What A Day - Cities’ Big Plans to Climate-Proof for the Future

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record, beating out the current #1…2023. In a world where extreme heat is becoming the norm and more and more people are living in cities, are urban areas literally and figuratively cooked? To get a sense of the unique climate threats facing cities and what mayors are doing about it, Max and Erin take a closer look at Boston, Phoenix, and Hoboken. Can soapy roads address the urban heat island effect? Where’s the best place to hide a stormwater cistern? Where does environmental justice fit into all of this? Listen to this week’s How We Got Here to find out.

Erin, one of those brutal summer heat waves is descending on the Midwest and the Great Lakes region again. It seems like there's always a record-setting heat wave somewhere in the U.S. Yeah, 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record, beating out the current number one, 2023. Wow, the climate's out here shattering records like Katie Ledecky. With that in mind, and with the air conditioner on full blast, that makes me want to ask... Hot enough for you? No, but close. It's this. In a world where extreme heat is becoming the norm,

are cities literally and figuratively cooked? I'm Max Fisher. I'm Erin Ryan. And this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question. Today is expected to be even hotter than yesterday, with the heat index well into the triple digits. Downtown commuters shuffled down sizzling sidewalks yesterday.

Baseball fans arrived for the White Sox game with fluids in hand. On the first day of the school year, outdoor activities were moved indoors. That was a clip from ABC7 Chicago discussing this week's heat wave in the Windy City. Max, I lived in Chicago for most of my 20s, and I am sweating just trying to imagine how like a treeless stretch of Milwaukee Ave would feel in triple digit temperatures. I cannot imagine like breaking down along the Dan Ryan. Oh, God. Listen, I lived in Washington, D.C. for years. So in the summers, it's just like you don't go outside for five hours in the middle of the day. And cities, like in general, are extra miserable during heat waves.

Beyond being uncomfortable places to live and work, that heat can be deadly. High temperatures are responsible for more deaths than wildfires, storms, and floods combined every year. And so our question this week, as temperatures rise, how are cities trying to beat the heat, and is any of it working? To find the answer, let's take a look at a few places that are giving it their best shot. The old college try, if you will. Funny you should mention college, as the first place we're going to look is famously a college town. And that town's new mayor is positively obsessed with talking about the effects of rising heat from climate change. Oh, can I guess? Let's see. Blue City, College Town, hot climate.

I'm going to say Austin, maybe Atlanta? No, Boston. Wait, Boston? Yes. Mayor Michelle Wu has made heat resilience an issue since she first came into office in 2021. But Erin, isn't it cold in New England? It's not like it used to be, and definitely not in the summer. According to a report the city put out a few months after Wu came into office, by the year 2050, Boston summers are projected to be as hot as summers are currently in Washington, D.C. Oh my god. I mean, as mentioned,

I lived through a bunch of those, and they are brutal. Even if the world aggressively reduces greenhouse gas emissions, by 2070, Boston will endure 40 days per year where the temperature crosses 90 degrees. If the world doesn't reduce emissions, it could hit 90 plus degrees for 60 days each year. Wait, in Boston? How is that possible? So the effects of climate change are exacerbated in Boston because it's a city. All that asphalt and pavement and dark roofs absorb heat during the day, which means the city can't cool overnight.

Tall buildings also create a canyon effect that traps heat inside. This is called the urban heat island effect. So I used to live in London, which has a vaguely Boston-like climate. And something I learned is that historically cool cities like that are hit especially hard by rising temperatures from climate change because they're just not built for long, hot summers. The buildings are all designed to hold in heat, not release it. There's not enough air conditioning. So a heat weave can be exceptionally dangerous in some place like that. Well, that's why when Wu's office put out Boston's first heat resilience plan in 2022, a lot of it focused on mitigating the health impact of hotter and longer summers. Okay, like what? A lot of things that might feel obvious but weren't going to happen without a concerted plan. More drinking fountains in areas with high heat exposure.

Installing shade shelters over bus stops and at schools. I can't believe that they didn't exist. I know, that someone had to make that decision. All those gingers in Boston and there's no shelters over the bus stops? People are freckling as we speak. And on routes where people commute on foot, they call those cool pathways. But Mayor Wu has said that there's a low-tech solution her office has found especially effective. Trees.

