Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Joel McHale
Although actor and comedian Joel McHale has lived in Los Angeles for nearly a quarter-century, he’s quick to point out that Sunday downtime here is a rarity. “I don’t think I’ve had a leisurely Sunday in L.A. since February,” he said during a mid-December interview. “I was gone for probably eight months of the year [for work], and I’m always flying back and forth.” (His sitcom “Animal Control,” which began airing its third season on Fox on Thursday, is shot primarily in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.)
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
McHale brings this up as a way of underscoring that the ideal Sunday itinerary he’s about to sketch out leans very heavily on the ideal part; it’s an ambitious slate of potential things to do and places to eat across the Southland that could easily fill a month of Sundays — and not one he’s actually orchestrated. Given his busy schedule, you won’t likely see him around L.A. (or Studio City, where he currently lives with his wife, Sarah, and their two sons, Isaac and Eddie) anytime soon. But you will be able to find him battling critters (and co-workers) each week on “Animal Control” (which he also executive produces), hosting the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films’ annual Saturn Awards on Feb. 5, and eventually (though not right away) reprising the role of Jeff Winger in the movie version of “Community.” (Yes, it’s going to happen,” McHale said. “We got the money, and Peacock wants it, but we haven’t started shooting.”)
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Take in a little tennis
If this is really my ideal Sunday, I’d get up and hopefully play tennis with my wife, my son and my friend Bill Hanson for a couple of hours. Tennis is the last form of a sport — a competitive sport — I can play where I can move around a lot and not collide with a person. I used to play in football and basketball leagues and [play] baseball and all that, and then I just kept seeing all my friends snap their knees and smash their faces, and I’m like, “I can’t do it anymore.”
Noon: Forage the farmers market
Then I’d ride an electric bike to the Studio City Farmers Market — I’ve got this Super73 bike with shopping bags on either side — and I’d get fresh pasta, I’d get pickles, meat, fish, tomatoes and there’s really good ice cream. That’s very vague, but I don’t know the names of the specific vendors.
1 p.m.: Cast a wide lunch net
For lunch maybe we’d head over near USC to Mercado la Paloma to a place called Holbox, which just got a Michelin star. It’s just incredible, [with] wonderful fresh fish. In that same market [ I’d get the] tacos at Komal, which has these really cool tortillas.
Before that, we might go to Proof Bakery in Atwater Village, which I think has some of the finest croissants in all the land. Or Saint, a coffee shop on Moorpark [Street] in Studio City [for] a cortado. “Cortado” doesn’t make any sense; coffee names are [generally] all scrambled now, [and] most of them are in Italian. [But the word] cortado is Spanish, and in Italy, the cortado is called a quarto — but nobody calls it a quarto here. And then the British started calling everything a … flat white, and then the Australians started calling their cappuccinos “Gibraltars.” It’s all very Paul Rudd [in that scene from “Role Models.”]
Maybe I would pick up a pie at Curtis Stone’s Pie Room in Beverly Hills because I do “Crime Scene Kitchen” with Curtis, and his pies are … amazing. His rabbit pie is one of the best things. It’s so damn good. [Even though Pie Room is usually closed on Sundays] he would open it for me to make my Sunday perfect!
Or let’s say I’m heading out there really far; there’s a taco place out in Muscoy called Tacos de Cabrito y Machito El Lagunero. It’s in the Inland Empire so you’ve got to head way out on the 210 [Freeway]. They’ll roast a goat every weekend, and they’ve got the pictures to prove it, and they always post them. They’re like, “The goat is ON!” and it’s great.
3 p.m. Run along the river
I like to run along the L.A. River, and there are certain sections between Laurel Canyon [Boulevard] and Coldwater [Canyon Avenue] where there’s actually a beautiful trail. Sure, you might have to fight a couple people, but whatever — it’s L.A. and it’s cool!
4 p.m. Check out Lost & Found
I might check out a shop called Lost & Found on Yucca [Street] if I’m going to get something for my wife. They always have this weird, wonderful stuff that she would like. I think that’s the first place I ever smelled palo santo being burned, and I was like, “I’m going to buy that!” The last thing I bought there was actually a book bag for myself — as if I’m on campus all the time, right?
5 p.m. Log some permit parent hours
[Isaac,] my 16-year-old, just got his driver’s permit, so we’ll go driving all over the place; my right foot will be just stomping into the [floor of the car] as I sit there, and he’s always like, “Calm down, dad, calm down. It’s gonna be OK.” He’s got much better reflexes than I do.
6 p.m.: Wind down at a wine bar
After my son drives me all over the place, we’d come home and he’d probably do some homework and maybe I’d go a to a wine bar with my friend Geoff Johns, the creator of [the] “Stargirl” [TV series] I was on. My favorite is Augustine Wine Bar on Ventura Boulevard. They burned down about a year and a half ago, and now they’re just about ready to reopen. They’re delightful people, and they do a really cool thing where they’ll open something like a 1976 Châteauneuf-du-Pape and [offer it] by the glass, so you can buy these crazy glasses without having to buy the whole [bottle].
7:30 p.m. Nosh at n/naka or make a beeline for Baroo
[Dinner might be at] n/naka, which is one of our favorite Japanese places. We know [chef] Niki — who started the place with her wife — from when she had a little place on Melrose and La Brea [avenues]. Or Mina Park’s restaurant, Baroo. She’s so cool and quite a character — and she talks as much as I do, which is saying a lot.
9 p.m.: Savor “Shadows”
My 16-year-old son might want to play tennis again, so it would either be late-night tennis with him or watching [FX Network’s] “What We Do in the Shadows” with my 19-year-old son. We’re very sad the show is over. We talk about it, parse it out, [discuss it] like a fine scotch. It’s just a masterpiece.
11 p.m.: Another court date
We might hit the tennis court — again — or shoot the basketball a little bit.
1 a.m.: Some early morning horror
I guess this is actually how my Sunday starts; my 16-year-old will come home from hanging out with friends and we’ll start to watch a horror film. The last one we watched was called “Stopmotion.”
4: a.m.: “The Blade” before bedtime
I’ll sleep six to seven hours — depending on my red wine intake — [and end my night by] scrolling through Instagram, watching a little more TV — I recently watched “Anatomy of Lies,” which is a documentary about a writer for “Grey’s Anatomy” and it’s wild — or listen to an audio book. I’m re-listening to “The Blade Itself” by Joe Abercrombie. He’s a genius. And with Audible you can just set it so it shuts off [after awhile] so you can just doze off.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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