Boiling Point

Latest Episodes:

Why Whales Are Getting Hit by Rising Ocean Temps Aug 13, 2026

Show notes

This year, sea mammals and birds have been washing up along the western coastline in alarming numbers. Gray whales, which migrate from Baja California up to Canada are suffering from malnutrition, leading to more than 100 strandings so far this year. Experts are blaming warming waters due to climate change which impacts the mammals’ food supply.

Host Miranda Green sets sail with staff from Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific to get a better sense of what’s going on with this marine population and what we can do to help. She also speaks with oceanographer Rafael Gonzalez-Quiros about what warming ocean temperatures are doing to the earth.

Join Boiling Point in its second season as independent investigative reporter Miranda Green walks listeners through the climate challenges and solutions facing our natural world. Produced by LA Times Studios, the weekly series will feature interviews with Los Angeles Times reporters, state officials, business leaders and scientific experts discussing the latest news and trends impacting Californians and the country.

Two New Plastics Laws are Bringing a Whole Lot of Baggage Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

California implemented two landmark plastics laws this year that aimed to answer an existential question: who is responsible for plastics waste? Both bills are intended to put more responsibility on plastics manufacturers so that fewer products end up in landfills.

But the rollout of the bills has been anything but easy– in fact, no one is happy.

Host Miranda Green speaks with LA Times reporter Susanne Rust about the troubled history of the two laws, and with entrepreneur Will Lorenzi about what the new policies mean for companies developing alternatives to conventional plastics.

California’s Offshore Drilling Nightmare Jul 30, 2026

Show notes

When a pipeline off Gaviota Coast cracked in 2015 and spewed 123,000 gallons of oil into the ocean, local officials shut it down for 11 years. But this past spring, A federal emergency declaration helped Sable Offshore Corp. get a fast-track to pump again and it has led to a flurry of lawsuits.

Host Miranda Green speaks with LA Times reporter Grace Toohey, economist Severin Borenstein, and surfing legend Shaun Tomson about how this seemingly local fight has become a national litmus test over the future of oil extraction.

Presenting: Season 2 of Boiling Point Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Join “Boiling Point” in its second season as independent investigative journalist Miranda Green walks listeners through the climate challenges and solutions facing our natural world. Produced by LA Times Studios, the weekly series will feature interviews with Los Angeles Times reporters, state officials, business leaders and scientific experts discussing the latest news and trends impacting Californians and the country.

Smoglandia Pt 6: FUTURE ELECTRIC, FUTURE TROUBLE Dec 11, 2025

Show notes

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.

Smoglandia Pt 5: SMOG CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

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.

Smoglandia Pt 4: SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT, BESTIES? Nov 20, 2025

Show notes

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.

Smoglandia Pt 3: COUGH COUGH Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

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.

Smoglandia Pt 2: SCIENCE TO THE RESCUE Nov 06, 2025

Show notes

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 shooting black plumes into the air, but someone had a feeling that the cause might be something else. Arie Haagen-Smit, a Dutch professor at Caltech who would later be deemed the "father of air pollution," was technically supposed to be studying the taste and smell of pineapples when he first began to conduct research into smog. Through letters and interviews with Caltech faculty and historians, we piece together how Haagen-Smit discovered the recipe to smog, and how after he published his results, people weren't exactly ready to hear that their beloved cars were at the root of the problem.

Smoglandia Pt 1: L.A. SMOG – VERY OLD-SCHOOL Oct 30, 2025

Show notes

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 curator Regan Dunn, who explains how and why the first Angelenos, 130 centuries ago, would have set fires that filled the broad bowl of LA and foretold the curse of smog. Fast forward thousands of years to the early 1940s, and the renowned artist Helen Pashgian, who grew up in Altadena back when the light around LA – once so radiant and cool – was slowly smothered by the blight from wartime industries that hurt her schoolgirl lungs and blotted out the once-glorious vistas.

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