Kristi Noem

I mean, I don't think the world would have looked differently had Bernie Getz not lived in New York City in 1984.

But I do think that the way it all comes together was was auspicious.

It was an opportunity.

It was it was a moment that everyone understood the significance of it, as would be the Central Park five and eventually exonerated five that we now even can understand that.

Right.

How that all happened.

Well, I certainly would not want to write.

I do write about the present day, but always trying to do so with some past context.

But I wouldn't want to do a book on that because I do think you do need time.

I think you need a little bit of distance.

But what is kind of stunning to me is it doesn't matter how much time has passed.

If you're only going to rely on kind of official sources, if you're only going to rely on the print media to tell you what happened, if you're only going to rely on people's recollection of what happened, you're never going to really be able to pull it back together or realize it.

reconstruct it and pull it back together.

So a pitch for being a historian, believe it or not, we start at the beginning.

We have preconceived notions, everyone does, but we are routinely surprised and routinely challenged by what we in fact see in the record.

And sometimes that's as simple as seeing an original autopsy report.

Or sometimes it's as simple as actually going and looking at the context that no one ever bothered to look at.

So I don't think it's about how much time.

I think it's about the sources that we get at and that context, context, context matters.

And frankly, we don't have a lot of patience for context as a society.