Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast · Alycia Asai

Misplaced Rage: Fear and Fury with Heather Ann Thompson

·39 min·2 clips

Daryl Kaby is paralyzed after Goetz shoots him a second time at point-blank range.

1. Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast focuses on Heather Ann Thompson’s Fear and Fury and the Bernard Goetz subway shooting of December 1984. 2. Alicia interviews Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning historian, author, and documentary consultant, because Thompson wrote the book and researched the case. 3. The episode asks how one New York City shooting became a lens for Reagan-era crime politics, media framing, and white racial rage. 4. Thompson describes a white man on a downtown subway train shooting four Black teenagers with a .38 Smith & Wesson after a brief exchange. 5. She says the case felt like a break from ordinary 1980s danger and later resembles incidents she names such as Charlottesville, January 6th, Kyle Rittenhouse, George Floyd, and Trayvon Martin. 6. Thompson argues that New York matters because Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Rupert Murdoch, the New York Times, the New York Post, and Fox News all connect to the city. 7. She says the same story was happening in cities across the country, so the case felt familiar far beyond New York. 8. Thompson places the shooting in the context of the 1980s, when Americans saw rising crime, disappearing public-sector jobs, homelessness, AIDS, and drug addiction. 9. She links those conditions to Reaganomics and austerity politics rather than to the stereotypes placed on Black and brown communities. 10. She explains that the South Bronx had once held extensive public housing for white families after World War II, but later lost jobs and resources. 11. Thompson names Bernard Goetz as a lonely, self-employed Greenwich Village resident with a troubled youth and an authoritarian father. 12. She rejects a simple mental-health explanation and says Goetz matched a broader white reaction to homelessness, drug use, and urban decline. 13. Thompson names the four teenagers as Troy Canty, Barry Allen, James Ramseur, and Daryl Kaby. 14. She says Daryl Kaby’s father died while trying to protect the truck he used for work, and that the family ended up in public housing after that trauma. 15. Thompson says the boys were heading to a video arcade and hoped to pry quarters from coin machines using screwdrivers in their pockets. 16. She notes that a normal exchange over “you got five bucks” became the catalyst for a shooting that would define the case. 17. Thompson says Rupert Murdoch used the Goetz story to sell a politics of fear, celebrate Goetz, and revile the victims. 18. She describes the case as a media turning point where crime reporting, sensationalism, and political messaging reinforced each other. 19. Thompson’s style is interview-based and explanatory, with detailed historical framing and strong emotional focus on the victims. 20. Readers interested in media history, race, and 1980s urban politics will get the most from it; listeners wanting a light or quick conversation may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear interview about how fear, media, and racial violence shape public life.

Fear and Fury comes through as a blunt conversation about racialized violence, media manipulation, and politicians working fear for their own ends.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When you want Heather Ann Thompson unpacking how fear gets weaponized through media, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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