#687 - Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani is the 112th Mayor of New York City. He was previously a housing advocate and member of the New York State Assembly. Mayor Mamdani joins Theo to discuss overall mayoral stuff, catching strays from world leaders, and if the American Dream still exists. Zohran Mamdani: https://www.instagram.com/nycmayor/ ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner @CelsiusOfficial https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Acorns: Head to http://acorns.com/investinall and give your money the best chance at growth! Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Mail stuff to: ATTN: TPW PO BOX 40137 Nashville TN 37204 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend X: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one year old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  He's the 112th mayor of New York City and one of the most talked about figures in politics. He's got a lot of big ideas and we're going to get into it. I'm thankful for his time. Today's guest is Mr. Zoran Mamdani.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  And if you got a move, Zohran, just do you prefer Zohran?

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm fine with that.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, all right.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, Zohran is good. Theo, I assume is fine.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fine, man. Thank you so much.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  No, please.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  There's a lot of folklore out there about who you are, right? And a lot of people have heard your name, but they don't know you.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  You were born in Uganda.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  You moved to New York at age of seven.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  You were a rapper for a little while, who wasn't?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little while.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  But give me the two minute, give me the two minute, who is Zohran Mamdani?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  I would say it starts and ends with being a New Yorker. As you said, I moved to our city when I was seven years old. My dad got a job here in New York City at Columbia. And so I grew up in the Upper West Side and went to middle school in the neighborhood. Went to high school in the Bronx, Bronx Science. And then I left for college and came back to this city. And the thing that has always been a part of my life is this city. No matter what stage of my life I'm in. And to me right now, I have the greatest job in the world because every day I get to wake up, serve the same city that I've loved since I was seven years old. And, and I think especially with a view of how do we make this a city that not only everybody can love, but everybody can live in.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Because a lot of people love this city, but not as many of them can live here. And that's because this is also most expensive city in the United States of America.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  It's the third most expensive city in the world.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, what am I talking about? I gotta pay whenever I leave here. Yeah. And I'm not excited about it. Yeah. It's an expensive place to be. What made you want to be mayor? Like, I'm a comedian, right?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  You know, self proclaimed, but there's some evidence of it, right? Because it's a weird thing to say.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  There's enough evidence.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It's a weird thing to say though, sometimes. But I'm a comedian because I need, like, there's something I need people's approval, right? There's something I need when I go on stage, the laughter. I don't know what it is. I need to be seen. I don't know what it is. But being a mayor, just, it seems like, you know, sometimes the mayor is like, you know, the guy in town who like finally wanted to be able to say, well, everybody picked me. Or like, you know, it becomes this sort of, I'm the hero kind of thing. Like, why, like, why? Yeah, why do you want to be mayor?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  I think the thing that pushed me the most to run for this position was both a love of the city, but also a frustration with the fact that a lot of the leaders of the city talked about the problems. Like they, there was nothing they could do about it. It was like, somebody's got to figure this out. It's like, you're the mayor.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, dude. That's where we are with a lot of, with a lot of.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  That somebody is you.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  And, and I think it's not to say these are easy things to resolve. It's not to say you can snap your fingers and people just were refusing to do it. But it's that a lot of times it felt like people weren't even trying. And if they were, they were just trying to make things worse because there was money to be made. When you make things worse. I mean, this flip side of being the most expensive city in the world is that a lot of people make a lot of money in this city. And amidst all of that wealth, one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. So to me, it was looking at the politics of the city I love and seeing a complete like abdication of duty. Just like a sense of somebody else's problem, not mine to fix. And the thing about being the mayor is, yeah, it's tough, but also you actually have tools that you can use to help people, to make people's lives better.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Is that, is that an honest fact, Mr. Mamdani?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  26% of New York. So.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a tough start to the interview.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  26% of New York City residents, totally a record 2.2, 2.2 million people live below the poverty line. Once you got in office, was there things like, do you get to see what's really going on? Like, once you're in there, can they keep, like, I don't even know who they are anymore. But it's like, are there still secrets kept? Are you, are you able to see that like, okay, the way that this is structured isn't for the everyday man? That this, this system here has been built like for the elites or to favor the elites? Like, what did you see?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I think one of the major things I saw was how deeply mismanaged the city budget was. It's not a sexy topic or one that most people wake up thinking about. But so often in politics, the incentive is just to tell the best possible story of the day and not tell the whole truth about what's actually happening. And so the prior administration had said, you know, we had a balanced budget. We had, I don't know, maybe a $6 billion deficit or so in the year to come. And then we came in, we looked through all the books and we found that at a best case scenario, we were at a $12 billion deficit.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  In, in the city?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  In this city.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  And the last time we had deficits like that, there was a major global event. Something had happened to cause the deficit. It was, you know, it was tough when it was the peak of the pandemic. It was tough when it was the global financial crisis. There was no event around this that could explain this much of a deficit.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  So what do you think is going on? Is it just greed? Like, is it just?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  I think it's, I mean, look.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Like, what did you notice? Like, what were some of the, like?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  I think a lot of it is incompetence and, and a lack of interest in resolving it. A sense that you could just keep pushing it until it was somebody else's problem.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  And that to me is like, yeah, look, I, I want to do a good job while I'm the mayor. I also want to leave the city in a good standing for whoever comes next because it's still the same city. Whoever's the mayor, we still live in the city. We still love the city. And so when you come in and you're like, actually, the deficit is twice as large. There's nothing you can pin it to besides internal mismanagement. It also just begs the question of what is going on? And what have been, what have been the, the decision making, like points over the course of the prior administration that led to this point? So I think that was one of the big things where you look under the hood and it is way worse than what you would have imagined. And you also realize how so much of the government is built with a short term in mind.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll give you an example. I come in, we start to see the most serious snowfall we've seen in New York City for a while. We haven't really had winters with a lot of snow recently.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice. I like snow.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I used to like snow until I became the mayor. And I thought about snow as a structural problem.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Well, we're probably overpaying for it from somebody.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the big thing is that we, I, I found out that the way we budget for snow removal services is as an average of the recent year's cost of snow removal. So if you haven't had snow for the last few years, you're not going to have any money really set aside for that snow removal.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  And so I think having to reallocate that funding, deal with the first blizzard in 10 years, these are the kinds of things that are some of the ones that they shock you when you get in there.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  So it's fair to say then you just saw a lot of mismanagement?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Mismanagement, there was waste. There's also this addiction to consulting, a sense that, you know, for years we've been told that if you contract something out of government, you will save money by bringing in kind of specialized consultants. When we looked at the city budget, when we looked at different departments, we realized we had to save a lot of money through efficiency as well. We couldn't just look for help from elsewhere. So we set up something called chief savings officers in every department. And their remit was how can you save this percentage in your department without cutting services? We do not want to cut services. So we saved $94 million just by renegotiating contracts to a better rate.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  We saved $24 million just by letting go of unused office space. You know, these are the kinds of things where you can actually save, you know, more than a billion dollars without affecting the services you're delivering to people. And that to me is like, look, I'm, I'm a socialist. I believe in the importance of government to deliver for working people. I also believe that that government has to be the most excellent, efficient version of itself to be worthy of people's trust. And when I came in, the government that we saw was powered by incredible city workers, but mismanaged at the top where waste was just an accepted part of doing business.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And that can't be. Every time you waste, you tell somebody, don't believe in government. You, you give them a reason.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Yeah, it's true. You're like, why would I even? Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Why would I waste?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  I don't want to pay my taxes. Somebody's just gonna, somebody's just gonna misappropriate it. But did you notice, did you notice a lot of fraud? Like, was it fraudulent, do you think it seemed? Or was it just, or is it, is it even worth figuring that out?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's, if you, if you find an evidence of fraud, it's always worth figuring it out. If, if that's actually the case. What I will say is from what we've seen, it's more to do with mismanagement. It's more to do with just kind of fiscal impropriety, I would say, like moving money around to make it look like things are better than they are. There, there are some people in the past administration who've been investigated for fraud. That definitely did happen.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  It's not, I'm trying to think. I don't even know. Maybe it's Eric Adams. I don't know if it's him or not. Is it?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  He was, he was the previous mayor.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  He was?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  He, he had a number of his.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  He was bonkers, dude. Remember when he was looking for those guns in those Care Bears or whatever?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, check your backpacks.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  And they had drugs or whatever in that little, um, they had like one of those little baby, it was, oh, it was like a little baby stroller. It was a fake one though for kids when they have a baby, like a pretend baby or whatever, to practice for like mother, for being a mother one day or something. And then they found like a little, uh, bag of dope on the side of it. You know, I was like, what is this about? But anyway, that's fraudulent to me.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  He had a number of top aides who were investigated.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  One of them memorably said, when speaking to a contractor, where are my crumbs?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Like where's my money as part of this deal?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Oh, that sounds like, that's a bar though, to be honest.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  If you're gonna be corrupt, those are the best words to use.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, at least, at least they were like kind of poetic at being corrupt. You gotta say that. So that's kinda cool.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  But I, but I think that to me is an example of why people have lost faith. And people, people look at it and they're like, I'm already giving you my money. Why should I give you my time? Why should I give you my care?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  And, and I don't ever wanna lecture somebody that they're wrong to feel that way. I wanna prove to them that it can be different. And then from there, hope that they can, they can believe.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  I know that, um, and thanks for talking with me today, man.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Please.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  I know one thing that you champion is rent control, right? And that you worked in the housing, as a housing counselor, what's the term?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  So I worked as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor, and I'll say that in English. That is me working for homeowners who are on the brink of foreclosure. They would come in and I would negotiate with their bank on their behalf.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  And was that private or was that was a public service?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  That was working for a nonprofit.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Okay, got it.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Um, so I would work for a nonprofit in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill in Queens. And these would be middle-class homeowners. They were, you know, what I would find is these are people who we would describe as having a successful middle-class life.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  They had a union job, they had a home that they owned. And it was just one emergency often that would throw them out of being on time with their payments.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  And it would be a medical visit they hadn't planned for, an illness of a family member, you know, they had a car, you know, some kind of a car accident and...

