peeled off her fingers and they turned white.
Her mother, in a separate interview, said in Spanish that her “head began to hurt” after she entered a lettuce field where a tractor had sprayed liquid that smelled like chemicals.
A 17-year-old strawberry picker at one of the many berry fields in the Salinas Valley.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
Unlike in other states, California’s system to protect farmworkers is split between local and state agencies.
Enforcement at the local level is the responsibility of55 county agricultural commissioners, who are appointed by their boards of supervisors and have a dual role of promoting agriculture and enforcing state pesticide safety laws. The stateDepartment of Pesticide Regulation enforces pesticide safety across California and provides guidance and training to agricultural commissioners.
In interviews, agricultural commissioners said the dual regulation system works because crops and growing seasons vary in each county and they can focus on the specific needs in their jurisdictions.
Yet when agricultural commissioners take enforcement action against a company for pesticide violations, they are not required by the department to check whether the firm has committed violations in other regions of California. In a statement, the department said that it “monitors compliance for repeat offenders as well as trends that may occur throughout the state.”
Capital & Main analyzed 40,150 records detailing pesticide enforcement actions across California from January 2018 through the first quarter of 2024.
According to the records, more than 240 businesses were cited for at least 1,268 violations of state pesticide laws in three or more counties. But for at least 609 of these violations — or 48% — the businesses paid no fines and received only notices or warnings.
Pesticide safety violations
Over six years, California cited more than 240 businesses across the state for at least 1,268 violations of pesticide safety laws in three or more counties.
But for nearly half of those violations the companies paid no fines and only received warnings or notices to correct the problems.
Analysis is from more than 40,000 state enforcement records from 2018 through early 2024.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
Craig Cassidy, a spokesperson for the Department of Pesticide Regulation, said in a written response that the number of violations with no fines “does not account for broader actions [that state and county regulators] may have taken to address the violations or to support compliance,” including warning letters or required training.
“Issuing fines is one tool in an effective enforcement program, which may be used in conjunction with other strategies to support compliance with statewide pesticide use laws and regulations,” he said.
Still, according to the data, there were repeated cases in which businesses were cited for multiple violations in separate counties but were never fined.
Agricultural contractor Nextcrop Inc., for example, was cited for 10 violations in four counties within a span of three years, but it was never ordered to pay a fine and received only warnings and notices to correct the problems, the records show.
All the violations pertained to requirements such as failing to provide pesticide safety training for workers, not posting information to inform employees about which pesticides were used on crops and failing to post information about when it was safe for workers to enter pesticide-sprayed fields.
The chief executive of Nextcrop and another company official did not respond to requests for comment.
Nutrien Ag Solutions, which is operated by a leading global supplier of agricultural services and products, is a company known to state regulators. In 2018, the firmagreed to pay $331,353 to U.S. officials in connection with 52 federal pesticide safety violations, some of them at seven facilities in the San Joaquin and Santa Maria valleys. The Department of Pesticide Regulation was involved in the investigation, according to federal regulators.
And from 2018 to 2022, agricultural commissioners cited the company for 35 separate violations of state law in 12 counties, the records show. They included failing to provide decontamination facilities and protective gear for workers, not following label instructions for pesticide use and failing to post emergency medical information in fields.
The firm paid fines for only 10 of the violations for a total of $14,700, according to the records.
In a statement, Nutrien Ag Solutions said that the violations “were resolved years ago, with prompt action taken at the time to address and correct them.”
“Nutrien upholds high standards in our operations,” the company said, “and remains dedicated to supporting farmers globally with the tools and expertise they need to produce safe and healthy crops.”
On two separate occasions, in 2018 and 2021, the Fresno County agricultural commissioner referred Nutrien Ag Solutions to the Department of Pesticide Regulation for enforcement action, the records show. Yet even after the second referral, the business continued to operate and was cited for 16 additional state violations in more than a half-dozen counties, the majority for which it was not fined.
The department said the case was referred to a regional office in Fresno County, but that it was never forwarded to headquarters in Sacramento for review.
“This was an error,” Cassidy said, “and we are looking into this matter.”
He added that the department is planning to propose regulations that would require agricultural commissioners to check a company’s statewide compliance history when taking enforcement actions, as well as justify the amount of their fines.
California agriculture has long depended on chemical-based pesticides to reduce crop damage and boost yields. Although organic farming has grown over the years, it accounts for less than 10% of all cropland statewide, far from the 20% goal by 2045 that California has adopted.
Commissioners in eight of California’s top 11 agricultural-producing counties agreed to provide estimates for the total number of times pesticides were sprayed in their jurisdictions — a figure they are not required by the state to track.
According to the estimates, pesticides were sprayed more than 687,000 times in the eight counties in 2023. That same year, 4,720 total inspections were performed in those counties — or less than 1% of the time that fields and orchards in those jurisdictions were sprayed with pesticides, according to enforcement records filed with the state.
