I don't know. I mean, I do hate every aspect of straight culture because it's all a heteronormative prison, but I don't hate the prison owners.

Welcome to Irong about the podcast that depressingly will never run out of social misconceptions to debunk.

You had a little poem going there for a second. I want to stick with that welcome to Irong about the podcast that will never run out of depressing things to debunk.

About which to shout about which to shout. Yeah, there it is. Good. It's Ryan. So it's technically a jingle.

I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall and I'm working on a book about the satanic panic.

And if you would like to support our show until we run out of things to debunk, you can support us at patreon.com slash Irong about.

And today we're talking about Kitty Genovies. Genov phase. Genovies. I am extremely excited for this one because I am a total blank slate.

Really? I literally didn't know her name before you told me. And all I know is the little story that we always use as a metaphor for urban decay that apparently she was killed in the courtyard of a building where everybody could see it and nobody called the cops.

That's the story. That's literally all I know. I don't know who she was or who killed her or what aspects of that story are not true. Like I am I am yours.

Hooray. All right. Climb on the magic carpet. Do you have any sense of when this happened? I was thinking about this last night and thinking like was it the 1890s or was it like the 1960s? I can't even place this in geologic time.

Do you know what city it is? New York City. It's a New York. Yeah. This is a story about a real life woman who became a metaphor.

Oh. And this happened in New York City in 1964. Okay. And it happened in Queens. Oh. Is that surprising? No. I mean, I said, oh, because it seemed like you needed a reaction, but it seems like that's a part of that's a part of New York that I've never been to.

I mean, to me, the first interesting thing is placing this geographically is that it happened in Q Gardens, which was known at the time as a very safe quiet, almost suburban neighborhood.

You know, at a time in New York, when fears about New York City, both outside the city and within it were focused on the fact that the crime rates were rising, the murder rates were rising.

There was a sense that people were living packed into unnaturally close confinement with each other. And the way that people who reflect on Kitty Genovese's murder today tend to put it is that this was a story that went viral to the extent that something could have gone viral in 1964.

Yeah, before we had viruses.

So to me, the first interesting thing about Kitty Genovese is murder. And we're going to start with the myth first is that Kitty Genovese is murdered on March 13th, 1964.

It receives a little bit of coverage. There's like an initial New York Times story. It's in tabloids. It's like another murder.

And then two weeks later on March 27th, the New York Times runs a front page story whose headline is 37 who saw murder didn't call the police apathy at stabbing of Queen's woman shocks inspector.

And then the article immediately goes on to say that 38 witnesses didn't call the police. So from the beginning, there was some hint that this had perhaps not been fact checked to the degree that it deserves.

The witnesses are the myth of the apathy came first.

Yeah, and it's like the murder becomes worth thinking about because it illustrates something bigger than itself.

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