The Digital Salon is a podcast series and a multi-media blog meditating on the theme of the PORTAL produced by the alumni and affiliated practitioners of UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative. In our pilot season, we respond to Arundhati Roy’s provocation in saying that the “pandemic is a portal.” As the pandemic fractures the cities we study, live in and love, alumni (and friends) fabulate responses that draw on the practices we call urban humanities. Through readings, soundwalks, audio-collages, interviews and more, we seek out the openings, fissures and apertures within the pandemic. digitalsalonpodcast.org