Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Jason Hehir and 'Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning'

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay are joined by filmmaker Jason Hehir to discuss the new docuseries ‘Murder in Boston’ (1:25), explain Boston’s history of racial strife (13:24), and the city's recko...ning with its past (24:18). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Jason Hehir Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:01 We have one of the world's greatest filmmakers showing us on Highland. You guys have all consumed his content over a long career of making documentary films, making films. Jason, how long you've been at? In the business, 25 years, but making films of my own probably since like 06. 06, wow. Wow, wow. You probably know him if you're a casual Johnny Cummel lately to the career of Jason Hire. from The Last Dance, which took the entire culture by storm, the whole world by storm,
Starting point is 00:00:39 and has fostered some interesting relationships that haven't even yet settled. Still some reverberation from that documentary. And we appreciate everything that you gave us during COVID. But his latest for a murder in Boston, excuse me, murder in Boston, is a fascinating, wild, and just ridiculous, a ridiculously important ride into injustice, social inequality, all based around one happening in Boston. We have the director of that joining us today.
Starting point is 00:01:17 Jason, how are you doing, man? Thank you for joining us on higher learning. I'm great, Ben. Thanks for having me. Okay. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about murder in Boston. Let's talk about, because we talked a little bit about this, and you gave me the rundown about it.
Starting point is 00:01:33 We'll get some breaking news about the documentary itself, which is fantastic. It's why we make art. That's a tease for the audience to come back a little bit later. But you told me, we spoke some weeks ago, and you told me that with this story, what you wanted to do was put a social justice narrative into a true crime story.
Starting point is 00:01:56 story. Most of the time when we talk about true crime, it kind of exists for the sake of itself. But with this, why don't you tell people what your documentary is about and why it was important for you to talk about an issue that's been so on the forefront of American culture in the last couple of years? Yeah. So the documentary is about an infamous murder case that occurred in Boston in October of 1989, a white couple, Chuck and Carol Stewart. were in Boston from the suburbs that night at a birthing class at Brigham of Women's Hospital, right on the border of the Mission Hill neighborhood in Boston, which was one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in Boston at the time.
Starting point is 00:02:40 And there's this infamous phone call that he made. He had a car phone. This is pre-sail phones back then. So he had a car phone. He calls the cops 911 and says, I've been shot. My wife's been shot. He said, I don't know where we are. So for 13 minutes, they kept him on the line.
Starting point is 00:02:55 and they eventually found his location, which was in the corner of the Mission Hill projects. And according to him, a black man had carjacked them, pointed a gun at his head, told them to drive, drove them to a remote location or pointed them to a remote location, shot his wife Carol in the head, killing her almost instantly, shot him in the gut, blowing out half of his intestines, took their belongings and ran into the projects. So there was a manhunt in Boston for the better part of 10 weeks to find the 5-10 to 6-foot thin black man with a raspy voice and an Adidas track suit with a black Adidas track suit with a red stripe.
Starting point is 00:03:37 And they eventually got who they thought was their man in a guy named Willie Bennett, who was a career criminal from the Mission Hill area. And Chuck eventually made it out of the hospital, fought for his life, made it out of the hospital after about eight weeks looked at a police lineup, picked Willie out of that lineup,
Starting point is 00:03:58 and Willie was about to be indicted for the murder of Carol Stewart and her unborn son, Christopher, when Chuck then jumped off the Toven Bridge and killed himself because his brother had gone to the police the night before and said it was all a hoax. There never was a black man. Chuck did this. He orchestrated it. I helped. And so that is the dark,
Starting point is 00:04:20 chapter in a fraught racial history. Let's put it euphemistically in Boston. Absolutely. Yeah. Certainly at my lifetime. And I had always wondered, you know, I'm from Boston. I'm proud to be from there. Ben, you know that I'm a Celtics, Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins,
Starting point is 00:04:36 Patriots fan. Yes. But I'm ambivalent and conflicted. I love you even so. That's the time we are. But I've always been conflicted and a little bit ashamed when I go to other places, especially if I'm talking to black people and say where I'm from, because we have that history and that reputation.
