Reboot Ideas: Love Thy Neighbor

In five-part original narrative series, award-winning journalist Collier Meyerson explores the 1991 Crown Heights Riot and the four days that changed New York. Reboot Ideas is partnering with Pineapple Street Studios to bring you an exclusive conversation with Collier about the podcast and an opportunity for her to answer your questions.

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Love Thy Neighbor  is an original five-part narrative series about the Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn from Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios. On the series, launching February 15, 2022 everywhere podcasts are available, Emmy-award winning journalist Collier Meyerson explores the lasting impact those four days of violence had on Crown Heights residents and the future of New York City. Meyerson has a deep connection to this story as a Black, Jewish New Yorker who lived in Crown Heights for eight years.

On August 19, 1991, violence broke out between the Black and the Lubavitch Hasidic community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. A deadly car accident of a young Caribbean boy set off four days of turmoil that ended with the killing of an Orthodox man and hundreds of arrests.  Reverend Al Sharpton led protests through the streets. Rudolph Giuliani would ride the controversy and defeat New York’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins. Outside the neighborhood, facts quickly gave way to a more easily digestible narrative. But the people in Crown Heights have had to live with what actually went down for the next 30 years.

Through deeply personal, new and archival interviews with residents, scholars, and activists, Love Thy Neighbor will show how those four days in 1991 were a flashpoint that shaped a dark new era of politics, policing, anti-semitism and anti-Black racism in New York City.

Guests on Love Thy Neighbor include Crown Heights residents, members of the Lubavitch and Black communities, journalists and activists, including: Tyesha Maddox, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Fordham University; Rabbi Simon Jacobson, born and raised Crown Heights resident; Peter Noel, a Caribbean journalist who documented the unrest for the Village Voice; lifelong Jamaican-American Crown Heights resident Judith Lovell; and Andrew Kirtzman, journalist and author of “Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City.”

Love Thy Neighbor will launch on February 15, 2022 with all five episodes available to binge exclusively on Audacy.  Episode One of Love Thy Neighbor will launch everywhere podcasts are available; new episodes will be available weekly on Tuesdays through March 15.

Collier Meyerson is a contributor at Wired Magazine and New York magazine and a Knobler Fellow at Type Media Center.  She received an Emmy for her work on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” and has won two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists for her writing.

About Pineapple Street Studios:

Founded in Brooklyn in 2016 by Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky, Pineapple Street Studios, an Audacy company, paved the way for in-depth, diverse storytelling by way of high-quality original and partner podcasts. Pineapple Street Studios creates inventive, award-winning original podcasts: multi-episode narratives, investigative journalism, branded series, and talk shows that routinely debut in the top ten on the Apple Podcasts charts, reach tens of millions of listeners, and have been cited repeatedly on “best-of” lists. Pineapple Street Studios is behind some of the most critically acclaimed shows, including 70 Over 70, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Wind of Change, Welcome to Your Fantasy, Missing Richard Simmons, Back Issue, The New York Times’ Still Processing, activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham’s Undistracted, and The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow.

About Audacy:

Audacy, Inc. (NYSE: AUD) is a leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company with the country’s best collection of local music, news and sports brands, a premium podcast creator, major event producer, and digital innovator. Audacy engages 200 million consumers each month, bringing people together around content that matters to them. Learn more at www.audacyinc.com, Facebook (Audacy Corp) and Twitter (@AudacyCorp).