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Speaker 1: So as we try to figure out all right, it's

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Speaker 1: a question I get all the time about sort of

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Speaker 1: the Trump era, how did we get here? Right? And

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Speaker 1: sometimes we begin with the financial crisis in nine and

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Speaker 1: sometimes some people say, well, it's the ball, you know.

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Speaker 1: I've made a case about the fall of the Berlin

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Speaker 1: Wall and sort of the end of the Cold War

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Speaker 1: that sort of certainly helped respark the rise of the

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Speaker 1: sort of the political bases in both parties, but There's

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Speaker 1: always been another part of Trump that people, you know,

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Speaker 1: why did Trump? You know, how did Trump form the

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Speaker 1: ideology that he formed right and understanding New York City

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Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, which shaped Trump's mind for

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Speaker 1: better or for worse, and the characters of that are

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Speaker 1: extraordinarily important. There's a new book, Fear and Fury by

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Speaker 1: Heather and Thompson, that focuses on a specific incident in

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Speaker 1: the early eighties that became a massive national story and

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Speaker 1: put the word vigilanteism sort of front and center. I

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Speaker 1: was twelve or thirteen at the time of this incident,

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Speaker 1: but I remember it very clearly how big of a

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Speaker 1: deal it was, and of course now I understand it

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Speaker 1: why it was a big deal, because of all, our

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Speaker 1: media is based in New York City, so of course

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Speaker 1: we were the entire country it's going to know about this.

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Speaker 1: But Heather Ann Thompson joins me now, author of Fear

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Speaker 1: and Fury, who takes basically is making an argument that

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Speaker 1: the Bernie Getz was sort of the first sign of

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Speaker 1: this sort of white rage that would incubate and certainly help,

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Speaker 1: I think, form much of Trump's ideology over time, and

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Speaker 1: it metastasized into something that we now see nationally. So

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Speaker 1: it's a fascinating argument. It's a terrific book. Look, New

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Speaker 1: York City in the seventies and eighties is an incredible

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Speaker 1: landscape to be thinking about if you're an author, a

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Speaker 1: screenplay writer, you name it. So let's get started, Heather,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 2: So glad to be here.

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Speaker 1: So let me just start with Look, you've done a

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Speaker 1: books that sort of explored sort of what's happened in

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Speaker 1: urban America urban decay. How long have you been thinking

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Speaker 1: about doing a Bernie Getz book.

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Speaker 2: Well, in some respects for a very long time, because

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Speaker 2: I remember the event and it always struck me as

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Speaker 2: such jarring thing to happen in the middle.

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Speaker 1: We haven't talked about what the event is. Let's remind

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Speaker 1: people what the event Bernie gets is on a subway.

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Speaker 1: Take it away.

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Speaker 2: So it's nineteen eighty four in New York City and

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Speaker 2: New York City, if anyone was around or anyone remembers it,

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Speaker 2: it was a pretty grim place to be in the

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Speaker 2: mid eighties. It was suffering greatly financially. If you were

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Speaker 2: to take this upway on a regular basis, which everyone did.

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Speaker 2: It was graffiti smeared, it was the streets were trash filled,

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Speaker 2: and homelessness was on the rise, and it felt very

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Speaker 2: much like a city in crisis. And on this one day,

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Speaker 2: three days before Christmas, kind of a loner white guy

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Speaker 2: named Bernie Getz gets on the train, and on that

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Speaker 2: train are already four young teenagers from the South Bronx,

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Speaker 2: another place that had really been been decimated by the

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Speaker 2: economics of this period, and they end up in a

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Speaker 2: very very brief conversation Hello. One of the kids asks

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Speaker 2: him if he has five dollars, which, of course, in

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Speaker 2: this time period of panhandling and everyone's asking everyone for

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Speaker 2: some money, it's not particularly unusual. But what is unusual

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Speaker 2: is this guy stands up as if he's going to

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Speaker 2: get some money and turns around, immediately assumes a combat

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Speaker 2: stance and guns down these teenagers. One he shoots straight

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Speaker 2: in the chest, the other in the back as he's

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Speaker 2: running away, the third also trying to run away, in

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Speaker 2: the arm, and the fourth, who he misses. What was

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Speaker 2: most staggering about this event, as he gets up, walks

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Speaker 2: over to him, stands over him and says, you look

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Speaker 2: all right, here's another and shoots him at point blank range,

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Speaker 2: severing his final calmn. So it was this incredible, especially

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Speaker 2: as you might imagine for the passengers on that train.

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Speaker 2: Really a horrific event that happens. The story I tell, though,

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Speaker 2: is really about the thereafter, the fallout from this, which

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Speaker 2: is as stunning in many ways as the event itself.

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Speaker 1: You know, think about though. You know, what's interesting is

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Speaker 1: you put together I think a very you really provided

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Speaker 1: some visuals that you did a terrific job just now

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Speaker 1: describing it. But we ought to remind folks there were

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Speaker 1: no cameras. That's right, right, this is all putting together

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Speaker 1: all of the eyewitness accounts right in sort of sort

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Speaker 1: of consensus accounts, and this is this is this is

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Speaker 1: the account I can only imagine, right, This is pre

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Speaker 1: social media and pre cameras everywhere, Right, something like this happens.

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Speaker 1: Now we would see the footage and every American would

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Speaker 1: be making up their mind on their own. In this case,

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Speaker 1: we basically had the New York Post and the national

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Speaker 1: media right shaping the events, and it took a while

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Speaker 1: for people to know everything that happened on that what

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Speaker 1: you just said was not the first reports.

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Speaker 2: Well that's actually that's so true. And what was really

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Speaker 2: remarkable is that after he shoots these kids, he then

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Speaker 2: disappears into the subway tunnels. He is on the run,

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Speaker 2: he's on the lamb for nine days, and before so

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Speaker 2: many New Yorkers even know his name, they are celebrating him.

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Speaker 2: He is the death Wish vigilante. He has taken out

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Speaker 2: these thugs, these animals. What is really amazing about this

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Speaker 2: story is that nobody, nobody knows what's happened, but so

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Speaker 2: many New Yorkers, I have to say, particularly overwhelmingly white

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Speaker 2: New Yorkers, have decided that they understand exactly what's happened

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Speaker 2: as the story unfolds.

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Speaker 1: Actually damned right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And so in so many respects, this

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Speaker 2: story is ground zero, not just for where we end

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Speaker 2: up today with this unleashing of kind of rage and

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Speaker 2: violence and how it's vindicated in the courts, but also

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Speaker 2: this moment we're in where up is down and down

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Speaker 2: is up, and even if you see the video, you're

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Speaker 2: kind of told, well, that's that's not what happened in

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Speaker 2: this case. He actually will confess on a lengthy video

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Speaker 2: taped confession where he says exactly what he did, and

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Speaker 2: even then it's not going to matter, which is why

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Speaker 2: this is such an interesting moment to revisit an unpack.

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Speaker 1: You spent some time with one of the survivors of

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Speaker 1: the shooting.

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Speaker 2: No, I did not, So what is interesting? No? No, no,

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Speaker 2: So this is the interesting story here. I am a historian,

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Speaker 2: so I usually I just start back in the beginning.

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Speaker 2: I'm doing the recovering everything that was written at the time,

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Speaker 2: every confession. But the reason why I was not talking

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Speaker 2: to any of the present day survivors is because I

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Speaker 2: had to make a decision. Bernie gets the shooter. He's

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Speaker 2: still around, he's still talking very loudly about what he did.

