Jonathan Mahler and Alec Agree, “New York or Nowhere”

Jonathan Mahler is a longtime staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of the best-selling book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, New York Times notable book The Challenge: Hamdan V. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power, and recently published book The Gods of New York: The Tumultuous Eighties, from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square Riots. Mahler’s first book was adapted into a mini-series for ESPN and his second book, The Challenge, won The Scribes Book Award in 2009. Formerly a columnist for Bloomberg View, Mahler’s writing has also appeared in Slate, the Daily Beast, and New York Magazine. Mahler’s work in sports journalism has been featured in the anthology book series The Best American Sports Writing and received numerous journalism and media awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award and the Mirror Award. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a bestselling author and a staff writer for The New York Times. Jonathan Mahler's first book, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bronx is Burning, was adapted into a mini-series for ESPN. His second book, The Challenge, won the Scribes Book Award in 2009. In the world of sports journalism, Jonathan Mahler has been featured in the anthology book series The Best American Sports Writing, and has received numerous journalism and media awards throughout his career. Mahler's latest book, released this past summer, is entitled The Gods of New York:

• 1:48Alec Baldwin?

  The Tumultuous Eighties from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square Riots. Raised in Palm Springs, California, I was curious where Jonathan Mahler's fascination with New York originated from.

• 2:03Speaker 04

  I was born in New York. Both my parents were New Yorkers. My father was a working class Jewish kid from the Bronx who, you know, got himself into Bronx science and went off to medical school, also in New York, and was offered a job out in California at a hospital out there. And, you know, he'd barely left New York. And I thought he was like, well, this is the dream, you know, moved to California, raised my family out there. So we moved to Palm Springs and my mom hated it from day one and couldn't wait to move back to New York. And finally-

• 2:33Alec Baldwin?

  You were there for a while.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  I was there my, really my whole childhood. I moved back. Well, I was in college when they moved back. And they actually made a deal because my mom was a smoker, lifelong smoker. And my father's a doctor. My father said, if you quit smoking, we'll move back to New York. And then what happened next was that they moved back to New York. My mom quit smoking. She was so miserable. My dad said, please start smoking again. So she got everything she wanted. She got to move back to New York and continue smoking.

• 3:00Alec Baldwin?

  What was it about New York that he, he didn't want to go? He wanted to stay?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Well, he just, you know, he was a workaholic and he was so devoted to his patients that he, for him, his life was going to the hospital, seeing patients in his office, making-

• 3:15Alec Baldwin?

  He had a practice.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  He had a practice. He worked seven days a week. And so, you know, he had a little, a little snippet of, of time on Sunday afternoon when he would sit by the pool and, you know, read a medical journal. So for him, it was, it, it worked out great, but my mom couldn't stand it. So.

• 3:31Alec Baldwin?

  It's interesting to me that you have written three books, correct?

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:36Alec Baldwin?

  The Bronx is Burning, Challenge, and then this book now, Gods of New York. You were born in New York, but you're not a lifelong New Yorker. You know, a big part of your youth was outside New York. What is it about New York? Because I mean, we both, everybody has their opinions as to, why do we stay?

• 3:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:51Alec Baldwin?

  It's so challenging. It's so tough. Why do we stay?

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's funny because I grew up in California, but I always felt like a New Yorker because both my parents were New Yorkers. I rooted for the Yankees and the Giants and the Knicks from, really from birth. Inherited that from my father. And we would come back every, you know, sort of every chance we got, my mom would- Bring us back to New York, which was, you know, really every year. I mean, we'd come at least once. So I felt always connected to New York. It was always like the place where I should be living, I think. And by the time I got out of college, my parents had moved back here. And so it became kind of naturally the place to move. And once you kind of settle in in New York, it's so hard to leave.

• 4:33Alec Baldwin?

  If it works for you.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Particularly because, not only because it's so hard to sort of find a way to make it work that once you do, you don't want to give it up. But also because New York is, it's always changing. You know, you're always going to new neighborhoods, discovering new neighborhoods, new restaurants. Your life here, I feel like it doesn't feel static in the way that it might in other places. So you just don't get bored with it, I think.

• 4:56Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I think that if you have an escape from New York, that makes everything a lot different. If you can't go anywhere else, if you have no other option, New York can be very, very onerous in that way of you're spending the summer there in the hot summer. But now for you, where did you go to college, Northwestern?

• 5:12Speaker 04

  I went to Northwestern, yeah, in Chicago.

• 5:13Alec Baldwin?

  Did you study journalism there?

• 5:14Speaker 04

  I studied English literature there, actually. But I did start working on the paper there. So that's kind of what got me launched. So even though I was an English major, I worked on the college paper.

• 5:24Alec Baldwin?

  Why? What attracted you to that?

