Boiling Point Presents: Smoglandia

Boiling Point

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.