Ana Kasparian has co-hosted the news and commentary program "The Young Turks" since 2012. She joined TYT as a two-week producer in 2007, and basically refused to leave. We have a couple things in common: we graduated from Cal State Northridge with a Bachelor's in journalism (she in 2007, I in 2001) and have returned to teach at CSUN. And we also worked at KNX news radio in Los Angeles. I was a weekend writer there during college, and Ana was a producer right out of university. Ana went on to...

Rob Parker is one half of Fox Sports Radio's "The Odd Couple," a contributor on FS1's "Skip and Shannon: Undisputed," is frequently on "The Herd with Colin Cowherd," hosts the "Inside the (Rob) Parker" baseball podcast and teaches at USC. We talk about what life was like growing up in Jamaica Queens, his work ethic, reading three newspapers a day as a 9-year-old, why he chose to go to Southern Connecticut State University for his Bachelor's in journalism (he also has a Master's from Columbia...

Liberté Chan is a meteorologist and reporter at KTLA. She can be seen every weekend morning on the KTLA Weekend Morning News. Liberté was born and raised in Los Angeles, attended Marlborough School for girls, University of Massachusetts Amherst for her Bachelor's Degree, UCLA for a broadcast journalism ceritifcate, and USC for her Master's in Public Health. Her first job in media was as a news writer at KTLA, working her way up to writing for the legend, Hal Fishman. She got a reel together...

"The Career Stories Podcast" host Natalie Brunell is also an SoCal-based freelance correspondent who most recently contributed to ABC News. Her story is fascinating! She was just five-years-old when her family moved from Poland to Chicago. She talks about how watching the news helped her parents learn English, and inspired her to become a journalist. Natalie's super ambitious. She attended Pepperdine University in Malibu, and helped create the Italian major! And if a double major in...

KLAC AM 570 LA Sports Dodgers reporter David Vassegh has traveled with the team for nearly 10 years. He's one of those rare "born in LA, never left LA" reporters. David started as an intern at a radio station above the Hot Dog on a Stick in the Fallbrook Mall in West Hills, California. His first job in the 90's was producing the McDonnell-Douglas Radio Show on KXTA and ESPN Radio, before joining KLAC and iHeartMedia to report full-time covering LA-area sports teams. David eventually became...

JoJo On The Radio has done nights at KIIS FM in Los Angeles for many years. He's an institution! But the first time he was on 102.7 wasn't the first time he was on the air in Southern California. He was on KEZY in Anaheim! Before returning to LA he hosted in Charlotte, Dallas and San Francisco. We talk about hanging out with The Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and his surreal experience hosting Michael Jackson's birthday party at Neverland Ranch! I also chatted with JoJo about life as dads on the...

Kat Timpf is more than just a Fox News contributor. She's also a stand-up comedian, host of the new show "Sincerely, Kat" on Fox Nation, co-host of The Tyrus and Timpf Podcast, and reporter for National Review. The Detroit native went to Hillsdale College, then interned at KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, Fox News Channel and other media outlets. We talk about her experience with rats, working at Boston Market, how she deals with haters, and why she spent part of her 30th birthday in a...

George Pennacchio's been ABC7's Entertainment Reporter since 1996. He was born in Chicago, family lived in SoCal for a while, then he spent his high school years back in Illinois. George had an opportunity to go to USC but turned it down to go to tiny Albion College in Michigan. He interned at a TV station in Chicago, then produced news in Monterey and San Diego, California. It was during his stint in San Diego he became the station's first entertainment reporter as the shop tried out this...

CNN national correspondent Nick Valencia is from Eagle Rock, went to USC, and this is where I usually list all the markets my guest has worked in prior to reaching his or her current position. NOPE! Nick didn't go that route. He started at CNN in Atlanta as a teleprompter operator, and worked his way up. Nick and I talk about how he handled his father's death two weeks before high school graduation, why he was scared of his mom growing up, discrimination he's faced, challenges he's overcome,...

DJ Hed is on Real 923 in Los Angeles Monday thru Saturday 7-midnight, and co-hosts the Homegrown Radio podcast with Chuck Dizzle. Hed is known for his brutal honesty, serving up raw thoughts in a steaming broth of confidence, humility and gratitude. We talk about how his childhood was full of moves around The Eastside because of financial issues — or his mom sensed he was hanging with the wrong crowd. Hed fell in love with radio at Cerritos College, finding his niche playing and promoting...

Frank Buckley co-anchors the KTLA Morning News and hosts the wildly successful Frank Buckley Interviews podcast and TV show. He moved around a lot as a kid but went to high school in 29 Palms, and that's where he got his start doing radio. He attended Cal Poly Pomona and USC. While in college Frank interned for the LA Times and Detroit News, and was a weekend writer at KNX radio in Los Angeles. Out of college he worked in TV news in Palm Springs, then North Carolina, KCAL 9 in Los Angeles,...

Jane Wells is a Southern California native who went to USC, and while in college was a news writer at KTLA and filled-in doing news with Rick Dees on KIIS FM. Yes, doing news for Rick Dees was her first on-air experience!! Now she's a CNBC special correspondent, successful podcaster, and talk show host at KFI in Los Angeles. During her TV news climb she worked at KOB in Albuquerque, WTVJ in Miami (some GREAT stories from the go-go Miami Vice days in the 80's!), WNBC in New York City, and...

David Begnaud is a CBS News correspondent who grew up in Louisiana. These days, he's based out of New York City. But he's also worked out of Miami and Dallas. Prior to joining CBS News he worked for Larry King's Ora TV, KTLA in Los Angeles, as well as in Sacramento and his hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. He was thrust into the LA news spotlight with his live coverage of the Occupy LA raid outside City Hall. A few years later he was thrust into the international news spotlight with his...

