Off-Ramp commentator Milton Love, an eminent marine biologist at UC Santa Barbara, is also a great storyteller. And this time, he tells us stories about how fish got their names. Including one of the most disgusting fishes, which was appropriately named for one of the most disgusting humans.

In 2015 Michael Holland, the LA City Archivist, dug into his files to explore how the city reacted to the 1919 flu epidemic that killed millions around the world. Michael was inspired to explore the topic by a measles outbreak, but no matter, the parallels between 1919 and today are eerie and fascinating. Masks in theaters? Music in restaurants? It's all there, more than a hundred years ago.

Mapping Eden; At Eden's Edge; Sound of Los Angeles; Hank Rosenfeld Can't Skate Backwards; The Man Who Made Plants Sexy; Compost It; May the Force be With You; To Seed or Not to Seed; Inner-City Academic Athletes; Smells like Smog; Reporter's Roundtable

The Observatory Revisited; Like a Phoenix; The Dark Patron of Griffith Park; Reporting in Flames; Theatricum Botanicum; Passing the Torch; Pomona's Cinema Paradiso; Billy Pew; Letters

Going BioDiesel; BioDiesel My Ride; Trolling for Oil; Vegging Out; Spiny Forest; Slide Show'n'Tell; Longing for Llano; Hungary for Sausage; Double Jeopardy; Fast Food Dude-Revisited; Theater LAndscape; Reporter's Roundtable

Off-Ramp to the I.E. Special thanks to cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz for plugging our little show in his nationally distributed comic strip, La Cucaracha (click "enlarge" to see.) This week, Off-Ramp explores the Inland Empire. The nation's fastest growing community is home to one of the world's oldest orange trees, Chick-fil-A and more. Next week, Off-Ramp will be broadcasting live from LA Times Festival of Books. We'll be at Dickson Court North, Zone F, booth 601. Come vist, we'd love to meet you. -John (and Queena)

Steve Lopez; Susan Straight; Russ Parsons; Chris Abani; Roving Reporter: Henry Winkler; Roving Reporters: Authors@Google; Roving Reporter: Spirituality Book Stand

Note from Off-Ramp This week, we take you to the world's biggest train store in Culver City, which is closing soon... another casualty of the Internet. Looking forward, on April 28th we'll be doing a live show from the LA Times Festival of Books. We'll talk with columnist Steve Lopez, chef Nancy Silverton, novelist S.E. Hinton and others. In the meantime, go visit the train store (info below). There might never be anything like it again. -John and Queena

Hot Ramen; I Eat Ramen, Here Me Roar!; The Tristan Project; Don't Be Koi; Sherlock Rock; Shopping in the Rain; The Good and the Ugly; Skinny Model Ban; Remembering Bob Clark; Reporter's Roundtable

City Hall Tower; Lucille Ball Remembered; El Pollo Chino; Star Power; Downtown LA Rising; Comic Book Legend Len Wein; These Streets Aren't Paved With Gold; Final Four