Lifestyle
'Survivor's guilt' is real right now in L.A.
Los Angeles is a place that feels physically and emotionally fractured these days. For tens of thousands who are displaced, routine is a near impossibility. Others carry on with little visible change to their daily life.
Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t a heavy inner struggle.
How do you grasp the fact that a sizable part of our city has been decimated, ravaged and left heartbroken while a significant majority remains untouched?
It is a confusing and paralyzing time, and it is, above all else, unfair. Smoke and ash are in the air, and so is survivor’s guilt, leaving many unsure how to act or grieve.
“Everything you say feels like it’s the wrong thing to say,” says Shannon Hunt, 54. Her central Altadena home is still standing while those nearby are not. An arts teacher, her place of work, Aveson School of Leaders, is gone.
“Every time I cry, every time I feel broken, I think I don’t deserve that, because someone else has it worse,” Hunt says. “That’s stupid, intellectually. I understand that’s not right, but it’s how you feel, because these other people have no baby pictures and no Christmas ornaments and they are people that I love. How can I complain?”
Survivor’s guilt, experts caution, will for many be the new normal. I have felt it, as a single thought has jolted my mind over the last two weeks when I’ve left my place: I don’t deserve this. I’ve attempted to go to spaces I frequent for solace but have left, as comfort and enjoyment, quite frankly, felt inappropriate in this moment.
It actually shows that you have a great deal of empathy. Most of us don’t want to express our suffering when others have suffered more because we don’t want them to feel bad. So it says something about us if we’re feeling survivor’s guilt. It says we care about people a lot.
— Chris Tickner, co-owner of Pasadena’s California Integrative Therapy
“You’ve hit the nail on the head there,” says Mary-Frances O’Connor, grief researcher and author of the book “The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn From Love and Loss.” “Survivor’s guilt is, in many ways, ‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to have been spared.’”
O’Connor brings up a concept of “shattered assumptions.” The term, she says, “is something we use a lot in loss and trauma research” and deals with our everyday beliefs — how life, the world and people generally work.
“Events, like loss and trauma, shatter those assumptions,” O’Connor says. “It’s not that we never develop new ways of thinking about the world, it’s that it takes time to address questions like, ‘What do I deserve?’ The process of having to pause and consider those questions we didn’t have to do before, because there was no entire Los Angeles neighborhood burning down.”
Acknowledge what you’re feeling
Chris Tickner and and Andrea-Marie Stark are romantic and professional partners, operating Pasadena’s California Integrative Therapy. They’re also Altadena residents whose home survived despite, Tickner says, everything surrounding it being devastated. As therapists, they now find themselves in an odd position, attempting to process their grief and survivor’s guilt while doing the same with their clients.
First step, Tickner says, is to normalize it.
“It actually shows that you have a great deal of empathy,” Tickner says. “Most of us don’t want to express our suffering when others have suffered more because we don’t want them to feel bad. So it says something about us if we’re feeling survivor’s guilt. It says we care about people a lot, so much so that we’re willing to be stoic and not express ourselves.”
To begin to process survivor’s guilt, it helps, experts say, to not only be vulnerable but to acknowledge and do away with our instinct to concoct a class system of suffering. The initial step to take is just to better understand what is happening.
The L.A. wildfires are an impossible-to-comprehend catastrophe, and whether you were heavily affected or relatively unscathed, a sense of survivor’s guilt is to be expected. All of us, after all, are feeling loss given our communities and our city will be irrevocably changed. And yet our inclination is to carry on and be quiet. A friend even warned me against writing this story, wondering if it was “problematic” to admit I was struggling when I was not displaced.
“The reality is that so much tragedy is existing all the time,” says Jessica Leader, a licensed marriage and family therapist with L.A.’s Root to Rise Therapy. “Burying our heads in the sand saying, ‘Just focus on me,’ I don’t think is the right approach.”
The reality is that so much tragedy is existing all the time. Burying our heads in the sand saying, ‘Just focus on me,’ I don’t think is the right approach.
— Jessica Leader, a licensed marriage and family therapist with L.A’s Root to Rise Therapy
For one, it’s isolating. “Every single person, no matter what they’ve experienced, has started their session by saying, ‘I’m so lucky. I don’t have a right to complain,’” Leader says. “That is really rattling around in my brain. The collective experience right now — survivor’s guilt is seeping into every conversation that we’re having. It’s normal. But it’s also paralyzing.”
