Many of us have experienced it: you’re walking down a dark street at night or standing alone in an empty subway station, and suddenly you’re overcome by a vague sense of fear. Someone might come along. Something might happen. Or maybe your mind is playing out a very specific scenario: a brutal attack, a mugging, someone pushing you onto the tracks.

Things like this do happen—but probably much less often than most of us think. Because the prevalence of fear of crime doesn’t always align with actual crime statistics. In this episode, host Sara Reinke talks with psychologist Dr. Marie von Seeler about how personal experiences, media coverage, and political discourse influence fear of crime, and what a rational approach to dealing with it might look like.