Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Julie Bowen
For Julie Bowen, mom of three teenage boys, a perfect Sunday would include plenty of “me time.”
“My whole family calls laundry and dishes my ‘hobbies,’” she said. “No, no, my hobbies are reading, going to museums, hiking and playing pickleball. Those are my hobbies. They’re like, ‘No, it’s not. It’s laundry and dishes, Julie.’”
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.
Bowen, who won two Emmys for her performance in the beloved long-running ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” is every bit as family-oriented as her character Claire Dunphy. She is currently filming “Happy Gilmore 2” in New Jersey, but when she’s home she prefers to spend time outdoors with her kids near Laurel Canyon.
After spending time in Baltimore, Rhode Island and New York, Bowen became a reluctant Angeleno. “I’m not sure I ever really thought of L.A. as my ‘home’ — in giant capital letters — until I had kids there and realized this is their home,” said Bowen, whose new thriller series “Hysteria!” is now streaming on Peacock. “L.A. is like a choose-your-own-adventure. You can go to some cities like Boston and really feel that it’s uniquely Boston, but L.A. has so many communities, cultures, corners of it. There’s no central Los Angeles. So at first when I moved here, I thought, ‘This is hard.’ But once you find your people, your places, it can really be a magical city.”
On the agenda for Bowen’s perfect Sunday are hiking, antiquing and a stop at Joan’s on Third.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
8 a.m.: Me-time with homemade ginger shots
In my fantasy, I could sleep in really late and then get up and go have brunch. Or make coffee and get back into bed with a book. That is so delicious. But the reality is I wake up early and I’ve come to love it because that is my quiet time. That is my alone time.
On Sundays, I get a whole bunch of turmeric, ginger, lemons and apples and then put on gloves — because the turmeric will turn your fingers orange — peel them all up and bake my own ginger shots for the week because I’m cheap and can’t stand spending $5 on them at Erewhon. I love Erewhon, but I don’t want to pay for the ginger shots so I like to do that in the morning while I’m having my coffee.
I usually get the groceries that morning. There’s a Trader Joe’s near my house that is fantastic. I love Trader Joe’s. I don’t know what I would do without Trader Joe’s. And on Sunday, L.A.’s genius for all of the farmer’s markets that are around. They have them in Hollywood, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Burbank … so I can hit any of those and get what I want.
10 a.m.: Pickleball with the ‘life-wife’
My really good friend, I call her my life-wife, Rachel, was always into pickleball. Her mom started playing years ago and [Rachel] started getting me into it a bit.
Then when I moved into a house that had this weird concrete space in the backyard, I thought, “I guess I could dig it up and make it a garden or something.” And then we measured it and I was like, “Or it could be for pickleball,” and that was that. So now I’m obsessed.
There are also great pickleball courts near my house. There’s the Burbank pickleball [court at Larry L. Maxam Memorial Park] right near the airport. That’s where you can get a really good competitive game, but since I had enough room in my yard to have a pickleball court, I usually just play singles there with my friend. I’m too scared to play doubles. Also, it requires more people.
Noon: Midday refuel at Joan’s on Third
Eventually, when my kids get up, they’re interested in going to Joan’s on Third in the Valley for brunch.
My kids like all the pastries. They go crazy for the chocolate croissant. They have a great berry muffin. One of mine loves to sit down and get the avocado toast. I love just browsing and snacking in there, because they have such delicious things. And I like to get some stuff to throw together for dinner. I’ll tell you one thing that’ll make my kids come together before dinner is when you make up a charcuterie plate from the stuff I get from Joan’s in the morning, that’ll bring them in.
2 p.m.: Wisdom Tree hike
If I could really have the ideal day, I’d throw a Wisdom Tree hike in there, because that, to me, is the greatest hike in the middle of L.A. You get a great view of the Hollywood sign, and it’s fun to remember [that] this is a magical, fun place to live. People travel from all over the world to see that sign.
