Boiling Point

Artificial Intelligence or AI seems to be all around us. It’s part of every conversation, every news cycle, and in every product. When people talk about AI, data centers are typically not far behind. But data centers use up a ton of energy and only about 24% of it comes from wind and solar.    Host Miranda Green speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Blanca Begert about how this new real...

Hosted by Emmy Award-winning journalist Beth Ruyak, California Politics Podcast is a weekly show examining the latest news, trends and policies shaping the Golden State. Each week during the legislative session, Ruyak sits down with lawmakers, academics and journalists from the Los Angeles Times Sacramento bureau and across the state to break down Capitol decisions and their impact on Californians...

How do you get more people to care about climate change — and tell riveting stories along the way? Boiling Point explored that question at a live event during this year’s New York City Climate Week at Columbia University’s Climate School. Host Miranda Green was joined by climate activist and author Bill McKibben, New York Times climate reporter David Gelles, Woo Qiyun, a senior communications mana...

Boiling Point’s Miranda Green and Heated’s Emily Atkin team up in a collaborative episode exploring the truth behind forest management. They speak with principal ecologist and co-founder of the John Muir Project, Chad Hanson, and Hugh Safford, a retired ecologist for the US Forest Service and director of the The Safford Lab at UC-Davis. Together, they dive into the fiery debate around logging, thi...

Wildfires in California are getting bigger and more destructive. Now, state regulators are turning to homeowners to take a new approach to fire prevention– starting with their gardens. Host Miranda Green talks with Los Angeles Times reporter Noah Haggerty about new “Zone Zero’ rules aimed at making homes and communities more resilient to flames and embers. She also speaks with Megafire Action foun...

The Colorado River has sustained communities, farms and cities across the American West for generations. But the river is shrinking due to hotter temperatures and less rainfall. As reservoirs that depend on the Colorado reach all-time lows, the seven states that rely on the river are fighting over who should use less water. Host Miranda Green talks with Los Angeles Times water reporter Ian James a...

California on Friday filed its 88th lawsuit against the Trump administration– this time suing them for an “illegal” settlement it entered into to stop an offshore lease sale in Morro Bay. In this bonus episode, host Miranda Green speaks with Attorney General Rob Bonta about the decision to sue Trump, why he believes Trump’s deals are politically motivated and illegal, and what to expect for the re...

California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court. Host Miranda Green speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Hayley Smith and U.S. Congressman Jared Huffman about the po...

From an unnamed weather event to an SNL punchline, our awareness of El Niño has grown rapidly over the past several decades. And now, as climate change raises the stakes and a potentially historic El Niño approaches, how prepared are we for what comes next? Host Miranda Green talks with Los Angeles Times reporter Rong-Gong Lin II about how California communities are preparing, and climate scientis...

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...

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 reporte...

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 surfi...

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 Califo...

From the Los Angeles Times and Sonoro comes the De Los Podcast — a weekly conversation where music, pop culture and Latinidad collide. Hosted by De Los editors Fidel Martínez and Suzy Exposito, the show pulls back the curtain on the stories, people and cultural moments shaping the Latino experience in the U.S. and beyond. Every episode is a front-row seat to conversations with the artists, actors,...

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 a...

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. 

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 weat...

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 do...

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 pollutio...

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...

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 Pat...

Los Angeles Times journalist Susanne Rust shares her eye-opening experience documenting her daily interactions with plastic. Despite being an expert on the topic, she was stunned by the sheer volume of plastic in her life, from single-use items to everyday essentials. Susanne and Sammy also discuss the current state of plastic regulation in California, including a much-criticized decision by Gov....

Bill McKibben is an acclaimed environmental activist and journalist, and the co-founder of 350.org . As spring training gets underway, Sammy and Bill discuss fossil fuel advertising at Dodger Stadium, and how oil and gas industry “sportswashing” is taking advantage of America’s national pastime.

Sammy Roth talks with Jason Rondou, an assistant general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, about the city’s shift from coal to clean energy. Believe it or not, L.A. still operates a giant coal-fired power plant, more than 500 miles away in rural Utah. In November, DWP is finally closing it — and replacing it with a combination of gas and green hydrogen.

Sammy Roth talks with Los Angeles Times environment reporter Hayley Smith about the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks, the misinformation driving them, and what they mean for the future of climate action. Project 2025 Tracker: https://www.project2025.observer/en   Read Sammy’s latest column: https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2025-09-18/california-legislative-session-climate-...