The Big Dig
a nine-episode podcast from WGBH
by Ian Koss
I’ve been listening to podcasts for a long time, long enough that I’ve gone from having to explain what a podcast is to having to fend off some people’s assumptions on the medium when I bring up something interesting I’ve heard. A few years ago, I was startled to hear my name deep in the credits of at the end of something. A trip to the website and the written credits showed the person responsible was Ian Coss, technically a last name different from mine but one with an identical pronunciation.
A couple of years after that, I started receiving occasional questions and compliments on my podcast skills, as Mr. Coss became more established in the field, listening to podcasts gained popularity, and my friends came across his increasingly prominent name.
And now we are here, with the Coss name firmly attached to the front of something, as he moves on to full-on production and hosting duties with The Big Dig, a nine-episode series exploring the planning, execution, and aftermath of one of the last major construction projects in the American interstate system, the transformation of I-95 from a tangle of concrete cutting through the city of Boston into an underground expressway that allowed for the restoration of neighborhoods uprooted and divided by the previous road system.
This history takes place over a span of more than three decades, and the amount of material that Coss has gathered, ranging from newspaper stories to government records to interviews with the people who ran the project, is not only impressive but gives this complicated story the necessary depth to make it more than another never-ending construction project that completely wrecked a city’s traffic in the name of fixing it.
The narrative moves along briskly, and there are plenty of challenges to overcome — political, sociological, and engineering — before the Big Dig can become just another part of everyone’s daily commute. I must add that while music is not a big part of this production, it’s chosen well and used to great effect, as any fan of Boston’s scene over the years will agree. If you are the type of person that could spend an afternoon watching a construction site at work, you will definitely enjoy this well-assembled history.
