“Imperfect Paradise” showcases California themes with universal significance, featuring the people, issues and places that define California as a flawed utopia. These stories illuminate aspects of American identity and underscore California’s reputation as a home for dreamers and schemers, its heartbreaking inequality, its varied and diverse communities, its unique combination of dense cities and wild places. In the award-winning weekly narrative journalism series, host Antonia Cereijido and reporters from across the LAist newsroom deliver the types of stories that could only happen in California but ripple across the country. Recent stories have included a never-before-heard look behind the secret recordings made of LA city council members that culminated in an extremely public scandal; a Latino couple who took a stand against a false kidnapping accusation by a white mom-fluencer; a group of exotic dancers who brought the labor movement to the strip club; one magician’s experience with the exclusionary practices of LA’s famed Magic Castle; and the Gen-Z activist who, at age 26, is California’s lead negotiator on the Colorado River during the worst water crisis in recorded history.