Starting point is 00:04:56 So I've always been curious as to how we earn that reputation, whether it's still valid, what we've done to ameliorate that, if anything at all. And more specifically, why I believed this lie. I, along with the rest of the city of Boston, no one really questioned whether or not Chuck was telling the truth. Even I remember being in school, I was an eighth grade at the time. And the teachers, the morning that he jumped, the news started to spread, the Chuck Stewart had killed himself. And the teachers, I remember them saying, like this poor man, he couldn't take it anymore. The grief was just so overwhelmed.
Starting point is 00:05:30 One of the reporters, Jack Harper, who's in the documentary, he said that when they were at the docks that day and they were fishing Chuck's body out of the water, he was asking, is this grief or guilt? Like, they still didn't know. There were editors in the Boston Globe newsroom. who said before we fan out and cover this thing, we have to decide or uncover if this is grief or guilt. So to this day, if you watch the doc to this day, some of the white people in power who were around back then still believe that Willie had something to do with this.
Starting point is 00:06:05 They can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that this wasn't anything but a monstrous act by a white man who knew that he could tell this one little lie and turn the entire city upside down and divert attention from himself and focus attention on this neighborhood that was otherwise innocent. Which is incredible that there's still people still maintaining or holding on to the same story that was initially your narrative that was initially pushed out there. I am from Texas.
Starting point is 00:06:36 I'd never heard of this until I watched your documentary. But I always knew that there was this stigma, surrounding Boston and that it was not great for black people. But I never knew why. I didn't know the history of it. And I'm wondering for you was it important because the way the documentary, obviously the documentary covers everything, but it focuses more on the history of racism in Boston.
Starting point is 00:07:04 And it talks about the neighborhood and the people involved more than it talks about the stewards. Was that intentional on your part? yes, if you could just explain that. Yes, it was. I don't care about Chuck Stewart. I don't care why he killed his wife. I don't care to examine the reasons why he grew into this monstrous human being.
Starting point is 00:07:29 You know, early on, we had a whole scene where we went to Revere and we showed what Revere was, because Revere doesn't have the greatest reputation as one of the suburbs in Boston that is the most racist. Revere comes up when you have that discussion. So initially I was thinking like, all right, I want to show people the kind of news he was consuming and the kind of culture he was growing up in to give him the idea to do this. But it didn't take a genius to do. He's not some diabolical genius. He's not a criminal mastermind.
Starting point is 00:07:58 He's a guy who grew up in Boston and knew if you pointed the black guy, all attention that the spotlight's going to go on the black guy. So I don't care about him. He's disgusting. There are a lot of disappointing, let's say, figures. in this story. And after disgusting, some of the police, the way they handle this and the way that they still maintain,
Starting point is 00:08:18 that really had something to do with it, I find disgusting. But Chuck was the most disgusting. What I cared about, the reason why I wanted to tell the story was to help the Mission Hill community and the Bennett family specifically to express the pain that had gone unexpressed properly for 34 years. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the final
Starting point is 00:08:39 with Bandoul predict. Predict the spread, total points, and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25 bonus. Offered by Fandual prediction markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Bonus is non-withdrawable and expires seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions applies.
Starting point is 00:09:01 See terms at fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.
Starting point is 00:09:40 Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfair Radio.com. The documentary is a murder in Boston documentary series. Roots, Rampage and Reckoning.
Starting point is 00:10:11 It's on HBO. If I didn't mention that, HBO, it's just the home of the great documentary. It really is. You know what I mean? It really is. We're talking about this a little while ago. Like, growing up, HBO
Starting point is 00:10:23 had a chokehold on me. Not just with some of the bigger docs, but the American, the American undercover series, all that stuff. You remember that? You remember it. I know you liked it. Yeah. That's like a, this is a pinch me moment for me because I grew up consuming all that. We're from
Starting point is 00:10:40 same generation. I grew up watching stuff. So to see us get a doc on that Monday night documentary slot that HBO has always had, that's a really cool thing. I worked at HBO sports for seven years in the beginning of my career. But it was always, it was always kind of annexed out from like the quote-to-quote real HBO where they were doing sopranos and Oz and things like that. And they, it's the best working relationship I've had with any executives at any network so far. We've had a lot of... Some tough ones, but the HBO one, they immediately got it.
