In this episode of "LA Made: The Other Moonshot": Were these three engineers set up to fail? The space race starts to hit debilitating roadblocks, and the Black aerospace engineers are beginning to feel the weight of the workplace — and the clock ticking. Shelby, Nate and Charlie develop different ways to cope with the pressure. A tragedy during an Apollo 1 flight simulation raises the stakes even further, while outside the company, racial tensions come to a head in nearby Watts.

"LA Made: The Other Moonshot" is a production of LAist Studios with Reasonable Volume, and the third season of the LA Made franchise. 

Visit BetterHelp.com/moonshot to get 10% off your first month. The Other Moonshot is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

In this first episode of "LA Made: The Other Moonshot": America aims for the moon. President John F. Kennedy stands proudly behind the mission to advance the country and welcomes a diverse team to get the job done. That team includes three Black engineers who have a studded background — Charlie Cheathem, Nathaniel LeVert and Shelby Jacobs. However, the three men quickly realize that social progress is slower than scientific advancement.

"LA Made: The Other Moonshot" is a production of LAist Studios with Reasonable Volume, and the third season of the LA Made franchise. 

Visit BetterHelp.com/moonshot to get 10% off your first month.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

When Joanne Higgins was growing up in Compton in Los Angeles, she heard her godfather, Charlie Cheathem, tell stories about his key role in the Apollo mission to the moon. As an adult she realized that his experiences — and those of other Black engineers — had been left out of the history books. She set out to record for the first time the accounts of these men whose crucial contributions to the early days of the Apollo mission have been overlooked — or taken credit for by others — despite their ingenuity and determination. Find the first episode on January 29, wherever you get your podcasts.

"LA Made: The Other Moonshot" is a production of LAist Studios with Reasonable Volume, and the third season of the LA Made franchise. 

For Barbie, the cultural upheaval of the 60s and 70s incites one identity crisis after another as Mattel tries to keep up with the times. On top of that, she has a new boyfriend to deal with. Ken's creation is a big hit for Barbie fans, but he’s facing a few growing pains of his own. In this episode, we investigate Ken's origin story, delve into the inner workings of Mattel, and hear how Barbie's inventor, Ruth Handler, was ousted from her own company.

This podcast is supported by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

In this episode, Ruth and Elliot Handler are gone, and the new Mattel team, led by a man who feared the volatility of the toy business, diversified the company and made a big gamble on electronics. It didn’t work. Fortunately, Barbie ends up in the sure hands of some trailblazing women executives, who could see that the culture was moving in a direction very compatible with Barbie’s persona. From the workforce to the workout, Barbie was a doll of her times.

This podcast is supported by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

The semi-successful Halloween test earns the squad some legitimacy and some money. Without consistent funding, though, the Suicide Squad breaks up before they've really gotten started. Until the U.S. government is caught off guard by the Nazis’ technological advancements and decides it needs to accelerate its own rocketry production — fast. 

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Frank Malina is wracked with inner conflict over working for the military. His calls for scientific advancement for the purpose of bettering humanity fall on deaf ears, which leads him to embrace a political philosophy that the US government is increasingly hostile towards.

While Frank Malina struggles with the militarization of his work, Jack Parsons is not so bothered. Instead, he's having the time of his life enjoying the Squad’s success and giving in entirely to hedonism and Sexmagick. It's all fun and games until the FBI starts investigating.

Episode 5 will launch January 10th.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Save 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/ROCKETS

Women trailblazers in aerospace often weren’t credited — including one woman who accomplished critical work with the Suicide Squad: Barbara Canright. This episode explores her contributions, as well as those of two other women pioneers in the field.

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Jack Parsons’s involvement in sexmagick threatens his position at Aerojet. And his troubles at home reach a breaking point when a red-haired, thirtysomething science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard walks into his world… and catches the eye of Jack’s girlfriend.

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Horrified that his new rocket design will become the vehicle for a nuclear warhead, Malina leaves JPL… just in time for the Red Scare to ramp up. Malina flees to France, but the FBI is hot on his trail. And one of Malina’s former Aerojet colleagues seems more than happy to tell them about Malina’s communist past.

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Malina leaves behind military work and brings his idealism to a new life and a new organization: UNESCO, in Paris. Back in the US, the FBI fumes, arrests Sidney Weinbaum, and makes every attempt to extradite Frank Malina… 

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While Frank Malina escaped the worst of the FBI's treatment, Suicide Squad member Tsien Hsue-Shen was not so lucky. This episode chronicles the shocking story of how the United States wound up losing one of its most brilliant minds in rocketry to China. 

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Save 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/ROCKETS

After WWII, the U.S. hired and promoted Nazi aerospace engineers in a program called Operation Paperclip — yet it drove away its own rocketeers, Malina and Tsien, for alleged communist activity. In this episode, we unpack that paradox. 

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When Jack Parsons dies in an explosion, conspiracy theories foment. Was it murder by a disgruntled ex-cop? Assassination by the US government? In this episode we wrestle to make sense of both the circumstances surrounding Parsons' death and the legacy he left behind. 

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Frank Malina’s legacy has often been eclipsed by flashier figures in American aerospace (like Jack Parsons and Werner Von Braun). But in this episode, we’ll show how Malina’s work paved the way for modern spaceflight — and the future missions of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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We go inside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and get a tour that’s not available to the public: watching technicians build spacecraft with Kobie Boykins, hanging out with Nagin Cox at the Mars Yard, and demystifying a campus famous for its secrecy.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Save 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/ROCKETS