TriPod: New Orleans At 300

Series produced by WWNO

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TriPod: New Orleans at 300 is WWNO’s innovative radio history of New Orleans, released in weekly segments as our city approaches its Tricentennial in 2018. Each TriPod segment is its own micro-documentary, devoted to a single story or subject from New Orleans’ rich history. The series explores lost and neglected stories, delves deeper into the familiar, and questions what we think we know about the city’s history.

TriPod: New Orleans at 300 is WWNO’s innovative radio history of New Orleans, released in weekly segments as our city approaches its Tricentennial in 2018. Each TriPod segment is its own micro-documentary, devoted to a single story or subject from New Orleans’ rich history. The series explores lost and neglected stories, delves deeper into the familiar, and questions what we think we know about the city’s history.

Why “TriPod”? “Tri” for the city’s three centuries, “Pod” for podcast, and “tripod”, a three-legged tool used to steady a capturing device that documents a time and place. TriPod moves beyond the familiar themes of New Orleans history to focus on forgotten, neglected, or surprising pieces of the city’s past, and to enrich understanding of its present and future.

TriPod is a production of WWNO in collaboration with The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans. The series is hosted and produced by WWNO’s Laine Kaplan-Levenson, working with the assistance of a forty-member international advisory group of historians and archivists.

TriPod airs Thursdays during Morning Edition at 8:30 a.m. on 89.9 FM, repeats on Mondays during All Things Considered, and is available anytime on WWNO.org and as a podcast on iTunes. Hide full description

TriPod: New Orleans at 300 is WWNO’s innovative radio history of New Orleans, released in weekly segments as our city approaches its Tricentennial in 2018. Each TriPod segment is its own micro-documentary, devoted to a single story or subject from New Orleans’ rich history. The series explores lost and neglected stories, delves deeper into the familiar, and questions what we think we know about the city’s history. Why “TriPod”? “Tri” for the city’s three centuries, “Pod” for podcast, and “tripod”, a three-legged tool used to steady a capturing device that documents a time and place. TriPod moves beyond the familiar themes of New Orleans history to focus on forgotten, neglected, or surprising pieces of the city’s past, and to enrich understanding of its present and future. TriPod is... Show full description


47 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Man with a rake and drying shrimp, Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
This episode of TriPod tells the story of one man’s family business, part of the Chinese immigrant community, that helped build New Orleans.

Bought by New Hampshire Public Radio


  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 09:30
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Union Sulfur Co. operations in Sulfur, La., Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
In this episode, Producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson looks at the arrival of Croatian people, and the split communities between the bayou and the city.

  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 09:25
Caption: Rendition of the slave revolt, Colony of Santo Domingo., Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
In this episode, Producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson introduces us to a woman whose family fled Haiti under the Duvalier regime.

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 09:26
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Veüe et Perspective de la Nouvelle Orleans" (View and Perspective of New Orleans), 1726., Credit: Jean-Pierre Lassus, Centre des archives d'outre-mer, France.
This episode of TriPod is about the founding and early colonization of New Orleans.

  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 11:10
Caption: P. G. T. Beauregard House, Chartres St. 1981.290.32, Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
In this episode, producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson explores why upper class Sicilians left Italy in the late 19th Century for New Orleans, why it was ...

  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 09:28
Caption: Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans; by William Henry Brooke, engraver; engraving with watercolor from The Slave States of America, vol. 1; London: Fisher and Son, 1842, Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
This episode plots points on the map of the domestic slave trade in New Orleans. Producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson visited physical landmarks that bea...

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio


  • Added: Feb 29, 2016
  • Length: 09:25
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: A 19th century map of Nassau, Bahamas., Credit: THE MECHANICAL CURATOR COLLECTION / THE BRITISH LIBRARY
In this episode of TriPod, Laine Kaplan-Levenson discusses the slave revolt on the Brig Creole with Harvard Professor Walter Johnson.

  • Added: Mar 01, 2016
  • Length: 10:23
Caption: The Old Plantation. Attributed to John Rose, Beaufort County, South Carolina, 1785-1790
In this episode of TriPod, Laine Kaplan-Levenson talks with Professor Sophie White about dynamics within slave communities in New Orleans and the s...