Here she is a few months ago talking with Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey for his podcast. The best climate change fighting technology we have is trees. It brings the temperature down. It holds the water in the ground. It creates peace and tranquility and beauty. But what's important for me about the Green New Deal is that it's not just the vision for what our future has to be one day in order to address all the needs that we have.

It's about all of the jobs and opportunities that come from getting the process right of getting to that future. And so whether it's with the school buses or with this Trees investment, we've also been able to use those resources and build the workforce that's going to have those jobs. We have Madison Park vocational technical school high school students now managing and servicing the electric school buses for Boston. And we have the staffing through our Power Corps program that trains young people in the green economy to help manage all of the work that's going to happen to actually get these trees planted in the right places.

I feel like that part she's talking about at the end about jobs is something that we hear a lot with city climate plans. And partly I'm sure that's because mayors love to talk about creating jobs, but also so that there is a near-term economic incentive for everyone to keep these programs going rather than seeing them as a climate extravagance that might get cut in the next budget. Yeah. And a lot of these jobs are jobs that could be filled by people who maybe aren't working in factories anymore because their factory closed. They're manual labor jobs that require physical strength. And they would benefit people who might be a little bit skeptical of climate change. Right. And now you're something in it for them.

Exactly. And because the number of programs in Boston's heat plant are going to take years to come fully into effect. So an immediate benefit is necessary. So energy efficiency upgrades, for one. Ever tried to do anything to a house? It takes a long time. It takes twice as long as you think that it will. Or things like financial incentives for buildings to replace existing black roofs, which absorb and hold heat, with more reflective white roofs. Or better yet, with green roofs, meaning covered in plants, partially or fully, that insulate from heat and can absorb rainwater to prevent flooding.

Infrastructure like that, I'm sure, takes years to turn over. There's another big, big focus of Boston's climate plan that we should talk about, and that is environmental justice. Oh, yeah, as in mitigating the ways in which things like racial wealth gaps or the legacy of redlining put some communities at greater risk from, say, heat waves. Yeah, redlining especially is a big one. This is the practice by which mortgage lenders refuse to give out loans to people in predominantly non-white neighborhoods, which depress development in those communities for generations. And that manifests today in, among other things, higher temperatures in the summer, because there are fewer parks and trees, but more asphalt and concrete.

One study found that Boston neighborhoods that had been redlined back in the 1930s are today, almost 100 years later, on average eight degrees hotter than surrounding neighborhoods. Eight degrees. That is a life-changing amount. Especially if you happen to suffer from chronic health issues, which are, of course, also more prevalent in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. But you're saying that Boston's heat plan is supposed to deal with this. That's the idea anyway.

Here's the mayor again, Michelle Wu, on Senator Markey's podcast. What you're doing is you're now the national leader in making sure that the city of Boston rectifies these historic injustices that affected those who were most vulnerable historically. The difference that it makes, not only for wildlife to flourish for all the ways that the water in that river seeps into the ground and affects other life systems but just to have fun to be able to let kids go and get their feet wet and and have fun we want to create those opportunities with all of

the open spaces that we have some of the funding that you helped deliver for us for Mowgli Park and its renovation means not only that we have. Some of the funding that you helped deliver for us for Mowgli Park and its renovation means not only that we will have improvements to a beautiful park right on the water, but that is one of the main flood paths over into the public housing development right across the street from there. And so it's always about trying to make sure we are addressing the things that need to be fixed, but also in the meantime and through that, delivering and making the opportunities and experiences of residents even better. Something else Michelle Wu has done that I thought was smart was presenting all this heat resiliency as a public health issue that affects everyone today. Here she is with Marky again. Sometimes people say, you know, we can't

afford to do this, right? We can't afford all the money it's gonna take to remediate this waterway or to transition into a healthier building, but all of the costs that we are saving down the line by taking action now far, far outweighs whatever we're talking about. All of the opportunities that are created now on the river because of the regulatory systems, because of the investments that were made are now returning so much of that investment.

And we saw during the COVID crisis that those that were in the worst housing or those that had the least access to health care, they also had the highest levels of asthma. That's right. And then that made them very vulnerable to another lung disease, which was arriving, COVID. And so that's why we then saw the highest rates amongst black, brown, immigrant communities. We should talk about another city that's been trying out a big heat resilience plan. It's actually one you are pretty familiar with, Max. Phoenix. Oh, my sort of hometown. I grew up partly in Phoenix, and it was hot as hell back in the 90s, so I can't imagine what it's like now. Yeah, Max only lives in places with terrible summers.

