Salutations, sister.

Greetings from the Michael Bay movie.

I thought you're going to make like a Destiny Child Survivor.

We are.

Destiny Child Survivors.

I'm neither Beyonce, Kelly, or Michelle.

I'm Sam Sanders.

And I met those girls either. I'm Zach Saffert, and you're listening to Vibe Check.

Listeners, this week, it is just Sam and I here together holding down the fort, which feels a bit cosmic because this week we

want to spend a lot of time diving into our home, Los Angeles, which as you have seen in the

constant news coverage of it, that we are going through a lot right now. A large part of our city

and county are still under fire. And the fire actually broke out as we were taping Vibe Check last

week. So we'll get into all of that.

And we even have a special guest joining us later in the show, a formerly incarcerated firefighter,

Royal Ramey, who will be joining us to talk about the fires, his experience fighting the fires in the

past, and his nonprofit that's helping incarcerated folks that you're seeing fight these fires

today in Los Angeles have access to jobs that are meaningful once they leave prison. But before we get into all of that, I want to ask Sam, how are you doing?

And I mean that in the realest way, because I haven't even seen you in person since the fires broke out,

and things have been touching the better. Yeah. Last we talked was during the taping last Tuesday when it was all starting. And then it was just texting and like, I'm just really shell shocked.

A lot of folks checked in and most of you listening probably know by now, Zach and I are okay.

I'm in South LA, so it was pretty far from the flames, but I got a lot of the smoke and bad air quality.

And one night last week, a dear friend of mine who lives in Hollywood had to leave his home and come to my house.

...