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Speaker 2: But when I realized I could not also talk to

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Speaker 2: his victims, I couldn't rescue their stories in the same way,

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Speaker 2: I stepped away from that and I said, let me

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Speaker 2: just start from the beginning. Let me reconstruct this story,

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Speaker 2: because the most amazing thing to me was the way

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Speaker 2: in which the victims were completely erased from this story,

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Speaker 2: written out of it didn't matter, And so my journey

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Speaker 2: was really trying to reconstruct who were they?

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Speaker 1: How did you do it without talking to them?

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Speaker 2: You know, the one thing about being a historian is

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Speaker 2: we are pretty good detectives. We have to go back

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Speaker 2: to the beginning. I was looking at everything. I was

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Speaker 2: looking at every newspaper, counter's looking at original, you know,

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Speaker 2: the probation report of Bernie Getz himself. I was the details.

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Speaker 2: They are depositions, court transcripts, and from one of the

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Speaker 2: really interesting pieces of information that gave me a lot

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Speaker 2: was these young men had applied for compensation, a few

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Speaker 2: of them from something that New York has, which is

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Speaker 2: called the Crime Victims Board. And if you're a victim

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Speaker 2: of crime in New York City, especially in the eighties,

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Speaker 2: there was this provision you could apply for some funding

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Speaker 2: because of course people were you know, disabled or injured

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Speaker 2: from these horrific crimes. And when they try to do that,

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Speaker 2: they are denied. They are decided to not be the victims.

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Speaker 2: It was they that deserved what they got. And so

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Speaker 2: from there it was just kind of like WHOA. We

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Speaker 2: got to start at the beginning, How is it? How

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Speaker 2: is it that this all happened? And so I take

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Speaker 2: you into their lives, into the cell.

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Speaker 1: So I want to go back to because I see

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Speaker 1: what I see the distinction you're trying to draw here

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Speaker 1: which is you're trying in some ways not to pollute

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Speaker 1: the moment with what could be what these folks could

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Speaker 1: believe they're telling you is truthful. But you know, the

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Speaker 1: brain misremembers right for some of it by for survival reasons,

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Speaker 1: whatever it is. And so do you feel like you

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Speaker 1: had a more pure sense of perhaps who they are

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Speaker 1: if you didn't talk to them in the present day?

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think so, I hope so. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it's not that I would not have talked to everybody.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps it is that, you know, I realize, look, I

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Speaker 2: mean to one of the victims ends up killing himself

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Speaker 2: on the anniversary of the event. Another dies very young.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he's completely drug addicted after this. His life

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Speaker 2: is so much in shambles. One of them is who's

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Speaker 2: still alive, is paralyzed brain damage from this event. So

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Speaker 2: when I sort of realized that part of this story

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Speaker 2: was about the erasing of the costs of this unleashing

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Speaker 2: of vigilante violence, then I just wanted to say, look,

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Speaker 2: let me, let me, let me go back, let me

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Speaker 2: reconstruct this. And you know that that is what I

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Speaker 2: did in my first book on the Attica Uprising. It's

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Speaker 2: what I did in this one. It's a journey I

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Speaker 2: will convince, but it is one that I feel like

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Speaker 2: I'm able, I hope anyway to take take readers there

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Speaker 2: in that moment on that subway train, or in that

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Speaker 2: project where the teenagers lived, or in Greenwich Village where

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Speaker 2: Bernie Getz lived and was what he was experiencing.

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Speaker 1: So, you know, I've been thinking about after reading your book,

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Speaker 1: I've been thinking about what did I think? What what

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Speaker 1: was shaped? How was Bernie gets shaped from me? Right?

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Speaker 1: And I vigilanteism? Right, And it was sort of this

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Speaker 1: idea that New York was under policed, under protected. You know,

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Speaker 1: I would go two years later, I would go to

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Speaker 1: the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. I had

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Speaker 1: an ant that lived there, and I wanted to see

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Speaker 1: all of that. And there was you know, you had

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Speaker 1: to be careful when you went on the subway, and

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Speaker 1: there was all these you know. So this was a

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Speaker 1: city where even the residents, it's not that they lived

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Speaker 1: in fear, they themselves were vigilant, yeh, constantly, Right, there

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Speaker 1: was this feeling. And so I don't want to say

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Speaker 1: that Bernie gets was portrayed as a hero in sort

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Speaker 1: of the my memory, but it was more of like

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Speaker 1: he had been pushed to the like it was a

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Speaker 1: he was the representative of a city that had been

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Speaker 1: pushed to the brink.

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Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. And what was interesting to

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Speaker 2: me was unpacking not why people felt like that, as

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Speaker 2: if it were somehow illegitimate. I remember it as you say,

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Speaker 2: people were vigilant.

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Speaker 1: Look, I went to that. I was a young staffer

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two for a news publication and we

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Speaker 1: were covering the Democratic Convention, and that was at Madison

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Speaker 1: Square Garden, and my job at four point thirty in

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Speaker 1: the morning was to go to a newspaper sort of

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Speaker 1: a place that got all the newspapers from the East Coast,

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Speaker 1: and it was in Times Square, right off the Times Square.

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Speaker 1: And the cab driver said he wouldn't wait. This is

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, you know, and you know this was people.

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Speaker 1: It's like the turnaround in New York really didn't begin

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Speaker 1: until the mid nineties, and so the early nineties really

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Speaker 1: were more like eighties New York. And it's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: that was the mindset. Cab drivers were afraid of certain

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Speaker 1: parts of Manhattan. You know, We're not talking about the

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Speaker 1: Bronx or Queens. I'm talking about man. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And what was so interesting to me to kind of

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Speaker 2: reconstruct and I keep using that word because that's what

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Speaker 2: it felt like. It felt like kind of going back

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Speaker 2: to the beginning piecing it together, was how did that happen?

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Speaker 2: How does New York City come to feel so under siege,

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Speaker 2: so abandoned, like everything is falling apart, And what people

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Speaker 2: remember and even what they were being told every time

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Speaker 2: they picked up the New York Post, every time they

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Speaker 2: picked up any kind of tabloid media was crime is

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Speaker 2: out of control, and there's a certain kind of predator

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Speaker 2: out there. It was not subtle. They were young, they

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Speaker 2: were black, they were poor, and you always had to

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Speaker 2: be on the lookout for that kind of a threat.

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Speaker 2: But what was really interesting when I sort of went

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Speaker 2: back was the realization that there had been kind of

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Speaker 2: this political story behind this. One of the things that's

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Speaker 2: happening here is that it is the eighties and we

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Speaker 2: have had the election of a new president. This president

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Speaker 2: is Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan was determined to do

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Speaker 2: something that frankly, a lot of wealthy people had wanted

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Speaker 2: to do before they had not really been successful, which

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Speaker 2: was to dismantle the New Deal kind of liberal welfare

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Speaker 2: state in America. And so he sets about doing this

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Speaker 2: really effectively. So by the time we get to eighty four,

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Speaker 2: the trash is piling up, their areas are feeling under police,

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Speaker 2: they are feeling under siege. People have lost their jobs.

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Speaker 2: The public sector is being decimated. There is the public schools,

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Speaker 2: the public hospitals. Meanwhile, an AIDS crisis is developing that

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Speaker 2: is getting no care. And so in this context it

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Speaker 2: was a possibility, right that people would say, wait a minute,

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Speaker 2: what's going on here. We don't actually want all these

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Speaker 2: resources taken away. But their attention is almost by kind

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Speaker 2: of you know, remarkably effectively directed towards people worse offt

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Speaker 2: than them. No, the wrong with New York City is

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Speaker 2: not that we don't have funding anymore for you know,

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Speaker 2: the public sector, for the social safety net for people.

