Today, we're devoting the show to a collaboration we launched in June with our friends at LAist.com. Over the past few months you may have caught a few segments on Take Two where you heard Angelenos reading their personal essays from a series called Race in LA.

The premise is simple: audience members are invited to write personal stories about how their race and/or ethnicity shapes their relationship with the world around them - then read them aloud on air. 

Today we'll listen to some of the highlights from the Race in LA series and look ahead to where it's going in 2021.

First Up: Shirlee Smith, who tells the story of the job she applied for at 18 back in the 1950s – to work as operator for Cedars of Lebanon hospital, which became Cedars-Sinai. The job interview was on the phone and she was hired on the spot. Then she came in, in person, to report to work – and that's when her new employer saw for the first time that she's Black.

Guest: 

• Shirlee Smith, author of the LAist essay "We Don't Hire Colored Girls': After A Job Rejection In 1956, A Young LA Telephone Operator Began Kicking Down Doors."