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been there. I mean, I've been on the edge of where it's like you have to call and you're trying to figure out refinancing and that takes so much of your time. And then you have to go to a public service to get some help. It's a nightmare.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  It, it is, and I, I think what was, it was one of the more fulfilling things I've ever done in my life. Because I could help someone stay in their home. The more depressing part of it is no matter how many clients I helped, there would always be another client. And it doesn't take away from the people that you helped, but it makes you realize that this is a systemic issue. There is no amount of individual assistance I can provide that will stop this. And that's then what made me think about running for office was understanding that actually, if you want to resolve this, you have to get into the systems and the structures that create these kinds of conditions.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Because there are so many people who you'd think are living a successful, middle-class life, and they're, like you said, they're on the brink.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  And they shouldn't need some intervention from one person to be able to survive. That shouldn't be based on whether or not that person does their job. And in that case, that person was me.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Where does like, you know, rent increase, like the cost of living has gone up? We live in a, in a time, it's really, really tough, right? You talked about a middle-class worker who's just trying to keep his home. Do you think that the American dream is even, is still alive even? But bring up what is the American dream? People have shit damn forgot what it is. It's, the American dream is the belief that anyone in the United States, regardless of where they started, should have a fair chance to build a better, freer and more fulfilling life through ability, effort and opportunity. It's an ideal, not a guarantee.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Look at that, look at that second sentence. I think in many ways that is the issue.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  A fair chance.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  No, it is an ideal, not a guarantee.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Right, it's not, okay, so I see what you're saying. So it's not something that's guaranteed to you, but it should be something that we can feel. And I think it's something that it's like, it's kind of like this tone that resonates inside of everybody here that I have a chance if I show up for myself, if I do my best. Um, you may need a little bit of luck or a little bit of good fortune along the way. I feel like that's always felt like it's been the case, but I feel like that, that, that's starting to dissolve.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  It's slipping away.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And like, it doesn't feel real anymore.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  It, it feels like a thing you can believe in, not a thing you can live. And it needs to be, it needs to be a guarantee.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  If something is just an ideal, it starts to lose its worth. I mean, think about democracy. A lot of people talk about democracy now as an ideal or as a value. And to somebody who can't afford their groceries, they're like, what do I care about a value? What do I care about an ideal? Like, I'll give you an example. To me, the greatest mayor in New York City history, Mayor Fierro LaGuardia. And when he was the mayor, this is about a hundred years ago, he was looking at the fall of democracies in Europe. And he was saying, people are not turning away from democracy because they're tired of liberty. They're turning away because they're tired of being hungry. They're, they're tired of not being able to feed their family. So if democracy doesn't mean the better life that it has to, it'll lose its worth. And the same thing with the American dream. If it's something