  • Added: Mar 02, 2016
  • Length: 10:09
Caption: Image of the St. Malo Maroon community from an 1883 edition of Harper's Weekly., Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
This episode of TriPod: New Orleans at 300 looks at runaway slaves known as maroons.

Bought by KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio, KUER, and PRX Remix


  • Added: Mar 02, 2016
  • Length: 09:37
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: 1918 photo of Louis Mayer's father (Louis E. Mayer), and uncles Gus (Gustave John Mayer) and Rudolph Mayer on the stage at the Turnverein von New Orleans. Uncle Gus is top left, Louis Mayer is in the middle., Credit: LOUIS MAYER
In this episode, producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson tells us how Germans brought gymnastics to New Orleans.

  • Added: Mar 02, 2016
  • Length: 10:17
Caption: 'Bull and Bear Fight - New Orleans', Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
In this episode of TriPod, Laine Kaplan-Levenson brings us back to the days when Algiers was a stomping ground for bullfights and other forms of an...

  • Added: Mar 02, 2016
  • Length: 10:23
Caption: The Purple Knights pose on the court; Harold Sylvester is kneeling next to his coach., Credit: HAROLD SYLVESTER / AMISTAD RESEARCH CENTER
In this episode, Laine Kaplan-Levenson discusses the first integrated high school sports contest in Louisiana between St. Aug and Jesuit--and talks...

Bought by WAER Syracuse, NY


  • Added: Mar 08, 2016
  • Length: 11:26
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Chitimacha basket maker Clara Darden, ca. 1900, Credit: MCILHENNY COMPANY ARCHIVES, AVERY ISLAND, LA
Laine Kaplan-Levenson returns with a story of how the family behind the famous Tabasco brand and a Native American tribe came together, over baskets.

  • Added: Mar 10, 2016
  • Length: 10:00
Caption: In 1834, artist George Catlin witnessed Choctaw lacrosse in Indian Territory near present-day Oklahoma., Credit: GEORGE CATLIN / SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Laine Kaplan-Levenson returns with a new story about an indigenous sport that became popular before the Civil War.

  • Added: Mar 10, 2016
  • Length: 10:19
Caption: A Tobacco Card from 1887, Credit: JOSEPH MAKKOS / NOLA DNA
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a profile of Eliza Jane Nicholson, a small town poet who became the first woman publisher of a major metrop...

  • Added: Apr 19, 2016
  • Length: 10:24
Caption: Imaginative view of Madame Delphine's House, 253 Royal Street in the Vieux Carre., Credit: KEMBLE, EDWARD WINDSOR / HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a story about George Washington Cable, and the beautiful danger of writing New Orleans-based historical fic...

  • Added: Apr 19, 2016
  • Length: 10:22
Caption: "Fed Up With Downtown Traffic" flyer, Credit: HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a two-part series on highways. The first looks at a controversy so intense, it’s called the ‘Second Battle ...

  • Added: Apr 21, 2016
  • Length: 10:34
Caption: Image created for "The Seventh Ward Creoles of New Orleans," an Arts Council of New Orleans publication. View of elevated highway built on neutral ground of North Claiborne Avenue. At center, a man pulls a grocery cart, Credit: THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with part two of its highway series. This is the story of the I-10 interstate bridge that sits above Claiborne A...

Bought by KALW


  • Added: May 05, 2016
  • Length: 10:17
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Poster showing vignette of New Orleans, Credit:  Historic New Orleans Collection; Gift of Michael Adler [2008.0038.15]
TriPod New Orleans at 300 returns with a two-part series on tourism, starting with the city’s relationship to the industry, and how we became depen...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 10:32
Caption: The Riot in New Orleans... the Struggle for the Flag. 900 block Canal Street., Credit:  The Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carre Digital Survey at The Historic New Orleans Collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns to remember the 1866 massacre at the city’s Mechanics' Institute. It’s part of a series of episodes on the Recon...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 10:23