Western Edition
Western Edition -- a podcast from Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and hosted by its director William Deverell, historian of the American West -- seeks to engage Angelenos, Californians, and Westerners as critical thinkers, conscious consumers, and informed community members. The podcast tells the fascinating stories of the people and communities of our region, connecting the past to the present, and demonstrating the tightly woven fabric of history.
The forth season, Hidden Pasadena, digs deep into the “Crown City” of the San Gabriel Valley.
The third season, Memorializing the West, explored historical memory, commemoration, and memorialization across the American West.
The second season, L.A. Chinatown, examined the past, present, and future of one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods and one of the first Chinese American cultural centers in the U.S. The first season, The West on Fire, looked at the West’s relationship with fire.
Western Edition is produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Eryn Hoffman. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
Episodes
31 episodes
Hidden Pasadena: The Children of the Liberator
After the Civil War, many of the children of the anti-slavery crusader who attempted to raid Harper’s Ferry, John Brown, sought new lives and peace in the far West, including Pasadena. This episode shares the story of the Brown brothers and the...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 6
•
26:08
Hidden Pasadena: Shōya House
What is the oldest structure in the San Gabriel Valley? This episode shares the story of The Shoya House, a 3,000 square-foot home that made a 6,000 mile journey from Japan to Pasadena’s Huntington Library. Now a part of the library’s collectio...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 5
•
40:54
Hidden Pasadena: Vroman’s Bookstore
What can we learn from a bookstore? Adam Clark Vroman opened the AC Vroman Bookstore in 1894 and it has symbolized an important piece of Pasadena’s intellectual community ever since. Though the location has changed, this episode takes a deeper ...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 4
•
25:24
Hidden Pasadena: John Birch Society
Thriving in Pasadena in the 1960s and 1970s, members of the John Birch Society identified as anti-communists, opposed the civil rights movement and racial desegregation, deeply disagreed with the feminist movement, and disseminated lies and con...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 3
•
27:55
Hidden Pasadena: St. Barnabas and All Saints
This is the story of two churches: St. Barnabas, the historically all-black Episcopal Church still standing on Fair Oaks Drive in Northwest Pasadena, and the mainly-white All Saints Church, located less than two miles south of St. Barnabas, Sou...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 2
•
18:04
Hidden Pasadena: Simons Brickyard
Now an upscale, residential neighborhood in the heart of Pasadena, Madison Heights used to be home to Simons Brickyard, once the largest brickyard in the world. The Simons Brick Company imprint can still be found on bricks throughout Southern C...
•
Season 4
•
Episode 1
•
32:34
Hidden Pasadena: Prologue
More than 50 million viewers begin each new year looking to Pasadena, tuning into the Rose Parade to see flower and seed-coated floats cruise slowly down Colorado Boulevard. But to nearly 140,000 of those viewers, the “City of Roses” is h...
•
Season 4
•
4:38
[BONUS EPISODE] Memorializing the West: 1871 Memorial
A year ago, the second season of Western Edition focused on the past, present, and future of Los Angeles Chinatown. As part of that fascinating exploration, we investigated the horrific 1871 massacre of Chinese and Chinese Americans in...
•
18:45
Memorializing the West: Digital Rediscoveries in San Antonio
Moving from removal to renewal, many communities are not just calling for dismantling problematic monuments but also creating new layers of historical memory. This episode explores grassroots and public-driven projects in San Antonio, where stu...
•
39:48
Memorializing the West: Reckoning with Denver’s Memorials
Denver, Colorado has seen highly public reckonings with historical markers referencing moments or people from the frontier past. Some actions seemed spontaneous and episodic: a statue of a Union soldier came down for its ties to a notorious mas...
•
40:50
Memorializing the West: ONE Archives as Memorial
Not far from the USC campus sits the home of the ONE Archives, one of the world's greatest repositories of historical material pertaining to LGBTQ people and institutions. The mid-century building once housed a USC fraternity and is now part of...
•
41:33
Memorializing the West: Settling Jackson Hole
Additional histories are hidden behind the laconic language etched into markers across the West. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers Marker 123 in the center of Jackson, Wyoming celebrates the arrival of Mormon families in 1889 while eliding importa...
•
38:55
Memorializing the West: Remembering a Northern California Duel
There are many places and sites in California that, if we listen closely, still echo with the angst of the Civil War past. Or if they don't, they should. Take, for example, the Broderick-Terry monument in Daly City. This plaque and two obelisks...
•
37:54
Memorializing the West: Catalina Barracks
Starting on Catalina Island, just off the coast of Southern California, this episode of Western Edition zeroes in on a Civil War barracks that is now a private yacht club. The site played a curious role during the war and in the violen...
•
32:56
Memorializing the West: Prologue
Given the nation’s widespread and often heated reckoning with sites of memorialization and commemoration in recent years, the new season of Western Edition – the podcast from the Huntington-USC I...
•
4:44
L.A. Chinatown: Today and Tomorrow
What’s next for Chinatown? What challenges does the community face in the era of Covid, of the Stop Asian Hate movement, of gentrification, and the ever-rising cost of living in Los Angeles?Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell ...
•
28:36
L.A. Chinatown: The Long L.A. History of the See Family
Spanning multiple generations across Los Angeles history, the See family takes focus in episode five. Novelist and historian Lisa See narrates her family’s rich history, as does Leslee See Leong, whose antique and furniture store has long been ...
•
28:25
L.A. Chinatown: From Old Chinatown to New Chinatown
In the early 1930s, the old Chinatown of Los Angeles disappeared to make way for the new Union Station Passenger Terminal. This episode examines the history of that eradication and displacement alongside the rise of “New Chinatown,” the adjacen...
•
35:46
L.A. Chinatown: Exclusion and the Struggles for Inclusion
California played a fundamental role in legislating Chinese exclusion in the last decades of the 19th century. This episode explores the history of such exclusionary racism, as well as the ways in which Chinese attorney Y.C. Hong worked on beha...
•
35:13
L.A. Chinatown: The Memory of a Massacre
A dark stain on Los Angeles, the horrific massacre of Chinese men and boys in Chinatown still reverberates across community and memory. A movement to memorialize the victims has taken root through civic activism, community organizing, and partn...
•
38:13
L.A. Chinatown: What is Chinatown?
As an idea, as a place, even as a single structure, Chinatown has meant and means different things to different people at different times. The first episode of L.A. Chinatown explores these multiple meanings across time and space.<...
•
Season 2
•
Episode 1
•
26:19
L.A. Chinatown: Prologue
L.A.’s Chinatown is a bustling cultural and business hub, legendary in cinematic history and popular with tourists and locals alike. Yet below its surface lies a challenging history – of racial discrimination as well as community resilience – g...
•
Season 2
•
Episode 0
•
3:55
The West on Fire: Climbing the Tower
For over a century, the U.S. Forest Service has posted fire lookouts at the tops of mountains and trees: men and women who gaze out at the horizon, watching and waiting for signs of smoke, and serving as the eyes for the fire crews who go out t...
•
Episode 7
•
24:26
The West On Fire: Incarceration and Firefighting
There’s a good chance that the firefighter saving you from a wildfire is actually an incarcerated person. As of summer 2021, about 1,600 work at conservation camps, also called fire camps, in California. These are minimum-security facilities st...
•
Episode 6
•
37:23