• 5:27Speaker 04

  You know, I guess I feel like as I kind of worked my way through college and started to think about what I might want to do, I realized that the only thing I knew I was like pretty good at was thinking and writing. And then the idea of, you know, going out into the world and not spending all my days kind of at a desk was appealing to me. The idea that that I might have a career kind of engaging with people and thinking and writing.

• 5:48Alec Baldwin?

  Reporting.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Reporting, yeah. So I thought I would maybe be interested in giving it a try. So I did it at, you know, my senior year, really, at Northwestern. And then I graduated and thought, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this a shot and see how it goes. Move to New York and try to be a journalist. And if it works out, great. And if it doesn't.

• 6:05Alec Baldwin?

  How did it begin?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  My first job was actually at the McNeil-Laird News Hour.

• 6:11Alec Baldwin?

  How did you pull that off? How?

• 6:12Speaker 04

  I just applied for an internship there and remarkably was able to get one, which I loved. And, um, you know, sort of sad to see what's happening to public television now, of course. That's a separate story. But I felt like I wanted to, I wanted to write.

• 6:26Alec Baldwin?

  How long were you there with them?

• 6:28Speaker 04

  I was there about six months, I think, as I recall. Yeah.

• 6:30Alec Baldwin?

  Not very long?

• 6:31Speaker 04

  No, because it was an internship. It was just sort of to get me.

• 6:34Alec Baldwin?

  And what did you pick up on that in terms of, I mean, obviously I, I like both of them and I like that show. But it was among the starchiest news programs I've ever seen in my life. Those guys were pretty old school. Did you absorb that? Like, I'm here and what do they want from me?

• 6:49Speaker 04

  I mean, what they wanted from me mostly was, was lunch orders and coffee.

• 6:54Alec Baldwin?

  It was that phase of your career?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I think I occasionally, you know, contributed some research to some stories was, was basically the extent of my work.

• 7:01Alec Baldwin?

  It was a real internship?

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, true internship. But I mean, those guys were amazing. I mean, Robert McNeil was an inspiring figure just because he had been a foreign correspondent. He had just, he had this kind of a gravitas, like the kind of Walter Cronkite type gravitas. And he was so cultured and so well-read and, and it was just, he was a certain kind of newsman that you just felt like, wow, that guy's amazing.

• 7:24Alec Baldwin?

  Right. They took the obligation very seriously.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Totally. Yeah, yeah. And, and he loved it.

• 7:29Alec Baldwin?

  Where do you go after McNeil-Laird?

• 7:31Speaker 04

  After that, I worked at the Wall Street Journal's wire service, the Dow Jones News Service. And I was a wire service reporter there. I mean, a lot of people probably don't even know what a wire service is because I think they sort of barely exist. Yeah. They were these kind of news services that provided stories to newspapers all around the world. And they worked on a very kind of hyperactive schedule, let's say. I mean, you were kind of writing all the time. Newsrooms would have these little kind of teletype machines and they would spit out these stories from the wire services. And, and they would rip them off and use them as copy in their newspapers. So I did that, writing about, you know, financial news for four years. And that was-

• 8:11Alec Baldwin?

  Four years? You were with the Journal Wire Service?

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. It was grueling, a grueling four years.

• 8:16Alec Baldwin?

  What about it made you stay?

• 8:19Speaker 04

  Well, that's a good question. I was sort of moving up. I started as a real kind of general assignment reporter where I was, I was really just writing, I'm essentially rewriting press releases, you know, 40 press releases a day. And then I became a proper reporter. And so I sort of, you know, was able to kind of grow a little bit there, even though I didn't really love the job. So I was kind of looking for what I wanted to do next at that point. And I knew that I wanted to be writing less frequently and longer stories. And I found my way. I started freelancing for a newspaper and then I kind of found my way there on staff, which was a Jewish weekly newspaper called The Forward.

• 8:59Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  It's an amazing institution. I mean, it's been around for well over 100 years, over 150 years. It was a, you know, it was sort of the newspaper for Yiddish speaking Jewish immigrants who came to New York in, in the early 20th century. And, you know, a sort of a, in the modern era, it was kind of reinvented as, as an English language newspaper. So, so I worked there for a number of years and, and I loved that. It was a, it was great.

• 9:25Alec Baldwin?

  I remember reading in the book that you're Jewish and your wife, I assume is not Jewish, although you convinced her to have a Jewish wedding. And she refers to the harrowing experience of you going to a New England Christmas.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  That was in an essay I wrote, I think. Yes.

• 9:40Alec Baldwin?

  Right, right, right. Yeah. No, she's a writer?

• 9:43Speaker 04

  She is an editor. So the first Christmas I went to, her grandmother, who's no longer with us, but yeah, yeah, exactly. She had a little Christmas ornament with my name on it, which was, you know, it was hard enough to be going to Christmas, but, but let alone have an ornament with my name on it. It was, you know, it's a very sweet gesture, but I was, I was surprised.

