The Golden Gate and Bay bridges have not only heavily contributed to the iconic San Francisco skyline, they serve as a collective engineering and aesthetic tour de force.

 Architect Donald MacDonald, whose work continues on the redesigned Bay Bridge, gives an extensive overview of both bridges and thier places in San Francisco's history. Covering the politics and the financial history of each bridge, MacDonald moves on to discuss seismic measures, environmental impact, the "bridge aesthetic" (design) and how some cities are branding themselves through their iconic bridges. 

Just east of Los Angeles, Palm Springs became and has remained the home of the architectural movement known as Desert Modernism.

In this 50-minute podcast, Alan Hess sets the movement in the historical context of post-World War II America and the rise of the recreational economy, describes the design and structural/material aspects which distinguish it from other movements and then covers the region's topographical and climatic conditions, the movement's core architects such as Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, William Cody, E. Stewart Williams and William Krisel, as well as how desert modernism has managed to maintain its allure over the years.