Nineteen Fire Shelters and Nineteen Deaths. Author Bill Streever takes us into the final moments of the 19 firefighters who, despite taking cover in their fire shelters, died in Arizona’s Yarnell fire. “You hang tight,” he writes. “To run is to die. The shelter is your only chance. And at this point you are struck by the truth that it is in fact only a chance.”

Sorry, Folks, L.A. Doesn’t Need Bicycles. While futurist Syd Mead thinks the bicycle is an ingenious mobility device with many virtues, he believes that to propose bicycle ridership as a serious mode of urban transportation is “specious folly.” Mead explains why bikes are not the transportation of the future.

Wait, So What’s the Law On Same-Sex Marriage Exactly? Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have resolved some big issues, but there are still many questions left unanswered.  Last Tuesday, UCLA Williams Institute legal director David Codell, San Francisco chief deputy city attorney Therese Stewart, and UCLA Williams Institute research director M.V. Lee Badgett discussed what’s next for same-sex marriage in a panel moderated by Los Angeles Times federal courts reporter Maura Dolan.

Who Got Hurt By This NSA Scandal? California. The National Security scandal might be a national and global matter, but it also hits at the heart of California’s economic life. Joe Mathews asks, “Will foreigners stop using the products and services of California technology and media companies—Facebook, Google, Skype, and Apple among them—that have been accomplices (they say unwillingly) to the federal surveillance?”

Writer Erika Hayasaki. Before talking with choreographer Debbie Allen about the arts and her life and work, UCI literary journalism professor and former Los Angeles Times reporter Erika Hayasaki reveals her biggest pet peeve, what dessert she can’t resist, and the first line of her obituary.

Next week …

Brian K. Barber on what’s happening in Egypt…

Ralf-Uwe Beck on the lingering wounds of having lived in a surveillance state…