• 10:00Alec Baldwin?

  How long with The Forward? How many years?

• 10:02Speaker 04

  I was there for five years.

• 10:03Alec Baldwin?

  Wow. So you really built a foundation?

• 10:05Speaker 04

  I did. Well, it takes a while.

• 10:07Alec Baldwin?

  You think so?

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't know. It did for me.

• 10:10Alec Baldwin?

  You believe that? Right.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. I guess in each of these jobs, I felt like I was still learning and kind of growing and, you know, finding new things to do so I could stick around. And also because I was sort of here in New York, there would have been opportunities at newspapers around the country. But if I wanted to stay in New York, it's harder.

• 10:29Alec Baldwin?

  Were you married when you did that on the forward? That was after the forward?

• 10:32Speaker 04

  That was after, yeah. So then I actually was at my next job where I met my wife, which was at Talk Magazine.

• 10:39Alec Baldwin?

  With Tina?

• 10:40Speaker 04

  Exactly, yeah.

• 10:41Alec Baldwin?

  And Tina said she thought that it could work if it weren't for COVID and Harvey bailing out from his financial commitment to the thing. She thought it was a really worthy project. Did you agree?

• 10:51Speaker 04

  I did. I thought it was a great magazine. It really was just starting out. I mean, I think in the end, I started working there a year before launch. So to me, it feels like it was longer. But I think that the magazine really only survived for two years. I loved working for Tina. It was fun. I'd never worked at a glossy magazine. It was a whole other world.

• 11:08Alec Baldwin?

  Describe that.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  It was just so different. I mean, particularly because I, you know, I was at a, I had come from this, you know, weekly Jewish newspaper where basically if you took a source out to lunch, that meant like splitting the cost of a tuna sandwich. And then suddenly I met, you know, this glossy magazine where you, you know, you have a proper expense account.

• 11:26Alec Baldwin?

  You have all the tuna you want.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Exactly. You know, even, even raw tuna. So it was wild. I think the idea was that it was obviously kind of celebrity driven, but it was also literary and classy and fun. You know, I really enjoyed it, but it was coming at the tail end of the age of the glossy magazine.

• 11:46Alec Baldwin?

  What was a story you wrote for her that you, that you enjoyed?

• 11:50Speaker 04

  I'll tell you what I remember because it's the one celebrity, real proper celebrity profile I've ever written. It was when Ridley Scott was making Gladiator and I flew over to London to profile Russell Crowe and to write about the movie. I was in London for what was in the end, I think, an hour long interview in Russell Crowe's hotel room. I was in London for a week, kind of waiting to get the nod to come over and interview. And he obviously had no, no interest in talking to me. You know, it was kind of an education, I think, in the kind of journalism I didn't want to do. But, you know, an experience like I'm glad I had.

• 12:27Alec Baldwin?

  But, but, but did he come around when you were with him? Was he forthcoming?

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Not really.

• 12:31Alec Baldwin?

  Was he? No.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 12:32Alec Baldwin?

  He was diffident the whole time?

• 12:33Speaker 04

  He had no interest in, in being there. I'm sure he had been forced to do it. And I Ridley Scott was Much better. Actually, I then went out to LA and he was.

• 12:41Alec Baldwin?

  He's a salesman.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  He is a salesman and I think he was interested in talking about his movie. Russell Crowe was not interested in talking about his, his performance. Yeah. I'll tell you, there was one other fun story that I did there. There was a moment in time when the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, had just made an agreement with the Venetian Hotel, which had just opened in Las Vegas. And they were gonna send some of their art over to the Venetian. And so there was gonna be, you know, there were gonna be paintings from the Hermitage, you know, one of the world's most famous museums in the Venetian Hotel as part of this agreement. So I went over to St. Petersburg and spent a few days in the Hermitage and interviewed people there.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  And, you know, in the middle of winter, it was kind of just an unbelievable city, just the most beautiful city. And then from there, I came back to the United States and went to Las Vegas to the Venetian Hotel. So it was the biggest kind of, you know, contrast of reporting trips you could possibly imagine.

• 13:39Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, my God. You read talk how long?

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Really until it folded, which was three years, I guess, in the end, because I started before launch. Yeah.

• 13:47Alec Baldwin?

  Then where do you go?

• 13:48Speaker 04

  That's when I sold my first book, which was Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning. So I started writing that book and I also started freelancing for the New York Times Magazine. So I was sort of doing those kind of in tandem for a little while until I got my book done.

• 14:03Alec Baldwin?

  Why the book about the Bronx was your first book? You've been writing for a while now and you're gonna write, this is your first book?