That's his one rule. Not deliberately. Well, it's hotter now. Phoenix typically sees more than 100 days every year that are over 100 degrees. Last summer, according to one estimate, 645 people died from heat-related causes. Half of those came during a particularly bad two-week heat wave, so it's pretty serious. And I know as the city has developed and sprawled, the heat island effect has gotten worse. And the natural cooling you usually get at night in the desert has also been blunted. All those concrete structures turning into heat sinks. Here's Kate Gallego, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, talking about some of the heat resilience reforms she put into place. This is from a 2021 interview with a climate project at George Washington University

called Planet Forward. This cool pavement project that you're trying, what is it and how much of a difference would it make? We used to see much more significant declines in temperatures overnight, but pavement and man-made materials are really holding in that heat. We're now paving the city with cool pavement and then monitoring the impacts on our community. And we've seen a significant noticeable decline in the temperatures, particularly those critical overnight temperatures in the areas where we've applied the cool pavement. What is it made out of? What does it look like? And how much of a temperature difference does it actually make? So it's made with asphalt, water, an emulsifying agent that might be more familiar with some of the components of soap, some minerals. Our scientific partners tell us we may be able to see a reduction of 10 to 15 degrees, which will make it the most popular addition to a neighborhood in Phoenix. Soap roads. It's amazing how low-tech a lot of these plants are.

Yeah, Phoenix, like Boston, is also putting a lot of resources into, one, planting trees, and two, extending shade over things like bus stops or heavily used sidewalks. Yeah, it doesn't get much lower tech than human stand-under tree. Look, sometimes the old ways work. But Phoenix is trying out some new ways, too. Here's Mayor Kate Gallego talking about the city's project of installing solar panels in places where they can double as shade. My first involvement with the city was as a volunteer on our Environmental Quality Commission trying to develop a solar energy program for the city. It's now grown to the point where we're number one in terms of U.S. cities for solar installed on our city facilities.

We're about to cut the ribbon on our 50th installation. We are doing it strategically. And one that I hope will become a national model is our partnership with our public housing authority. We are putting solar shade canopies over parking at the housing authority. That creates more comfortable shaded areas. But it's also giving our residents a $15 credit on the bill. So they're sharing in the benefits of the electricity that is generated at their home community. Environmental injustice, which we talked about before, huge problem in Phoenix as well.

A few years ago, the Washington Post reported on one historically disadvantaged neighborhood called Edison Eastlake, where temperatures are as much as 10 degrees higher at night than in surrounding neighborhoods. Wow. I assume this is as in so many similar neighborhoods in so many cities. Edison Eastlake has fewer trees, fewer parks, more asphalt, more concrete, and less shade. It also has higher rates of chronic illness, all of which adds up to a mortality rate from heat-related causes that is 20 times higher than the rest of the county. Wow, 20 times. And I'm sure that's a gap that is only going to widen as Phoenix continues to heat up. Which is why Phoenix's climate plan calls for repaving Edison

Eastlake with those cool sidewalk materials we heard about earlier, plus installing shade shelters and, you guessed it, planting more trees. The plan is to eventually have 25% of the city under some sort of tree canopy. I can't believe you've gotten this far into an episode on heat resilience and haven't used the word evapotranspiration yet. Great word. You're always saying that word. It sounds like a whiz-bang gadget from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's even more amazing than that, actually. It's just a thing that plants do. Plants absorb water from the ground, then naturally release that water back into the air as gas, and that process uses heat as energy, which is to say that it pulls heat out of the air and thereby makes the air cooler.

Even desert plants. Right, that desert sage and aloe vera and saguaro cacti you know from Wile E. Coyote cartoons. It might be associated in your mind with withering desert heat, but they're actually tiny little refrigerators cooling the desert air 24-7. Isn't that cool? Oh, cool. Next time I'm in the desert and I'm really hot, I will hug a cactus. Hug a cactus.

