LA LISTA: A Latinx Writers Podcast

A SELF-TAUGHT LATINA WRITER

For our season seven finale, Sylvia Brindis shares growing up between Guatemala and Southern California, finding her way from USC film school and acting into writing by learning to embrace being a beginner, creating and starring in the kids' series Fluff Piece to teach media literacy, and developing a project about the CIA's role in Guatemala's 1954 coup and the fake-news campaign behind it.

Season 8 of the pod starts back up March 2027!

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week:

We close out the season hungover and toothless, Thulio serves Princess Diana street style before partying until 5 a.m., Rubén nearly goes straight after getting showered with compliments at a cocktail party serving poppers over ice, and a three-hour grifter documentary has Thulio gagged while Rubén wonders why we keep giving scammers the cinematic universe treatment.

Plus our first annual Punch-Up-Palooza: Big Laundry, Ralph's discounted meat, billionaires who can't hire cashiers, AI-generated flyers, family Euro trips masquerading as solo trips, and Apple Cash's fraud department are all taken to task!

See you in March, divas!!!

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A QUEER CHICANO WRITER FROM EAST LA, ÓRALE

The podcast comes full circle for Episode 200 as first-ever guest Richard Villegas Jr. returns to talk about leaving a teaching career to pursue writing, weathering COVID and the writers' strike with writing as his North Star, turning his stories from two decades of public school teaching into the memoir Your a Fat Suckr Bich: Notes on the Merry but Perilous Work of Schoolteaching in Los Angeles, and continuing to build community through playwriting.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: LA kicks off spooky season with 100-degree weather, Thulio sobs his way through Before It's Too Late, Rubén finds live theatre growing in a Topanga tinderbox, a COVID-conscious lesbian bar in Western Mass sends woke discourse into a tailspin, and we consider how logging off and shutting up for a while might actually be part of the creative process.

Plus a Punch-Up on putting down Taylor Swift and picking up Tinashe... and businesses guilt-tripping customers into rebooking a $500 service.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A MODERN FOLKLORIST LATINX WRITER

Angela M. Sánchez shares growing up Chicanx in Los Angeles, how experiencing homelessness as a teenager shaped her commitment to telling stories about people too often overlooked, finding her creative voice through anime, comics, and fanfiction, going from education and philanthropy to building community with Latinx in Animation, writing for Primos, Dora, and the PAW Patrol universe, and turning a Los Angeles strip mall into a modern folktale with her animated short Spin Cycle.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio closes out summer with a Y2K Palm Springs girls' trip, Rubén checks out Animal LA with seemingly every gay in the city, Flo from Progressive reveals herself at the Groundlings, Mr. Kansas earns honorary membership in the LGBTQ+ alphabet, and Hollywood's collapse sends the writers running back to live theater.

Plus a Punch-Up on keeping Ryan Murphy away from your life rights... and rewarding spaces that build real community, because vibe-less branding is not it.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A NO SABO ECUADORIAN-AMERICAN SAD BOY WRITER FROM QUEENS

Christopher Moncayo-Torres shares growing up Ecuadorian American in Queens as a recovering no sabo and latchkey kid, discovering writing through college creative writing classes and New York theater spaces, building community through The Moth and Fail Better Arts, turning his relationship with his dad into the Hollywood Fringe show No Sabo, and bringing both parents onstage in Before It's Too Late to explore family, language, loneliness, and what it means to be seen.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: A rainy Labor Day weekend ruins Thulio's beach fantasy, Animal enters the LA gay bar group chat, Olive Garden becomes a Mid-City gay haven with bottle service and an iPad baby, Stella Lefty is not beating the nepo-baby theft allegations, and HBO's Lanterns turns a gay Green Lantern into Yellowstone cosplay.

Plus a Punch-Up on letting the Harry Potter reboot die already... and giving Brittany Murphy the Oscar she was owed.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A CHILANGA MOM WRITER

Natalia Mejía shares growing up in Mexico City, starting her TV career straight out of college writing Mexican telenovelas, moving to Los Angeles to get her MFA at UCLA and learn to write in English while keeping her voice, working in U.S. rooms like Snowfall and FBI: International, and exploring motherhood, contradiction, and women caught between worlds in her work.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio makes his triumphant WeHo return and somehow wakes up in Glendale, Rubén gets accused of dining & dashing at Dave & Buster's, a pool day delivers Scorpio slander and a blown-out floatie, Margaret Qualley lets the dogs out in chopped Chanel, and Paramount's Warner Bros. Discovery bid becomes a billionaire hostage negotiation.