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Speaker 2: The problem is those people. It's a moral problem. It's

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Speaker 2: a problem of the underclass that kind of working that

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Speaker 2: out and seeing it in real time and actually seeing

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Speaker 2: how the media Rupert murdochs media that will become Fox News.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he is a right hand guy in the

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Speaker 2: Reagan administration. They understand that he's promoting a message, a

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Speaker 2: kind of a conservative sensationalists to message that they want promoted.

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Speaker 2: And so the book kind of, I mean it lays

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Speaker 2: this bear, I think, and we get a different understanding,

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Speaker 2: not that people weren't legitimately fearful, but that it was

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Speaker 2: kind of tragically misdirected and the consequences of that were vast.

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Speaker 2: For So.

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Speaker 1: You did you do you feel like you had to

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Speaker 1: then go back to sort of you know, how did

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Speaker 1: we go from let's just it's New York City. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know, you go back. I remember the great tabloid

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Speaker 1: headline that's like President Ford to New York City dropped dead, right,

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Speaker 1: which was over a funding funding dispute. But you know,

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Speaker 1: to me, the eighties New York really was built in

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Speaker 1: the seventies.

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Speaker 2: Right, Well, so that's also kind of a it was

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Speaker 2: a surprise to me, I think it'll be a surprise

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Speaker 2: to some of the readers. Yes, and no, the forties,

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Speaker 2: the fifties, the sixties, this is the prosperous time in America.

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Speaker 2: This is when the American middle class is built on

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Speaker 2: so much of that social funding that we came to

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Speaker 2: depend on the sixties become very tumultuous, to be sure,

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Speaker 2: as the discriminatory aspects of this are challenged, But the

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Speaker 2: seventies will experience an economic downturn that is actually global.

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Speaker 2: It's a fiscal crisis, is global everywhere, all right, But

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Speaker 2: it recovers, and it would have recovered it we recovered

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Speaker 2: around the globe. It actually recovered. But into this really

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Speaker 2: interesting moment steps an opportunity, or is an opportunity, I

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Speaker 2: should say, for again for folks who had long wanted

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Speaker 2: to kind of dismantle attack structure that felt burden some

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Speaker 2: to wealthy people, and they actually will take that kind

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Speaker 2: of already very much struggling civic infrastructure that you know,

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Speaker 2: again was on the mend elsewhere, and we'll double down

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Speaker 2: on this austerity. It happens here, it happens in the

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Speaker 2: UK under Thatcher, and it's a moment that we've kind

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Speaker 2: of forgotten, and it is a moment that every subsequent

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Speaker 2: president will actually contribute to, including Clinton and everybody else,

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Speaker 2: will continue to kind of erod at that social safety net.

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Speaker 1: slash chuck. Okay, but so how would you explain, because

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Speaker 1: you know, if you look at it right in the eighties,

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Speaker 1: it was the cities can't be helped, right, That was

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Speaker 1: kind of the mindset. It's too late for the cities.

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Speaker 1: Everything was moving to the burbs, right, malls all, you know,

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Speaker 1: all of the e commerce was moving out of the

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Speaker 1: cities left and right, you know, including basketball arenas and

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Speaker 1: and stadiums. Right. Everything was going. And then at some

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Speaker 1: point in the mid nineties we figured out, hey, that's

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Speaker 1: a bad idea. We should invest in our cities again,

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Speaker 1: which of course gave us this sort of renaissance for

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Speaker 1: a period of time that feels like we're in retreat again, you.

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Speaker 2: Know, that renaissance that what they would call at the

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Speaker 2: time is I know you remember, right, the Giuliani miracle

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Speaker 2: that happens in a saying area. But is it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, every city experience right downtowns every pretty much

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Speaker 1: every city except the other one you wrote about, Detroit,

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Speaker 1: right Detroit, And in fact, I've got a request. I'd

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Speaker 1: like you to do Saint Louis next. But that's a

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Speaker 1: that's a that's a separate because it's very it's fascinating

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Speaker 1: to me that Detroit is recovering in Saint Louis, isn't. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is? Which is? But I don't want to distract

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Speaker 1: us here from New York. But you're right, like, there's

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Speaker 1: this you know, the broken windows mindset, right, that that's

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Speaker 1: a part of seeing as a part of it. And

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Speaker 1: yet you know it wouldn't it mattered who was mayor

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Speaker 1: every city recovered was recovering by the Turney Center.

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Speaker 2: But one of the things that I think that you'll

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Speaker 2: see is that this is all connected to what we

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Speaker 2: were just talking about. So once we start to free

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Speaker 2: up taxes and we start to have this very popular

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Speaker 2: message that the problem is with people, the problem is

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Speaker 2: with the undeserving, the problem was with the criminal element.

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Speaker 2: People like Giuliani are very savvy, right, He's part of

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Speaker 2: the Skeets story too, and they're very savvy. They understand

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Speaker 2: that this is a message that sells. But also when

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Speaker 2: you free up monies at the top, you can invite

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Speaker 2: businesses in, you can invite that kind of redevelopment, and

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Speaker 2: you touch off this kind of moment of gentrification, and

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Speaker 2: all of that feels really good when you're coming into

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Speaker 2: a city. Times Square, right, goes from feeling undersieged to

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Speaker 2: feeling a bit like Disneyland, and it does feel like

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Speaker 2: an economic miracle. But there is the other side of that, right,

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Speaker 2: which is the explosion in incarceration in New York City

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Speaker 2: and in New York and around the country. The hyper

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Speaker 2: policing that goes on that leads in New York City

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Speaker 2: to stop and frisk, tons of people being pulled over

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Speaker 2: with no criminal charges, and it leads to a pushing

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Speaker 2: out of that poverty into other boroughs, other neighborhoods. This

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Speaker 2: happens of course across the country. And so what I

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Speaker 2: think we're seeing now, which is super interesting in a

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Speaker 2: place like New York is it's wearing thin. What's wearing

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Speaker 2: thin is this idea that the private sector can save

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Speaker 2: everybody that cutting taxes at the top. While it makes

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Speaker 2: everything glitzy and brings Gucci to your downtown, it doesn't

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Speaker 2: actually make people more prosperous. Income inequality is more severe

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Speaker 2: now than it has been since the Gilded Age, And

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Speaker 2: that's kind of the story we tell. Well, but also

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Speaker 2: this is Trump's story, and Trump is kind of always

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Speaker 2: ever president here benefiting from this, navigating this and ultimately

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Speaker 2: writing to the White House as a beneficiary of this.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's funny. One of the jokes that

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Speaker 1: many of my political reporter friends and I always make this, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, Trump's been stuck in the eighties, right, that

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Speaker 1: he never got out of the eighties. And part of

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Speaker 1: that is, you know, if you actually any elderly person, right,

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Speaker 1: any older person, when you talk with them, they'll always

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Speaker 1: spend more time on in the era that was best

430
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 1: for them, right. So you know, Donald Trump in the

431
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: eighties was popular. Donald Trump in the eighties was interesting

432
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 1: to people. Donald Trump in the eighties was fun to

433
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: watch on David Letterman, right like he was. So I

434
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,360
Speaker 1: think in a weird way, his obsession with the eighties

435
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: is because it was the last time he was liked, right, Like,

436
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:59,479
Speaker 1: he really has been, weirdly, you know, always searching for this.

