Low Key

Liam Neeson admits that for a time, he walked the streets looking for an excuse to kill a random black man because of his anger over a friend's rape. On this episode, we talk about the deep history of insidious and deadly lies that fed his mindset, and what we can all learn from his admission.

We go from Neeson to Trayvon Martin to Jussie Smollet to why growing up on an island that's 96 percent white might make you susceptible to some backward views on race. And we also talk about some of the ways the media coverage of Neeson's admission could have been better.

Just when we're about to sign off, we instead go into a deep dive about the long, long history of white people using accusations of aggression by one black man to justify horrific behavior against large numbers of African-Americans. If this subject interests you, we'd recommend reading up on Rosewood, Florida and the Scotsboro case, to start.