• 15:53Speaker 02

  you can only see when you turn on your TV or you hear about that one guy you grew up with who made it, that doesn't mean enough.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  And so to me, it's like, in this city, the reason I'm focused on housing and childcare and groceries, it's like, these are the basic aspects of a good, dignified life, and people can't afford them. I mean...

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I've seen some of the stuff that you've done. You know, I know that you were offering like, um, a night out for parents, you know, the opportunity to go have a, a night out for themselves and to offer childcare to help with that. Tickets for the opera, which is just a chance for somebody to have a new experience. That's all. It's pretty cool, right? Like a lot of quality of life sort of things. I think there's, oh, I know you're working with the stabilization of rent control, right? And a two-year moratorium on an increase?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what the, the independent rent guidelines board, they came out, they said for the next year and the year after that, no rent increase for more than 2 million New Yorkers.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right. And it sounds like to me, it sounds like you're just trying to give people a chance to take a breath, right? That's what it sounds like. I mean, all those things kind of like, you know, I can have a night out, right? I can listen to a music that gives me a bit of peace, right? I can know for a couple of years that the job that I have is gonna equate with the, uh, costs that are gonna be going out, right?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  That's, it is, that is such a beautiful way of describing it, is to take a breath. Because when we talk to parents and we ask them, you know, what are the two most important things that could make a difference in your life? It's time and money.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  And you give them the time of a night out, you take care of the cost of childcare.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it keeps the love going. If you gotta take your lady out.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  You know, go out for a dinner.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, go out for a fish dinner. If you got a little couple of extra bucks, if it's Friday.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Fish dinner.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, if somebody loves you, I think they buy you fish, but...

• 17:40Speaker 02

  What kind of fish is your favorite?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Huh? You know, there's one I don't like, but it smells really bad, but I can never remember which one it is.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm gonna hit you with a couple.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  All right.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Is it Branzino?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  I feel like it. Branzino is the one that was in the mob or something. I don't eat that one.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Huh? Yeah, Branzino.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Was that in the mob?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  He probably was. What are you even talking about? You're gonna tell me Branzino wasn't friggin' involved in some fishy business or whatever?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Saying is if you want some good fish, 31st Street and Broadway, Astoria, Bahari Estatorio. Great, great Greek seafood.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Baharia?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Bahari.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Bahari?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Estatorio?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Estatorio.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Branzino.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Don't ask, he's not a guy there.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Is the fish.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Okay, got it. I got it. Okay. Yeah, I think, but there's, they missed, they, they, there's a lot of misguided with fish because they'll come in with like, every year like a new fish comes out, like barramundi, where was that? My whole life, didn't exist, bam, suddenly.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Who is that?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. It's on the menus. But yeah, he's not running against you, you know what I'm saying? But barramundi.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Who is he?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, barramundi sounds like...

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I thought we dealt with them.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  But me too, but still, then they come in with tilapia, like they come in with...

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Tilapia is a classic.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  But has it always been there? Like, it came out probably 16 years ago, people started talking about tilapia. Then they come in with whitefish. And then a lot of American catfish got replaced with this thing, I think it was called wee fish? Can you look it up? This Vietnamese fish?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Wee fish?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  They snuck it in. They snuck it in, you know? Vietnamese fish dishes commonly feature, no, it's called wee fish. No, Q U E maybe? Q U E?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Queefish?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Queef, well, that's not the clip we need out there.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Okay, it's not.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm just saying, I'll say this.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  I was repeating what you said.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Well, look, I, I do not, never repeat after me, sir. I'll tell you that straight up. But were you looking up? It was a fish that replaced catfish in Louisiana in a lot of restaurants. I think...

• 19:33Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny, cause I was born in Uganda.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  And in, in Kampala or by Lake Victoria, this is...

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Oh, swai. The fish you're thinking of is usually S W A I, a Vietnamese farm-raised pangasius fish, often used as a cheaper substitute for Louisiana, US catfish.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Is this the one you were thinking of?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they snuck it in a while back. I don't know what happened. Swai filets are mild, white, boneless, and usually inexpensive properties that make them suitable for fried fish plates. Anyway, there was a time when they were gaslighting a lot of fish plates with using this or whatever. I don't know if gaslighting is a term, but they were tricking people. They didn't tell you, but you just knew something was off, you know?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Swai.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, swai. It was just a fish, a fish that had happened. Um, anyway.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Do you like it?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  I didn't like it, and I knew something was wrong.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  You knew it wasn't catfish?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I just knew, yeah, I just knew something was wrong and I'd ask and nobody would, you couldn't get any real information, you know? It's kind of like government, you know? I think it's probably like that. Like, you think you have, you think you have this like democracy, but then you start realizing like, something's wrong here, right? Something's a little off, you know? There's some bad fish in here, you know?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  And that's, I don't even know if that was a good comparison, but...