437
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: I think he's always been in search of in his

438
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: own life, heyday. Yeah, trying to bring the eighties back,

439
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: right first, you know, in his own way, in the

440
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: nineties in the ox and then obviously make America great. Really,

441
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: in his own head is about just making America the

442
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: way it was when I was interesting and popular to people.

443
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 1: And so talk about what Trump's experiencing in this moment.

444
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he is ground zero in the story as well.

445
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 2: The eighties is on the one hand, completely falling apart

446
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,199
Speaker 2: for so many, but he is navigating it. He is

447
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 2: part of this kind of group of very wealthy New

448
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 2: Yorkers that see this as an opportunity to get wealthier,

449
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 2: to build a real estate empire, really, but also to

450
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 2: understand the importance of the media, the flashy media, the

451
00:26:55,800 --> 00:27:00,919
Speaker 2: New York Post is his friend. And ultimately, by the way,

452
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 2: recognizing very sadly how powerful the fear mongering is, how

453
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:12,199
Speaker 2: powerful the race baiting is, and really watching this so

454
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 2: carefully watching and benefiting from the Giuliani political experience in

455
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,919
Speaker 2: New York and Trump himself. He tries to court the

456
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 2: Reagan White House. He's happy courting the Clinton White House.

457
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:28,360
Speaker 2: He doesn't really care so much initially about what party

458
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 2: he wants to have power, and as this story unfolds,

459
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 2: he understands the formula he will wants. Rubert Martach creates

460
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 2: the Fox News. He will make that his platform deliberately,

461
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 2: again having watched the New York story. But also right,

462
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 2: he goes on The Apprentice, and he goes on Worldwide

463
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 2: Wrestling and things like that, because he is selling what

464
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 2: the Reagan Revolution sold, which is we're going to say

465
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 2: day this country with businessmen and the people who are

466
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 2: going to put us in office to do it, or

467
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 2: working class white guys. So he's really masterful.

468
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: Actually, you know, if Bernie Gets doesn't happen, does he

469
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,239
Speaker 1: insert himself into the Central Park five? Right, it's an

470
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:25,400
Speaker 1: unknowable but you know you can't help but wonder watching

471
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: the Bernie Gets story, Yeah, does that sort of why

472
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: he dabbles even more into something like that?

473
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,479
Speaker 2: I think so. I think so. And actually, you know,

474
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 2: turning the question slightly differently. I mean, you know, would

475
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 2: the Central Park five have been quite the media inflammatory

476
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 2: episode that it was without the Guest story and without Trump?

477
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:50,120
Speaker 2: I mean, it is it's so interesting that this happens

478
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 2: quite a few years later, but it is. It is.

479
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 2: It is absolutely unleashed on them in a way that

480
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 2: had just been building since eighty four, by the way,

481
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 2: as did the mob of killings in in Howard Beach,

482
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 2: you know, in benson Hurst. Because the thing about the

483
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 2: Guests case and if you're if you're reading it, you're

484
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 2: it's you know, day by day you're in the courtroom,

485
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 2: you see that there is a bloodthirst that is kind

486
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 2: of being nurtured and stoked. And when he is and

487
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 2: this is the key, when he is vindicated in the courts, Uh,

488
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 2: it sends a message. Uh. It sends a message to

489
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 2: the n RA, for example, who has funded his his

490
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 2: legal defense to come to New York. Guns are no

491
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 2: longer about gun you know, sportsmanship and hunting. They're about

492
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 2: protecting your domain from their stems so much. And I

493
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 2: hope I connect the dots for people.

494
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: You really do see that is it's interesting the NRA

495
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: aspect to this, that that it transforms the NRA from

496
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: a sportsman club to to it became Yeah.

497
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And by the way the media is transformed by

498
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 2: this moment, we've kind of begun at the end of

499
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 2: the story, which is that there is this tabloid sensationalist media.

500
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:15,440
Speaker 2: But but what we don't really understand is that that

501
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 2: media becoming mainstream. This moment when that kind of starts

502
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 2: to happen, so that even papers of the record, like

503
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 2: the New York Times, which is you know, initially a

504
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 2: little sober in the reporting.

505
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: On this, is well in typical Times fashion. If I'm

506
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure this must have frustrated you, you know,

507
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: buried on the local section, right, probably never made it

508
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: to the front section until it became a thing versus

509
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: the New York Post, which was always front paging it

510
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 1: every day.

511
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, And then the repeating of the misinformation about

512
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 2: this story is so effective that it it is also

513
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 2: sending a message to the mainstream media. You want to

514
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 2: sell papers, you want to get an audience, you too,

515
00:30:58,600 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 2: have to sell crime.

516
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: We're in the earlier stages of talk radio at this

517
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: point too.

518
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 2: Oh yes, ab WABC in New York City, Curtis Leewa,

519
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 2: who will of course recently tried to be the mayor.

520
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 2: He is, he's ground zero of this case as well.

521
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: He the Guardian Angel. Had he started like the timing

522
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: of Guardian Angels started yet or not yet?

523
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 2: Oh yes? And they they will go on the the

524
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 2: muscle to raise as much money for Bernie Gets as

525
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 2: they can. And and Curtis ly was a talk radio

526
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 2: show which was increasingly conservative and again kind of just

527
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 2: really a side of misinformation just takes off as a

528
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:42,360
Speaker 2: result of the Bernie Gets case. So you know, it's

529
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:43,719
Speaker 2: kind of funny. We don't want to put it all

530
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 2: on one case. But I was myself, I'm rarely surprised.

531
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:50,640
Speaker 2: I was a little surprised by how it all came together.

532
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: You know, just to put this in context, how often

533
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: were there subway shootings?

534
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 2: I mean just didn't you know, rarely there?

535
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: I thought this was not this was a really unusual thing. Yeah,

536
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: and it just you know, obviously it was stuff people feared.

537
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: But then you know, here it was, this wasn't common

538
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: subway shootings, That's right.

539
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 2: And if you've ever been on a subway, you know

540
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 2: how tight that is, how confined it is. Sure, And

541
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 2: so for this to have happened. I mean, imagine being

542
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 2: that passenger while this is going down. People are running,

543
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 2: you know, they're trying to get off this train, and

544
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 2: it is a it is a shock, even even in

545
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:37,320
Speaker 2: an era of people feeling very unsafe.

546
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: So let's peel back the public policy aspect of this.

547
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: If one thing, if you could have changed one thing

548
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: on the public policy front in nineteen eighty one, right,

549
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: what's what has the biggest impact in the positive for

550
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: New York City?

551
00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 2: H Well, I think what was most consequential on the

552
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 2: ground was the stripping away of resources that people desperately needed,

553
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 2: which in turn led to, for example, people turning to

554
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 2: the illegal drug trade at a whole record level to

555
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 2: support themselves their families, which in turn also contributed to

556
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis, which in turn could not get the

557
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 2: care and attention it needed without the public resources it needed. So,

558
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 2: if we are to really look at a kind of

559
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 2: a ground zero moment, the Reagan tax cuts starting in

560
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 2: eighty one actually and then getting doubled down on in

561
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 2: eighty three, are monumentally important in a place like South Bronx.

562
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 2: Think about it. Most African Americans in places like the

563
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 2: South Bronx are dependent on public sector jobs right working

564
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 2: for the city, working for the state. They are eviscerated.

565
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 2: Teenagers got summer employment through something called SEDA ceda jobs.

566
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 2: Reagan eliminates them. Mentally ill people relied on general assistance.

