In Episode 12 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax explores kindness through two distinct trajectories: one synthetic and one deeply human. Lisa begins with friend.com, a wearable AI companion that promises emotional support and friendship. Is it an antidote to loneliness, a tool for connection or a purposeful delusion we choose to believe in so we don’t feel alone? There seems to be a fine line between kindness and delusion in our present-day reality. Perhaps we must believe in a kind of delusion to imagine possible futures? Then, Lisa reconnects with artist Trek Thunder Kelly, known for living in his van for five years as part of a micro-living art project. His newest project is a performance art piece centered around kindness. Trek is a walking advertisement for kindness, both on his shirt and in his kind daily actions. He travels the world painting 'Be Kind' murals in local languages. Trek acknowledges the darkness and uncertainty of our times, but sees acts of kindness as very real antidotes to the dark. Together, Lisa and Trek explore kindness as an act of resistance, a creative discipline and a delusional force that may just reshape reality itself. This episode meditates on whether the future of emotional intelligence belongs to humans, machines or those who live between the two.

In Episode 11 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax travels to Hesperia, California to visit an open house for SuperAdobe homes at CalEarth. Tucked behind a housing development of cookie cutter homes is a time capsule from two eras: the ancient past and a potential Martian future. Semi-underground, domed domiciles built from sandbags and with all the elements in mind. Volunteers explain how these earth-built structures not only resist fire but harden and strengthen when burned, like pottery baking in a kiln. They’re designed to outlast us, to withstand wind, and even to be built on Mars. (NASA had collaborated on this idea.) Lisa meets dreamers who see these domes as a new kind of smart home with ancient-future technology: a way to finally live with nature, rather than to struggle against it. Some imagine SuperAdobes in Joshua Tree, others in Twentynine Palms, all envisioning a different kind of luxury: one rooted in earth, resilience and simplicity.

In Episode 10 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax takes on extreme weather in Southern California and finds herself in two parallel battles. In one scene, she steps into the role of a concerned parent on the evening news, demanding that school officials to provide shade for students as heat waves intensify. In another, she finds herself almost 10 years earlier at an Airsoft convention inside an abandoned Mojave Desert waterpark—suddenly cast as a UN peacekeeper in a Star Wars-style clash between the Rebels and the Imperials over control of California’s most precious resource: water. What connects these moments is our ability to be multidimensional in how we live and tell stories. If the world is a stage, then we’re all playing parts and rehearsing futures before they arrive. This episode blurs the line between reality and performance, showing how the roles we act out and rehearse, in real life and online or LARPing varieties, really do shape the worlds to come.

This isn’t the start of a joke. It’s what happened when a Black midwife, a French tour guide and a jazz trumpet player cross my path in Downtown L.A. In Episode 9 of Allergic Reaction, In Episode 9 of Allergic Reaction, I wander Downtown Los Angeles on Election Day, looking for directions to anywhere. I wander through Biddy Mason Park, the Bradbury Building (Blade Runner, 500 Days of Summer), the Broad Angels Flight, and Grand Central Market. I chase loops and mark time by meditating on a red yoga ball floating down the L.A. River, or a mini bottle of tequila spinning endlessly in an escalator groove. I arrive in the present moment where a robot waitress serves me lunch in Little Tokyo. It is now eight months after the election that no one seemed to mention on the day of the election, and I retrace my steps. This time the world feels like Teflon. Nothing sticks. Until I return to Biddy Mason Park and meet Issce, a jazz trumpeter who practices eight hours a day. The sound of his trumpet echoes off the surrounding buildings. He likes to play there because "it's a little seedy" and no one bothers him (except me). We talk about the power of human potential. We talk about being in the flow. We talk about what it takes: practice. In these present moments of honing your craft, using this time to improve, you can actually create a greater future.

They say L.A. isn’t a walking city, but I dare you to try it. In Episode 8 of 'Allergic Reaction,' I set out on foot in the same black denim overalls to explore L.A.’s newest ruins and decaying landmarks. Along the way, I meet some really interesting people and have some unexpected conversations. First stop: Oceanwide Plaza, the billion-dollar ghost tower turned graffiti mecca in Downtown L.A. I meet Kyle (@CHELLYZTV) who is a multi-hyphenate photographer, actor, brand builder. We talk real estate, street art and what it means to spend a billion dollars and still fail. Nine months later, I hike up to the abandoned Old Zoo in Griffith Park, where I meet Arshak (@ACLandmarks), who broadcasts his own insights into the 'Assassin's Creed' franchise. He and Phee Chai @pheechaixiong were shooting a video, and casually invoking Julius Caesar as a modern-day model for taking civic action. Then, I tag along with Dave and Grandy. Dave’s an author who is also building a Museum of American Humor. Grandy is a wearable artist who turns Amazon boxes into couture handbags (@atelier_grandi, featured in VOGUE). She calls her work a real-life "allergic reaction.” We couldn't agree more. None of these encounters were planned. I only learned who they were after I Googled them post-shoot. But maybe that’s the point: You never know who you'll meet, or what forgotten places you'll find, until you actually get out into the world and say hello to strangers. Each interaction changes the course of the future trajectory, somehow. (A lesson I learned from the film 'Back to the Future.')