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I, I actually think, have you heard of the term enshitification?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Enshitification?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I haven't.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  I might, I might screw this up a little bit, but my sense of it is that it's a description of how something that is initially successful is then made worse, oftentimes in a pursuit of greater profit. The quality gets worse.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  And profit gets greater.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Stant socks. There was a company called Stant socks, and they had, this is just my judgment, they had the best socks. And then they started getting them, I think, outsourced. Something happened. They started just wanting to make a higher, higher level of money. And it's fair, that's their business, you know? But enshitification, the process where online platforms or digital services progressively degrade in quality over time as they chase maximum profits.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Well, that was gonna be one of my next questions for you, uh, is, yeah, like, do you think that the American dream is still alive? You know, um, I don't know, it used to feel like you did enough work, you did this, and you did these things, and you could have this, you could have a life, right? You could have an existence. What's that graph we were looking at, at earlier, Nick? If you have that, it was about... Yeah, US rent prices versus income since 1986. And you can see that rent prices are up 150%, whereas income is up on average 25%.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I mean, it's.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Right? You're putting people, this is just a slow boiling of people's ability to at some point even have peace. Because if you don't have peace, if you can't like catch your breath, like you're saying, it's like, you just can't operate, you know? Like, you can't live the American dream if you can't get a good night's sleep.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  You know, like if you're stressed out, it's like, you know? And I just think that that's a place where a lot of people are, they've internally, they still have that thing that wants them to be able to do it, right? They're striving, but the external isn't meeting them halfway or even a third of the way anymore, like I feel like it used to.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  It feels like you have to luck out in some big way.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  I mean, in many ways, I feel like it's why a lot of people play the lottery. That's for many, it feels like their only chance.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Well, do you feel like there's like?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Like, people, people think that they have better odds playing the lottery than making it in their own life. What does that say about the country that we live in?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Well, it just feels, now it feels like if you were born in a certain circles, you know, if you have certain DNA, if you have, that there's kind of like a, you do the work and I'll earn the, earn the, earn the wages, I'll earn the money. It feels severely like there's like a trafficking of opportunity. That's what I would say it feels like to me a lot of times.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  And, and to me, one of the greatest things about this country is that the American dream wasn't just held up as an ideal for someone else. It was that you thought it was for you too.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  And the problem is that people, like you're saying, people feel like no matter how hard they work, it's just as far away. They're not getting any closer to it.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Well, they're the only ones holding up their end of the bargain. That's what it feels like. America isn't holding up its end of the bargain anymore.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And I think the tough part of this, if I'm thinking about it from a city level as a mayor.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It's not really your responsibility because you're a city guy. But it is a bigger picture thing.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  The city is a microcosm of the country.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's our biggest microcosm.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Exactly, and, and if you look at it at the city, it's not even like, people are struggling, and it's everybody. It's that we're also the wealthiest city in the world. There's never been a wealthier city than this. So imagine you're living that graph, and then you look outside in your city and you see the kind of wealth that exists here. You realize that it's not for a lack of opportunity being created. It's that that opportunity is being consolidated.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  And that's why, for me, one of the things that I speak about so often is, we have to make this a place where everyone can afford it. Because right now, it feels like the city is becoming a museum. Something a middle-class family can afford to visit once a month, maybe on the weekends.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  We want people to live here. And there's more than enough money for everyone to be able to.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Well, where does, where does greed come into play then? Because that seems like a word that's not maybe spoken about sometimes, I don't know. It just seems like then, at that point, it would seem like some people are just being really greedy.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I think that greed is baked in to a lot of this economy. I think that in just last week, we, we held DoorDash to account.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, congratulations, dude.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Thank you, man.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  That was cool. I mean, I know there were other people that were involved. Who, who was involved?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  I would say the first person I want to give credit to is the, is the commissioner of that agency. The agency is DCWP. Commissioner's name is Sam Levine.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Does a great job.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Thank you, Sam.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  And the people at DCWP, they are doing great work. What they did, they poured through terabytes of DoorDash data. And they found that DoorDash was underpaying or not paying at all more than 260,000 workers for $131.5 million. This is the largest labor settlement in New York City history. $131.5 million.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  That's a lot. That's as much you can have.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  That's a lot of money.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  And, and the thing that I so appreciate about Sam and DCWP is that they're not now going to make those delivery workers jump through a hoop. That money.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  They're gonna hit them with it?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  They're going to the same email that they were registered with, with DoorDash. They have a choice. Do you want it as a check? Do you want it as direct deposit?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Damn, boy!

• 26:29Speaker 02

  And if you don't respond, just send in the check.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  And that to me is, you have to make it easy, you have to make justice easy.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  If you make justice hard, then we're gonna end up with cruelty.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Everything's, well, not everything. And I don't want this to be a dour conversation. Sometimes I can get a little bit dour.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  We're not getting dour.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so, but that's awesome, dude. Oh, God, I should have done fricking DoorDash!

