Episode
Smoglandia Pt 3: COUGH COUGH
- Podcast
- Boiling Point
- Published
- Nov 13, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2066
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/boiling-point-7162470/episodes/smoglandia-pt-3-cough-cough/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/boiling-point-7162470/smoglandia-pt-3-cough-cough.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
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.