That's right. Phoenix's plan also deals, more than other cities' plans, with the dangers of heat waves, which can bring down power grids at the exact moment when people are already most at risk. Here's Mayor Kate Gallego again talking about this last year on the CBS News show Face the Nation. We have mobile cooling units that can go to an emergency site like a fire, where our firefighters can go inside and cool down while they're fighting a tough blaze. Residents have also used those. Sometimes when there's an intense fire, the electricity needs to go down for safety if wires are down and our residents can go into those

mobile cooling units. We even have tactics where we can go out with IVs that have been cooled, and that can cool people from the inside, which can save lives. Okay. I'm putting my hands on my face in horror. First of all, I am very needle phobic, but I just had a baby, and they put needles in you all the time when you're pregnant and stuff. Sure, sure. And they give you an IV at the hospital, and it always feels cold. I cannot imagine. It is so unsettling. I hate that feeling.

The idea of an artificial thing that is injecting you with coldness. Yeah, and your arm gets cold, and you feel you're about to transform into like Jack Frost or something. But you know what? You got to do what works. And if that works. I mean, listen, get ready for the climate resilience era. Hearing about Phoenix wiring people up with cold IVs like it's engine cool, it really drives home that like this is what we're getting into as a species. She's. And now for climate adaptation city number three, beautiful Hoboken, New Jersey. Wait, Hoboken, the place your train goes through on the way to New York? We are going to get some angry emails from people in Hoboken.

Hoboken is actually kind of nice. No, it's cool. It's nice. I'm sorry. A climate adaptation. I'm like really mean about D.C. and Phoenix, but I'm like, hey. Stand up for the Boken. A climate adaptation leader, but not for coping with too much heat. No, Hoboken's success is in coping with too much water. Oh, yeah, this must be a Hurricane Sandy thing. Yeah, the storm that left much of New York underwater and without power in 2012. Here's a report by the news outlet NJ Spotlight on how seven years later, Democratic Governor Phil Murphy started making preparations for the next big one. Seven years ago, the city

of Hoboken was 80% underwater. Today, it's host to an innovative plan to mitigate storm surges. Governor Murphy chose this town to commemorate the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. He signed an executive order here this morning, creating a chief resilience officer position in state government. New Jersey is ground zero for the negative impacts of climate change, and New Jersey cannot be content with anything less than being a national, if not global, leader in resilience and pushing back against the reality of climate change. God, I love New Jersey, a state that just produces like great New Jersey guys. Absolutely. Their main export is incredible New Jersey guys.

Hoboken is instructive for coastal cities around the world, which are going to have to find a way to deal with rising sea levels. Hoboken is also mostly situated in a flood plain, which puts it at risk of flooding during heavy rains, too. Heavy rains, of course, being a major feature of climate change and that the heat and climate creates many more extreme weather events, which is especially dangerous in areas like the U.S. Mid-Atlantic that already face heavy summer storms.

Hoboken is an interesting test case because it collected $230 million in state and federal grants toward making the city something of a model in storm and flood resilience. Here's another report from Yes! NJ Spotlight on some of what the city has done. I've got to subscribe to this podcast. NJ Spotlight is great. It is fantastic, solid.

The second person you hear in this clip is Hoboken's chief resiliency officer, Caleb Stratton. The saying goes, if two people cry in Hoboken, the streets flood. So they designed parks around the city meant to capture excess rain and floodwaters. So the concept is to create storage capacity underground, essentially expanding the capacity of our sewer system. The block behind us, it's basically the size of a city block with massive underground storage, which is a cistern. And the building behind me is the pump station. So allowing water to collect underground in the cistern and then being pumped out to the Hudson River. We're trying to replicate natural system conveyance, which would be, you know, if there wasn't all these buildings here, there would be streams or marshes or a floodplain for water to basically flow to. So that's kind of what you would be below ground.

And then on the surface, it's not asphalt. It's a permeable surface, rain gardens, grass, anything that has an ecological benefit. That's cool. Big block-sized parks that drain into underwater cisterns. But is that really enough, though? It's not all that Hoboken is doing, in addition to telling people that they cannot cry. Nobody is allowed to cry in Hoboken. It's a good city ordinance, honestly. I support that. Just to be on the safe side, no crybabies in Hoboken.

