Every New Yorker knows Rudy Giuliani. He was America's mayor, one of the heroes of 9/11. He was President Donald Trump's lawyer. He denied the 2020 election. Giuliani has been a big name in New York City politics since the 1980s. But it didn't start that way. The story of Rudolph William Louis Giuliani starts long before then. On May 28th, 1944. In East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

This episode was reported, written, and produced by Eleanor Hildebrandt and Emily Sawaked.

Giuliani: The Unraveling – Episode 2: Ambition is a Beast

Shoe Leather is an investigative podcast that goes behind the scenes of forgotten stories that shaped New York City. Go along with the team as they knock on doors and track down the people who were at the center of the news.

This season, we're going to 1970 Greenwich Village. A townhouse suddenly explodes. And authorities find out that it’s ground zero for the operations of the Weather Underground: a radical group of young revolutionaries who use violence to "bring the war home." Three members are killed in the explosion, two others escape. Police would later describe the townhouse as a “bomb factory.” What pushes a protest movement toward violence? What makes a group of mostly middle-class, college-educated young men and women decide to build a bomb?