‘Fiasco’ Podcast: Get an Exclusive Preview of Leon Neyfakh’s New Season on 1974 Boston Busing Crisis

Journalist and producer Leon Neyfakh’s podcast ‘Fiasco’ focuses its third season on the Boston busing riots in the 1970s

Reporter Leon Neyfakh is taking the third season of his “Fiasco” podcast to Boston, looking back on the 1974 busing crisis and its lasting impact on racial equality in America. Get an exclusive preview of “Fiasco: The Battle for Boston” in the video above.

This new season of “Fiasco” debuts Aug. 13 on Luminary, and Neyfakh will examine the cultural and historical ramifications of the violent riots that erupted in the city over school desegregation, which many white Bostonians severely opposed. This led to violent altercations at Boston City Hall and across the city as white and black residents clashed over the issue.

Neyfakh had worked at The Boston Globe from 2011 to 2014, and the paper has extensive archival coverage on the riots in Boston throughout the 1970s.

Neyfakh previously co-created the Slate podcast “Slow Burn” while employed a staffer at Slate. “Slow Burn” was given a television adaptation, and Neyfakh now hosts the streaming docuseries for Epix.

The prior two seasons of “Fiasco” covered the Iran-Contra affair and the Bush v. Gore election. The second season on Iran-Contra won two 2020 Webby Awards for best podcast writing and best documentary podcast.

“Like ‘Slow Burn,’ ‘Fiasco’ gives perspective on our current era without making explicit connections to it — and, somehow, manages to revive an excruciating political moment without making it excruciating to relive,” New Yorker critic Sarah Larson wrote in a recent review.

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