Turn your attention outward
Survivor’s guilt, says Diana Winston, director of Mindfulness Education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, is a “constellation of feelings” — “despair, hopelessness, guilt, shame.” The longer we sit with them, especially shame, the more reticent we can become to discuss them. Winston recommends a simple mindfulness trick called the RAIN method, an acronym that stands for “recognize, allow, investigate and nurture.”
Consider it, in a way, as a beginner’s guide to meditation. “I think people, without a mindfulness background, they can work a little bit with RAIN,” Winston says. “‘This is what I’m feeling, and it’s OK to have this feeling. It makes my stomach clench and I can breathe and feel a little bit better.’ Anyone with a little self-awareness can do that.”
Just take a moment to focus intently on the last aspect, “nurture.” “A lot of people are feeling guilt, fear and panic, and what we can do is turn our attention out toward other people,” Winston says. “It tends to help people not be lost in their own reactivity.”
An exercise like RAIN also can help us articulate and share our emotions, which is integral. Don’t bottle them up. That can lead us into a nihilistic place of feeling as if nothing matters, or accelerate our grief to the point it becomes a part of our identity. Dwelling on things, Leader says, can inspire a resistance to letting go, of feeling guilty if we are not living in our memories daily.
O’Connor says to think of what grief researchers refer to as the “dual process model.”
“When we’re grieving, there’s loss and restoration to deal with,” O’Connor says. “Restoration can be reaching out and helping our neighbors. We need a moment to have a drink and cry and talk with a person who gives us a hug. The key to mental health is being able to do both, to go back and forth between the building and the remembering. People who adapt most resiliently are the ones who are able to do both.”
Take the smallest possible step toward comfort
It’s also important to acknowledge what we’re capable of in this moment.
“There needs to be a caveat,” Tickner says. “Practicing mindfulness right now is really hard.”
Hunt says friends have recommended she take a moment to herself. It’s just not possible. “A friend was like, ‘I have a pass to a spa day. Maybe you can take it and relax.’ I said, ‘That sounds awesome, but I do not think I can do it.’ I would just start bawling on the table. I can’t imagine sitting in a hot tub. My brain is spinning. That kind of self-care would not work for me right now.”
Restoration can be reaching out and helping our neighbors. We need a moment to have a drink and cry and talk with a person who gives us a hug.
— Mary-Frances O’Connor, grief researcher and author
In such instances, says California Integrative Therapy’s Stark, simplify it. “Talking to friends, talking about how you feel, writing it down, making art, listening to music,” Stark says. Then, of course, get out and be a part of the community. Volunteering can be especially comforting.
And when friends offer help, accept it.
“We’re staying at a friend’s right now,” Stark says, “and their neighbors came over and they said, ‘We made too much pasta. Do you want some?’ And I started to say, ‘No, no, no, I can’t take.’ Then I heard myself say, ‘You have to accept. It’s just pasta.’ So I said yes, and they came over with the beautiful ziti and it was warm and lovely. And it made me feel so much better, even though I was in terror.
“So please,” Stark says, “say yes to anything people offer you.”
Say yes, write, put on music and volunteer if you can — easy tips, says Stark, but ones with long-term health benefits.
“Every time you do a practice like that, you’re literally opening up a new neuronal pattern in your brain that expands your selfhood, your ability and that wonderful word we use called ‘resilience.’”
Online prediction market platforms allow people to place bets on wide-ranging subjects such as sports, finance, politics and currents events.
Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images
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Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images
The rise of prediction markets means you can now bet on just about anything, right from your phone. Apps like Kalshi and Polymarket have grown exponentially in President Trump’s second term, as his administration has rolled back regulations designed to keep the industry in check. Billions of dollars have flooded in, and users are placing bets on everything from whether it will rain in Seattle today to whether the US will take over control of Greenland. Who’s winning big on these apps? And who is losing? NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn joins The Sunday Story to explain how these markets came to be and where they are going.
This episode was produced by Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Liana Simstrom and Brett Neely. Fact-checking by Barclay Walsh and Susie Cummings. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez.
We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email at TheSundayStory@npr.org.
