SMOGLANDIA

Introducing: Smoglandia

For decades, the city’s air was so thick and gross with smog that it hid the mountains from view, shut down Hollywood film shoots and sent children home from school with burning lungs and stinging eyes. What was in the air and where was it coming from? No one knew for sure. L.A. Times Studios presents a special season of Boiling Point: Smoglandia. Hosted by longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison, Smoglandia is a narrative audio series tracing the rise, impact and eventual retreat of L.A.’s most insidious form of pollution: smog. Through interviews with scientists, policymakers, filmmakers and artists who lived through the worst days, Smoglandia explores how Los Angeles became a testing ground for environmental regulation, and how science and innovation transformed public health. At a moment when our hard-triumphs over smog face new setbacks, Smoglandia explores a landmark victory for the City of Angels, and, through clearer air, looks forward to the lessons we still have to learn — and the battles we have yet to fight.

EP 6: FUTURE ELECTRIC, FUTURE TROUBLE

Decades ago, some unhappy Angeleno wondered why cars couldn’t just run on nice, clean … water? Not for want of trying – cleaner power has created lots of engine experiments, most dramatically Caltech versus MIT in the great electric car race of 1968, a story you’ll hear from the winner. Not all is fresh air and plug-ins: smog has been especially devastating on communities of color, and the Trump administration may pull the plug on that have let California clear its own air.

EP 5: SMOG CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK

Whaddya know – the federal government sees the wisdom of working with California and its “queen of green” for cleaner air – up to a point. The Golden State gets its own “secret recipe” gas, but new partners mean new frictions over the smog check program familiar to every behind-the-wheel Californian.

EP 4: SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES?

Well, it took long enough. We finally realized that smog didn’t stop at some city limits line … that burning the family trash in the backyard incinerator wasn’t a good idea … and California started putting muscle into getting the air clean. Governor Ronald Reagan made the Caltech “father of smog” the head of the new state air resources board, TV stations began reporting smog alerts along with weather forecasts, and one stubborn LA county supervisor started his ten-year letter-writing crusade scolding the Big Four automakers about cleaner-burning engines. And a Louisiana gal named Seraphine was tooling around smoggy LA in her Triumph convertible and gas mask. Spoiler: she still lives here.

EP 3: COUGH COUGH

Living with smog was like living with an obnoxious neighbor. Angelenos tried protesting at city hall. They kept their coughing kids inside. A couple of actors manufactured joke cans of “genuine smog” and sold them to tourists. A few came up with earnest but crackpot solutions, like drilling a smog tunnel in the mountains. But serious pollution cost us serious money. Hollywood shoots had to shut down or move farther out of town to avoid it. And Southern California’s billion-dollar agriculture industry was being literally killed off by smog. One story we tell – of the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana – made it look like LA had to choose between good jobs and good air, between pink slips and pink lungs.