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: The Crevasse, viewed from the levee., Credit:  The Historic New Orleans Collection
For the next few episodes TriPod dives into the city’s messy relationship with water through a new series called NOLA vs. Nature. First up: a look ...

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Nov 30, 2017
  • Length: 11:45
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: A street scene in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti., Credit:  Wynne Muscatine Graham
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with an hour-long special that explores two places linked in history. called “Haiti and New Orleans: Is the Feel...

Bought by WCAI / WNAN Cape & Islands, Mass., KISA Digital Studios, and WCAI / WNAN Cape & Islands, Mass.


  • Added: Oct 27, 2017
  • Length: 59:00
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Bohn Motor Company Building , Broad Avenue, Broadmoor, New Orleans, Louisiana. On the National Register of Historic Places., Credit:  Infrogmation / Wikimedia Commons
This is another edition of TriPod Xtras. We’ve cut together some highlights from a really interesting panel we went to a little while back, put on ...

  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 11:31
Caption:  Rashauna Johnson (left) and TriPod host Laine Kaplan-Levenson discuss Johnson's award winning book "Slavery's Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans during the Age of Revolutions" at the 2017 Organization of American Historians Conference.
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with another edition of TriPod Xtras. Host Laine Kaplan-Levenson and Dartmouth history professor Rashauna Johnso...

  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 20:17
Caption: Andre Paultre wears a carnival mask in Jacmel, Haiti., Credit:  Wynne Muscatine Graham / WWNO
WWNO’s original history podcast TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns next week. Host Laine Kaplan-Levenson traveled to Haiti this past summer and wil...

  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 11:44
Caption: Diorama of Lunch Counter Sit-Down Protests - National Civil Rights Museum - Downtown Memphis, Tennessee. , Credit:  Adam Jones, Ph.D. / wikimedia commons
In this edition of TriPod Xtras, Laine Kaplan-Levenson speaks with Rafat Ali, founder and CEO of Skift, a media company that looks at travel trends...

Bought by KISA Digital Studios


  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 10:19
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Boy holding an Equal Pay for Equal Work sign, ERA March and Jazz Funeral, 1982, Credit:  Pat Denton Collection, Newcomb Archives Tulane.
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with part II of its series on the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment.

  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 12:12
Caption: Pat Denton speaking at the ERA March and Jazz Funeral, New Orleans, 1982. , Credit:  Pat Denton Collection / Newcomb Archives, Tulane University
This is the first in a two-part series on the local Second-wave feminist movement and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment.

  • Added: Oct 26, 2017
  • Length: 12:14
Caption: Laine Kaplan-Levenson in Jacmel, Haiti. , Credit:  Andre Paultre
In this edition of TriPod Xtras, host Laine Kaplan-Levenson sits down with WWNO’s Janae Pierre to talk about a recent trip to Haiti, the end of Tri...

  • Added: Oct 24, 2017
  • Length: 10:56
Caption: Oscar James Dunn, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana 1868–1871, Credit:  Mathew Brady Studio / National Archive
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a story about a monument that was supposed to be erected in the late 1800s, but never happened.

  • Added: Oct 24, 2017
  • Length: 12:20
Caption: Mystick Krewe of Comus, 1933 Parade, Credit:  The Charles L. Franck Studio Collection / The Historic New Orleans Collection
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a retrospective look at Mardi Gras, and the year that carnival took place in the dark. Hear the TriPod Xtra...

  • Added: Oct 24, 2017
  • Length: 12:02
Caption: Krewe of Cynthius, 1948 Parade, Flambeau Carriers. , Credit:  The Charles L. Franck Studio Collection / The Historic New Orleans Collection
Tripod Xtras feature one on one interviews with special guests. This week’s TriPod episode focuses on Mardi Gras 1946 and the strike of the flambea...

  • Added: Oct 24, 2017
  • Length: 23:25
Caption: Wm. & Charity Harris are the great grandparents of Sandra Green Thomas. Wm.'s parents, Betsy Ware & Samuel Harris, were two of the 272 people sold by Georgetown University to two Louisiana plantations in 1838. , Credit:  Sandra Green Thomas
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with part two of its series about one of the largest sales of enslaved people in our country’s history, and an a...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 12:21
Caption: Healy Hall at Georgetown University, Credit:  Georgetown University
TriPod: New Orleans @300 returns with the first in a two-part series about one of the largest sales of enslaved people in our country’s history. In...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 11:50
Caption: Immigration buildings at what was 'Camp Algiers' circa 1916., Credit:  THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. PETER BERNARD, ACC. NO. 1984.112.228 / HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
Tripod New Orleans at 300 returns with Part II of its series on Camp Algiers, an internment camp that detained Latin Americans during World War II....

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 11:48
Caption: Quarantine Station in Algiers La., Credit:  The Historic New Orleans Collection, acc. no. 1995.19 / Historic New Orleans Collection
TriPod New Orleans at 300 returns with Part I of a two-part series about a World War II era internment camp in Algiers that held those suspicious o...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 12:02
Caption: Al Ledner outside of the Cointreau home he designed out on Park Island in New Orleans. , Credit:  Roy Beeson
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 brings us another edition of TriPod Xtras. Host Laine Kaplan-Levenson sat down with 92 year old Architect Al Ledner. Led...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 08:49
Caption: Coverglass and matt bound together with black paper tape. View looking along the 1200 block of Governor Nicholls Street in Treme, with the church visible in midview. , Credit:  The Historic New Orleans Collection, Gift of Mrs. Joy Segura, acc. no. 2004.0096.68
This is a special edition of TriPod New Orleans @300. Producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson handed the mic over to the New Orleans Scholars, a group of st...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 11:10
Caption:  Photograph of Mother Catherine and her congregation at the Temple of the Innocent Blood, ca. 1929. , Credit:  Historic New Orleans Collection, made possible by the Clarisse Claiborne Grima Fund.
TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a portrait of Mother Catherine Seals, one of the city’s most prominent 20th century spiritual church leaders.

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 12:24
Caption: The entrance to the Sisters of The Holy Family Motherhouse on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East, Credit:  Laine Kaplan-Levenson / WWNO
TriPod New Orleans at 300 returns with a story of The Sisters of the Holy Family, the religious order of nuns for free women of color founded by He...

  • Added: Oct 19, 2017
  • Length: 11:25