The Big Dig Season 4: Mitt & Ted, a healthcare story

Healthcare is the problem American politics cannot solve. It’s the subject of screaming matches at town halls, the cause of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the justification for political assassination...

September 11th changed the world forever; but in particular, it changed airports. In this special episode of The Big Dig, we go inside the world of Logan Airport – the place where the 9/11 attacks began – to tell the...

How do these things all connect: Wu-Tang Clan, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, and the largest garbage dump in the world? That story is the subject of a new series from the podcast Revisionist History called “The Staten...

Our show now has three seasons in the feed, and it just dawned on Ian that every topic we’ve covered also happens to be a rich topic in American song: highways, gambling, and fishing. So today we share a special...

The Big Dig in Boston was a fluke, a unicorn, something we may never see again. But there are simpler and cheaper ways to rethink our urban highways – Providence, RI tried one. Guests: Edward Fitzpatrick, Zack Cunha...

Even as cities try to heal the damage of the interstate era, we are also continuing to expand our urban highways, continuing to turn parks and neighborhoods into new lanes and new off-ramps. So why is it so hard to...

This episode is about a very different kind of teardown – one that came suddenly, tragically, and without warning. But within this utterly unique story there are some universal questions about how we build for the...

In the stories we tell about public works, there is a constant bias towards the projects that actually happened, but it’s the apparently ‘failed’ projects that can often teach us the most. Guests: Marcus Green, Tyler...

The anti-highway movement, like any movement, has always been a coalition. Different people with different backgrounds and different interests finding a common cause. But sometimes the coalition cracks. Guests: Lillian...

There is exactly one other American city crazy enough to attempt anything like what Boston did with The Big Dig. That city is Seattle, and they are not done tearing down highways. Guests: Joshua McNichols, Greg Nickels...

How did the Austin City Council find themselves locked in a ‘death match’ over what to do about Interstate 35? Two councilors and two journalists talk through the fraught politics of so-called highway caps. Guests...

Once the highway is gone, can the divisions these structures created actually be healed? Can the people on either side become neighbors again? Rochester, NY is trying to answer that question. Guests: Erik Frisch, Brian...

Is it possible to re-write the Interstate map and send highways around cities instead of through them? Syracuse, NY is doing just that. Guests: Marie Therese Dominguez, Lanessa Owens-Chaplin, Joe Driscoll Recorded live...

What to do with the BQE? It’s a one of a kind highway in desperate need of repair, but no one can agree how to fix it. Guests: Polly Trottenberg, Lara Birnback, Stephen Nessen Recorded live at WNYC’s Greenspace Archival...

Every American city is divided by crumbling old highways. Every city is trying to figure out what to do with them. But even if the problems with these structures are obvious, the solutions are not – often they are...