I have two sons [who’ll] go hiking with me, while the other one likes to go play basketball. And with Wisdom Tree, it gets hot in L.A., so you should either go early or late. But if this is my perfect day, it’s February and I can hike all day.
4 p.m.: Antiques shopping at Ventura Place
Ventura Place is the best. I always love popping into Hide & Seek. It’s a little vintage shop. I don’t think I’ve ever left there without buying something.
I’m always on the hunt for the thing I didn’t know I wanted. I do have certain obsessions that I’m always looking for: folding antique game tables that start little and then you can fold it out. I love furniture that does double duty. At Hide & Seek, in particular, they always have beautiful furniture but I’ll just find an amazing serving spoon or a little statue or a piece of art. It’s just always worth sticking my head in there.
I’m not a very good clothes shopper. I’m lucky enough to hire a stylist for big events, and the rest of the time, I’m afraid that my family says I dress like Derelicte from “Zoolander,” which is not something I’m proud of, but I get it together when I need to.
4 p.m.: Bonus hour to visit the Last Bookstore
In my ideal Sunday, I’d have to add on extra hours to go down to the Last Bookstore in DTLA. That is another very, very special place in L.A. that you kind of have to see to understand. It’s three-quarters art installation, one-quarter books. I still love the smell of a book. I do read things electronically most of the time, but I love a bookstore, and that’s one of the greatest ones in L.A.
I would say literary fiction would be my favorite genre. I do not love pulpy, soapy beach reads. I don’t love mystery. I like really sort of interior kind of pieces. Right now I am reading Adam Johnson, who wrote “The Orphan Master’s Son.” I think he won the Pulitzer for that. I am reading his first book of short stories called “Emporium” that I found at a used bookstore in New Jersey, and I couldn’t believe it because I thought I’d read all of his stuff. And it’s not available electronically as far as I know so I was very excited and have been reading it as slowly as possible, because each page is delicious.
7 p.m.: Family dinner
I grew up having dinner with my whole family every night. Due to varying schedules, [my kids and I] can guarantee that we’ll all have dinner together only one night a week, and that is Sunday night. It’s funny with teenage boys, if you eat too early, you have to make another dinner later.
I would never cook just for me. But when cooking with kids, I try and make each of them do something different. I’ve got one who’s great at grilling, so there’s usually grilled chicken or grilled fish. I always make the salad. One of my kids loves pasta, so he’s always making pasta — from scratch these days, I might add. Crazy. I don’t know how he learned that. I’m going to say TikTok. And the other one is not much of a cook, but we’re like, “You set the table, you clear the table,” he has to do the dishes.
8:45 p.m.: Movies and games
Right now, my kids are really into mind-bending movies, that’s what they refer to them as. So I’ve been introducing them to classics like “The Usual Suspects” and “Memento.” They like it when we have to stop every 10 minutes and they’re like, “Wait, what’s happening?” Ordinarily, that would not be my favorite thing. But you do what you need to do to get along with your kids.
Or else we’ll play a card game. I feel like you can tell everything about a person by the way they bet in a hand of poker, whether they’re brand new or not. I’ve got one kid who will go all in on everything. I love it, but that’s not me. I’m a nerdy student. I get out my little cheat card, because I can never remember the hands, and I sit there and figure out roughly the odds and then I bet accordingly.
10 p.m.: Wind down and prep for bed
I love a Sunday night putter: cleaning out a drawer in my bathroom or giving myself a manicure, because I never go and get them. Just some wind-down time and then go to sleep. In reality, my kids are probably up for a while after I am but they’re old enough that that’s on them now.
It is remarkable how much late night laundry I end up doing. I’m like, “I am going to bed. It is 10.” My ideal time to go to bed, to close the door to my room, is 10 and to be asleep around 10:30, that would be awesome. I can’t remember the last time that happened because there’s always, “Mom, I need my uniform,” and I end up doing laundry or dishes until midnight.
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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