A River Runs Through Los Angeles
16 July 2024 - 43 minsWhen you hear the word "river," you probably picture a majestic body of water flowing through a natural habitat. Well, the LA River looks nothing like that. Most people who see it probably mistake it for a giant storm drain. It's a deep trapezoidal channel with steep concrete walls, and a flat concrete bottom. Los Angeles was founded around this river. But decades ago it was confined in concrete so that, for better or worse, the city could become the sprawling metropolis that it is today. All these years later the county is still grappling with the consequences of those actions.
Reported by Gillian Jacobs, guest hosted by 99PI producer, Vivian Le.
A River Runs Through Los Angeles
Subscrib...
Bamboo Is Innocent
A devastating fire put one of Hong Kong's oldest building traditions on trial, but the real story runs much deeper.
32 mins
11 August Finished
100 Objects #12: "Negro Cloth"
Roman Mars and historian Seth Rockman trace the strange life of so-called "Negro cloth" — a textile category defined by nothing but who it was worn by.
37 mins
7 August Finished
The Borrowed Nature of Biomimicry
Behind every perfect nature-inspired design is a far more complicated story.
31 mins
4 August Finished
100 Objects #11: Brannock Device
In 1925, the world saw the birth of what just might be the greatest gadget in American History: the Brannock Device.
27 mins
31 July Finished
The Finnish Baby Box
A simple cardboard box helped transform Finland into one of the best places in the world to raise a child.
33 mins
28 July Finished
100 Objects #10: Nunchaku
In the early 1970s, Bruce Lee made nunchaku (nunchucks) cool, but the nunchucks craze coincided with something much bigger: the birth of a radical new Asian American identity.
36 mins
24 July Finished