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was my first book. I mean, it goes back a little bit to what we were talking about before that, you know, New York had always had this kind of mythic hold over me. You know, because my father had grown up in the, both my parents had grown up in New York and my father grew up in the Bronx. And it was always, as I said, the place that I was kind of supposed to be. I, you know, I had this kind of connection to it. But I also felt like I didn't know it as well as I wanted to and I didn't know its history as well as I wanted to. So, you know, when you're, when you're setting out, especially when you're setting out to write your first book, you feel like I need a subject that I know is gonna hold my interest because this is gonna be hard. And so it was, you know, New York and, you know, New York in the seventies,

• 14:48Speaker 04

  which was when I had my first kind of, when I first came here, my first images of New York were really New York in that era.

• 14:54Alec Baldwin?

  When you were seven?

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Seven, eight.

• 14:57Alec Baldwin?

  And you stayed for how long on that trip as a child?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  We would come for, you know, always a couple of weeks. We would stay in a, in an apartment that belonged to a friend of my parents.

• 15:06Alec Baldwin?

  Summertime.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Summertime. We would go to, you know, I'd go to Yankee games. We would go to see, you know, we went and saw Sweeney Todd. We would see shows on Broadway. We would sometimes go to, you know, Gilbert and Sullivan, light opera. We would go to Rockefeller Center. We would just kind of do all the things you do here. I just felt like I knew it was a subject that had a kind of hold over me.

• 15:24Alec Baldwin?

  And somewhat surprisingly, you retained memories as a seven-year-old.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  I did. I mean,

• 15:29Alec Baldwin?

  I find that interesting.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, nothing too detailed, but just, you know, almost like movie images that you sort of have a, have a vague recollection of and like kind of a sense of, almost aesthetic memories in a way, especially with the first book. I mean, you really don't know what you're doing. I did so much research that didn't make its way into the book. I talked to so many people. I read so many books. I mean, in a funny way, a lot of that material didn't appear in the book, but you have to kind of master a subject in a way to write a book about it. And that does mean a reading widely and talking to people widely and, and going way really beyond the subject of the book to feel.

• 16:05Alec Baldwin?

  The page count, yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like to just feel marinated in it and to feel kind of comfortable.

• 16:10Alec Baldwin?

  And a lot of it, you know, it's going to stay out. It's not going to make the cut.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  No, no, that's, that's exactly it. The book was sort of partly about the Yankees from that year, 1977, because that had been, again, this, this team I followed from afar out in California and I was kind of obsessed with in the way that you are when you're a kid, you become obsessed with sports teams. And then part of the book was, was just about the city and the life of the city, the 1977 blackout, the Son of Sam. And these were just things that I, as I researched, I just got kind of more and more into. It's the great thing about writing a book is that, you know, as you get to know a subject more, in a way, it becomes more captivating. It, it sort of pulls you in.

• 16:49Alec Baldwin?

  Who was the imprint?

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Uh, for our Strauss and Giroux.

• 16:52Alec Baldwin?

  And how did you pull that off? Getting a book published is tough.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  I wrote a proposal. I had a good agent. I rewrote the proposal a couple of times and they bought it. Yeah. And then they published my second book, too.

• 17:05Alec Baldwin?

  Author and journalist Jonathan Mahler. If you enjoy conversations with intrepid writers, check out my episode with Lawrence Wright.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  When people go into Scientology, they don't, you know, they don't go into it because it's a cult. They go into it oftentimes because they're looking for something.

• 17:22Alec Baldwin?

  Such as?

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Well, you know, sometimes they're spiritual seekers, or they're, you know, you might be one of those people that goes down in the subway and someone says, would you like to take our personality test? And, you know, well, we see that you have a little trouble communicating with people. That's true. Well, we, you know, we can help you.

• 17:39Alec Baldwin?

  They know what to say.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  We can help you with that. We have a course that can help you in your relationships. And the truth is, oftentimes, they can help. It's like going into therapy. People do benefit from it. So this initial exposure to Scientology is often very positive to people.

• 18:00Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Lawrence Wright, go to here'sthething.org. After the break, Jonathan Mahler details how his first book, The Bronx is Burning, wound up becoming a miniseries for ESPN.

• 18:25Speaker 01

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• 18:56Alec Baldwin?

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 19:14Speaker 06

  My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way, and I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like what matters now. Somewhere, Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt, and music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

• 19:36Alec Baldwin?

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.

• 19:56Speaker 07

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 20:13Speaker 05

  Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:19Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Before joining the staff at the New York Times, Jonathan Mahler was a sports columnist for Bloomberg View. He then became a contributing writer for the New York Times, where he covered everything from baseball to politics. For Mahler, I wondered what it was like transitioning from freelancing to full-time staff writer.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Actually, for a while, I worked from home, and then I rented an office for a little while in Dumbo in Brooklyn, and I would go there every day and write. And then eventually, I went full-time on staff at the Times.

• 20:55Alec Baldwin?