They've also redesigned major intersections to collect and redirect rainwater so that water doesn't end up pooling in someone's school or apartment building instead. And they've redesigned their sewer system to drain away more water in a flood or major storm. So Erin, I remember that about a year ago, there was a huge rainstorm in New York, almost 10 inches in some areas, lots of flooding, subways shut down, highways closed. Basically, the city stopped operating and it ultimately caused $100 million in damage. How did Hoboken do during all that? According to a New York Times report,

the sum total of damage for Hoboken was that six cars had to get towed. Whoa. And three of the city's 277 intersections briefly saw some standing water. A scheduled arts festival went ahead that very weekend, like nothing had even happened. That's pretty cool. I know we usually associate climate resilience with heat, but flooding prevention is a big one

and not just in Hoboken. Pittsburgh has taken some similar measures. Durban, which is a big city in South Africa, did their own version of the Hoboken plan recently by restoring long bulldozed wetlands on the city's outskirts. Oh, so like a natural version of those parks they built in Hoboken to drain into cisterns.

Right. The wetlands naturally soak up huge amounts of water during heavy rains, which in theory spares the city from getting flooded. Plus, they're nice to look into cisterns. Right. The wetlands naturally soak up huge amounts of water during heavy rains, which in theory spares the city from getting flooded. Plus, they're nice to look at. They are. And it's amazing how often the solution to all of the problems we've created by obliterating our natural environment is just to put back the natural environment.

Yeah, there's maybe a lesson in there somewhere. Okay, Erin, what other cool ideas did you encounter? Oh, so many. A team in Athens launched an app called Extrema Global that, but in Greek, it would probably be like, that overlays. I can say it because I studied there in college. Okay, it's fine. Was that actual Greek or was that gibberish? Well, no, thank you in Greek. Okay. But yeah, that's pretty good Greek. Thank you. It's one of the only things I can say in addition to Den Ketelveno-Elenika, which is I don't understand Greek.

Extrema Global that overlays a map of the city with heat refuges like parks and air-conditioned public buildings. It also tracks heat risk, and it'll even give you directions from one place to another routed to minimize heat exposure. But it's just in Athens? Also in Paris, Milan, and Rotterdam. Melbourne, the city in Australia, Milan, and Rotterdam. Melbourne, the city in Australia, has a similar app as does Barcelona. I have also used air quality apps in

various cities. They're great, but it's definitely a reminder of how inhospitable our world can be nowadays. Though, I don't know, at least we have smartphone apps to navigate it, I guess. Yeah, and I gotta say, if you're in Athens and you don't live in Greece and you want to visit the Parthenon, you can't avoid how hot it is. It's going to be hot. Yeah, that's just how, okay, well, thank you, Matt. You told me it's going to be hot. There are also some programs in developing countries that offer what are called microloans, very small loans at low rates to help families to buy things like rainwater collectors. And some groups in India are testing heat insurance. The idea is that people who have to work outside, like farm workers or garbage pickers, can't safely do their

jobs when it's too hot out. And the number of days when it's hot out is, of course, going up. So they can buy heat insurance for the equivalent of about $2.40 per year, and it pays out on days when the temperature is above a certain level. Something I feel like we should keep in mind is that, yes, all of these programs cost money, and some of them cost a lot. One plan for a New York City seawall to protect the city from straight-up sinking as sea levels rise would cost an estimated $119 billion. But all of these are still a hell of a lot cheaper than not preparing cities for heat and flooding. Right. One study estimated that every dollar spent on climate-resilient infrastructure would ultimately save $2 in averted damages from things like storms or power outages. Admittedly, that study was commissioned by an engineering firm that would stand to benefit from cities spending billions on climate proofing.

But the underlying idea is sound. Harvard Business School professor John McComber put it succinctly on the podcast Climate Rising. Some places are very ready for these things to happen and some not. I kind of liken it to the old story of the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. And the first little pig

has a house made of straw and the wolf comes and blows it down. The second pig has spent more money, has a house made of wood, and the wolf has a harder time. And the third pig has a house made of brick,

which the wolf can't blow down. So the question becomes, how much more money is it to build in brick than in straw? How often is the wolf going to show up? Is the wolf going to see one of the other pigs? And is the wolf going to be in good breath when he gets here? Honestly, recasting climate change and all major social problems as grim fairy tales is pretty helpful. Absolutely. That wolf, I don't want the wolf to show up if I'm living in a straw house. McComber also notes that there are five dangers of climate change that are linked. Like you mentioned, Max.