Plus a Punch-Up on BYOT pool-party etiquette... and AirPods so bad they become anti-tech propaganda.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A MAGICALLY REALISTIC, QUEER COLOMBIAN LATINÉ WRITER MAKES AN ATTEMPT

Dylan Guerra shares growing up queer and Colombian in Miami, being raised by artist parents in a world of improv, stand-up, and DIY theater, finding his voice after moving to New York and writing the wildly personal solo show Find Him, getting staffed on The Other Two, and using ghosts, monsters, grief, comedy, and queer Latine mythos to build his own version of American folktale.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio fights Karl the Fog at Outside Lands, Slayyyter saves a flop summer with "Brand New Chanel," Heated Rivalry casting discourse demands meat on the bones, Rubén turns Greg Araki's I Want Your Sex into an AMC Burbank side quest, and streamers double down on their video-podcast content-churn era.

Plus a Punch-Up on job interviews with more rounds than Interview with the Vampire... and Black and Brown creatives whose indie projects somehow still have all-white casts.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A QUEER LATIN AMERICAN WRITER-DIRECTOR

Fiorella Vescovi shares growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay, feeling trapped until sports opened a path to the U.S., driving from Missouri to Los Angeles with emo music and black nails, finding herself beyond acting by falling in love with writing and directing, joining the queer series And Also With You, and turning her father's experience during Uruguay's dictatorship into the tender LALIFF/Netflix-supported short Pilotos de Papel.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio becomes a gay cowboy ghost-story extra, free LA archery turns him into Katniss Everdeen, Rubén finds artistic hope at a queer film night at Akbar, Comic-Con throws every Ryan into the MCU, and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey somehow makes Ancient Greece straight.

Plus a Punch-Up on the gay guide to escalator etiquette... and late-stage capitalism turning everyone at LAX into the villain.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A MEXICAN-AMERICAN WRITER AND ARMY VETERAN FROM CHICAGO

Jon-Alexander Genson shares growing up Mexican-American in northern Illinois, joining the Army to escape his hometown before a deployment to Guantanamo Bay helped him start accepting who he was, studying creative writing at Illinois State, breaking in through the Writers Guild Foundation's Veteran Writing Project and Support Staff Training Program, co-writing an episode of FBI: Most Wanted, and exploring masculinity, shame, and outsiders stumbling toward self-awareness in his work.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio survives The Abbey phone-theft industrial complex, Rubén's office job turns him into a fluorescent-lit shell of a woman, Love Island signs off and World Cup brain rot clocks in, Erling Haaland becomes the internet's strangest tall king, and The Great LA Exodus has everyone asking whether the dream is still worth the rent.

Plus a Punch-Up on FIFA refs choosing favorites... and Riverside, the AI podcasting hellbox holding us hostage.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP LATINX WRITER

Lisa Quintela shares growing up Cuban-American between New Jersey, Miami, and New York, how her parents' harrowing escape from Cuba shaped her drive and storytelling, moving from Tisch-trained actor to journalist to lawyer before writing a pilot about her family that brought her to LA, breaking into TV on The L Word: Generation Q, and using her legal background and love of exposing hidden rot in shows like The Lincoln Lawyer and CBS's Matlock.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Thulio returns from Gilmore Girls country and enters his World Cup Brazilian era, Rubén turns 35 and discovers his head is now extra-wide at Warby Parker, a queer vaquero fundraiser cracks the TikTok marketing code, Love Island takes over the algorithm, and the feed is fake but the clips are forever.

Plus a Punch-Up on airlines forcing broke bitches to gate-check their carry-ons... and politicians letting data centers and toxic fires get way too comfortable in our neighborhoods.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

XGIMI MoGo 2 Pro (New) Portable Projector with Multi-Angle Stand

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream

A GRATEFUL, CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC, IN-HIS-HEAD, OCD LATINX WRITER

Eugene Garcia-Cross shares growing up half Puerto Rican in Erie, Pennsylvania, feeling like the Latino kid in his hometown and the gringo cousin in Puerto Rico, trading a decade in academia for a last-chance leap into TV writing, breaking in through the NBC Writers Program and writer's PA jobs, and finding his old-school sitcom dream on NBC's Happy's Place.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Arriba Mami - Jingle Punks

This week: Corporate Pride is dead (but the Chase Sapphire rainbow logo lives in our hearts), Thulio dodges the WeHo Pride tax, Rubén hits Club Cobra and begs DJs to let a song breathe, the LA mayoral race takes a post-Spencer Pratt breath, and Unc cinema faces the rise of Gen Z excellence.

Plus a Punch-Up on Y2K parties with no whimsy... and nosy gays turning open vs. monogamous relationship discourse into a courtroom drama.

La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva ditch the formal interviews and hop on the mic for quick, unfiltered conversations about their chaotic creative lives — covering new writing projects, hot takes on industry trends, dating disasters, and whatever discourse the algorithm served them that morning.

Instagram - @lalistapodcast

Music: Sunny Side - Airstream