If you’re in the mood to take a walk down Humboldt memory lane this month, you could do much worse than to check out the new season of Rip Current, a podcast written and produced by crime writer Toby Ball and published by iHeartRadio. It rewinds the clock 35-odd years — very odd years — to revisit the Timber Wars, Maxxam’s takeover of Pacific Lumber, the lead-up to Redwood Summer and, of course, the still-unsolved car bombing of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney.

Your Lost Coast Outpost — who, full disclosure, was interviewed for the project — was pretty skeptical of the thing when it was announced, having pretty strong distaste for the whole “true crime” genre that has taken over all forms of media.

But Ball’s podcast doesn’t rubberneck at acts of violence, as so many of these things do. He goes very deep into the culture of the Emerald Triangle in the late 1980s, from both the hippie and the redneck sides. He has an episode on the Bari’s history as a labor organizer, and another on the Maxxam acquisition. He has a very interesting interview with an architectural historian who talks about the role of North Coast redwood in the building of the West Coast.  

In short, it’s a podcast about local history, and Ball has put in the work. Five episodes have been published so far, and along with historical audio he unearths from the vaults Ball has fresh interviews with a bunch of key people: Mike Geniella, the veteran Ukiah journalist who played a big role in the story; Larry Livermore, the founder of Lookout! Records who was publishing a magazine in the hills above Laytonville at the time; and Crawdad Nelson, the Fort Bragg poet and millworker. Among others.

Highly recommended. Check it out.