567
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 2: It is gutted. And of course again it's not just Reagan.

568
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 2: It is a long Reagan revolution because it will actually

569
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 2: be Clinton. As I you know, am not shied ap point.

570
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: Out shifted right on these issues. Yes, that's right.

571
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 2: So the round zero changing moment is really an economic one, uh,

572
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:33,759
Speaker 2: from which the cultural, the racial, all of it will

573
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 2: get much tenser, much more exacerbated. But you know, but

574
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 2: the flip side of that, and I just want to

575
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 2: go back to your point about Times Square, about about

576
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:47,719
Speaker 2: the Giuliani moment. The flip side of that is, if

577
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 2: you had means in this country, if you were wealthy,

578
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:55,239
Speaker 2: the tax burden just shifted dramatically for you in a

579
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 2: really wonderful way that we've also been doubling down on.

580
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 2: So when Trump is elected, where our eyeballs are focused

581
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 2: on Denmark or we're focused on Minneapolis, but meanwhile, the

582
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 2: economic story of what's going on is just stunning. We

583
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 2: have concentrated wealth at the top in a way that

584
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 2: few have really paid attention to.

585
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:24,480
Speaker 1: No. I mean, it feels, you know, I've been obsessed

586
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 1: with the first twenty five years of the twentieth century

587
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: because it feels it feels like we're in a similar

588
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 1: moment where we're having this massive change in nightmare shifting

589
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: from a grarian to industrial and the industrialists basically think

590
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: they're such geniuses they should be in charge of everything,

591
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: not just their little corner of what they've invented or

592
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: what they're profiting from. And then you see this, you know,

593
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 1: massive gap, and then the people fight back, right that's

594
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,240
Speaker 1: when we get the director. We pass an income tax

595
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: constitution constitutional amendment to allow for an income tax, and

596
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: you know, which was at the time just designed because

597
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: people were fed up with the super rich, and the

598
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: only people actually got got taxed back then we're the

599
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: super rich. And so it does feel like we're we're

600
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: sort of stumbling back into that moment. It's a different

601
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: set of robber barons this time. They're all in Silicon

602
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: Valley and so and here we are in this an

603
00:36:24,800 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 1: economy that that right now, if you if you have

604
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 1: money Europe you're you're okay, but if you don't, it's

605
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: ten times worse.

606
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's it's the new Gilded age. Uh.

607
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 2: And on the racial front, and on the kind of

608
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 2: racial violence front, it's the new Jim Crow. And so

609
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 2: we we are, I think, in a changing moment. But

610
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,360
Speaker 2: this is where the misinformation media and that story told

611
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 2: uh that really locates in the eighties is so important

612
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 2: because unlike other moments, uh, you know, we as a citizenry,

613
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 2: we're just stabilized. What is the truth? What is you know? Up? Down?

614
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 2: Down is up? And so I kind of wanted to

615
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 2: really elevate that as important to the story because, yeah,

616
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 2: we are in a terrible crisis right now, and it

617
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:11,800
Speaker 2: could go in any direction.

618
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: But well, this is a great you're you're myth busting too,

619
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, back then, there were actually

620
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: fewer media outlets. Yeah, and the ease to create misinformation

621
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 1: was actually easier, right. There wasn't alternative you know, maybe

622
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:28,919
Speaker 1: you had a village voice. The New York Daily News

623
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly what it was was sort of a different

624
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 1: vibe back then, for sure. It is you know, I

625
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: think the when people talk about the good old days

626
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:41,800
Speaker 1: of the media. I'm like, well, you have no idea,

627
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:46,399
Speaker 1: actually how poor those journalists were back then, and how

628
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: mona mona culture. The journalism was right, it only and

629
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 1: it was more group think than you than you realize.

630
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: In fact, the criticism of group thing today is actually

631
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: to me more a legacy issue. There was a ton

632
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: of group think in the eighties, which I feel like

633
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: in some ways that's what you're surfacing here. There was

634
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:12,840
Speaker 1: just just massive mainstream media group think, which is why

635
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 1: Bernie gets gets off right absolutely.

636
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 2: And one of the startling things is the way in

637
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 2: which this at that time was absolutely about race, but

638
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 2: it was racially coded in the way that today is not.

639
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 2: So it's not so much that, as you say that

640
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 2: the kind of group think is so different, it is

641
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 2: that it has now been kind of unveiled in a

642
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:43,480
Speaker 2: different way. And so in the eighties people were not

643
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 2: making always in race has nothing to do with this,

644
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 2: Race has nothing to do with this. Even while you know,

645
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 2: Reagan is talking about the welfare Queen and this and

646
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 2: he's racializing all of it. One of the things that

647
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 2: happens is the Guests case kind of allows for just

648
00:38:59,239 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 2: peeling back we don't need to pretend anymore. You know,

649
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 2: these guys deserved it. They were black thugs. They were.

650
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 2: And of course the civil rights movement is still around.

651
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:14,240
Speaker 2: They're pushing back, They're saying, look the hypocrisy here. If

652
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 2: a black guy would have gotten on that subway and

653
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:19,280
Speaker 2: shut down four white teenagers.

654
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,879
Speaker 1: They had gotten the death penalty New York back then.

655
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 2: But no one's hearing it, right, no one's hearing it

656
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 2: because there's this a denial that it has anything to

657
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 2: do that. I think that is different today. The decorum,

658
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 2: the decorum of the decorum, maybe even of double speak

659
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 2: is we're not there.

660
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:40,760
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say, you call it decorum. I've

661
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 1: always said, you know, and I have confessed to this,

662
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: meaning you sometimes when you're reporting for these big media companies,

663
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:51,280
Speaker 1: you round the edges.

664
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:52,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do that.

665
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: So because you don't want to upset, you don't want

666
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: to create extra controversy in the coverage itself. Right in

667
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 1: the goal of being dispassionate in your reporting and detached

668
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: from the story personally, you end up putting a more

669
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 1: too sanitized of a version of events on the air,

670
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 1: even though that wasn't the intent. It was the intent

671
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: actually was to just sort of not insert the media

672
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:26,960
Speaker 1: organization into the debate, right, And and that's that's my

673
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 1: guess of how the how the how the major networks

674
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: covered it versus how the tabloid media covered it.

675
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 2: I think that's right. And so what is so striking

676
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 2: is the way in which the success actually of the

677
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,759
Speaker 2: tabloids in this time period, the success of that more conservative,

678
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 2: sensational and media is we've underestimated it actually as making

679
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 2: its imprint on journalism in general, I think, and you know,

680
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:54,800
Speaker 2: this is not to throw all mainstream journalism under the

681
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 2: bus by any means, but it is to say that

682
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,760
Speaker 2: the culture shift that happens over the last fifty years

683
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 2: maybe driven by politics and driven by the economic agenda

684
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 2: of you know, certain segments of the population, but ultimately

685
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 2: it has to be translated, and ultimately it has to

686
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 2: be either legitimated or seen as outrageous. And there's something

687
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 2: about this moment when again we first see that up

688
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:25,799
Speaker 2: is down, down is up kind of moment that we're

689
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 2: in today, and no one set of hands is dirtier

690
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 2: than another. It's just more it's an ecosystem that starts

691
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:38,359
Speaker 2: to get developed, which I personally just found fascinating and I'll,

692
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 2: you know, share a confession with you like I found I,

693
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:44,439
Speaker 2: you know, try my hardest to kind of be well

694
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 2: informed and read and know what's going on in my world.