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I think you're doing alright.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Dude, you gotta go after some other companies. I have a list of companies I've worked for that I want you guys to look into.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  The sock one?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Tans?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Oh, Stance?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Stance?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  No, I never worked for them. I've worked at Cold Stone Creamers though for almost 11 months.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Like it, love it, gotta have it.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  I did lie, seven months.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Where did you work from?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I worked at Location 1171.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Where would, I, I know 1172, so I'm not as familiar.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I was outside of Baton Rouge, so, yeah. And people, you know, they like ice cream, but.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Did you have to do the singing?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Uh, I would do it sometimes, but also sometimes I would send, once I was, I had a little bit of seniority, which only took one month because we had a lot of turnover and we had, and we had layoffs. But, um, once I had seniority, I would make the, like, uh, like, I don't wanna say lower level employees, it was just me and one other guy, but I'd make, I'd make Danny go up there.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  What was he singing?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Huh? He'd just sing the happy birthday song, but anyway, we got more important stuff.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. Shout out to Danny, though.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, shout out to Danny, dude. I think he's okay, dude. Actually, I will rat him out a little bit because he had this like, he kind of, this is another problem is some people want to take it too easy. His arms would get too cold from being in the, in the, in where the ice cream was, like in the ice cream aquarium or whatever. And he'd have to go.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Ice cream aquarium?

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Or like whatever you put the ice cream in, the.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Never heard it described.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? Like the thing where the ice cream's in?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  He'd start complaining his arms were too cold and he'd have to go sit on the side and wrap a towel around each arm. So I'm gonna rat him out, Danny. You little fricking cold-armed monkey. Um, anyway, moving on, sir. Um.

• 28:26Speaker 00

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• 30:24Speaker 01

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• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it just feels like, yeah, like, yeah, like, how does greed like, how do you?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Well, I think.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  How do you battle greed? Like, how do you battle it? Like, is that, is that even a real thing that can happen?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes, it is. And I think the reason I even was, was bringing up DoorDash is that the CEO of DoorDash spoke openly about needing to use the greedy algorithm, right? Needing to pursue, like we were talking about in shitification, needing to pursue whatever the path was to highest maximum profit.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  And why did he say it?

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Because to shareholders, profit is all that matters.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Dude, I'd rather lose money on the stock that I invested in and everybody make a fair wage.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. And, and I think the problem is we start to think about everything from the perspective of a shareholder, that people have to make more and more and more money. And these companies look at the products they have and they say, how can I create more money? I have to drive up the margin and I can only do that by breaking the law, driving down the quality, whatever it may be. And I think to your question, can you hold greed to account? I believe you can. You just have to be willing because it's not an easy thing. And the funny thing is when you do it, the people you're holding to account will pretend like they were gonna get there anyway. DoorDash, morning of the announcement, puts out like a notes apology. It's like a, hey, guys, we just found out.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, long night over here.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  You know, we just, we mistreated some dashers. It sounds like they're talking about like the reindeers that you love. And it's like, you don't care about these guys. But they're like, we just mistreated some dashers to the tune of a hundred and thirty one and a half million dollars.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Just like a post-up, like, yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  So sorry, never gonna do it again. It's like.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Do you, is, is your, is your government, your state, your, is your city government equipped well enough to battle some of those algorithms? Like, do you guys have a technical group that's capable enough? Cause that seems like a place where a lot of these companies sort of are hiding in sort of this, um, place that's not as brick and mortar, where you can't send like a, you know, an employee to go over there and just be a surveyor or be a, um, like a.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Inspector.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Inspector, yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  I think that's the only reason we were able to hold them to this account was because, again, Sam Levine, DCWP, they have incredible city workers at DCWP who literally pour through terabytes of data. And one of the things that's so exciting is this isn't just a settlement where DoorDash delivery workers will get money. Fifteen million of this, roughly around fifteen hundred, I think about sixteen and a half million, is civil penalties and fines. From that money, we're developing our own app that the DoorDash delivery workers can use to record their use of the DoorDash app. So when DoorDash gives us its data, we will also have the same, the workers who worked, giving us their version of the data to cross-reference it.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Man, that seems like so much extra work just because somebody doesn't want to be honest, though.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta plan for a lack of compliance as opposed to expect that you'll get it.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And who was the company, who owned that company that was doing that? Like, who was allowing that to happen on their watch?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  And that's DoorDash.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  But who's the owner of it? Who's the owner of DoorDash?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  About to find out.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  But who's the CEO of it? Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of DoorDash is?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Tony Hsu.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Tony Hsu. Hey, Tony. What's up with Hsu, bro? Pay up, dog. Come on, bro. And Tony, he knew what's, he knows what's popping, Tony, what's going on. And that's allegedly Tony Hsu. We don't know. We don't have an attorney. So that's just allegedly him. And that's allegedly how you even pronounce his name. Um, but yeah, don't dash on your workers like that, Tony. That didn't seem cool. Um, Zaron, let's go into like, let's go into a common ground, actually, that both of us had. Like, we both went to the nurses' strike.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Can I, can I reach over and dap you up?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll do it.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Type shit. We both.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  We need a type shit at this point, dude. Just for even being alive, bro. We should have a type shit day for the entire country where everybody.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  It's actually what I'm here to announce. Didn't know that you were gonna join me in this.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Type shit, man. Just because we're go, people are going through it, bro. And we're able to feed and house ourselves, man, and people are really going through it.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  You know, when, when the parents drop their kids off for that night?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  For the night of what?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  For the, for the, for the parents' night out when, when we're doing childcare for the kids.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Everybody just says it right after they drop the kids off.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  That's, that's it. Now, once the kids are out of earshot, the kids do not need to be hearing this.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Do not need to hear this.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  No, but once they're out, I wanna see parents high fiving with a TS between them, brother. Hey, uh-huh. One thing that we have in common is the nurses' strike. We both went out. My sister's a nurse, right?