Starting point is 00:11:12 We took this out. This was right in the wake of the last dance. So, nothing was really going on still. Everybody was in lockdown. I vividly remember sitting in a freezing cold. It was a really cold October night. I was outside my apartment in New York, and I was talking to some other distributors about the story.
Starting point is 00:11:28 And we almost went to another platform, which I won't say who that was. But they wanted to lean in more to the tawdry aspects. Rachel, you asked to... about like Chuck Stewart, they wanted to know more about the Stewart family, kind of the tropey stuff
Starting point is 00:11:42 that a lot of true crime does, which is romanticizing the couple, not that Carol Stewart and her family don't deserve sympathy, but it's always, you know, demonizing the murderer, praising that's the wrong word,
Starting point is 00:12:01 but making the victim look as sympathetic as possible, and not really kind of peeling off that other layer. Some do it, but there's such a glut of it now that I don't think that all of them do it. This one, this was right in the wake. If you remember, I should say to wrap that thought up, HBO immediately got it. When I said I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of the black community in Boston
Starting point is 00:12:23 and specifically the Bennett's, they immediately got it, that this is not the reasons why Chuck did this. And if there was another woman and if he wanted insurance money, that's a footnote in my mind. And they agreed. So that's why we went with them and we were better for it. But when we had that discussion, this was right in the wake of the last dance. The last dance had come out in April and May of 2020. And nothing was going on. It's almost four years ago now, but the world was still stopped down that fall.
Starting point is 00:12:54 I think we had another wave coming in New York, so everything was shutting down. That's why I was sitting outside in the freezing cold having this meeting that I'd otherwise be having a place like this. and they said I was having meetings where people saying other other stories that you want to tell because up until that point
Starting point is 00:13:08 I've largely done just sports stuff and this was right in the wake of George Floyd and that summer of 2020 all of that stuff was fresh in everybody's mind and I remember watching
Starting point is 00:13:22 all of that unfold the protests and everything that summer and thinking like there's nothing that epitomizes the discussion we're having nationally right now, like this Stewart case.
Starting point is 00:13:34 Which is how I organized, how I and other white people who consider themselves liberal, progressive, not racist, how we organize the world and believes what was being told to us by news outlets. Remember, there weren't many. There's no Reddit threads back then. There's no Twitter. There's no TikTok. There's no conspiracy theorists that are amplified. You get three networks at home, three affiliates, NBC, ABC, ABC. CBS and two newspapers, the Globe and the Herald.
Starting point is 00:14:04 And that was my entire, that's how we all consume the information we consumed. And what they said was the truth. That's it. So every single one of those outlets I've just mentioned were beating the drum of like the search for this, the hunt is on for the killer. And how is Chuck doing in the hospital? And oh, the baby Christopher died 17 days after the murder. And that was a really sad thing. And, you know, hindsight is 2020.
Starting point is 00:14:30 but it's just you wonder like how could we not have said like it's always the husband you know it's always the spouse always the partner so I was really interested in kind of looking in the mirror and having frankly white people in Boston
Starting point is 00:14:46 look in a mirror and and try to unpack why we believed what we believed on it's interesting the response to the documentary um from people
Starting point is 00:15:00 people that I know that are from Boston. The case is very famous. I've never heard of it, but the case is very famous. There was some fear. There was some fear of dragging the city, which is trying to turn the page
Starting point is 00:15:22 on its racial reputation or the culture of Boston through that again. The fear almost for some outweighed, hey, this is a very important time in the city's history and a microcosm for racial injustice writ large. And we need to talk about this. It was a painful. It was I wonder what's going to happen type thing. You know what I mean? Did you wrestle with that?
