SMOGLANDIA Podcast by LA Times Studios, Patt Morrison

Episodes 7

Avg. Duration 35m

Activity Dormant

Apple Rating ★ 5.0 (2)

Since Dec 2025

Latest Episode Dec 2025

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About This Podcast

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.

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Recent Episodes

S1 Introducing: Smoglandia

Dec 16, 2025 2m Trailer

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…

S1E6 EP 6: FUTURE ELECTRIC, FUTURE TROUBLE

Dec 12, 2025 45m

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…

S1E5 EP 5: SMOG CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK

Dec 12, 2025 38m

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…

S1E4 EP 4: SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES?

Dec 12, 2025 35m

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…

S1E3 EP 3: COUGH COUGH

Dec 12, 2025 34m

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”…

S1E2 EP 2: SCIENCE TO THE RESCUE

Dec 12, 2025 33m

By the late 1940's, Los Angeles had experienced several extreme smog days -- or "gas attacks" as they were called back then. Everyone had their eyes on wartime factories that had sprung up and were…

S1E1 EP 1: L.A. SMOG – VERY OLD-SCHOOL

Dec 12, 2025 27m

Don’t blame us – blame our geography! Modern LA earned its first smoggy nickname 450 years ago, as the “bay of smokes.” At the La Brea tar pits, we take a short walk through a long history with…