Hey, what's up? It's Gustav Ariano, and today we're bringing live taping with our Masters of Disasters at the LA Times Festival of Books this past weekend.

Our masters and I talked about their origin stories, how they got into covering disasters, the ones that changed their perspective about their beats, and how readers and listeners can nevertheless find hope as disasters become more and more common and deadlier.

Enjoy.

All heroes have origin stories.

Superman was found in a Kansas cornfield.

Wonder Woman was formed out of clay.

Clayton Kirschoff threw a curveball during a spring training game during his

rookie year that made Vince Gully proclaim, holy mackerel. Here, at the LA Times, we have a lot of

such stories for our many, many journalism heroes. But there's a rare class of individual among us,

those who each week dive bravely into the future of the scary, scary planet.

Not all heroes wear capes, and not all heroes can call themselves masters.

I'm Gustavo Ariano. You're listening to The Times.

Essential News from the LA Times. It's Saturday, April 22nd, Earth Day during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Bush.

Today, the origin stories of three LA Times reporters who cover an angry Mother Earth.

It's times like these that we turn to my colleagues

of catastrophe, our prophets of peril,

the Otanis of uh-oh,

I'm talking about

Masters of Disaster

Zazza Zza Zza.

Musica maestro.

Music Zah, Zazza, Zza, Z.

...