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Now you can pair your big show with dinner and a more intimate listening experience. The Hollywood Palladium, an Art Deco music venue graced by performers like Frank Sinatra, Richard Pryor, Jimi Hendrix, Lady Gaga and Jay-Z since 1940, has debuted a swanky lounge known as Vinyl Room.
Inspired by 1970s Japanese high-fidelity (hi-fi for short) listening rooms and operated by entertainment company Live Nation, it’s a space where concertgoers can have dinner, grab drinks and catch a vinyl DJ set before, during or after their ticketed event in the same venue.
With a name like Vinyl Room, you can expect to see vinyl records everywhere.
“You’re in [for] a whole night of music,” says Geni Lincoln, president of the California region for Live Nation, adding that her team put “so much thought” into the sound and design of the space, which was in development for more than two years.
“I’ve been coming to the Palladium since I was a teenager, so it’s really special to see,” she says.
Entering Vinyl Room feels like you’re stepping into a secret speakeasy for music lovers, one with iconic music memorabilia, a thoughtful food menu and premium sound quality. Want to check it out? Here are five things to know.
Everything inside of Vinyl Room is inspired by the sounds and the musicians who’ve played at the Hollywood Palladium since 1940.
1. Vinyl Room is exclusively open to members and concertgoers with an upgraded ticket
Vinyl Room is open only on Hollywood Palladium show nights, starting 90 minutes before doors open, and remains open one hour after the concert. Admission is limited to concertgoers who purchase a ticket upgrade, which starts at $35. Early reservations are recommended.
Vinyl Room also offers annual membership packages, which start at $2,000 and come with various benefits such as complimentary guest passes to Vinyl Room, access to an exclusive menu, valet parking, table reservations inside the lounge, a dedicated private entry, complimentary coat check and concert ticket credits.
Tip Dunn, also known as DJ tenSpeed, played records during opening night at Vinyl Room at the Hollywood Palladium.
2. Hi-fi is having a moment in Los Angeles — and Vinyl Room delivers on sound quality
From Common Wave Hi-Fi in Boyle Heights to Slow Jamz Gallery in the Arts District and Gold Line bar in Highland Park, hi-fi — a 1950s term used to describe the high-quality reproduction of sound — venues and experiences have been slowly popping up around L.A. over the last few years. Vinyl Room joins a short list of places where audiophiles can go to listen to music on hi-fi equipment, which many argue is the best way to experience it.
Much like the Hollywood Palladium, which is known for its top-tier sound, Vinyl Room also makes sound a priority. The lounge utilizes hi-fi sound equipment including Master Sounds Clarity-M speakers to ensure that the records sound as crisp as possible. Live DJs spin records on a set of turntables, which helps to create a richer and more analog sound that is closer to the original track than compressed versions such as MP3s.
Ruthie Embry, vice president of architecture and design at Live Nation, says the records and other memorabilia inside the space “connects you directly to the venue’s history the second you walk in the door.”
3. All of the decor ties back to music and the Hollywood Palladium’s rich history
With a name like Vinyl Room, you can expect to see vinyls everywhere. Records line most of the walls and shelves, drinks are served on vinyl-shaped coasters and tables and light fixtures are designed to the theme. There’s even vinyl wallpaper in the photo booth. In one corner of the lounge, you can dig through records under a neon sign that reads, “But have you heard it on vinyl?”
Ruthie Embry, vice president of architecture and design at Live Nation, says the records and other memorabilia inside the space “connects you directly to the venue’s history the second you walk in the door.”
Some standout items include a Red Hot Chili Peppers show flier, a Hollywood Palladium postcard signed by late musician and host Lawrence Welk and a photo of late singers Bonnie Baker and Orrin Tucker at the venue. Even the bathroom creates a memorable photo moment: The stalls are filled with photos of musicians and an “on air” studio sign lights up when a stall is occupied.
Vinyl Room’s menu, created by Chef Ryan DeRieux, is inspired by Asian flavors and includes items like the “Vinyl Roll,” which is made with spicy tuna.
4. Don’t worry about dinner plans before or after the show. Vinyl Room has got you covered
Eliminating the need to find a pre- or post-show restaurant, Vinyl Room has a full Asian-inspired menu created by Chef Ryan DeRieux.
