Home in the Valley, the podcast

Remnant of an old Valley orange grove remaining at Cal State University, Northridge.

In his terrific new podcast series, Home: Stories from LA, Santa Monica author Bill Barol seeks to explain what it meant to call the San Fernando Valley home, even if you haven't lived there in decades. It's a subject close to my heart, of course, and he does a really nice job with it, capturing that mix of feeling special in a special place while also being outside the mainstream of Los Angeles. Barol interviews me, "Wrecking Crew" director Denny Tedesco, Valley Relics Museum founder Tommy Gelinas and author Hal Lifson, and works in a few different versions of the World War II popular song, "San Fernando Valley," made a hit by Bing Crosby.

He calls it Growing up 818.

One note. In my conversation with Barol, the meaning of one point got garbled. Where he says that I don't remember going on field trips to the Griffith Observatory or the museums in Exposition Park, what I meant was that we did go on field trips there — but only there. I think the way I said it left the opposite impression.