What is SoCal Culture?

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For each of these culture-of-place episodes, we look for someone who both adores a place, are very much a product of that place… and are also very much at home talking s**t about that place. They see its difficulties, drawbacks, and hostilities clearly — and can hold all of that alongside their deep and abiding love for the place. And that’s Gustavo Arellano, who’s been writing about SoCal culture with verve and humor and great skill for decades. (Such great skill that just a week after we taped this episode, he was named as a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in commentary). I can’t wait for you to join us as we talk about making dioramas of missions out of sugar cubes, car culture, conspiracy-curious crunchy-fascists in Orange County, and so much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
0:10.1	And I'm Gustavo Ariano columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
0:13.6	When I thought about doing an episode on Southern California, you were the first person that came to mind.
0:19.0	In part because in all of the conversations that we've had,
0:21.8	like you managed to put in references to various places in Southern California that makes me
0:27.4	incredibly curious to explore more and more and more every time that we talk.
0:31.8	So that's part of it.
0:32.7	But what would you say your bona fides are as a Southern Californian person?
0:37.4	Oh, my God. Born and raised,
0:40.1	Anaheim, aka Anacrime, which is an Orange County, California, one of the most accursed places in the
0:46.7	United States, which, by the way, gives me an outsider's perspective and insiders at the same time.
0:52.3	My family's been now in Southern California five generations from my great
0:58.4	grandfather who picked oranges back when Orange County had a bunch of oranges all the way
1:03.7	to my nephew.
1:05.7	So that's five generations.
1:07.0	I have spent my entire life here as a person, as a writer for the most part. And also, I mean,
1:16.5	Southern California is where it's at for both the beauty, the problems, the future of this country,
1:22.6	the past. Like it is, I know it's a humongous region, but still in many ways, it really embodies all that's horrible yet wonderful.
1:32.3	Because at the end, I'm an optimist above everything.
1:34.8	I'm a cynic who's an optimist.
1:36.4	Yes, you are.
1:37.1	Of the American dream.
	...

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