BEEF with Bridget Todd comes to L.A.: California Water Wars

In a Minute with Evan Lovett

Audacy

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Special Episode* BEEF with is an award-winning, scripted narrative storytelling podcast that serves up the juiciest rivalries you've never heard of. Hosted by celebrated podcaster Bridget Todd, our show tells the tales of competitive enmity and petty grievances pushing historic luminaries in every aspect of our society, from music to business, politics to bird-watching, to the heights of their humanity potential and the deepest depths of self-destruction...all while changing the world as we know it. A group of rural farmers versus a growing metropolis. This week on Beef, the growing metropolis that is 1920s Los Angeles wages war on California’s peacefully bucolic Owens Valley over its most precious resource: water Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Bridget Todd⁠⁠⁠⁠ Written by Max Wolfson Showrunning, Editing & Sound Design by Pete Musto Produced by James "Sam" Levine Created by Executive Producer Jeremiah Tittle Find out more about all of Next Chapter Podcasts' incredible content at ⁠⁠⁠⁠nextchapterpodcasts.com⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Transcript

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0:00.0	In communities across the country, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $23 an hour
0:07.1	with opportunities to grow their career and their paycheck.
0:11.1	Learn more at AboutAmazon.com. It's 1924, and a group of hard-scrabble farmers and ranchers gather in California's remote
0:34.9	Jawbone Canyon, a mandible-shaped feature in the sprawling Mojave Desert,
0:39.3	where the geology takes on extraterrestrial blues and reds
0:42.3	that contrast greatly against the otherwise tan and tote palette of the land.
0:50.3	Despite the men's professions, they don't bear pit-chorcks, scythe,
0:53.3	or any other tools of their
0:55.2	agricultural trade. Instead, they're armed to the teeth, not just with rifles, but also dynamite.
1:03.0	What brings these modest rural people together so ready to fight? It's not wolves or coyotes
1:08.7	or cattle rustlers. It's not even gold, although Jawbone Creek had been the site of gold mining operations for some time.
1:16.8	What brings them here tonight is simply water.
1:21.0	Well, water and revenge.
1:26.0	They had tried peaceful protest before deciding to use force, but their efforts had come to nothing,
1:31.5	and every person there had watched their towns, communities, and families struggled to survive for over a decade.
1:37.7	The force behind this theft wasn't God or nature.
1:40.8	It was another place in California, one that was growing exponentially fast and needed more of everything, especially water.
1:48.0	So together, the gathered band of farmhands and cowboys strapped their explosives to the side of the massive metal cylinder that carries the precious resource hundreds of miles away.
1:59.0	Then they light the fuse and scurry out of the blast radius.
2:03.6	With a resounding boom, the pipeline is shattered and the water at the heart of this feud
2:14.6	spills out onto the Arroyo.
2:19.7	Los Angeles won't be able to ignore them anymore.
	...

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