In this episode, we go back to 1980s Los Angeles, when civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua sent hundreds of thousands of people north and helped turn LA into “Little Central America.” With professor and longtime participant Rubén Martínez as our guide—someone who lived through this moment firsthand—we follow the Sanctuary Movement as churches quietly, and then publicly, open their doors to refugees the U.S. refused to recognize. Sanctuary meant food and a place to sleep, but it also meant music, theater, poetry, and posters that challenged U.S. policy while helping people process their grief.

From there, we step inside Echo Park United Methodist Church, where artist and performer Elia Arce and a circle of Central American poets, musicians, and organizers transform the basement into a cultural home. We also sit with Rev. David Farley, pastor emeritus of Echo Park United Methodist, who was there to witness it all. Upstairs, families try to stay invisible on classroom floors; downstairs, performances inspired by banned writers, songs from back home, and handmade banners turn fear and exile into shared story.

Our last stop is the Getty Research Institute, where archivist Jasmine Magaña—a Salvadoran Angeleno herself—is helping build a new, expansive record of this era.

Through in-depth oral histories with artists and organizers, she and her colleagues work to preserve stories that were never formally recorded but continue to shape Los Angeles today.

Together, Rubén, Elia, and Jasmine show how the art around the Sanctuary Movement didn’t just document a moment—it held people together, reshaped Los Angeles, and still offers a blueprint for solidarity in our own tense times.

Special thanks to Rubén Martínez, Elia Arce, and Jasmine Magaña. Deep gratitude to Lindsey Gant and Diana Carroll for their generous support in publishing and creating the web pages and Gina White for her work on rights and clearances.

Before the Supremes, before Berry Gordy, a Los Angeles record label run out of a garage was shaping the future of American music.

Founded by Dootsie Williams in the early 1950s, Dootone Records became a hub of innovation—recording doo-wop, jazz, and the first Black comedy albums that would influence generations. But while the physical site of Dootone has nearly vanished, its intangible heritage—the voices, rhythms, and entrepreneurial spirit it carried—still reverberates through today’s culture. Through interviews with historian Robert Petersen and Getty preservationist Rita Cofield, this episode explores what it means to preserve sound as history: how a song like “Earth Angel” can outlast the walls that once contained it, and why the legacy of Dootone still matters today.

Join Jaime as he retraces Dootone’s path with Robert Petersen and Rita Cofield—following the threads from a Central Avenue porch to playlists today and uncovering how keeping these sounds in circulation keeps Dootone’s legacy alive.

Special thanks to Rita Cofield and Robert Petersen.

Jaime Roque follows a lost concert that almost never happened—and the homemade tape that kept it alive.

The story begins in 1968 with a teenager who can’t get into jazz clubs and decides to bring Thelonious Monk to his public-school auditorium instead. Tickets lag in mostly-white Palo Alto, so he turns to nearby East Palo Alto and invites neighbors who actually know the music. On a rainy Sunday, a school janitor tunes the piano, sets up a reel-to-reel, and hits record. The concert fills. The night is calm. Then the tape disappears into a box for decades.

From there, the episode tracks how a forgotten spool becomes a record the world can hear. Jaime visits the GRI at the Getty to see how fragile tapes are assessed, cleaned, and safely played back—how cleaning cloths, aging machines, and careful hands can turn a closet keepsake into public memory. And with a jazz scholar’s ear, he listens for why this set matters: the character of Monk’s touch that night and how a public-school stage becomes a time capsule.

Jaime asks what it takes to keep culture from slipping away—and how one Sunday afternoon can carry forward, beautifully, half a century later.

Special thanks to Danny Scher, Dr. Ron McCurdy, Jonathan Furnanski, and Thelonius Monk.