695
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 2: And when I started this book, I was embarrassed to

696
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 2: admit internally, like I knew who Bernie Getz was, but

697
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:57,919
Speaker 2: I had no idea the names of the people who

698
00:41:59,160 --> 00:41:59,800
Speaker 2: he had shot.

699
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: I mean, what was the alternative media landscape back then?

700
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: In New York? You had the village Voice about the.

701
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 2: News, Amsterdam News, Yeah, newspaper.

702
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: How did they cover this story?

703
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 2: Very differently? Imagine very differently. You know, of course, you

704
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,400
Speaker 2: knew who those victims were, you knew what had happened

705
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 2: to them, you knew the context.

706
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: From was that where you got most of the information

707
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: trying to fill out the paint the portrait of the victims,

708
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: of the gets victims, you got to get it from

709
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: the alternative press.

710
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 2: I got a lot of it from there, and I

711
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 2: also got a lot of it because ultimately, one of

712
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 2: the most severely injured victims, his mother is this kind

713
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,879
Speaker 2: of diehard advocate on behalf of her son, Darryl KB.

714
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 2: And there will be a civil case against Ernie Getz,

715
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 2: where a jury will award him forty three million dollars.

716
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 2: This is how kind of how obvious to them it

717
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 2: is the damage a bronx jury and that deposition that

718
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 2: trial trans so much came out and there that I

719
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 2: think was really blurred over in the criminal trial. I mean,

720
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 2: you know, kats is he is unapologetic, and it doesn't

721
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:20,360
Speaker 2: he's he says, you know, in this one of these moments,

722
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 2: you know that surely Katy Derrell's mother should have had

723
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 2: an abortion, she he should never have been born. He

724
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:32,240
Speaker 2: ends up deposing the young man that he actually paralyzed

725
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 2: in this civil case. I mean, it's just just it's

726
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 2: an unhinged story that you just kind of can't believe

727
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 2: until you walk yourself through it. And here we sit today,

728
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:46,279
Speaker 2: uh and you know, even today, you know, Bertie gets

729
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 2: his still giving interviews on what he did, and people

730
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,200
Speaker 2: still don't know who he did it to. And so

731
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 2: I'm I'm hoping this is kind of shiny new light

732
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 2: on it. If nothing else. We take us through a

733
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:04,720
Speaker 2: cr criminal trial with Barry Slotnick. Barry Slotnick is his lawyer.

734
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 2: He is a you know, he's John Gotti's lawyer. So

735
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:13,040
Speaker 2: you can imagine this trial is theater from start to finish.

736
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:17,439
Speaker 2: So it's a mix of taking you back there, but also,

737
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 2: I hope kind of showing us I ouch ouch, you know,

738
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:23,279
Speaker 2: this is how we ended up here.

739
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from

740
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:32,200
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741
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,600
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742
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:39,040
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743
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:40,880
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744
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745
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746
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:50,400
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747
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 1: I was able to go to college. Little did he

748
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749
00:44:57,680 --> 00:44:59,680
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750
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758
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762
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763
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764
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766
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:56,960
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767
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768
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about, especially

769
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 1: if you've got a growing family. You know, what I

770
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 1: was reminded of in reading this book is how much

771
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: this incident sort of clearly was the inspiration for Bonfire.

772
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: The vanities tumble right, like it's like obvious right that

773
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,240
Speaker 1: you know, which was such you know an early book

774
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: that I, you know, devoured back in the early nineties,

775
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: the movie The Paper, which is my I think nobody

776
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:35,400
Speaker 1: captures a newsroom better than that movie. It's one of

777
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:37,839
Speaker 1: to this day, I think it holds it holds up

778
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: in the in understanding how journalists interact with each other

779
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: really well. But people forget this sort of the the

780
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: backdrop of the of the of that story is sort

781
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:54,680
Speaker 1: of a a fictionalized version of of a racialized incident.

782
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:58,560
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it is sort of Bike Lee Spike Lee's

783
00:46:58,760 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 2: you know, do the.

784
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: Right thing, all of this in some ways that it

785
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 1: goes back right gats is the and. And this is

786
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,800
Speaker 1: what I love about historical fiction. Sometimes there's an actual

787
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: moment that actually helps shape the historical fiction that helps

788
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 1: tell the story of America and tell the story of

789
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:21,920
Speaker 1: New York City. I'm curious. It is so obvious now

790
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: reading this book and watching the divide over the killing

791
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: of Renee Good in Minneapolis and the dividing the political

792
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 1: dividing lines that immediately shaped I mean, I'm sure you

793
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 1: watched this and thought this is my book.

794
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:41,240
Speaker 2: You know, sadly tragically that's right. You know, it plays

795
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:43,879
Speaker 2: out on film as we begin the.

796
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:45,240
Speaker 1: Difference, that's the big distinction.

797
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter at some level, right because because

798
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 2: the because it is a story, it's going to be

799
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 2: a story or it's it's trying to be a story

800
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 2: of the self defense of the of the shoe. And

801
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 2: that is the ground that is the ground zero of

802
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 2: this book. I mean, as is stuff that might surprise us.

803
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:09,320
Speaker 2: You know, back in the day, you know, people watch

804
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 2: the glitzy media shows, uh, television shows like Lifestyles of

805
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 2: the Rich and Famous and and you know, Dallas and

806
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 2: Dynasty and got swept away by the magic of being wealthy.

807
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 2: But but of course, meanwhile they're being kind of told that,

808
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 2: you know, there they should be Charles Bronson to protect

809
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 2: themselves on the real streets.

810
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 1: Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry.

811
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 2: And I feel like we're in that moment again, right

812
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:39,800
Speaker 2: we are. We are meant to admire on social media

813
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 2: the wealthy, the elite, but meanwhile we are meant to

814
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 2: you know, arm ourselves and walk with severe suspicion on

815
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:53,760
Speaker 2: our city street. So it's it's alarming, you know, we uh,

816
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 2: we can't look at Minneapolis right now, I think and

817
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 2: not feel alarmed.

818
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,399
Speaker 1: I want to pull back a little bit in your

819
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 1: journey here. You've done You've done these urban stories in

820
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: the past on Attica and then you did Detroit. You know,

821
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 1: what's the thread that always seems to, you know, serve

822
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 1: as a magnet for you when you see something like

823
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta, I want to tell that story.

824
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 2: You know, Usually it is there's something about the way

825
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:28,280
Speaker 2: that I learned it, or it continues to be told

826
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 2: that just doesn't strike me as the full story. It

827
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 2: just doesn't bear the smell test. I I'm always gravitating

828
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:42,839
Speaker 2: towards these really powerful events that I know, or I

829
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 2: suspect very strongly have kind of shaped where we went,

830
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:51,840
Speaker 2: impacted the direction the country took. But I'm also very

831
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 2: persuaded that we've only heard one side of it, usually

832
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:57,880
Speaker 2: the side of the people with the most power in

833
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 2: that story. So I'm always intrigued to kind of go

834
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 2: back and tell all of the stories and try to

835
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 2: humanize the experience of how it all unfolded at the time.

836
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 2: At Attica, for example, you know, we were told that

837
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 2: all these brutal, violent prisoners had killed hostages at Attica,

838
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,439
Speaker 2: and it kind of became this excuse for mass incarceration

839
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 2: and not caring about conditions behind bars, and lo and behold,

840
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:27,240
Speaker 2: I dig in and that's not at all what happened.