In Episode 7 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax walks the full span of Los Angeles’ newly built Sixth Street Bridge. Bridges (this one included) often represent symbols of connection, unity and hope for someplace better. Designed to link Boyle Heights to the Arts District, this bridge stands as both a literal and metaphorical threshold between two distinct worlds. But upon crossing it, Lisa is left wondering: Which side actually represents the future? Eight months later, she’s standing atop the La Puente Landfill—a 500-foot-high mountain of compressed trash with methane pipes snaking through its hills and high-voltage power lines soaring overhead. Once the largest landfill in the U.S., it’s now being reimagined as a sci-fi-style public park. Within these two locations, Lisa meets two hikers dedicated to the terrain they walk across. Both offer insights and meditations on these gateways to the future.

In Episode 6 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax talks with a new generation of students facing a future that looks nothing like the past. There are no five-year plans. No guaranteed paths. No expectations of stability. These students aren’t what you’d expect. They aren’t lost, but they are something new. They are first generation to enter a human-AI world. They are the pioneers of an unknown future landscape, and they have arrived without a map. This episode explores:     
•    Why planning feels obsolete in a world changing too fast
•    What it means to grow up knowing AI is your peer     
•    How today’s youth are navigating the unknown with humor, grace, and glitchy faith     
•    Why this might be the most emotionally intelligent generation yet

In Episode 5 of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax time-travels to the early days of social media—when people gathered in real life, built grassroots communities and shared creativity without feeding the algorithm. We meet Judy at an underground fixed-gear (no breaks!) bike race in Long Beach, who tips us off to a photobomb meet-up in Echo Park. It's Easter Sunday, 2016, and people have congregated to connect, create and celebrate their shared love of photography--not for likes, but for each other. Then, we fast-forward to the present. Lisa visits Griffith Observatory on a Monday—it's closed, but tourists from around the world still arrive to capture the exact same photo. The algorithm rewards repetition, and belonging now means capturing photos of what we've already seen, exalting one specific shot to icon status. This episode explores: How social media fame once grew from subcultures and spontaneity Why we travel the world to capture the same photos as everyone else How the promise of connection became tethered to the algorithm's demands

n this two-part episode of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax time-travels through two versions of the future. In Part 1, she wanders into the “future” we’re now living in—delivery robots and self-driving cars glide through West Hollywood, signs of a world that once existed only in our imaginations. Then, the clock rewinds to 2016, where an underground fixed-gear bicycle race in Long Beach captures a different kind of future—one powered by community, adrenaline and a fledgling internet culture rooted in real-life connection. This episode explores: • How today’s technology has grown up • How social media once helped underground communities thrive • How yesterday’s dreams shaped today’s realities

In this episode of Allergic Reaction, Lisa Lomax descends into a real-life Cold War-era bunker—an artifact of past fears that still echoes in our present-day anxieties. But beyond its concrete walls lies a different kind of response: the work of Liam Young, an real-life architect, who is trying to save the world by designing fake ones. Young, also a filmmaker and professor at SCI-Arc, has bold visions for the future. Lisa visits one of his imaginings: Planet City, a single city that houses 10 billion people, the entirety of the world's future population. He invites us to imagine radical solutions to the planetary crisis we face today. This episode explores: - Why old adaptations like bunkers or recycling are insufficient in the face of the coming global challenges - How the science fiction of yesterday is shaping Silicon Valley today - Why the stories we tell shape the realities—and futures—we build Forget the bunker… or build the bunker, but also imagine new worlds.

In Episode 2 of 'Allergic Reaction,' Lisa Lomax returns to Altadena in the wake of a firestorm that tore through the foothills—devastating homes, memories and a once-idyllic vision of life. What she finds is a surreal landscape of survival and loss. Chimneys rise where houses once stood. Handwritten signs warn of what’s no longer safe to enter. Neighbors recount how close it all came to total collapse. We walk through what remains with Alan Zorthian, whose family ranch—once a utopian outpost of art, memory and myth—is now in ruins. Together, Lisa and Alan sift through melted artifacts in his office, beneath scorched staircases that now lead to nowhere. What does it mean to inherit a utopia? And what do you do when it burns down?