Starting point is 00:15:54 Did you wrestle with at any point, this is over, this is done? Should I be doing this? I got a lot of gentle nudging and advice from people saying why would you want to reopen that wound? Yeah. And it's funny, I was talking to interviewing Tito Jackson who appears in the documentary
Starting point is 00:16:15 who was a city council or former city councilor in Boston and now works in the mayor's office, grew up at Mission Hill, was around the same age as me, but he was being strip searched and thrown against walls and thrown against cop cars searching for the killer.
Starting point is 00:16:30 He's a 13-year-old. kid. So he had anecdotal memories of what went on. But I said to him exactly what we just are discussing here. I said that a lot of people have said to me why would you want to reopen that wound? And he said, well, I would say that the people
Starting point is 00:16:45 who said that to you, for a lot of us, that wound is never closed. In order to heal a wound that's been festering for 34 years like that, you have to dig all the pus and the gunk out of it. You have to disinfect that wound before it could even start to heal.
Starting point is 00:17:01 and that's what you're doing with this documentary now. It's a painful process, but it's necessary in order to sew up that wound and let it start to heal. You have to revisit it. And I think that it's one of the mistakes microcosmically in Boston we've made is not addressing our past, but also nationally too.
Starting point is 00:17:21 These stories need to be told. And even if, you know, we'll get to it a little later on, but Mayor Wu did make an apology yesterday, the mayor of Boston. And some of the criticism from the other side of the aisle is, well, she wasn't even around. She's from Chicago. She was minus four years old. It doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:17:39 What matters, even for people who weren't alive in Boston, they need to be educated about this. This is your city. This is your history. So appreciate what happened. It doesn't mean you're guilty. It doesn't mean that we're admonishing anybody. It's just appreciate what happened. And more importantly, appreciate the humanity and the pain of the people who suffered.
Starting point is 00:17:59 That's what's the most. important is to acknowledge them as human beings. And they were wronged. It doesn't mean, it doesn't take anything away from you to say, oh, I'm sorry that that happened to you. Why do you think that's so hard? Books and college courses have been taught about them. Boston especially is provincial and proud of its Irish Catholic, Roman Catholic heritage. and there's a different level of otherness in Boston between blacks and whites. I'm trying to choose my words carefully
Starting point is 00:18:35 because this is so, it's such a flammable subject, you know? But I think there's a lot of deep-seated generational pride and deep-seated generational ideas about others in Boston, where you look at a neighborhood and you say a white couple was shot, it's difficult for people of a certain age to wrap their head around. To this day, difficult for people to wrap their head around. Well, Black person must have had something to do with it.
Starting point is 00:19:05 Willie Don, who's the in our documentary, his theory, which we didn't really have time to parse, is that Chuck must have known Willie Bennett. Willie Bennett must have been Chuck's drug dealer. And so Chuck must have, in the course of their drug dealings, asked Willie Bennett to do this. There's no evidence that Chuck has. had a drug problem. In fact, anecdotally, his friends say he wasn't even that much of a drinker.
Starting point is 00:19:32 There's no evidence there. I think there was one misdemeanor charge that Willie Bennett was picked up on for drugs. I mean, let's be clear about this too. Willie Bennett's no angel. Right. He's got a long rap sheet and his offenses were violent. But those
Starting point is 00:19:52 are irrelevant in this case. What we are examining in this case is not just what he was put through being thrown in jail and called a child killer and a lady killer and ended up spending 12 years in jail on another case that they just happened to be holding him for while they were gathering evidence to indict him for this case. And that case was weak at best.
Starting point is 00:20:19 And they never would have picked him up on that unless they were just looking for an excuse to know where he was. Billy Dunn in our documentary says, we just needed to make sure he wasn't going to flee to Canada. He says that's part of the process. The most galling soundbite in the entire series to me is that it's part of the process. Well, the process is horribly flawed
Starting point is 00:20:38 if that's part of the process. This man for 12 years, whether he was an angel or not, was taken away from his family, had his freedom taken from him. And as we demonstrated in the doc, this is generational. And the ripple effect lasts to this day.
Starting point is 00:20:56 So to see what happened yesterday, it's a great start, and we'll get to that, I guess. It's a great start, but it's not a solution. I hope it's just the beginning. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping.