  And they gave you a desk?

• 20:56Speaker 04

  They gave me a desk, yeah. Actually, now, we don't even, I don't even have a dedicated desk. We have kind of floating desks in the magazine for the writers, and I, you know, I don't go in.

• 21:04Alec Baldwin?

  You're still working with them now?

• 21:05Speaker 04

  I am, still there.

• 21:06Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. And when you first walked into, as I call it, the Kremlin there to work at The Times.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:12Alec Baldwin?

  What was the feeling you had? Did you feel the kind of heft of that experience?

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Yes, definitely. And, you know, initially, The Times moved, so it kind of, you know, just a few blocks, but it moved into this very kind of, you know, beautiful sort of modern building.

• 21:25Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  You know, it's an amazing office. I mean, I love it. I love being in the building. I love being at The Times. And it's, it's like, you know, and particularly now, I mean, you feel like the work that The Times still does feels more important than ever, and it's an amazing workplace filled with just very smart, dedicated people.

• 21:42Alec Baldwin?

  And you still feel, when you first got there, you felt you were with a very special crowd of people?

• 21:45Speaker 04

  Totally, from the beginning till the present day. I mean, it really is, it's a special place, yeah.

• 21:51Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you write the book Challenge, and you're immersed in this Guantanamo, correct?

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:56Alec Baldwin?

  Is, is, is one of the big backdrops there?

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 21:59Alec Baldwin?

  I've asked other writers who write to kind of embrace difficult material, how do you manage your feelings while you're doing some of this work? Do you ever get really, really down and kind of overwhelmed?

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that you sort of learn, and, and I don't even know if you learn it, it just, you learn it in the way that it's just sort of necessary, is a certain like degree of detachment, I think. Not so much that you become kind of inured to, you know, what you're seeing and hearing, but there's a sort of a pursuit of a story. There's a kind of a mindset that I think you get into when you're sort of on a story and you're pursuing a story. And it's funny, because I think for journalists who sort of do this, you don't even really think about it until you kind of step outside and, and, you know, you're asked a question like that question. Because it doesn't feel like, you don't feel detached, but it's what you have to do to kind of pursue the story and to not feel defeated by it or crushed by it.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  You know, in the case of Guantanamo, I mean, I think I just, you know, I spent some time down there. I spent some time in Yemen, because the, the sort of main, one of the main characters of the book was a Yemeni detainee. And so I wanted to go over and, and meet his wife and, and meet his family. And, you know, he was being held on Guantanamo Bay with, you know, His future was was, you know, very uncertain. She had no contact with him. I mean, it was, you know, it was obviously, you know, sort of powerful and sad to be kind of reporting on it. But at the same time, I I felt like I had a job to do. I felt like I I needed information I needed for my book and for actually for a magazine story I did before the book. And so you just sort of find your way through it.

• 23:39Alec Baldwin?

  Is there ever a situation, it doesn't matter whether it's the Times or the Wall Street Journal, that you want to do something and you check yourself? Do you say to yourself, I don't want to bother pitching this idea because they're probably going to say no? Do you censor yourself?

• 23:54Speaker 04

  I don't quite censor myself. I would say that for an idea to work, it has to be something that people other than me are going to be interested in. So I try to sort of edit myself, I guess, rather than censor myself. Though I I think it's also okay to kind of go with a passion project now and then, or try to go with a passion project. I probably should try to do more of it, in fact. Yeah, I think it's harder.

• 24:17Alec Baldwin?

  How did ESPN become the venue for the Bronx is Burning series?

• 24:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, the book kind of moves back and forth between the Yankee season and the year and the life of the city. So so they were interested in, obviously, in the kind of the Yankee story, which is an amazing story because it's kind of Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin are just locked in this kind of, you know, amazing like duel over the course of the year.

• 24:42Alec Baldwin?

  Very lively time.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, it was some crazy stuff. And Reggie Jackson was this like, you know, this kind of larger than life figure in the city. And so was Billy Martin in his way. So they were interested in the baseball story. Of course, when they came to me to to option it and develop it, they also said, oh, we're gonna, you know, we're interested in the city stuff, too. All of that kind of, I think, kind of fell out along the way. And it really became a kind of a story of the Yankee season with with kind of the city and the kind of against the backdrop of the city. You know, so it's sort of half the book in a way, I guess.

• 25:13Alec Baldwin?

  Then you had the movie adaptation of The Challenge, and that was in Clooney Land, or whatever it was. And then what happened?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah. Well, it never, it's sort of, it died in Clooney Land, as I guess sometimes. Yeah, I don't know exactly what happened. I know that there was a script. Aaron Sorkin actually wrote a script.

• 25:32Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  And I don't know quite what happened, but you know, they renewed the option and then I guess for whatever reason, the script didn't work out and then it just kind of somehow died.

