This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

I love podcasts. I really do. Not just mine and the ones I'm associated with.

But I listen to dozens of podcasts a week and I'm always looking for some spark that excites me.

It comforts me, challenges me, entertains me. I love seeing the proliferation of podcasts.

It would never occurred to me to mock it. Like I know the joke, everyone has podcasts now.

But I always want more. You know, not all of them are for me.

But when one hits, I just get excited about its existence. I get excited about existence in general.

And this happened to me when I was listening to a new show called California Love.

It's a podcast about seeking to understand what it means to belong and not belong to the places that we are from.

And the episode I thought would most resonate with you, my beautiful merits, is about graffiti,

which is a huge part of the visual expression of cities.

There is a culture war being played out before our eyes and the back and forth between

tigers and anti-tackers. And this kind of humane story is about those sides and what it feels like to be in the middle of it.

Where the stakes to an outsider can seem so low, but actually couldn't be higher.

This is California Love. Here's Walter Thompson Hernandez.

It's spring 2017 and I'm on the 733 bus line heading west on Venezuela Boulevard.

I'm sitting in the back of the bus. It's the early afternoon and there's nobody else sitting next to me.

I'm listening to music on my headphones when I notice an old friend hop on.

It's Ivan and we used to be in the same circles when I used to tag in the early 2000s.

Ivan hasn't changed for a bit. He still weren't oversized t-shirts and still speaks from the side of his mouth, like he used to when we were teenagers.

His hair still cut really low too. It's been more than 15 years since we last saw one another.

Oh s**t, what's up man?

...