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Lost LA
Building The Metropolis
Season 2
Episode 3
Wood, iron, steel, concrete -- these are the materials that gave form to Los Angeles and shaped its identity in the national imagination. This episode also questions the cultural legacy and environmental costs of the city's relentless growth.
Lesson Plan: How has the perception of Los Angeles changed over time?
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26:40
Tiki culture isn’t a Polynesian import — it’s a Hollywood creation.
26:49
Archives reveal the “forgotten plague” that shaped Southern California: tuberculosis.
26:50
Visit Hollywood Forever, Evergreen and Forest Lawn, where L.A. reinvented the cemetery.
26:39
How Filipino Americans in Southern California are making their heritage more visible.
26:37
After internment camps, Japanese Americans made L.A.'s Crenshaw neighborhood their home.
26:46
Dig deep into Southern California’s past to reveal lessons for our climate-changed future.
26:46
Why did Los Angeles dismantle one of the greatest rail transit systems in the nation?
26:40
Explore the lasting impact of the Shindana Toy Company, created out of the need for community empowerment following the 1965 Watts uprising, whose ethnically correct black dolls forever changed the American doll industry.
24:52
As recently as a century ago, scientists doubted whether the universe extended beyond our own Milky Way — until astronomer Edwin Hubble, working with the world’s most powerful telescope discovered just how vast the universe is.