• 35:22Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's just got a soft spot in my heart and, um, and, and it's probably the job that I admire the most, because it feels like it's one of the places that it's very obvious that someone is putting in their care, right? I mean, their genuine care, their time, taking time, and these are mothers, a lot of them. And so they're taking time away from their own children and their own family members to be there for someone else's, right? Which is, it's such a, um, it's, it's almost the biggest sacrifice you could do would be to love someone, you know, to love someone else solely for their own wellness, right? Um, and, but this, but, but.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  That's a beautiful way of putting it.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I, I saw a fact that those nurses would have to work two hundred years full-time, uh, to make some of the same salaries that some of these CEOs make in just one year at those hospitals.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  I mean, that.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  What are we doing?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  It gets back to the lottery thing. It's like, you don't even have that shot. And it's not that people need to make what that CEO is making, right? Like, we're talking about astronomical figures. But again, to what you were saying earlier, labor is what is creating the value.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  And you have nurses who are pouring everything into their job.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Like, sometimes it's hyperbolic when people describe things as life or death or life-saving. This is literal. This is literal when we describe this as life-saving.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  It's a great point.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  And we can't even pay them.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  We can't, and, and when you go to the picket line and you hear from these nurses, what are they asking for? They're asking for safe staffing. They're asking for better ratios between nurses and patients so they can take care of the patients.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of them had an insane, like, people don't understand the nurse ratios. Some of it, it's like, yeah, how many patients are they responsible for, for each nurse?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  They simply cannot take care of that many patients. And yet that's what's their ask, that's what they're being asked to do.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And safe conditions. They wanted security around some of their parking lots and around some of the hospitals so they could walk safely to their car after work so they don't end up hurt and in the hospital that they work at.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Does this sound like luxury?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  One nurse got hurt after work, they put her in the hospital, then they put her on her own chart. So she had to be the patient and then come and take care of herself.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  That's insane.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  What the heck, dude? That's impossible. And they won't give some of them adequate healthcare. And what are we, that's, it's like, it's almost at the point now where it's like you have to laugh at sometimes. Because, like, they say that police officers, sometimes you'll see them laughing outside of something that, like a murder scene or something very sad. And it's because it's a body's natural way of handling it. And it's just like.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  It's either laugh or cry.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  And I think what's, you know, I, I remember meeting a nurse. I asked her, you know, she let out a big sigh. We were in the elevator together. She let out a big sigh. I was like, how's your day going? She was like, ah, it's going okay. Um, I gotta go home after this. I was like, oh, where's that? She said, I have to drive for two hours. Cause she couldn't afford to live in this city that she's working in. And, and I, like, beyond what that does for her quality of life, beyond what that means about the city, also in terms of safety, you have nurses pouring everything they have into their shift. And then you want that person to get on the road for two hours at night.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Fucking unreal. And it's the same city that like, that would spend all the money on the commercial, let's applaud our COVID nurse, let's be in the front lines. And now they can't even like, they can't, where, where are those commercials now? When you wanna take care of your nurses? Where's that same energy?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  This goes back to what we were saying earlier, which is the difference between a value and something that's material. It's like, we were there to clap. Now, we have to actually take care of these people in a way that isn't just 7:00 PM clapping outside of our window.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Is there a, go on, I'm sorry.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Well, I think that was one of the reasons that I went out on the picket line. And there were these articles written about mayors don't stand on picket lines. Mayors have to remain neutral in a negotiation between workers and management. And Desmond Tutu spoke about a long time ago that neutrality in the face of oppression is choosing injustice.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  And.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  How am I gonna be the mayor who ran on a platform of making the city affordable and then just sit in my office and watch nurses rally for the basics and say, not my fight?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  The basics. Agreed. Dude, if you're not fighting for the underdog anymore, who the fuck are you even fighting for, bro? That's my question. And Desmond Tutu came and spoke to us when I was a student. I was a student on semester at C. I worked in the bookstore there. And, uh, they gave us a chance to go like on this cruise ship. It was like a cruise ship around the world. And I got a scholarship, whatever, and I got to go. But he came and spoke to us on our, on our boat one day. It was pretty cool. Anyway, that's bragging, but.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  That's awesome. That's not bragging, that's facts.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  It was pretty cool. You're right, it's facts.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  But I mean, to your question, if you're not rooting for the underdog, who are you rooting for? You're rooting for the favorite and you're telling yourself they're the underdog. That, that, that's the funny thing is when you talk to people, nobody thinks that they're rooting for the system.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  They think that they're, everyone thinks they're aggrieved by the system.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  But we have to actually address the problems of it.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Do you think you can do that?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  You do?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  I don't think it's easy.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  I don't think it can happen. I don't think we've solved it in, in nine months. But, but I think in nine months, we've started to deliver universal childcare for families. There's two thousand families in the city that are now saving twenty K that they would have otherwise spent. We've shown that we can do the big things, the little things. We've paved two hundred thousand potholes. We've won this hundred and thirty one and a half million dollars back for the working class people who deliver the food that people need to, to stay full. And this, while also saying that so many of the things that annoy so many people, they're gonna be our problem too. I mean, coming up in October, we're launching the nation's first municipal click to cancel