Starting point is 00:21:14 Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer, you don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections
Starting point is 00:21:54 under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them,
Starting point is 00:22:14 and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. What's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiaraadio.com. I was going to ask you, and knowing that the police officers that were involved with this in 1989 still were on the force all the way through, seeing that Detective Dunn still talk about it as if somehow Willie Bennett was the person that was involved or that the police didn't do. anything wrong is more of his take on it. It makes me think, and me being from, not from Boston, still knowing that there's this perception of Boston. Has Boston changed? Is there's still this
Starting point is 00:23:07 perception of black people being a certain way? Is the relationship still strain between black people and the police in Boston? I know that the apology came yesterday, which is wild after almost 35 years, but has anything changed? It's generational. And that's a very simple way to put it. We could discuss this for four hours if you guys have the time. But you can imagine the demographic that still feels that way. I think that Dunn is the, he's the extreme example.
Starting point is 00:23:43 And I regret that we couldn't compel more of those retired cops who were actively involved in this case to participate in this doc. because I didn't want for Billy Dunn to be the avatar, the representative for all of the Boston police, because he's the worst of the worst. Right. But there are still people like, if you go to his Facebook page and you see the filth that he is spewing
Starting point is 00:24:08 on a daily basis politically, and it's racially tinged. And the people who are liking this and commenting on, and if you go to their pages, a lot of them are retired cops. And when you talk to some people of that age in Boston who aren't at least overtly racist, they still kind of wink and nudge. They call Billy Dunn the legend because he calls himself that.
Starting point is 00:24:31 He was, if you guys remember, Rachel, I know if you're a sports fan band, I know you are. Back when the Red Sox were good about 20 years ago, Papalban was the reliever and there was this big fat cop who used to fist bump him every time he came out of the bullpen. That's done. Oh, no. So he was celebrating, he sang the national anthem at Fenway Park three months before this murder happened. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:24:58 He was celebrated in Boston. He was one of the, like, he was, there was pride around Billy Dunn and people, you know, admired him. Why? You'd have to go back and ask those people. But to answer your question, I think that it's dying out, that those attitudes are dying, off. And if you go to, you know, back when this happened in 89, if you went from South Boston into Matapan or Dorchester, certain parts of Dorchester, Roxbury, Mission Hill, you would know if you were in Rosendale or Jamaica Plan, you could tell just by the way the buildings look and the
Starting point is 00:25:39 demographics of the people, the skin tone of the people, you knew what neighborhood you were in. Those edges are softening in Boston now, for better or worse. And, and, you know, It's mostly gentrification, but we interviewed Dard Adams and Howard Bryant in an apartment that was in South Boston. And both of them said, this is a neighborhood. I was not allowed to come to for fear of my city when I was a kid. And now we're being interviewed in this. And it's over a yoga studio and a coffee shop. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:06 So a lot of the edges are blurring in the city. And also you have the people in power reflect the diversity of the city far more than they did 34 years ago. We've had two black police communities. missioners in the last 10 years. One of them, Michael Cox, was at the podium yesterday and gave a formal apology on behalf of the Boston police to the Bennett family into Mission Hill. And we have our first elected non-Irish, non-Italian, non-male mayor, Mayor Michelle Wu. So the city has slowly been changing for the better. And as long as there's, you know, President Obama used to talk about politics being an oil tanker.
Starting point is 00:26:49 And you can only turn it that much at one time. And then you have to hand off somebody else. So I do feel that that oil tanker is turning, but it's still not nearly as turned as some of the other major cities because we had such a long way to go. These are generations of damage was done. But I am optimistic that Boston is turning a corner. I'll just have you know that Jonathan Papelbaum was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Starting point is 00:27:13 So you're welcome for that. what we keep talking around something I want to mention is that because of this documentary because of and once again the documentary is murder in Boston oh my writing is terrible
Starting point is 00:27:35 race rapids it's the roots of the problem so one the rampage searching for the killer in episode two and then the Reckoning once we've realized what happened in episode three. Murder in Boston, Roots Rampage and Reckoning that's on HBO right now. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, on behalf of the Boston Police Department, like you said,
Starting point is 00:27:58 apologized to the family of the man who was wrongly accused here. Jason, your work brought about in at least an acknowledgement. And we'll see where this goes. An acknowledgement of a wrong that have been festering. for a generation, for more than a generation in Boston. That just happened. What was it like for you to see that come about? I should mention that the Globe partnered with us on this too.