841
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 2: And in fact, there's a massive cover up at Attica,

842
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:33,799
Speaker 2: which we don't say that word cover up lightly as

843
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 2: historians are as journalists, I mean, you have to have

844
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 2: real evidence to say that. And and this was a

845
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:42,720
Speaker 2: slightly different approach in this book because I wasn't looking

846
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 2: for cover up or I wasn't looking for you know,

847
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 2: smoking gun. I was just looking to understand, like, how

848
00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 2: did we end up here where you know, our eyes

849
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 2: aren't to be believed, and decorum is out the window,

850
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,719
Speaker 2: and and and it feels like our democracy is in

851
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 2: real danger. And I wanted to understand how that could

852
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 2: have happened in such a short period of time.

853
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:06,520
Speaker 1: Really, are you convinced if it wasn't Bernie Gets it

854
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: have been another incident. It was just that this was

855
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 1: a moment that was going to It was inevitable, it

856
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: was going to happen. That they were just looking for

857
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:16,720
Speaker 1: the star for their show.

858
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:19,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think the

859
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 2: world would have looked differently had Bernie Gets not lived

860
00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:25,880
Speaker 2: in New York City in nineteen eighty four. But I

861
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 2: do think that the way it all comes together was auspicious.

862
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,800
Speaker 2: It was an opportunity, it was it was a moment

863
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 2: that everyone understood the significance of it as would be

864
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 2: the Central Park five and eventually exonerated five that we

865
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,760
Speaker 2: now even could understand that better. Right? How that all happened?

866
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,120
Speaker 1: I want to ask you from the point of view

867
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 1: of a story, and I'm going to sort of get

868
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: you sort of land the plane this way. I had

869
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: Garret Grafhon It's written some really good oral histories and

870
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 1: he's put together and we were talking about the sweets

871
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: when you're trying to sort of find out what really

872
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:11,880
Speaker 1: happened and that you know, there's this point where, you know,

873
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,719
Speaker 1: do you want people who are around to help you

874
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 1: navigate what happened then? Or because of the way memory works,

875
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 1: it could be misleading? And is it easier to get

876
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,760
Speaker 1: the truth after everybody dies? I'm curious where you are

877
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 1: and what does it take, you know, when you feel

878
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: like you can paint a complete picture? Is it fifteen

879
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: years after an event? Thirty years? Is five years? When

880
00:52:37,600 --> 00:52:39,279
Speaker 1: is it? And when is it too soon to try

881
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,280
Speaker 1: to unpack an event? Like you know? I often wonder,

882
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: you know, do we need more time to truly understand

883
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:51,880
Speaker 1: nine to eleven? I don't know right like it because

884
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,280
Speaker 1: you know, it's often. How often is it the case

885
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 1: that a book written forty years after an event surfaces

886
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:05,520
Speaker 1: something that perhaps the popular memory of it had completely erased.

887
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: So you, as inn historian, what's your general like when

888
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: when is it too soon to tackle to try to

889
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:15,120
Speaker 1: unpack an historical event in your mind? And when is

890
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: it too late?

891
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:20,440
Speaker 2: Well, I certainly would not want to write. I do

892
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:22,799
Speaker 2: write about the present day, but always trying to do

893
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,400
Speaker 2: so with some past context. But I wouldn't want to

894
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:28,120
Speaker 2: do a book on that because I do think you

895
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:30,000
Speaker 2: do need time. I think you need a little bit

896
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:32,799
Speaker 2: of distance. But what is kind of stunning to me

897
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 2: is doesn't matter how much time has passed. If you're

898
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:39,359
Speaker 2: only going to rely on kind of official sources, if

899
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 2: you're only going to rely on the print media to

900
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 2: tell you what happened, if you're only going to rely

901
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:47,840
Speaker 2: on people's recollection of what happened, you're never going to

902
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 2: really be able to pull it back together or reconstruct

903
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:54,479
Speaker 2: it and pull it back together. So to a pitch

904
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:57,480
Speaker 2: for being a historian, believe it or not, you know,

905
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 2: we start at the beginning. We have preconceived notions. Everyone does.

906
00:54:01,160 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 2: But we are routinely surprised and routinely uh, you know,

907
00:54:05,719 --> 00:54:09,799
Speaker 2: challenged by what we in fact see in uh, in

908
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 2: the record. And sometimes that's simple as seeing an original

909
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:17,960
Speaker 2: autopsy report, or sometimes it's as simple as actually going

910
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:22,120
Speaker 2: and looking at the context that no one ever bothered

911
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 2: to look at. So I don't think it's about how

912
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 2: much time. I think it's about the sources that we

913
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:32,920
Speaker 2: get at, and that it's context. Context. Context matters, and frankly,

914
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 2: we don't have a lot of patience for context as

915
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 2: a society.

916
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: We don't.

917
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 2: Context feels like it's a drag. And so when I write,

918
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 2: I always try to like, it's still got to be

919
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 2: a narrative, right, we still got to move through it,

920
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:48,720
Speaker 2: We still got to put ourselves there. But context matters.

921
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:55,120
Speaker 1: How do you check your own bias? Right? Like in

922
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,080
Speaker 1: your own and what I call present day bias? You know,

923
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:04,160
Speaker 1: for instance, right, you know what can be offensive to you?

924
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: And I today was mainstream thinking at a certain period

925
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: of time in our history. And how do you correctly

926
00:55:14,080 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It's like, how do you

927
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:20,840
Speaker 1: weigh that when you're surfacing an historical moment?

928
00:55:21,360 --> 00:55:25,080
Speaker 2: Well, it interestingly, it goes back to this question of

929
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 2: both context but also sources, So the question of what

930
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 2: is normal in a given moment. Right, So people would

931
00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 2: write back in the day about the you know, the

932
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,279
Speaker 2: end of slavery, and you know how few people were

933
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 2: actually standing against slavery? Was kind of you know, everyone

934
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 2: was everyone kind of accepted slavery. But when you actually

935
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 2: go back and you look at the record, but it's

936
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 2: not true. Actually a lot of people were against slavery.

937
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:49,759
Speaker 2: There were there were sides to take even then. There

938
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 2: were there were positions to take even then, and so

939
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 2: you kind of test yourself always like, well, what would

940
00:55:56,200 --> 00:55:58,840
Speaker 2: the other side have said? And you try to find

941
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 2: that other perspective, and you try to make sure that

942
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 2: you are painting an accurate picture of the zeitgeist of

943
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:08,240
Speaker 2: that moment by making sure you've heard from everybody. Frankly,

944
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:11,760
Speaker 2: like looked at all of the like you mentioned earlier,

945
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:14,240
Speaker 2: like there's the black press and there's the white press

946
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:16,800
Speaker 2: in New York. Well, we need to look at both

947
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:19,040
Speaker 2: if we want to have some sense of how this

948
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:22,480
Speaker 2: case was being understood at the time. That's just an example.

949
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 2: But I think that you know, you as a as

950
00:56:25,120 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 2: a journalist, myself as a historian. We are constantly aware

951
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 2: of Oh, let me, let me, let me stop, let

952
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 2: me think about that. How am I writing that sentence?

953
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 2: How am I? How am I understanding what just happened?

954
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 2: Because if we stop doing that, then we're just plembics.

955
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:43,400
Speaker 2: We're just we're just we're writing tracks, you know.

956
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:45,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this whole thing, you know, you want

957
00:56:45,600 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 1: to what people want more than anything I've at least

958
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:51,279
Speaker 1: I think the people that gravitate to what you do

959
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:53,080
Speaker 1: and what I'd like to think I'm trying to do,

960
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: is they want clarity. Yeah, that's right. They definitely want clarity.