• 41:01Speaker 02

  rule. So what that means is we're gonna have a portal where you can submit any of the subscriptions you have, like, if it's like a Planet Fitness or Peacock or whatever it may be, and you don't know.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  And you guys will cancel it for them?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  That's what we're gonna do.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Let's go, bro. You're gonna do that?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  And then that's the thing is that they, it has to be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's not fair because they trap you, bro, when you call in somebody. Then they're like, meet me under a bridge if you wanna cancel or whatever. Like, what? Our town doesn't even have a river in it. Like, what bridge? Like, it's all, bro, a lot, it's a lot of just a shell game to steal people's money and then your time and then your stress goes up and then you get inflamed and then you have to go to the hospital. You know, that's where it's at. It's like, it's just like, yeah, it feels like kind of a dark game sometimes. It starts small, though, but all those little small things are really starting to add up for people.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  They build.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Some people, and yeah, shout out nurses, man. That's cool. Yeah. Maybe I'll marry a nurse one day. I don't know. Gotta meet one.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Inshallah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Single, uh, but TBD, right TBD, you know?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  You on the apps?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  No, I'm not on that apps. I don't, you know what I don't like?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  What?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  I don't like, were you ever on the apps?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I was.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  You are?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I met, not, no, not now. I was.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Back then, um, I, I met my wife on Hinge.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Nice, bro.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  But it's also, it's not easy.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Oh dude, I don't, oh no, I know it's not. I know it takes a lot of work for people on there. Um, just the, and that's a level of like, you know, you know, well, congratulations. That's cool.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And are you still married?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yes, we're still married.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Okay, great. Oh yeah, I didn't see that. I'm sorry.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Um, let me ask you.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  But, but I do want to answer. The reason why I didn't like it, I don't like somebody being able to tell me no when they're not in front of me.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Like you can look at me and tell me no, cause I do that every day, kind of like somewhere in the dark recesses in my head, you know? But you're not gonna do it from the comfort of your own home, you know? You gotta, you gotta show up.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  See me.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you at least show up. Cause if you show up and tell me no, it's like, I, that's fair, you know? Like you come, you've looked in the window, you've been like, dear.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  You gave me a shot.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. Yeah, you just said, even you just came over, yeah, take a gander, you know? Look, you know, filter, filter. I know it's a bit of a sale rack over here, but filter through, you know? Um, so I think that's why I'm not on them. Um, I want to talk a little bit about socialism, right?

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Please.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  It's a buzzword, right? Cause socialism, will you define socialism for us? Because people say it a lot and don't know what it is, and sometimes those people are me.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Well, I'm, I'm so happy to be with those people right now. Um, socialism to me, it means that you will have whatever you need to live a dignified life. And that it is the government's job to deliver on that.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Right? It's, it's a belief that you shouldn't, you shouldn't live in a place where all you can do is pick your own leaders. You should also be able to have that power in the rest of your life, right? People talk about it as the extension of democracy from the ballot box to the rest of your life. What do people mean by the rest of your life? They mean your workplace, your home, things like that. So when people say dignity, I want to be very clear, we're talking about the things that allow you to take a breath. Housing, childcare, right? Public transit. No one should be priced out of these things. These are non-negotiables. You need these to live. And what I think is so confusing is there's parts of life in our country

• 44:27Speaker 02

  that line up with this belief, right? Public education. Right? We, we believe that everyone should be able to go K through 12 for free.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  And they do. Libraries. We believe that everybody should be able to read a book that they'd like to for free, and they do.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  But when it comes to early childhood education, right? Before kindergarten, we're comfortable with people paying $20,000 a year to afford it.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Cause that's what the cost is, the average cost in the.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  In New York City.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  In New York City right now.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Good deal.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  They did a study that found that for a family of three to afford childcare, they had to make $330,000 a year.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  To live in the city and afford childcare?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  And afford childcare.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  A family of three?

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Three.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  So that means only one child?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Okay. And, and to me, that's kind of, even what used to be enough money 10 years ago, is not enough money. That the struggles of affordability, they apply to a lot more people than people typically think. And, and to me, when, as a socialist, what I'm fighting for is that nobody is priced out of dignity.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  And there's, there's just a comfort right now with living in a country where the market gets to determine everything, not just luxury, but dignity too.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  We say, oh, I'm sorry, I don't have enough money to afford a home.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Makes you feel like, yeah, there's something.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Food.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  It's like, it's, it's.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah. A dad that is like having to maybe watch his kids eat something that he wishes they could eat something better because he can't afford it, even though he worked all day? Like, here's the thing is.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Want him to do?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. What do you want him to do?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Where is he supposed to go?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Right. At that point, it's a level of, you're just, you're creating a level of suffering, right? And people like will say like,

• 46:14Speaker 01

  okay, some of this stuff I don't know exactly about, but I'm just thinking the best that I can. And our listeners know that I don't know about this. So it's like, I'm not gonna pretend that I know a lot about some things about socialism, um, democracy, communism, et cetera.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Right at home in politics.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, good. I mean, you, you explain socialism like I kind of thought it was, right? That's what I, what I, what I thought it was. It feels to me like we're in this kind of privatized communism right now that people don't want to admit to a little bit. Like it feels definitely like the government,

• 46:46Speaker 01

  like it's basically businesses that are running how we operate. It's businesses that are even puppeteering our government. I mean, it seems like that at, at a very high level, especially like when you get into like, you know, lobbies and some of these tech industries and stuff like that. I mean, and I think that's obvious to me by, you have people that were like heads of large companies, especially in the tech sector, who were Democrats last time, but now they're Republicans suddenly. And people like, oh, that's just odd, you know? It's not odd. It's just because of the opportunity, I feel like, to be some sort of a puppeteer, right? But outside of that, like, we've, people want to, there's this desire inside of us, I feel like, as a, just an American person, that you want to believe in capitalism, right? You want to fight for capitalism.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Because that feels like what's fair. That feels like what's always been there. But now it feels like, like so much is owned by just a 1%, right? That's like, like, how can you believe in, if there's no capital to ism, you know? What are, what are you still fighting for, right?