Starting point is 00:28:28 So the Boston Globe did a huge eight-part print series. It was wonderfully written. And then they also have a podcast called Murder in Boston, which is complimentary to our documentary. So we got to partner with them. And they're the reigning Pulitzer Prize winners for investigative journalists. So they were part of this too. But it was surreal to see that.
Starting point is 00:28:49 I never thought. I'm like, I'm cynical because I've lived in that city and good and bad. I've heard it all and seen it all. So I never thought that they would get a formal public apology the way they did yesterday. What I thought they would do, the best case scenario was that they would call the Bennett family and a couple of representatives of the Mission Hill community to City Hall and have a luncheon maybe and say, hey, listen, we want to acknowledge your pain. And they would parse their words somehow and, you know, maybe take a picture and it would be on page 19 of the paper the
Starting point is 00:29:25 next day. I thought that until 72 hours ago. I had heard they were going to do this thing on the 20th because quite frankly, I would have like to, I would have stood in the back because this is not my day. It's their day. But I would have liked just to be there for this. Because you do sports documentaries, what's the most impact that? can have. You entertain people and maybe people have a different opinion of Scotty Pippin than... It had an impact.
Starting point is 00:29:54 It had a huge impact. This is a different kind of impact. And so for all of us to have worked on this film and gotten to know the people involved. This wasn't as expected the Bennett family
Starting point is 00:30:10 and Derek Jackson, who was a key character in this, who was a friend of Joey's Joey Bennett at the time. This wasn't a thing where we just called them up and said, meet us at this place and we're going to ask you questions. Like, this was repeated visits to them long before cameras rolled because I'm a white kid or white guy, 47 years old,
Starting point is 00:30:31 but I was a white kid at the time from Newton, Massachusetts, which might be the whitest place on her. So when they hear that this guy is going to be the one telling their story, I understand that there's going to be skepticism. Right. So it took, it took, work and it should have taken work for them to trust me that I was going to tell this story responsibly and that they could be safe in saying what they wanted to say and I was going to
Starting point is 00:30:53 use it the right way and as we told the story. So it was, I just thought back to that that night, that cold night in October when I was talking to the HBO executives and thinking like that was over three years ago and now here we are. I thought, again, even when they told me on Monday that they were going to do this on Wednesday. I thought, oh, they'll do, like, it's going to be in a room behind closed doors, and they'll give them a private apology, and then they'll put out a press release and say that,
Starting point is 00:31:23 hey, we apologize and let's move on from this. Because Merit Wu, this is a, this is a ballsy political move. Like, she, there's a, there's still, you can imagine the left and the right in Boston. There's a lot of infighting. She is under heavy fire recently. I don't know if you don't know,
Starting point is 00:31:42 Boston politics probably that well, but she had a meeting, a dinner, an annual dinner of, it's, sorry, I'm trying to phrase it right, but it's elected people of color. And everybody was, everybody was black at the table and people went nuts. I saw it. Elections of color, it was called. Now, the important context there. So obviously anyone against her is going to say, oh, who named that? Elections of color. I don't know. That's why I was trying to choose my words carefully. We understand now. But this came.
Starting point is 00:32:22 So the reaction was, oh, it's okay. The racist mayor Wu. No whites allowed, Mayor Wu, blah, blah, blah. She's having this dinner. And now she's only doing this to cover up for that. First of all, this was planned long ago. When they saw advanced copies of this documentary,
Starting point is 00:32:41 it was brought to their attention. I'm sure they saw the Globe talk to them too. So this was way before that firestorm happened. By the way, this, I guess I say it right, electives of color dinner, what's happening for the last 10 years? This predated her. She was, this was on her agenda. It was like, oh, I got to go to this thing.
