We Were Wrong

September 27, 2023·54 min·4 clips

Governor Sargent broadcast a live announcement canceling Boston's expressway plans — the first time any U.S. governor had stopped a segment of interstate highway.

The story starts in a rush. Someone remembers Galbraith coming off a plane, bleary-eyed, then climbing the stairs two at a time while Jim Morey struggles to keep up. The funny little scramble matters. Between the ground floor and the second floor, Morey briefs a very tall man on the problem. Galbraith says he has it. Then the meeting turns a highway route into a test of politics, decency, and what people mean when they say progress. An MIT professor speaks first. He argues that removing 2,500 dwelling units could weaken a blue-collar voting bloc and help elect more progressive local officials. Another man agrees. To them, the road should cut through the neighborhood instead of the campus because the political math looks better. Galbraith refuses to let that sit there. He calls the argument cynical and points to the integrated Cambridge neighborhood as rare, fragile, and worth defending. The room shifts. The host explains why these route fights mattered: they bought time, pulled in attention, and gave Cambridge residents a reason to care beyond their own block. As long as the road could still move, the fight stayed alive. The episode does not settle into warm nostalgia. Its ending suggests the story demanded some soul-searching, including from the host, instead of a neat verdict from far away. Public works leave paperwork. Here, the evidence that sticks is a scene: stairs, a rushed briefing, a finger across the room, and one blunt line that helped spare a neighborhood.

As heard by us

A highway saga built on irony, Cambridge politics, and a fierce fight over the Inner Belt.

The Big Dig turns a highway project into a story about irony, urban politics, and the fight over the Inner Belt. The episode's strongest move is simple: it keeps circling back to the fact that the man who set it in motion hated highways.

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Why you'd press play

You want Boston's Big Dig story: a highway fight with a real moral sting.

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