• 25:43Alec Baldwin?

  So when you do this book now.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:45Alec Baldwin?

  When you're doing The Gods of New York, you use, I mean, most writers are very specific and very intentional with their words. What was it that you felt the word gods applied to these people? Why did you choose that word?

• 25:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, it's funny. That's a good place to start because the title is kind of a little controversial because you could read this as, what, you know, are you calling, you know, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani gods? And I think the idea is really, I know, the idea is, is the kind of the Greek gods, the sort of the gods who can be vengeful, who can be narcissistic. And so really the idea is just, these were larger than life figures who were elevated to this stature, you know, by the kind of culture of the city, by the tabloids. And so they kind of loomed over the city like gods in a way. So it's

• 26:38Speaker 04

  not, it's very much not, not a god in the sense that they're all powerful, but rather that they're these, these kind of towering figures who are kind of hanging over the city, you know, on their own kind of Mount Olympus.

• 26:50Alec Baldwin?

  You're calling a lot of the shots.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 26:53Alec Baldwin?

  The book, you picked that specific time, which is interestingly, the last two years of Reagan's second term and the first two years of Bush's only term.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:03Alec Baldwin?

  That 86 through 90, why that period? Why did you home in on that?

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, you know, I sort of started with a kind of a wider lens, thinking about the eighties. And then I kind of came to see that, you know, I wanted to narrow the narrative down a little bit, just for storytelling purposes. I didn't want it to feel like kind of a survey history of the eighties. So, and I felt like the story of, of those four years, which, which were really, it's the story of really Koch's last term as mayor, when, when everything he's done over his first two terms. unravels and the city unravels and so many crazy things happen during this just this four year period of time. I mean, from Howard Beach to Black Monday, you know, the the stock market crash to the Tuana, the crazy Tuana Brawley story to

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yusef Hawkins. Yusef Hawkins. Plus, it was the sort of the AIDS crisis and and the birth and rise of ACT UP and this kind of whole new activist movement. It was when crack arrived in the city. It was when, you know, New York had its first black police commissioner ever, who was presiding over this unprecedented kind of drug epidemic. It's when homelessness really became an issue in the city. They just it was when Spike Lee Made Do the Right Thing, which is, you know, kind of an iconic film and I really captured the city in this moment. It just so many things happened in this four year window. Plus, I had kind of Koch's final term as a as a sort of a narrative spine that it just felt like both from a, you know, really from a storytelling and kind of a more Gestalt-y perspective. It was like the right, the right period.

• 28:41Alec Baldwin?

  Author and journalist Jonathan Mahler. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Jonathan Mahler talks about the breaking point New York City faces today and how it mirrors that of the 1980s.

• 29:11Speaker 07

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. And amount subject to lender approval. Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists.

• 29:53Speaker 07

  We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by rising star Sienna Spiral. My first ever in the world show was when I was 10 and I sang at a pub called the Georgian Devonshire. I was so nervous. I was 10, so they let me in only to sing my song and they kicked me out right after. And then I remember I wrote, I've been writing since I was 10. So I, I wrote this song called Lady in the Mirror, made this little track with it. But I just like pressed it and I remember I sang this song and there was like five people in there and I remember how myself I felt and I felt like I understood myself and understood what I needed to do. So does that take us back to, I sing just to know I'm alive? Hundred percent, hundred percent, in my whole life.

• 30:35Speaker 07

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment. The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers. Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.

• 31:48Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Jonathan Maller's most recent book, The Gods of New York, chronicles how New York City dramatically changed during the tumultuous years of the late 1980s. The book also details why he believes that period of time served as a prequel for the New York City of today. Talking to Maller now, in the aftermath of an historic mayoral election, I wanted to know his thoughts on Ziran Mamdani's unlikely political ascension, and what his win says about the current state of New York City.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Well, I think it certainly tells us that the city is at a kind of a breaking point. I mean, I think that this is in many ways kind of the story of my book, right? It's the story of New York is emerging from the kind of dark days of the 70s, the fiscal crisis, the subways are covered in graffiti, you know, it's a disaster, the city's in a death spiral. And then it's reborn in the 1980s, and at the center of that rebirth is Wall Street, and is the real estate industry, which kind of lives off of the Wall Street bonuses. And, you know, New York kind of goes through this transformation, and becomes the capital of global finance. But the problem with that transformation is that a lot of people are left out of it. A lot of people are squeezed out of it.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  And, you know, I think that that cycle, it sort of exacerbates over the course of the decades since then. The wealth gap widens, and you get to a point of crisis now, where you have, you know, you have people who are making, you know, $140,000 a year, who can't afford to buy an apartment in a, you know, in a neighborhood they want to live in, and are kind of struggling to live in the city. And then you have people who are, you know, making a whole lot less than that, who are on a waiting list to get public housing for years on end. And so, you know, it's maybe that not surprising in that context that someone who is really proposing, much of it is not, not realistic, but still proposing, you know, pretty radical policies here.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  I mean, you know, and by radical, I mean, I don't mean that in a Negative cast necessarily, but but big change, let's say. And, you know, from from doubling minimum wage to providing free childcare for every New Yorker from six weeks to to five years. I mean, that is a, you know, the idea that that's, you know.