Heat, river flooding, sea level rise, fire and drought. Can't take care of one without taking care of the other ones. And so cities facing one of these will likely at one point or another face the other four. There's also the issue of property rights. I know, boo-hoo. In a place like Los Angeles, where parts of the city contain very little public or green space,

city planners trying to make the neighborhoods less hot would bump up against private property owners. And people tend to get salty when the government wants to turn their houses into a park. Although that didn't stop the LA Dodgers when they set their sights on Chavez Ravine. Yeah, no expense spared for big sports stadiums, but climate resilience for heat waves, all of a sudden we're very sensitive about that. But we could honestly do a whole standalone episode on the cost of sports arenas. And we will probably do that when

you're on vacation. God bless. Here's another statistic that stayed with me. As of last year, 46% of Americans experienced at least three consecutive days of temperatures above 100 degrees. And by 2050, that will apply to a projected 63% of Americans. So extreme heat is really coming for all of us. And most Americans live in cities, which means we'll be looking to those city governments to help us prepare. I got to say, there is always a stretch living in Southern California where we get like four or five days in a row that are close to or above 100 degrees and they are objectively miserable. Even in air conditioning. I remember a few years ago, we had rolling blackouts and our AC wasn't working when it was 113 degrees outside.

It is like it is completely uncomfortable. Yeah, that's also a big part of a lot of climate resilient plans is how to deal with the basic inevitability of rolling blackouts or brownouts. Like when I lived in Phoenix, this was something that would happen whenever they would like do a lot to try to encourage people to use less power. But part of the Phoenix plan now is like, OK, well, the power is going to go out when the temperature is too high for too long. So what are things we can do to have like emergency substations or emergency power banks prepare for it, which is like, I don't know, like a lot of these climate resilience plans on the one hand, it's like, oh, okay, somebody like thought through this and came up with a solution that is like reasonably practicable and like not too, it's not like the high-tech whiz bank stuff I would have guessed it would have been.

It's like stuff that is pretty cheap to create just like day-to-day resilience so you can get through your week when temperatures are, you know, above 100 for many days in a row. But at the same time, it really drives home for me. It's like, wow, the cities are really going to get kind of inhospitable in the relatively near future, even at the optimistic end of climate change projections, just like really difficult, hot summers, you know, are going to be a thing from Phoenix to Boston. And that's not just uncomfortable for people like you and me. It's really dangerous for a lot of people. I mean, when I was a kid, we didn't have central air in my house. And when it would get really, really hot, we would just like go in the basement

because it's a constant temperature in the basement. It's like 68 degrees constantly. But a lot of these places where there's extreme heat, it's not practical to just dig basements. You can't have a basement in an earthquake zone, really. It's not a great idea. And so obviously there are things that we need to do in order to get ready. But I also think getting people to think long term is going to be a challenge. And if there's one thing we love to do in America, it's being like, you know what?

Our kids are going to worry about that. Someone else will take care of it. Yeah. It's part of why I think it is nice that they are designing a number of these programs around like, you know, something that we have talked about is that LA and Southern California

have programs to provide a financial incentive for you to change out your grass lawn with local plants. And that's something that's aimed more at preserving water, although it does have a heat reduction effect and potentially a really big one if a lot of people do it. But it's something where they have designed the program not around like, do your duty to fight the climate, but like, here's some money in order to have a nicer lawn tomorrow, which is just, I think, just a smart way to structure it. And I also love the idea of roof gardens. Yeah. A roof garden is lovely. You can grow some of your own herbs. You don't have to go to the

grocery store just to get a bunch of parsley. You can just have parsley growing at your house. It keeps the top of your house cool. It's really just lovely. And when I lived in Chicago, there were a lot of buildings that were doing that. So, you know, maybe some of these things that we will have to do to adjust to the new reality will actually objectively improve our lives beyond just the heat reduction and making cities more hospitable. And, God, I do not want to do those ice-cold IVs. I know. Cooling people from the inside is not my first preference. I'm not going to shotgun a... Oh, God.

Awful. Awful. Okay. Well, let's leave you all with this clip from a song by The Lovin' Spoonful written back when cities were not nearly as hot as they were. I wonder what The Lovin' Spoonful would think today. Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty. Bend down, isn't it a pity?

I didn't know this was a Love and Spoonful song. Yeah. I really associate them with much more like country folksy 60s kind of. Well, they don't really know much about cities, clearly. That's true. Coming in. the show. Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Fotopoulos. Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto, and Adrian Hill. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី