Ten Across Conversations

Some curse words are used in this discussion.  

In the previous episode, Mitch Landrieu discussed his upbringing, including the impact his father had on race relations in New Orleans and how this informed Mitch’s leadership during some of city’s toughest hours. In the second half of this conversation, we get his unvarnished perspective on changes in the federal approach to the budget, humanitarian aid, and personnel-- matters closely related to his experience in Louisiana state and local government.  

Disasters on the scale of Hurricane Katrina were once relatively rare. Today, they are occurring with greater frequency and intensity. According to Climate Central, the 1980s averaged 82 days between billion-dollar disasters; for the five years between 2019 and 2023, that average gap shrank to just 16 days. The average annual cost of these events has more than tripled— from $28 billion in 1984 to $101 billion today.  

The Palisades, Hurst and Eaton fires in Los Angeles began the 2025 list of devastating national disasters, resulting in over 37,000 acres burned and an estimated $30 to $50 billion in damages. Having worked with the federal government through several recovery processes in his own state, Mayor Landrieu has some concerns with how the delivery of disaster aid was managed for California.  

Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Mitch Landrieu discuss the stakes and responsibilities of governing in the face of national disaster and global conflict.  

We’ve taken a new approach with this episode, take a listen and let us know what you think by leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform.   

Related articles and resources:  

Governing Through Times of Crisis and Opportunity with Mayor Mitch Landrieu - Part One

“Americans’ Deepening Mistrust of Institutions” (Pew Charitable Trust, Oct. 2024)  

“Americans agree more than they might think—not knowing this jeopardizes the nation’s shared values” (The Conversation, Nov. 2024)  

“Johnson opens door to linking voter ID to California disaster aid after Trump demand” (The Hill, Jan. 2025)  

“Trump threatens to withhold aid for California wildfires in first TV interview since inauguration” (The Washington Post, Jan. 2025)  

“US stock market loses $4 trillion in value as Trump plows ahead on tariffs” (Reuters, March 2025)

As a native New Orleanian, Mitch Landrieu knows a thing or two about crisis and recovery. He served as the lieutenant governor of Louisiana through Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and the compounding effects of subsequent storms including Ike and Gustav. In 2010, he was sworn in as mayor of New Orleans—just one month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion undermined the region's efforts to recover from five years of depopulation and economic decline.  

Mayor Landrieu’s experience working for the efficient restoration of New Orleans’s critical infrastructure later led the Biden Administration to appoint him as an advisor on the national implementation of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), this bill has been the largest long-term investment in U.S. infrastructure since the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. It has prioritized and funded an array of essential, future-oriented projects throughout the country.  

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how the increasing scale of environmental disasters will expose vulnerabilities in the nation's aging infrastructure. Local leaders are thus seeking strategies that balance the needs of growth and economic development with the proactive management of current and future risks.  

The work that Mayor Landrieu, city staff, and community partners undertook to steer New Orleans’s recovery process away from bankruptcy and toward revived communities and a more secure built environment has provided a case study for policymakers and resilience groups around the world.  

In part one of this two-part episode, Mayor Landrieu talks with Ten Across founder Duke Reiter about the personal and professional experiences that have influenced his views on equity and resilience and shaped some of the bold positions he's taken in governing. Part two will delve further into his views and outlook on contemporary governance.  

We’ve taken a new approach with this episode, take a listen and let us know what you think by leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform.   

Related articles and resources:  

“Want to Understand the Future of U.S. Climate Resilience? Look to the Gulf Coast” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, Dec. 2024)  

“Sunk Costs, Sunken City: The Story of New Orleans with Richard Campanella” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, June 2023)  

“DOGE says it’s now saved $65B in federal funds, but that’s still impossible to verify” (ABC News, Feb. 26, 2025)  

“Veteran crisis hotline may be impacted by federal layoffs” (ABC 15, Feb. 24, 2025)

“Angry Over Confederate Flag, Mayor Plans March” (New York Times, March 2000)  

“What is in the just-passed House Republican budget bill? What to know” (USA Today, Feb. 26, 2025)

Phoenix experienced a 113-day streak of temperatures at or over 100 degrees, and an annual average high temperature of 90 degrees in 2024. The city’s extreme heat is the worst in the nation and has equally resulted in staggering increases of climate-related health emergencies and deaths. 

Greater resilience to such rising temperatures requires clear, verifiable information that can guide communities in effective decision-making. Researchers at Arizona State University are working to fill this gap, using the Phoenix metro as a laboratory in which to measure, study and document the complex variables that determine thermal risk or safety for humans.  

Using novel technologies—like ANDI, the only thermal manikin in the world customized for testing outdoor environments—these scientists are building a detailed understanding of how heat affects the human body under a variety of real-world conditions. The results inform local governments' urgent heat risk mitigation work, identifying and prioritizing high-impact opportunities for public cooling center facilities and augmented built or natural shade.  

Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter the award-winning climatologist Jennifer Vanos and human thermoregulation expert Konrad Rykaczewski about progress and direction in this groundbreaking heat research at ASU, and how its results may help other heat-vulnerable cities in the I-10 corridor and beyond.  

Related articles and resources  

National Centers for Environmental Information Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters 2024 tally  

Phoenix Shade Action Plan  

“Phoenix closed popular hiking trails for 45 days in 2024. That could rise in 2025.” (Arizona Republic, Jan. 2025)  

“Meet ANDI, the world’s first outdoor sweating, breathing and walking manikin” (ASU News, May 2023)  

“What Some of the Hottest Cities on The 10 Are Doing to Address Deadly Heat” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, Aug. 2024)

 “Local Experts Answer: Why Are People Still Moving to Phoenix?” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, Feb. 2024)  

“Why do Bedouins wear black in the desert?” (The Guardian, Aug. 2012)

New Orleans is an extraordinary place that has experienced more than its fair share of adversity. Living below sea level where the mouth of the Mississippi River meets the Gulf Coast, residents have become adept at mitigating a variety of water-related challenges, from the inundation of tropical storms and subsidence to the scarcity issues of saltwater intrusion.  

There’s a lot we can learn from the people and leaders of New Orleans. The city's pride in its wealth of culture was on display to the nation recently in the pageantry of Super Bowl LIX. But the spirit of New Orleans may be most evident in the way the city has pioneered a model of urban resilience that addresses future social, economic, and environmental risks.  

Future-oriented action, with all its challenges, is the core focus of Ten Across and the focus of today’s episode with Greater New Orleans Foundation CEO Andy Kopplin.  

To commemorate their 100-year anniversary, the Foundation recently hosted a “Next 100 Years Challenge,” offering a $1.2 million investment in 10 different resilience project proposals across Southern Louisiana. The community has already seen significant returns on this initial investment, offering a compelling example for local and regional support of stronger communities in a changing climate.    

Related articles and resources:   

“New Orleans Was Called Resilient After Attack. It Didn’t Need the Reminder” (The New York Times, January 2025)  

“Ideas: Stop Telling New Orleans To Shut Up and Be Resilient” (Time Magazine, January 2025)

“Past and Future Resilience Along the Mississippi with Boyce Upholt” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, January 2025)    

“Want to Understand the Future of U.S. Climate Resilience? Look to the Gulf Coast” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, December 2024)  

“Sunk Costs, Sunken City: The Story of New Orleans with Richard Campanella” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, June 2023)  

“Responding to Inevitable Disasters with Juliette Kayyem” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, November 2022)

Compelling communication about risks and necessary actions is of special interest throughout the Ten Across geography. As we continue to follow the course of recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area, we took a closer look at journalism on the ground-- reporters doing their best to convey urgent information at multiple and sometimes personal scales.  

On the heels the hottest 12 months in recorded history, parts of the Los Angeles metro burned during most of January. Ten months of abnormally dry conditions in the city were preceded by two very wet winters. Scientists refer to this increasingly common phenomenon as hydroclimate volatility or whiplash. It has been shown to be aggravated by climate change, and in Southern California, it creates the essential ingredients for large-scale wildfire.  

As inaugural director of the Annenberg Center for Climate Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California, Allison Agsten’s job is to study how the news media and other communication professionals are informing audiences of climate change risks and impacts. In 2023, we invited her to share this important work and to lead our Climate Communications workshop at our Ten Across Summit in Los Angeles.  

Allison is, unfortunately, also a recent survivor of the Palisades Fire conflagration.   As her neighborhood burned and the media converged around her home last month, she conducted some research in real time by asking them whether their reports would cover the ways climate change influenced the disaster. In this episode, we’ll hear what they had to say and what Allison believes this means for the future of climate journalism in the U.S.  

Related articles and resources:

 “What I Learned from LA Reporters Covering the Fires” (Allison Agsten, USC Annenberg Center for Climate Journalism and Communication blog)

 “The media needs to show how the climate crisis is fueling the LA wildfires” (The Guardian Opinion, January 16, 2025)

“US Speaker suggests withholding disaster aid over California immigration policies” (9 News, January 23, 2025)  

“How partisan news outlets frame vested interests in climate change” (Journal of Environmental Management, February 2025)  

“Consuming cross-cutting media causes learning and moderates attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers” (Center for Open Science, 2023)  

“What We Can Learn from the LA Fires with Char Miller” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, January 30, 2025)  

“Urban Expert Bill Fulton’s Perspective of How LA Can Rebuild Following the Fires” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, January 15, 2025)  

“NOAA Meteorologists Reflect on This Year’s Historic Atlantic Hurricane Season” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, November 22, 2024)

In many ways, modern American engineering was born on the Mississippi. In the early days of westward expansion, the continent’s largest river basin presented both a vital resource for transportation, biodiversity and agricultural production and a complicated barrier.  

The Army Corps of Engineers was founded in 1802, a year before the Louisiana Purchase. By the mid-1800s, Congress charged the Corps with improving transportation on the river to support the nation’s burgeoning steamboat industry and riverine settlements. Military-trained engineers were enlisted to control the river, using brute force technology, into a predictable path to prevent flooding of communities and stabilize water levels for travel.  

In the new book, The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, award-winning investigative journalist Boyce Upholt questions the logic of believing it possible—or ideal—to control one of the world's largest and most powerful rivers for centuries. Taking a holistic and geologic view of the landscape, Boyce describes how the Mississippi River has continually changed paths over millennia and why this is necessary to the health of the entire delta, especially in a changing climate.  

The book offers insight into the power and the fragility of many of the ecosystems on which we rely. Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Boyce Upholt discuss the intersections of the built and the natural environments, and the complexities of maintaining habitable places within essential yet hazardous geographies.  

Relevant articles and resources:  

Read more from Boyce:  

Southlands newsletter  

“Is the ‘Age of the Delta’ Coming to an End?” (Knowable Magazine, 2023)  

“The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi” (Hakai + WIRED, 2022)  

“A Killing Season” (Winner of the 2019 James Beard Award for Investigative Journalism, The New Republic, 2018)  

Learn more about the Mississippi Delta:  

“Want to Understand the Future of U.S. Climate Resilience? Look to the Gulf Coast” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, December 2024)

 “Sunk Costs, Sunken City: The Story of New Orleans with Richard Campanella” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, June 2023)

Our examination of the conditions that exacerbated the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this month continues today with perspective from author and environmental historian Char Miller.  

Southern California received some much-needed rain over this past weekend, allowing firefighters to better contain the Palisades, Eaton, and Hughes fires. At the same time, the burned hillsides now bear much greater risk of mudslides and floods.  

These communities and individual residents must make complicated decisions about how to securely rebuild for the future.  California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have both advocated for eliminating some regulatory hurdles to help fast-track the reconstruction of Pacific Palisades and Altadena.  

Having carefully studied California’s fire history, Char argues that haste could lead to repeats of the same land use, zoning, and construction mistakes that have increased residential fire risk across the state to begin with.  

Climate change aside, land use policies that discount long-term environmental awareness are common contributing factors in nearly every type of disaster risk found in the Ten Across geography. Listen in as Ten Across founder Duke Reiter talks with Char Miller about the developing events in Los Angeles and how they relate to many other risk and adaptation stories across Interstate 10 in recent history.  

Related articles and resources:  

Books by Char Miller referenced in this discussion:  

Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning  

West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked an Environmental Justice Movement  

Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream  

Ten Across Conversations podcasts referenced in this discussion:  

“Urban Expert Bill Fulton’s Perspective of How LA Can Rebuild Following the Fires” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, January 15, 2025)  

“State Preemption is on the Rise: What it Means for Cities” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, April 6, 2023)  

“Leading the Country’s 2nd Largest City with LA Mayor Eric Garcetti” (Ten Across Conversations podcast, November 17, 2022)  

Other:  

The Fragmented Metropolis (Robert M. Fogelson, 1993)

In the hottest year in recorded history, extreme heat corresponded to several notable weather events and ongoing public health impacts in the Ten Across geography. Evidence shows warming ocean temperatures were behind an especially destructive Atlantic hurricane season for the Gulf. Nearly all states along this transect saw their rates of private insurance nonrenewal increase among the most at-risk communities, as a result of storms, wildfires and other extreme weather. Lastly, all but four US cities that saw the most significant jump in their number of extremely hot days last year are along Interstate 10.  

It would not be unreasonable to feel some uneasiness and uncertainty as the new year begins. We are living in a fast-paced, highly connected period of volatility for humanity at large. And many of the decisions and actions taken now will have more immediate consequences here in the Ten Across geography, where the evidence of climate change is felt most profoundly.  