• 34:11Alec Baldwin?

  Lot of money, lot of money.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Yes, lot of money. I think it speaks to really the the sort of extreme income inequality that's kind of become just like the fabric of the city now.

• 34:21Alec Baldwin?

  See, I wonder with homelessness, you know, I mean, when do we say to ourselves that it isn't working, whatever the policy is, and then they have to be taken somewhere? It could be decommissioned to army bases or something in upstate New York where they can get a shower and a meal and get cleaned up and get, I mean, or do we let them just lay on the streets? Has laying on the streets worked? I don't know. I'm looking for someone to maybe help me with that.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  No, no. I mean, those are good questions to ask. I mean, I tell the story, actually, in the book of of really kind of the the beginning of New York City's homeless policy, which is kind of an amazing story. This guy, Bob Hayes, who was at the time a young associate at a Sullivan and Cromwell, of of kind of a fancy white shoe law firm, you know, this is in the late 70s, is, you know, struck by all the people he sees who seem to be kind of living in Washington Square Park and on the streets. And because this is, you know, New York did not have a homelessness problem per se until this period of time. I mean, there were what were called like bums and winos on the street.

• 35:16Alec Baldwin?

  The Bowery.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  The Bowery, yeah. But you didn't have, you didn't have people sleeping on the streets. So this guy, Bob Hayes, is sort of curious about this, and he starts talking to them. And, you know, he learns that there are people who've found themselves on the street, either because they were in a mental hospital that they were sort of pushed out of, or they were living in a single-room occupancy hotel, a welfare hotel that they got, they got pushed out of, or, you know, they found their way to the streets, and there was nowhere for them to go. And so he decides he's going to file a lawsuit on behalf of these people, these these homeless people. One of the plaintiffs literally lists his address as a cardboard box on Park Avenue. And he is is rooting around in in the NYU Law Library to try to to figure out,

• 35:57Speaker 04

  you know, how he's going to make his case. And he finds a piece of legislation that was passed during the Depression that was sort of pushed by LaGuardia that says, "New York State shall provide, you know, care, housing and care for the needy." And he's like, bingo, paid it. He adds that to the lawsuit.

• 36:18Alec Baldwin?

  He's the guy that unearthed that.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  He did, yeah.

• 36:21Alec Baldwin?

  Right, wow.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  Koch realizes that he's cooked. He's lost. He signs a consent decree saying that he will do this. And suddenly, the city is desperately trying to house literally thousands of people who are sleeping on the streets. And so, the story of homelessness kind of begins there. And I think in the beginning, there was this sense of like, okay, well, this is just a, you know, we'll figure this out. It's just a logistical issue. We just have to figure out how to find homes for these people. And needless to say, that did not happen. And, and 40 years later, we're still trying to figure out what to do.

• 36:57Alec Baldwin?

  What does the next mayor need to do in terms of, we've been kicking the can on so many issues in this city. And we've been, you know, one, one day you turn around, it seems like yesterday, people were saying, the subway is great. And we've invested in the subway and the subway is on time. Everybody's loving the subway. It's just really, really humming along. And then it's like 10 years go by, they're like, the subway is a disaster. Whatever you do, don't take the subway. I mean, obviously, COVID was a part of that whole episode. But, I mean, I wonder, what is the thing you think, Bamdani, Adams, whoever, that comes in? What's the issue that we can no longer forestall?

• 37:30Speaker 04

  I mean, I, I do think it's the affordability issue. I mean, I think that this city, it can't be New York City if it isn't giving people a foothold, if it isn't giving people a chance, right? I mean, I feel like I am all for endless opportunity, boundless opportunity in this city. I think you should be able to, to come here and get as rich as you can get, be as successful as you can be. But I think it has to also find a way to give people a foothold. It has to give them some kind of leg up to try to make it. Or I, I think it's just going to lose so much.

• 38:05Alec Baldwin?

  But we have to have a net. You've got to have a net for people. When I was a kid, I'm in acting school at NYU and I'm going, and then years go by and I understand that every maid, every guy that works in a shop, every bus driver, everybody, cops even, everybody's coming from somewhere else.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:22Alec Baldwin?

  New York is that strange place where I went to GW. And they taught us when we took DC culture and politics, where they said, this is a city where- All the rich people live outside the city. They go on the trains out to Virginia, suburban Virginia, Maryland and so forth. And it changed over the years. And then Manhattan has, has always been, for the large part, maybe with some lapses, the place where the rich people lived in town.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 38:45Alec Baldwin?

