Jeremi and Zachary speak with historian Heather Ann Thompson about her book "Fear and Fury," using the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway case to explore how Reagan-era, rising inequality, and a newly powerful conservative media reshaped public attitudes about crime, race, and self-defense. They connect the episode to figures like Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani, and to the often-overlooked lives of the four teenagers at the center of the story.

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan, and is the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books, 2016). Her latest book is Fear and Fury: The Reagan 80s, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026).