Why did the mullet become a thing? Why did everybody go crazy over Cabbage Patch dolls? And why would anybody ever go on a reality TV show? These are the typical questions you'd find asked in Slate's Decoder Ring, one for the smartest podcasts out there and one that more people should be checking out. In each episode, host Willa Paskin, usually the TV critic for Slate, picks up a different cultural object — a word, a phenomenon, a moment, a device — and subjects it to a simple question: why? This week, Nick talks to Willa about how she and her producer go about choosing the topics of their deep-dives, what makes her so interested in cultural histories and how they pulled together their epic two-part series on Jane Fonda.
The bank robbers make it out of the Security Pacific Bank, cash in hand––but they’re immediately met by the police and a firefight begins. We meet one of the first officers on the scene, who explains the culture of the Norco police force in the 1970s and reveals just how unprepared they were for an armed robbery of this magnitude.
Norco ‘80 is produced by LAist Studios in collaboration with Futuro Studios.
May 9th, 1980 began as a regular Friday in sleepy Norco, a small town about 48 miles east of Los Angeles, known mostly for its horse trails and old western look. But around 3:30pm, five masked men with assault rifles would attempt to rob the Security Pacific Bank downtown.
Host Antonia Cereijido introduces us to a region that was rapidly becoming the “Bank Robbery Capital of the World'' in the 1980s. The robbers themselves describe the beginning hours of the ill-fated robbery, that forty years later is still used to justify the evolution of armed policing and crime response in America.
Norco ‘80 is produced by LAist Studios in collaboration with Futuro Studios.