Starting point is 00:32:59 It got emailed to everyone. And then it was explained like, okay, if you're elected of non-color, you can't come to this. My point is this. It was a gutsy move on her part. And I admire her for doing this. that she doubled down and said, you know, she said, I am sorry.
Starting point is 00:33:19 On behalf of the city of Boston, I am sorry for the pain that you went through. This was full-throated, like 100% all-in apology and acknowledgement of wrongdoing, which was tremendous for me. And then I said, up until even the morning of, I said, well, the cops aren't going to come to this
Starting point is 00:33:40 because then there's election seasons and all that. Michael Cox, black commissioner of the Boston police. He was the second one to speak, got up there and apologized on behalf of the Boston police and said that this was racist. I was floored and tremendously happy, not just for the benefits,
Starting point is 00:33:59 but for the city. I'm proud of the city. That doesn't happen too often, especially in this context, but I'm proud of Boston right now for that. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Cream. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window?
Starting point is 00:34:13 Gone before you saw it come. You deserve a break that actually satisfies. Sweet Green's new wraps have got you. Real ingredients? Zero shortcuts. Everything you love in one hand. Think green goddess chicken. Garlic aoli.
Starting point is 00:34:27 Crumbled bacon. Corn salsa. Forty grams of protein. Made to keep up with whatever comes next. New sweet green wraps hit different. Order now at order. Dot sweetgreen.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business.
Starting point is 00:34:40 Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. and even this podcast. That's why I trust Spectrum business. It keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners
Starting point is 00:34:57 already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Once again, it's on HBO. I'm murder in Boston, roots, rampage, and reckoning.
Starting point is 00:35:13 You guys, you got to go check. Check out. Check out all this man's work. It's, you're looking at the reason right now that Larsa Pippin and what? I told Jason already. He just had to. Pippin,
Starting point is 00:35:29 Jordan love affair is it's because of Jason. It wouldn't have happened if not for Jason. He's a documentary filmmaker. He's a brilliant artist and he's a connector of souls. Jason, before I let you go, I got to tell you one, I got to tell you one dollar. documentary you have to do. I know everybody tells you this. I know it's, but it's one you have to do.
Starting point is 00:35:49 It's called the slide. Okay. You have to do a documentary about that slide in Boston. That's how it starts, Jason. That's how you start. No, you do the audio and that guy. That poor guy, my favorite part of that was his, oh shit, when he landed on the Oh shit.
Starting point is 00:36:24 But they had to close that slide van. I know. That's why I'm serious. I want like a 20 minute doc short. So many people were trying to recreate that slide and prove that they can do it the right way, that they close the slide. It's ironically police tape around that slide now.
Starting point is 00:36:45 The kids of Boston are being robbed of one of the best slides of these. Because that got, that's the funniest video of you. And it's because of the police. It is. I mean, that back for out of him. I mean, he was just trying to have fun. This was a lot more innocuous than 34 years ago. But that's how far we've come is that now we're criticizing people coming down slides.
Starting point is 00:37:03 So that's a good thing. All right. You guys can watch. And all three parts of the dock are on HBO right now. You guys can watch them. You guys should watch them. And in addition to being something. something that is, you know, lofty and very important.
Starting point is 00:37:20 It's also incredibly well made and very entertaining. Yeah. Jason, thank you for joining us on higher learning. And, you know, hopefully we'll have you back when you got something else cooking. I know you got always got a dock in the works. Hopefully we'll have you back. When you and I go to Angola, we'll come back and we'll tell Rachel and everybody else about it because I want to do that story. You want to do Angola?
Starting point is 00:37:41 There's a whole. Yeah. Wow. It's a whole thing. A very specific, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea. And I hope we can bring it to life. We will bring it to life.
Starting point is 00:37:51 And then we'll come back and happy. We're going to end the universe right now. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this dot. All right, man. Thank you for joining us, brother. Always good to talk to you.
Starting point is 00:38:00 Thanks for having me. See you guys. Thank you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.