  And everybody else who didn't have money lived out of town.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 38:48Alec Baldwin?

  And commuted. So we have to make that work for them. I can't stand to see people, even some I work with, who work, who take care of my home.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:58Alec Baldwin?

  Uh, struggling with their costs like that. What are you planning on doing next? You have another book on the boiler?

• 39:04Speaker 04

  Nothing yet. I have to say, I wrote this book, it took me eight years. And I was, you know, working full time at the Times throughout. It is very difficult to write a book while, while working at the New York Times. So I think for a little while at least, I'll just take a break from the book writing.

• 39:21Alec Baldwin?

  Does your wife, your editor?

• 39:22Speaker 04

  She, yes, she does.

• 39:24Alec Baldwin?

  She does?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  She always does. She is, she's the best editor.

• 39:27Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:28Alec Baldwin?

  Well, this book, The Gods of New York. I haven't read a book or been aware of a book that's encapsulated the cauldron of New York at that time. I mean, New York was really, really, really tough. What's an excerpt that you favor?

• 39:42Speaker 04

  How about I'll start with this, two paragraphs of my introduction of Ed Koch. At 5:25 in the morning on New Year's Day, Edward Irving Koch was awakened in his king-sized bed at Gracie Mansion by the knock of a police officer on his door, just as he had been nearly every morning for the past eight years. He did not have a hangover, but he did have a head cold. Still, no runny nose was going to keep him from enjoying the historic day ahead, his historic day. In a matter of hours, he would become the third person in modern history to serve three terms as mayor of New York City. And he'd been re-elected in a landslide with 78% of the citywide vote.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Koch's success was a tribute to him, his wit, work ethic, and unerring political instincts, but also to New York and really, America. His father, Louis, nay, Leb, had arrived at Ellis Island in 1909, a Jewish child of peddlers from a dirt poor hamlet in the Austro-Hungarian, Hungarian Empire. He started as a lowly pants maker in a Lower East Side sweatshop, even sleeping for a while in the factory, and eventually built a solid, middle-class life for his family in a leafy section of the Bronx. His mother Joyce, nay Yada, was a Jewish immigrant from similarly humble roots, who had come to New York in 1912. She also worked in the garment trade before they were married and had their second child,

• 41:08Speaker 04

  Edward, in 1924. Koch had benefited from the city's and country's largesse, enrolling at the tuition-free City College of New York in Uptown Manhattan, when he was just 16, before being drafted to serve in World War II in March 1943. Three years and two commendations later, he was back in the city, living with his parents on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Instead of finishing college, he went straight to New York University School of Law, courtesy of the G.I. Bill. At law school, he fell in love with Greenwich Village, its inexpensive restaurants, tree-lined streets, and countercultural ferment. He was no beatnik, but he had progressive ideals. He took up folk guitar and was involved in the Right to Sing Committee,

• 41:53Speaker 04

  which campaigned against the ban on musicians performing in Washington Square Park. He also fell in love with politics. Koch was now running his own law practice, but at lunchtime during the 1952 and 56 presidential elections, he could be found atop a soapbox on busy street corners, extolling the virtues of the Democratic candidate Adalay Stevenson, derided by Republicans as an egghead. He soon discovered that he was a natural public speaker, shrill and nasal, but compelling and persuasive.

• 42:23Alec Baldwin?

  I think it's interesting to me to read that. I'm glad you read that, because it highlights for me in my lifetime in New York how some mayors were mayors who had a distinct personality.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:35Alec Baldwin?

  And Koch, no one had more personality, so to say, than Koch.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  The biggest.

• 42:39Alec Baldwin?

  And some of them, I wonder if they survived, now because they don't have any personality.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:43Alec Baldwin?

  You don't really know very much about Adams, other than he's a cop.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  That's that's true.

• 42:46Alec Baldwin?

  His policies. De Blasio was kind of in negative integers in terms of his personality.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 42:52Alec Baldwin?

  Bloomberg had a personality, but it was always framed in dollar bills in terms of his wealth, his wealth, his smarts. I mean, Bloomberg is an exceedingly bright man and successful man, but that eclipsed everything in terms of what we know what was he like.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  I mean, he had a profile, but not a personality in a way, right?

• 43:10Alec Baldwin?

  Koch may be the last.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:11Alec Baldwin?

  Koch may be the last.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I can't think of anyone.

• 43:14Alec Baldwin?

  That had a very bright personality. Anyway, my thanks to you, The Gods of New York, a great analysis of New York in eighty six to nineteen ninety, and my best of luck to you with whatever you're going to do next.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, Alex. It was so much fun.

• 43:29Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to author and journalist Jonathan Muller. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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• 45:39Speaker 00

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