Jonas Knox hosts weekends on Fox Sports Radio. He grew up in Thousand Oaks, and fell in love with sports talk radio listening to the likes of Jim Rome, Steve Hartman, Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, and Mason and Ireland on Xtra Sports 690 and 1150. While working in real estate Jonas interned with Jeff Biggs at KLAA. He got his first job by flying out to Charleston, South Carolina, to hand-deliver his resume -- but the station folded less than a year later. Jonas returned to Thousand Oaks, worked odd...

Kelli Tennant is a former All-American volleyball player turned TV sports reporter with ESPN, Fox Sports, Spectrum SportsNet LA and others. While at USC she stopped playing volleyball after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Kelli says she was on various mediciations for more than a decade before she learned she'd been misdiagnosed. She didn't have fibromyalgia. Kelli actually had Epstein Barr, leaky gut and SIBO. In 2012, while Kelli's juggling her medical condition and jobs, her...

Letty Peniche hosts Dash Radio's "The City" hip-hop channel 2-5pm. She has previously worked at Real 923 and Power 106 in Los Angeles, and was a host at Genius.com. She explains why she spent only a week working at Forever 21, how she didn't let having a baby as a teenager stop her from chasing her radio dream, owning her name and story, and growing out of the stereotype of what a woman should be or do in the hip-hop community and radio. Note: We talk about how Letty met and married Nipsey...

Alex Gervasi is a DJ on 102.7 KIIS FM in Los Angeles. She was born in New Jersey, went to school at Asbury College in Kentucky, worked in Lexington, Virginia Beach and Austin before making the big jump to LA. We talk about dating life in Southern California, creepy direct messages, and how she handles anxiety around body image. Alex is also a big advocate for self care and women empowerment, and recently started her own podcast "Alex Tries Her Best." Oh, and she basically made me talk about...

KTLA reporter Wendy Burch worked in several cities prior to Los Angeles -- including Eureka, Reno, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver and New York City. Before joining KTLA, Wendy worked for KCAL 9, E! Entertainment and KABC Channel 7. She's reported on her struggles to get pregnant after 40, has gone viral a few times (got thrown up on once, chased after a shirtless beach runner), and in this episode talks about how she's going to meet her biological mother for the first...

For this episode I rode in KTLA's Sky 5 helicopter with badass pilot and reporter Tim Lynn. The Coast Guard veteran from the South Bay spent more than 30 years in law enforcement. A few years after joining Huntington Beach PD's Air Unit, he traded the badge for breaking news. He worked for KCBS and KCAL, then joined KTLA as one of only two pilot-reporters in Los Angeles. We talk about his emergency landing in Hollywood, his favorite police chases, and I find out how a guy from Torrance ends...

Simply put, Tony Bruno is a legend. A sports talk radio pioneer. The Philadelphia native has an impressive résumé: WCAU and WIP, the first voice on ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio, frequent appearances on ESPN, ESPN2, and Fox Sports Network's The Best Damn Sports Show Period, mornings on Sporting News Radio, KLAC AM 570 LA Sports, and now has his own podcast #MustWatchRadio. http://www.tonybrunoshow.com/ https://twitter.com/tonybrunoshow https://www.instagram.com/tonybrunoshow1/ ••• You...

PJ Butta is a fixture on hip-hop radio in Los Angeles. He does afternoons on the legendary 93.5 KDAY and hosts The World Chart Show on Radio Express. PJ's also worked at 92.3 The Beat (my favorite station growing up) and Hot 92.3, is a proud graduate of the University of La Verne, and he teaches at the school where I discovered my love for radio: Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) in Walnut,...

Steve Mason is one half of 710 ESPN LA's Mason & Ireland, heard weekdays 12-3ish. He's from Ohio but has been in LA long enough he's pretty much a native. Steve's been in radio for decades, but has also done TV, owned movie theaters, taught yoga, and I don't know if he wanted to throw something at me or walk out of the studio when I told him I'd never seen The Godfather. https://twitter.com/VeniceMase https://www.instagram.com/venicemase/ http://www.stevemason.com/ Culture Pop...

Lisa "Kennedy" Montgomery busted onto the scene with MTV in the 90's, seamlessly transitioned to talk radio in the Pacific Northwest and at KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, and now hosts her own show "Kennedy" weeknights at 9 on Fox Business, and is frequently featured on Fox News. https://twitter.com/kennedynation https://www.instagram.com/kennedynation/ https://www.foxbusiness.com/shows/kennedy ••• You can hear The News Bender Podcast host Aron Bender on The Tim Conway Jr Show weeknights 6-10...

Leah Uko is a Southern California native. She was raised in Palmdale and Chatsworth, dodged figurative gang and drug bullets, went to UC Riverside, paid her dues in Texas, Nebraska, Arkansas and Georgia, before landing a gig at Fox 11 KTTV in Los Angeles. It's been a rollercoaster! In this episode, Leah explains how getting fired from two jobs didn't break her but helped build her, the moment she decided to wear her hair natural on the air, and why she's in a 12-step program for food...

Jason Stewart worked for years on The Jim Rome Show booking guests, going on blind dates, and padding his acting résumé. The Cal State Fullerton graduate and Orange County native has also produced shows on KLAC AM 570 LA Sports, and is now working at FS1 in Los Angeles. https://twitter.com/jasonstewart https://www.instagram.com/jasonstewartsports/ ••• You can hear The News Bender Podcast host Aron Bender on The Tim Conway Jr Show weeknights 6-10 on KFI AM...