LAist Studios debuts new podcast Wild, a show about little moments that lead to monumental change

LAist Studios, Southern California Public Radio’s (SCPR) podcast development and production studio, today announced WILD a new narrative podcast about origin stories and growing up, life’s transformative moments, and finding strength in overcoming chaos and adversity. The inaugural season, hosted by award-winning journalist and filmmaker Erick Galindo, will be a time capsule of stories about how a global pandemic transformed our views of home.

The first two episodes of “WILD” will be available on June 21, with subsequent episodes launching weekly. A trailer is available on LAist.com, and listeners can subscribe to the series now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR One, iHeartRadio and wherever podcasts are available.

Season 1 of “WILD” will take listeners to the place that, for many, became their whole world last year: Home. When stay-at-home orders set in across the US, friends became lovers, people became parents, careers pivoted, and personal identities were forever molded. As the outside world thaws out from an extended moment of pause, this 10-episode season looks back at how the little moments from a year at home shaped the lives of people across Los Angeles in big ways.

Woven into these personal accounts of the transformative nature of a year spent at home are freeform experimental segments that will bring to life essays and poetry from LA-area writers; slice-of-life interludes from the show’s team of producers, listeners of the show, and others in Erick’s life; and more additional guest segments. The series is produced by Megan Tan, who last year was honored by Adweek as “Producer of the Year” for her work on “California Love,” which was named a “Best Podcast of 2020” by Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and The Atlantic.

Remarked Erick: “During the pandemic, surroundings stayed the same and yet so much life happened within the confines of our homes. As I reflected on my own experience of moving into my families’ home for nearly a year, I began to think about how the sudden uprooting and reinvention under challenging circumstances is the closest I’ve felt to the immigrant experience that my parents had. I wanted to create this series as a time capsule of who we’ll become as a result of these experiences. While the world may snap back to a facsimile of what it was before, maybe us as individuals won’t, and this series is about embracing that transformation with positivity and hopefulness for what’s to come.”

“Erick has been an essential piece of the work we do at LAist and KPCC, and his ‘Mis Ángeles’ column was a model for the range of nuanced stories there are to be told about LA’s immigrant communities and how they shape the city,” said Herb Scannel, CEo and President of Southern California Public Radio. “With ‘WILD,’ Erick and his talented production team have placed a focus on a younger generation of Angelenos using this extreme moment of disruption to come together and create positive change for themselves, their families, and the places they call home. These are the types of stories our present demands.”

Among the voices featured are entrepreneur Daisy Figueroa; banda singer Sarah “La Morena” Palafox; writer and showrunner Lynda Yvette-Chavez; comedians Chris Garcia, Jenny Yang and Aida Rodriguez; photographer Shan Wallace; “WILD” senior producer Megan Tan; and Erick’s family, the Galindos. Stories in the first season will come from the perspectives of parents and children, the newly-in-love, those struggling with the concept of reopening, and young creatives reinventing their careers.

Erick is a Telly Award and James Beard Foundation-winning Latino filmmaker, journalist, and culture writer who has published and produced work for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, KPCC/LAist and more. He previously served as the original managing editor of LA Taco, which he helped to build into a successful DIY alternative LA news magazine that reaches millions of Angelenos. Erick is also a film director and writer known for “The Man Who Saved the Lakers,” “The Bubble Machine” and “A Laker Life.” He is an alum of the prestigious New York Times Journalism Institute and co-founded the production company Sin Miedo Productions with author and producer Patty Rodriguez.

“WILD” is hosted and edited by Erick Galindo. Antonia Cereijido is the executive producer and Megan Tan is senior producer. The show’s production team includes Lushik Wahba, producer and sound designer; Victoria Alejandro, producer; Marina Peña, associate producer and fact checker; Shaka Mali, associate producer and announcer; and Eduardo Perez, sound engineer.

This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

About Southern California Public Radio (SCPR)

Southern California Public Radio (www.scpr.org) is a member-supported multi-platform public media organization that has garnered more than 500 journalistic honors since 1999. Recognized as a national leader in public service journalism and civic engagement, SCPR’s flagship radio station, 89.3 KPCC-FM, reaches more than 900,000 listeners every week as the most listened-to public radio news service across Southern California. The network’s five stations (89.3 KPCC-FM, 89.1 KUOR-FM, 90.3 KVLA-FM, 89.9 FM, and 89.5 KJAI-FM) deliver award-winning local news coverage to the diverse communities of the region, including a robust slate of signature programs from NPR, APM, the BBC and PRI. LAist (www.laist.com) is a digital news site committed to in-depth reporting about life in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Its award-winning work reaches over seven million people per month, and in 2019, the brand grew to include LAist Studios (www.laiststudios.com), a dedicated podcast development and production studio. Furthering SCPR’s commitment to premium on-demand audio storytelling, podcasts from LAist Studios aim to reflect the ethos of Los Angeles — a forward-looking, minority-majority community built upon unmatched diversity, inclusion, and drive — going beyond geographical borders to connect with listeners around the globe who share the LA state of mind.