Lifestyle
Need a soundtrack for an L.A. stroll? There's a walking podcast for that
• In April, comedian Allan McLeod launched “Walkin’ About,” a podcast in which he and a guest stroll somewhere in the L.A. region.
• His walking companions have included actor Dan Stevens, Ed. Begley Jr. and comedian Jon Gabrus.
• Through his many adventures on foot, Mcleod has discovered that walking “can be really complex and profound.”
It’s hot when Allan McLeod and I meet up for a walk in Old Pasadena, but thankfully we’ve missed the early September heatwave that blanketed L.A. County with triple-digit temps. He’s no stranger to braving our county’s persistent heat. Since he began making his podcast, “Walkin’ About,” in April, his recording studio is often outdoors.
Even before he launched the series, walking was something McLeod was constantly thinking and talking about.
“I’m very annoying to friends and family,” he admits. “So I decided to put that energy into a podcast.”
Now in its second season, each episode features McLeod and a guest exploring a different L.A. location by foot, something he feels is both simple and profound.
McLeod takes a selfie with Sodaro at the disc golf course at Hahamongna Watershed Park. He uses selfies as cover art for each episode.
Most people might take the act of putting one foot in front of the other over and over again for granted. But for McLeod, walking enhances so many different aspects of life, creatively, mentally, physically.
“It’s great for problem-solving, for clearing your head,” he said. “It also makes me feel like I’m connecting with my community.”
Los Angeles as a whole is not exactly a city built for pedestrians. Our freeways and massive sprawl can sometimes act as a barrier to traveling by sidewalk. But McLeod is convinced that attitudes are slowly changing, and that if you look hard enough, there are communities of people all over who are enthusiastic about creating a pedestrian-friendly environment. And talking about it.
While our walk isn’t for the podcast, I’m excited to get a taste of what recording an episode of “Walkin’ About” might be like, having already powered through most of the 20 episodes available on walks of my own. We start outside Copa Vida Cafe on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Green Street. Old Pasadena is McLeod’s favorite area, given its preserved history and the fact that it just feels like it’s meant to be experienced on foot.
“[Walking is] great for problem-solving, for clearing your head. It also makes me feel like I’m connecting with my community.”
— Allan McLeod, comedian and host of “Walkin’ About”
McLeod, 44, dressed in a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pair of Hoka Bondi 7s, spends most of our walk pointing out factoids about buildings gleaned from research he’s done ahead of time.
“I believe this is one of the first co-op buildings in California,” he says, stopping in front of the Moorish Colonial-style Castle Green apartment building that was once a long-term hotel for wealthy travelers who used Pasadena as a winter escape.
Across the street we pause at the old Spanish-style train station where major train lines like the Santa Fe used to unload passengers, including wealthy Castle Green guests. It’s now a Metro stop for the A Line heading downtown. The main depot room is a restaurant cleverly called The Luggage Room.
McLeod came up with the concept of “Walkin’ About” after meeting Harry Nelson, executive producer at Adam McKay’s production company, HyperObject Industries, at a party. McLeod was telling Nelson about a passion project he’d been working on, an audio tour guide of Old Pasadena. Nelson was intrigued. The two took the audio guide and reformatted it into “something that was a little broader, a little less site specific.”
Shadows are casts as McLeod walks and talks with Sodaro in Pasadena. Past guests have included Andy Richter and Dan Stevens.
The structure of the podcast is simple: Each episode, McLeod meets up with a guest for a walk through a different part of Los Angeles. While on foot the pair chat about subjects such as the history of the area, what they’re seeing around them or each guest’s personal relationship with walking. So far, McLeod has strolled through Barnsdall Park with Ed Begley, Jr., hiked the Arroyo Seco with actor Dan Stevens and traversed the Bunker Hill Pedway with comedian Jon Gabrus. If McLeod had a dream guest for the podcast, it’d be Rick Steves.
“He’s one of America’s greatest ambassadors,” McLeod says excitedly.
We head across Central Park and up Fair Oaks Avenue toward the One Colorado Shopping Center, stopping in front of the iPic movie theater. Here, McLeod points up to a painted sign advertising the old Clunes Theatre, which was a vaudeville venue in the early 1900s. It also showed an early screening of the 1915 controversial silent film “Birth of a Nation,” which might have led to the formation of the Pasadena chapter of the NAACP.
“There’s a tangential connection there, but I don’t know the exact story,” McLeod caveats. But it’s these kinds of facts and trivia that he likes to pepper into his walks. For him, that’s part of the fun.
A native of Alabama, McLeod has lived in Los Angeles for about 20 years, arriving as a fresh-eyed graduate of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In college, he’d taken an advanced production class led by the director Tom Cherones, who would later become his mentor.
McLeod and Sodaro on the Devil’s Gate Dam. McLeod enjoys including facts and trivia about the area he’s exploring in each “Walkin’ About” episode.
“Tom said to me, ‘You’re a writer, you should move to L.A.” recalls McLeod. “So that’s what I did. That’s all it took.”
Today he considers himself more of an actor-writer: “Acting is where I’ve had more success, professionally.” After years of doing improv comedy at Upright Citizens Brigade, McLeod has landed roles in shows like “You’re the Worst” and “Drunk History.” In the Hulu comedy series “Interior, Chinatown,” coming out in November, he plays Desk Sergeant Felix.
McLeod has a dry, slightly deadpan sense of humor and a gentle voice that can sometimes get lost in ambient traffic noise. If this were an episode of the “Walkin’ About,” we’d each have small DJI lapel mics — a tiny microphone that records audio remarkably well — clipped to our shirts.
“It’s a newish microphone technology that’s kind of amazing,” says McLeod. He wants each episode to feel as immersive as possible, which means including surrounding noise like buses honking, a busker singing in an alleyway or a volunteer asking if we have time for gay rights.
(As this is his first podcast, he admits it took some trial and error, and a lot of lost audio segments, to get the recording-while-walking rhythm down. He credits his team of editors at HyperObjects for helping in that department.)
Our final stop is the corner of East Colorado Boulevard and Raymond Avenue, across the street from another Spanish Colonial-style building. McLeod points out it’s one of the most haunted buildings in Pasadena. Supposedly it’s built on top of an old mission, which is never a good start.
Allan McLeod, right, with Sodaro, at Hahamongna Watershed Park.
“It was originally a bank, and there are stories of people dying in it — the bank manager’s daughter was found dead in the vault, a big robbery that went wrong, things like that.” Now it’s an AT&T store; there’s an escape room next door.
By the end of our time together, it’s clear just how much McLeod really does love walking. In the 50 minutes and roughly 1½ miles that we’ve spent together, I’ve learned more about Pasadena than I have in the last 10 years of living in L.A. And aside from my desperate need for air conditioning, I almost lament my need to get back in my car to head home.
Would our conversation have made for good tape? For McLeod, the key to a successful episode of “Walkin’ About” is finding guests who enjoy walking as much as he does.
“That’s the trick,” he says. “The goal is to have people talking about walking in different ways. Because the subject can be really complex and profound.”
Lifestyle
‘How to Rule the World’ explores education and power at Stanford University
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.
Lifestyle
OTB Takes Full Control of Viktor & Rolf
Lifestyle
How having zero points in tennis — or ‘love’ — came to sound so sweet
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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