Built to Burn
99% Invisible1 Aug 2018

Built to Burn

After the massive Panorama Fire in southern California in 1980, a young fire researcher named Jack Cohen went in to investigate the houses that were destroyed. One of the first things that Cohen did was to listen to emergency dispatch tapes from the day of the fire. And as he listened, he began to notice a pattern. People were calling in about houses on fire long before the fire front ever reached their neighborhoods.The houses were not burning because a wall of flames was racing through the community, destroying them. It was something else: embers. This started Cohen on a crusade to get people to rethink how we fight wildfires.

Built to Burn

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early.

Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Avsnitt(775)

Unsure Footing

Unsure Footing

Before 1992, the easiest way to run the time off the clock in a soccer game was just to pass the ball to the goalkeeper, who could pick the ball up, and hold it for a few seconds before throwing it ba...

15 Okt 201926min

The Kirkbride Plan

The Kirkbride Plan

Today, there are more than a hundred abandoned asylums in the United States that, to many people, probably seem scary and imposing, but not so long ago they weren't seen as scary at all. Many of them ...

8 Okt 201939min

The Help-Yourself City

The Help-Yourself City

There’s an idea in city planning called “informal urbanism.”  Some people call it “do-it-yourself urbanism.”  Informal urbanism covers all the ways people try to change their community that isn’t thro...

1 Okt 201931min

99% Invisible presents What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

99% Invisible presents What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

Donald Trump took office 977 days ago, and it has been exhausting. Independent of where you are politically, I think we can all agree that the news cycle coming out of Washington DC has been very inte...

24 Sep 201940min

Dead Cars

Dead Cars

Everything in Bethel, Alaska comes in by cargo plane or barge, and even when something stops working, it’s often too expensive and too inconvenient to get it out again. So junk accumulates. Diane McEa...

18 Sep 201936min

The Pool and the Stream Redux

The Pool and the Stream Redux

This is the newly updated story of a curvy, kidney-shaped swimming pool born in Northern Europe that had a huge ripple effect on popular culture in Southern California and landscape architecture in No...

10 Sep 201940min

Wait Wait...Tell Me!

Wait Wait...Tell Me!

Waiting is something that we all do every day, but our experience of waiting, varies radically depending on the context. And it turns out that design can completely change whether a five minute wait f...

4 Sep 201931min

All Rings Considered

All Rings Considered

Before we turned our phones to silent or vibrate, there was a time when everyone had ringtones -- when the song your phone played really said something about you. These simple, 15 second melodies were...

28 Aug 201936min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
rss-jossan-nina
varvet
uppgang-och-fall
rss-borsens-finest
rss-svart-marknad
avanzapodden
fill-or-kill
bathina-en-podcast
dynastin
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
svd-tech-brief
lastbilspodden
borsmorgon
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
rss-dagen-med-di
rss-den-nya-ekonomin
24fragor
market-makers