Think sushi tots (like crispy tuna but with tater tots instead of rice), tuna poke nachos, chili crunch chicken wings and shiitake tempura burgers. There’s also a mouth-watering 10-ounce American wagyu skirt steak served with shishito peppers, pickles and charred carrots. For dessert, try the taiyaki, a popular fish-shaped Japanese street food, which is served with a delicious passion fruit cream that I wanted to take to go because I liked it so much.
Signature cocktails at Vinyl Room, inspired by popular songs, include the Superfly, Escape (if you like piña coladas) and Smoke on the Water.
5. The craft cocktails aren’t just delicious — they each have a story
Vinyl Room’s old-fashioned is made with Nikka Yoichi whisky, which is made in Japan.
The cocktail program, developed by third-generation bartender Sean Kenyon, is inspired by the songs created by musicians who’ve graced the Hollywood Palladium stage. A nod to the 1970s, the Superfly is a fizzy, citrus-forward play on Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 track and is made with Roku Gin and yuzu and sencha syrup. Other signature drinks include the rum-based Escape (if you like piña coladas) with coconut oolong syrup, pineapple juice and miso, and the tart yet sweet Smoke on the Water, which is reminiscent of Deep Purple’s 1972 song. The bar also offers an espresso martini (called the MT Joy), a signature old-fashioned (made with Nikka Yoichi whisky) and a Japanese whiskey highball (made with Hibiki Harmony whisky). The bar offers a number of non-alcoholic options as well.
A screenshot from George Mélière’s Gugusse et l’Automate. The pioneering French filmmaker’s 1897 short, which likely features the first known depiction of a robot on film, was thought lost until it was found among a box of old reels that had belonged to a family in Michigan and restored by the Library of Congress.
The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
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The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has found and restored a long-lost silent film by Georges Méliès.
The famed 19th century French filmmaker is best known for his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction adventure masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
The 45-second-long, one-reel short Gugusse et l’Automate – Gugusse and the Automaton – was made nearly 130 years ago. But the subject matter still feels timely. The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress’ website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer.
In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, “probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image.” (The word “robot” didn’t appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Čapek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..)
“Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots,” said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. “Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new.”
A long journey
Groth said the film arrived in a box last September from a donor in Michigan, Bill McFarland. “Bill’s great grandfather, William Frisbee, was a person who loved technology,” Groth said. “And in the late 19th century, must have bought a projector and a bunch of films and decided to drive them around in his buggy to share them with folks in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York.”
McFarland didn’t know what was on the 10 rusty reels he dropped off at the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. A Library article about the discovery describes the battered, pre-World War I artifacts as having been, “shuttled around from basements to barns to garages,” and that they, “could no longer be safely run through a projector,” owing to their delicate condition. “The nitrate film stock had crumbled to bits on some; other strips were stuck together,” the article said. It was a lab technician in Michigan who suggested McFarland contact the Library of Congress.
“The moment we set our eyes on this box of film, we knew it was something special,” said George Willeman, who heads up the Library’s nitrate film vault, in the article.
Willeman’s team carefully inspected the trove of footage, which also contained another well-known Méliès film, Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes (The Fat and Lean Wrestling Match) and parts of The Burning Stable, an early Thomas Edison work. With the help of an external expert, they identified the reel as having been created by Méliès because it features a star painted on a pedestal in the center of the screen – the logo for Méliès Star Film Company.
A pioneering filmmaker
Méliès was one of the great pioneers of cinema. The scene in which a rocket lands playfully in the eye of Méliès’ anthropomorphic moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune is one of the most famous moments in cinematic history. And he helped to popularize such special effects as multiple exposures and time-lapse photography.
This moment from George Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is considered to be one of the most famous in cinematic history.
George Méliès/Public Domain
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George Méliès/Public Domain
Presumed lost until the Library of Congress’s discovery, Gugusse et L’Automate loomed large in the imaginations of science fiction and early cinema buffs for more than a century. In their 1977 book Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film, authors Douglas Menville and R. Reginald described Gugusse as possibly being, “the first true SF [science fiction] film.”
“While it may seem that no more discoveries remain to be made, that’s not the case,” said Prelinger of the work’s reappearance. “Here’s a genuine discovery from the early days of film that no one anticipated.”
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