Heather Ann Thompson

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Heather Ann Thompson talks about the 1984 New York City subway shooting, when Bernhard Goetz, a white man, shot four Black teenagers. "We are watching someone tell us exactly who they are, exactly what they did, and it will not matter. Up will become down, down will become up. And that also felt very, very familiar to where we are today," she tells Tonya Mosley. Thompson argues reactions to the Goetz case helped fuel a politics of racial resentment that reshaped criminal justice, national policy and media narratives. Her book is 'Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage.'To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer-winning historian who wrote Fear and Fury, and Julia Loktev, filmmaker who documented independent Russian journalists, speak candidly. They explore journalism under Russia's crackdown, intimate reporting choices, and the cultural forces behind vigilante violence in 1980s New York. Short, vivid conversations about press freedom, exile, and how fear reshapes public memory.

Heather Ann Thompson, historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of work on criminal justice, discusses her book Fear and Fury. She recounts the Bernie Goetz subway shootings and how media and 1980s politics lionized vigilante violence. They trace links between that era’s white rage, policy shifts, and the political terrain that helped normalize tough-on-crime politics.

Heather Ann Thompson, historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of work on prison history, digs into the Bernie Goetz subway shootings and their place in 1980s America. She traces how fear, media narratives, and political shifts normalized vigilantism. Short, sharp takes on race, urban decline, conservative media, and the rebirth of white rage.

Heather Ann Thompson, historian and author who digs into urban America and criminal justice, revisits the 1984 Bernie Goetz subway shooting. She traces how tabloid media, political austerity, and racial fear turned a violent act into a vigilante narrative. Conversations connect 1980s crime panic to policing changes, media spectacle, and the political playbook still shaping today.