Drawn by the lure of Hollywood, Bryan Bishop and Gina Grad both crash-landed in Los Angeles more than 20 years ago and after intersecting journeys through our turbulent but eternally rejuvenating city, each found a home worth writing home about. Now, the electric duo is energizing LAMag’s newest bi-weekly podcast, The Bryan and Gina Show, with their 47 years of combined experience covering the good, the bad and the ugly of life in L.A.
The pair gained a devoted following as co-hosts of the hugely popular Adam Carolla Show, and based on the response to the premiere of their new podcast, they seem to have brought along that same dynamism and audience to LAMag. In its debut weekend, The Bryan and Gina Show garnered a 4.8 rating and now sits at #10 on the Apple Podcast charts for Society and Culture, just two rungs beneath Joe Rogan (#8) and well ahead of Anderson Cooper’s All There Is (#92), Oprah’s Super Soul (#47) and even The New York Times’ Modern Love (#39).
In their first episode, Bishop and Grad sat down with Los Angeles‘s Senior Investigatkive Reporter Michele Mcphee to discuss her profile of accused con artist Sara King, the “Slot Whisperer” (also dubbed “the Anna Delvey of Orange County”) a former lawyer who allegedly scammed her friends, family and a Swiss banker to fund a wild $10.2 million-plus Vegas spree.
A self-proclaimed “journalism nerd,” Bishop understands that what makes the final cut of a published article often leaves out tantalizing details. The pair say they see podcasting as a new frontier to explore the muddier ambiguities of L.A. stories that are often overlooked. “There is also tons of stuff that happens after a story has gone to press,” says Bishop.
According to Executive Producer Gary Smith, who recently stepped in to head up Los Angeles magazine’s new podcasting division, this show is all about those strange paradoxes that make L.A. such a puzzling and inexhaustible place to live.
“What you’re going to get is the experiences of two L.A. transplants who moved from very different places for very different reasons and embraced L.A. as their home,” says Smith. Judging from the enthusiastic reaction to their maiden podcast, they’ll be here for a while.
Meanwhile, another Los Angeles podcast, Andrew Goldman’s The Originals, has also been making a splash, thanks to a steady stream of headline-generating interviews with iconic L.A. celebrities from Paulina Porizkova to Leslie Jordan to Connie Chung. Earlier this month The Originals interview with Chaka Khan was scooped up by dozens of news outlets across the globe, following the diva’s scorching comments about Mariah Carey, Beyonce and Rolling Stone.
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