Illuminating and depressing: Fiasco – The AIDS Crisis reviewed

Fiasco is a podcast series on Audible that dives deeply into episodes in recent American history. It takes listeners through the smaller moments. Often those that, within the larger epoch-defining events, have been lost to history. In the first season, for example, which centred on the Bush v. Gore election, the opening episode is devoted entirely to the international custody imbroglio of Cuban-born Elian Gonzalez. This case – which saw President Clinton allow Gonzalez to be removed from his relatives in Florida and sent back to his father in Cuba – contributed to Al Gore’s loss of the Latino vote in Florida and thereby cost him the presidential election. Other seasons have been devoted to the Benghazi scandal, the movement to desegregate Boston’s public schools, and Iran-Contra. (At Slate’s Slow Burn, Neyfakh has also produced seasons about Watergate and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.)

The podcast weaves new interviews from the events’ major players with archival news recordings and other sources from the era, which both allows for a greater understanding of history as it unfolded, but also has the added benefit of unintentionally letting the listener feel a bit smug, a bit wiser than we really are; getting to hear important people say things that we, with the benefit of hindsight, know smacks of hubris.