A loss of insurance or homeownership; loss of recreation or thermal comfort due to extended heat waves; or loss of communities as we once knew them from disaster, places a significant mental toll on those in the immediate and surrounding environment, as well as observers. However, a study by George Mason University finds most Americans (65%) ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ talk about the topic of climate change with friends or family.    

In this episode, Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Dr. Sophie Nicholls, principal investigator for the Feeling Planet research study, discuss the importance of naming and reflecting on difficult feelings about our environment. Sophie’s study seeks to demonstrate how this process is critical in tending to ourselves and others, and for generating action and hope for the future.  

Related resources and articles:  

Download Feeling Planet workshop materials and read more about the study HERE.  

“LA-area wildfires taking toll on mental health of disaster survivors” (NPR, January 14, 2025)  

What If We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, written by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson  

The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains, written by Clayton Page Aldern

The events of the past year have reinforced the logic of the Ten Across initiative. In the context of the hottest year in recorded history, the Ten Across geography witnessed ongoing drought, a supercharged Atlantic hurricane season, devastating wildfires, and a significant loss of homeownership or insurance safety nets for its residents.  

As we enter 2025, with staggering urban wildfires still raging in the Los Angeles area and a new federal administration soon to be sworn in; it is evident that this year will be a complex, unpredictable, if not historic year. This underscores the urgency of continuing our dialogues and collaborations on climate resilience. We believe the Ten Across region holds critical insights to understanding our present challenges and the foreseeable future as a nation as climate change and other global forces converge.  

In this episode, we contextualize major issues surfaced in 2024 and their significance within our region to set the stage for conversations in the year ahead. While we cannot highlight every guest and topic, we would like to sincerely thank all who engaged with us and shared their insights last year. We hope this summary will inspire you to revisit and share some of your favorite conversations of the show, so that we may connect with more of you in the new year.  

Thank you for listening along and stay tuned for more!  

Featured podcasts by order of appearance in this recording:  

“Why Phoenix is the ‘Most American City’ with George Packer”  

“How the 10X Region Can Plan for Climate Migration with Abrahm Lustgarten”
 
“Future Cities: How Mayors Are Leading U.S. Progress with Clarence Anthony”   

“James Fallows on How the News Media Influence U.S. Democracy and Elections”  

“New America’s Anne-Marie Slaughter on the Importance of Local and Regional Governance”  

Related articles and resources:  

Link to subscribe to the Ten Across newsletter

George Packer on Washington Week with The Atlantic, 12/27/24   “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles” (Peter Kalmus, NYTimes Opinion, January 10, 2025)  

“The Great Climate Migration Has Begun” (Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times Magazine, July 23, 2020)  

Our Towns Civic Foundation  

New America’s Co-Governance Project

On January 10, a sudden urban fire began in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, immediately scorching 200 acres. Two hours later, evacuations were ordered for the 23,000 people in the community. By morning, all Los Angeles firefighters were called to duty, prepared for the worst as 50 to 80-mph winds began to pick up and carry embers from the fire for miles.  

Then the worst happened—firefighting aircraft became grounded due to the strong Santa Ana winds and hydrants, not designed for a fire of this scale, ran dry after constant use for 24 hours leaving homes and first responders defenseless. Within a short period of time, the Palisades fire razed 5,000 structures and counting to the ground.  

A little over a week since the blaze began, the Palisades and nearby Eaton fire in the Angeles National Forest, remain largely uncontained. Smaller fires in the conflagration—including Hurst and Kenneth on the northeast side of LA—are nearly or 100% contained. However 90,000 residents remain under evacuation orders and another 84,000 are under a warning. Life has come to a standstill in this portion of the nation’s second largest city and the path to recovery is uncertain.  

For years, the insurance industry has been anticipating an event like this. In fact, just last summer, 70% of Palisades residents had their home policies dropped because companies determined wildfire rebuilding cost would be insurmountable. The absence of private insurance coverage, and the speed with which the fire consumed billions of dollars’ worth of property, has raised urgent questions about how and where we will choose to develop housing, businesses, and necessary institutions in a climate changed world.  

In this timely episode, Ten Across founder Duke Reiter and Bill Fulton, the former mayor of Ventura, California and former director of planning and economic development for the City of San Diego, discuss the future of homeownership, insurance, and residential development in Los Angeles while this singularly tragic event continues to play out.  

Related articles and resources:   

“As L.A. considers rebuilding, here’s what people say they’re willing to change” (The Washington Post, Jan. 15, 2025)  

“How climate change is reshaping home insurance in California—and the rest of the U.S.” (NPR, Jan. 14, 2025)  

“We Will All Be Paying For L.A’s Wildfires” (The Lever, Jan. 14, 2025)