961
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not there. And I think that we, you know,

962
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:04,839
Speaker 1: and that's the hardest thing to convey, is you know,

963
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,280
Speaker 1: I wish that were I wish that was an easy

964
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 1: step one, step two, step three. That's how we got here,

965
00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:13,239
Speaker 1: and that's how we get out right. And I think

966
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:17,640
Speaker 1: that even when you try to speak with clarity and

967
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 1: if you don't include the context, the clarity falls flat.

968
00:57:21,880 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 2: Well, and especially where we're going to go next. So

969
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 2: you know, we can speculate, we can hope, we can fear,

970
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, we only actually

971
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 2: have our past as guide. And so yeah, we just

972
00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 2: kind of cross fingers and through stories and through education

973
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:43,560
Speaker 2: of what actually happened, perhaps bring some clarity on the present.

974
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 2: But but forward is the gamble, right, We can get

975
00:57:47,960 --> 00:57:50,040
Speaker 2: a whole lot worse before we get better, but we

976
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 2: hope we won't.

977
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: So what are you? How many projects are you working on?

978
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 2: That? Well? I actually was meet.

979
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 1: Most historians have more than one going.

980
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:01,160
Speaker 2: I was knee deep and writing a whole other book

981
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:03,440
Speaker 2: which I'm now going to return to, which is on

982
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 2: the move bombing in nineteen eighty five in Philadelphia, where

983
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:13,880
Speaker 2: Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on an urban black neighborhood

984
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia where a black radical group resided and took

985
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 2: out incinerated to full city blocks of that city. And

986
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 2: it was one of these also dramatic moments that is

987
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 2: told very very differently depending on who you were and

988
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:31,640
Speaker 2: what you thought about it. It's about the police, it's

989
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:34,720
Speaker 2: about the city, it's about race again. So that's where

990
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:35,520
Speaker 2: we're going next.

991
00:58:35,720 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: Oh, if Philadelphia in some ways was even more divided

992
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: on race.

993
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, story, this story, I think you'll see is really

994
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 2: ground zero of so much of why that was. And

995
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 2: also it has scarred the city to this day.

996
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 1: It's interesting what you just said. I'm going to go

997
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: back to it. What was gets always out there? Or

998
00:58:57,720 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: was this sort of a aha moment it for you?

999
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:04,400
Speaker 2: So guesses, Yeah, that's what we kind of dropped that thread,

1000
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 2: Guess is something that I remembered at the time. I

1001
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 2: was re reminded of it when I was working on

1002
00:59:09,640 --> 00:59:13,320
Speaker 2: Attica because one of the lawyers that will defend one

1003
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 2: of the boys is Bill Kunstler, who was a key lawyer.

1004
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: Oh my god in the right who you'd start to see,

1005
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 1: you know, all these lawyers from the eighties became TV

1006
00:59:23,760 --> 00:59:26,000
Speaker 1: pundits during OJ and he was one of them.

1007
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 2: That's right. So Kunseler was a lawyer at Attica, but

1008
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 2: he was also a lawyer at Guests. So I was

1009
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:34,040
Speaker 2: kind of already reintroduced to Guess working on the Attica book,

1010
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:37,960
Speaker 2: and then when Trump was gearing up for to likely

1011
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:39,880
Speaker 2: win a second term, I was just like, I just

1012
00:59:39,920 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 2: need to stop, I need to pivot. I'm really interested

1013
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 2: in this moment. I just want to go back and

1014
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 2: work on that. So that's that that was what happened.

1015
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 1: Look, I think this is an important piece of the story, right,

1016
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: Like with the trying to understand. I go back to

1017
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 1: how I introduced you, which is, you know, there's a

1018
00:59:54,760 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: constant the question I get all the times, how'd we

1019
00:59:56,720 --> 00:59:59,520
Speaker 1: get here? And you know, there's a lot of ways

1020
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:01,840
Speaker 1: we got here. There's no one way we got here.

1021
01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:04,960
Speaker 1: It's been there's a variety of ways that you know,

1022
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:08,080
Speaker 1: it takes a village, and it took a village in

1023
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:13,080
Speaker 1: the negative sense too. But this is an important cog

1024
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: in the story. I think you've I think you've surfaced

1025
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:19,160
Speaker 1: an important moment. So when is the when is the

1026
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 1: scripted mini series come out? Well? These are stories. Look,

1027
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,120
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in this. I think we need

1028
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 1: we need to educate people better. And if you want,

1029
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:31,280
Speaker 1: if people want to watch something more than they want

1030
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,480
Speaker 1: to read something, I don't, as long as they want

1031
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:36,760
Speaker 1: to inform themselves, let's put it in every platform neutral

1032
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:40,480
Speaker 1: this screams episodic show.

1033
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 2: Well. Well, luckily, as with Attika, I am very much

1034
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:48,800
Speaker 2: knee deep trying to get all of this out there

1035
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 2: in a different platform like in television series. And so

1036
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 2: you know, fingers crossed and stay listed and but you know,

1037
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:58,400
Speaker 2: thank you so much for allowing me to share this

1038
01:00:58,720 --> 01:01:01,840
Speaker 2: story with people, if nothing else, I think it's you know,

1039
01:01:02,440 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 2: I hope it is going to get people thinking and

1040
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:08,680
Speaker 2: also and just treat intrigued by the human beings at

1041
01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 2: the heart of the story.

1042
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's almost like a whole series. You

1043
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:13,920
Speaker 1: could read, right, the Bronx is Burning. You read your

1044
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 1: Bernie Gets book, maybe throwing a roy Cone, right, the

1045
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 1: one about I forget Zion is it. I can't remember

1046
01:01:26,560 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote it. You know, it was supposed

1047
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 1: to be an autobiography and it turned into kind of

1048
01:01:30,600 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 1: an antagonistic thing. Bonfire the vanities, right, you sort of

1049
01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 1: you get to you get New York City in the

1050
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:37,560
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties.

1051
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,480
Speaker 2: Huh, that's right, that's right there. And I think there's

1052
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:42,439
Speaker 2: a reason we're going back to the eighties. I will

1053
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 2: just leave us with that thought. I mean, I think

1054
01:01:44,640 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 2: that was a decade that we either remember so fondly

1055
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 2: as you know it was Madonna, it was Neon and

1056
01:01:50,320 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 2: it was it was great fun, or we remember it

1057
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,360
Speaker 2: as oh, that was a scary time. But either way,

1058
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 2: we got it, we got it.

1059
01:01:57,120 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 1: It depends on it depends who you were, right, by

1060
01:01:59,280 --> 01:02:01,720
Speaker 1: the way, nineteen fifties have the same vibe to it.

1061
01:02:02,360 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: For some people, the fifties were this amazing moment in

1062
01:02:05,240 --> 01:02:10,920
Speaker 1: American history and the advancement of the suburban America. YadA, YadA, YadA.

1063
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1064
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:14,280
Speaker 1: And that's if you were white, right. If you were

1065
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,600
Speaker 1: black in America in the nineteen fifties, Ye're not. They

1066
01:02:17,640 --> 01:02:20,800
Speaker 1: weren't happy days. Yeah. To borrow a to borrow a

1067
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:21,600
Speaker 1: TV show.

1068
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:22,880
Speaker 2: Phrase, Yeah, absolutely.

1069
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:26,520
Speaker 1: Anyway, Hey, hither and this is great man. Congrats on

1070
01:02:26,560 --> 01:02:26,880
Speaker 1: the book.

1071
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:28,680
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on