Pesticide inspections
Agricultural commissioners provided estimates for the number of pesticide applications for 2023 in eight of the top 11 counties for agricultural production in California. The data and state enforcement records showed that these counties performed a small number of inspections compared with overall pesticide applications.
= 1,000 pesticide applications
Safety inspections were performed less than 1% of the time
Agricultural commissioners in Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Merced, Monterey, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara and Tulare counties and state pesticide enforcement records.
Lorena Iñiguez Elebee LOS ANGELES TIMES
In interviews, six agricultural commissioners said the pesticide regulatory system is too complex to be measured by a single metric, such as the number of inspections.
“I don’t think it’s a realistic way to gauge effectiveness,” said Melissa Cregan, the commissioner in Fresno County.
She and other commissioners pointed to illnesses from pesticide exposure as a key indicator of their success. Of the 859 cases reported in California in 2021, the most recent figures available, 210 — or 24% — were agricultural workers.
But experts and worker advocates say that such figures are probably undercounted, noting that more than half of the state’s farmworkers lack documentation.
“There are many, many cases that are not reported because the workers are afraid of being deported or retaliation from the employer,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said.
Commissioners also said that farmers are using less dangerous chemicals, citing a 56% increase in use of biopesticides over the last decade.
In the last 10 years, they said, use of carcinogenic substances has dropped by 20% statewide, groundwater contaminants have been reduced by 77% and the use of reproductive toxins has dropped by 45%.
Commissioners said that most of their field enforcement is focused on so-called restricted use pesticides, which represent a relatively small percentage of all pesticides used but have a higher potential to harm people, wildlife and the environment and include chemicals that can cause cancer.
Yet even by that measure, relatively few inspections are conducted.
The hands of this 17-year-old strawberry picker are a testament to the physical nature of the work.
(Barbara Davidson / Capital & Main)
In Monterey County, where 14-year-old Jose and his family labor in Salinas Valley strawberry fields, the number of all agricultural pesticide safety inspections in 2023 equaled just 3% of the total number of times that restricted-use pesticides were used, according to state records. That equates to just one inspection for every 35 times that the toxic chemicals were applied on farmlands.
From 2021 to 2023, the Monterey County agricultural commissioner approved more than 53,800 “notices of intent,” which businesses are required to file prior to applying restricted-use pesticides. That was the highest number of approvals among the top agricultural counties in California — and more than three times the number in the next-closest county, according to enforcement records.
Monterey County’s agricultural commissioner, Juan Hidalgo, said that, unlike other counties in the state, his jurisdiction has multiple growing seasons. He added that “we do review every single one of those notices of intent.”
The Salinas Valley stretches for about 90 miles across the county and is lined with rows of berries, lettuce, spinach, artichokes and cauliflower.
The valley is where, in 1970, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers launched their Salad Bowl strike, the largest farmworker labor action in U.S. history.
Today, the Salinas Valley’s biggest cash crop is strawberries, accounting for more than 20% of Monterey County’s$4.9-billion annual production value from agriculture.
A dozen minors interviewed in Monterey County described picking berries in fields that smelled of chemicals or working in fields where tractors had sprayed liquids with a strong chemical odor. Under state law, the amount of time that pickers are supposed to stay away from treated fields generally ranges from four hours to several weeks, depending on the pesticide.
Jose and his sister Raquel, 19, described entering a field in 2022 after a tractor had sprayed in rows next to where they were working.
“It smelled like chemicals, really strong … It made me dizzy,” said Raquel, who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average and now attends college. She wants to become a nurse and work in the region, where she can use her Spanish and Mixteco language skills to help her community.
The California Strawberry Commission, which represents hundreds of growers, said that the state has the nation’s most stringent workplace safety laws and that protecting berry pickers is a top priority.
“The health and safety of farm workers is paramount in all aspects of production and prioritized by farmers and federal, state and local regulatory agencies,” Chris Christian, a vice president with the commission, said in a written response. “Farmers are also working in the fields, and their families live, work, and go to school in the communities where they farm.”
Hidalgo, the county agricultural commissioner, said worker safety is also his top priority.
He acknowledged that his 20 inspectors can’t cover all of the 314,000 acres in the county used to grow fruits and vegetables, but he said they know the growing cycles for different crops and when pesticides are most likely to be used.
“We just show up,” Hidalgo said, “and start doing an inspection.”
The inspections include a check of company records to confirm that workers receive required pesticide safety training. Yet underage workers don’t necessarily understand the documents they are told to sign, according to youths and their parents.
When she was 16, Raquel recalled, she was handed a stack of documents that had something to do with pesticides. “They just told us to sign it and to just get ready to work,” she said.
“I didn’t really know what it was because I was young,” she added, “but I signed it.”
Lopez is an independent journalist and fellow at the McGraw Center for Business Journalism. Data journalist Cherry Salazar analyzed state pesticide records for this report.