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  And I do understand though, that people, I understand when people like socialism, you can't put the government in charge of everything. But at a certain point, if capitalism is not working for everybody, if it's only working in theory, and every, and 1% own everything and have just monopolized everything and squeezed it into, you know, it just into themselves and into their own chest. If there's a level of greed that's that big, then you have to do something to take care of people.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  At that point, it's not humane to still believe in something that doesn't seem like it's working. I'm not saying I know everything about capitalism. I don't, and I don't even know why I'm kind of agitated, but.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't need.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  But it's not, but if it's not working, then something has to be done. And so that's like, but when people hear socialism, they get very scared, right? So, or, or is it like kind of a new idea of socialism that you're pitching? Or is it just that, that there's no other way out? Because for me, I don't know, I, I wouldn't describe myself as a socialist. I believe in democracy. That's sort of like, I think.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the building block of socialism.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  And, and I would say is that you don't need to have a PhD in this.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  You just need to walk outside, look at the world that you live in, and ask yourself, is this enough?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Well, is this working also too? It's like, how long do we want to keep like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like putting your fantasy team out there every week and you're like, they fuck, they've been bad for like, one guy's a hundred, one guy's 77, one guy's Mitch McConnell, who doesn't even know he's a guy anymore. It just like, you know, you start to look at like, if something isn't working, then even if there's a guy who will come in and has a sort of a hail Mary idea, even if it is a hail Mary idea to some people, right? I would, there's something about, at least that's something different.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Right? Like, that's the part of me that like, um, I'm not saying that I'm a socialist or that I'm, you know, I'm a capitalist. Shit, I, I practice capitalism. I, I work in it. You know, there's things I don't like about it, but I still take part in it. So it's tough for me to be angry at a system that I also cooperate with and work in, but, um.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  But I think the, the other thing is.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Am I making any sense?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  You're making a lot of sense.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  But yeah, just like, what else can we, I feel like we're at a point where there, you have to do something.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  And, and I think that the contradictions that you're talking about, those are the ones that everyone is living through. We're all living through capitalism. And you might be doing well, and at the same time, you can still feel anguish about the fact that there are other people working just as hard who aren't. And they never will, because they don't have a shot. And the only thing, like if we keep, you know, I keep going back to this, this thing of the lottery. It's like, the chances of hitting it are so low, and yet people see it as higher with the chances in their own life. And it effectively ends up becoming a tax on the poor. And, and, and what we're talking about is how do you bring some humanity back into what you guarantee to everyone?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  And oftentimes people will say it's idealistic, and I just go back to LaGuardia, the, the mayor of about a hundred years ago. And he said, I'm gonna go right on with my idealism, because it is an idealism that delivers for everyone who lives here. And that to me is, is, if you're, if you're not fighting for them, then what are you doing?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  If you're fighting to just keep this system.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that, that's, yeah, that's crazy.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  You know, and we don't, we don't want the same thing with a different face and a different name and a different, we want something different. And I think.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  It's like fucking, this has been a long Halloween, bro. This like,

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  This like system that we've been living in. It's been a fucking, it's been a long Halloween for a lot of people.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  You were saying earlier, you know, what do you do, right? I think implicit in that is like, you feel this, then what do you do? I mean, the, the place that I found as my political home was an organization called The Democratic Socialists of America. And this was a place where I would just go for meetings. I would meet people who felt the same way. And

• 51:44Speaker 02

  first you would realize that you're not alone. You're not nuts. You are actually part of something much bigger than yourself, and you can be as well. And it feels like when people go through life, the further they get away from school, the more isolated they start to become from the world around them.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And that is also a function of a society where people are what they call increasingly atomized, just separated out. And so much of the fabric that we used to have, it started to come apart at the seams. And for me, being a member of this organization, it was something that opened my eyes to how to make sense of it, and also what I could do to change it. And that was something that, it didn't just help me with my anxiety. It also just helped me with my sense of my place in the world. Where it was like, okay, I feel this way. Here's a candidate that feels the same. I'm gonna go and knock on doors for them. And that's what I did for a lot of years. I would just go out there, I would knock on doors, door after door after door.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  And one of the most radicalizing things is when you knock on somebody's door, they open their door, they invite you into their home, and you see the life that they live. And you ask yourself, how can this be okay in a city this wealthy? You knock on a door, you're there to ask them, are they gonna vote in an election in three weeks? And it's an older man in Bay Ridge, and he says, come in, come into my apartment. And he's proud and he's welcoming you. And you look at this man, he's north of 80 years old, he's alone. And you're like, how is this life?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  This man has worked his whole life. And how is this how we treat him?

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Sorry, I know you said you didn't want to be dour. I don't think it has to be dour, though.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  But yeah, so doesn't, does our government already kind of practice socialism with some of their policies? A lot of the things, a lot of the programs that they're supposed to have are already a form of socialism, isn't it?

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yes, there are, there are socialistic policies we have.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  The point is, how do we actually expand that so that everyone gets to benefit from it?

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Like, and you think about whenever people come forward with an idea of taking care of working people, it is slammed with the most kind of fear mongering tactics you can think. When the idea of social security was introduced, it was described as trying to Sovietize the republic. That's how people talked about it. And now social security is the most normal thing you could think of in this country.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  And, you know, right now, we're trying to build five city-run grocery stores. Why? Because the cost of groceries has gone up 30% since the pandemic. People can't afford their groceries. And we're gonna have one city-run grocery store in each borough, and there's gonna be a 30% discount on the essential items. The idea is so that people can afford to go to the grocery store, they can afford to feed their families.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  And you'll hear a lot of fear mongering around it, but the basic question to me is, what's the point of government if not delivering for people who are being priced out of the essentials?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  That's a key part of it.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Well, government's been working for the elite for a long time, it feels like, or it feels like, that certainly feels like what's happening more than ever. And now it feels very exposed, it feels very out in the open, especially when there's like a trove of emails, like connecting a lot of them, you know, involving certain crimes or alleged crimes. Um, whenever you ran for office, some of your campaigning was calling out Trump for, um, his broken promises, right, that, that he campaigned on, right? Uh, cheaper groceries from day one, no forever wars, and helping the working class, right? How do you work together with someone, um, that you've had so many public disagreements with,

• 55:24Speaker 01

  but then keep that energy when you have to go into a meeting in order to, um, like, make deals so you can get done what you do need done for yourself?

• 55:35Speaker 02

  I think-

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Sorry, God, you think it would be easier for me?

• 55:37Speaker 02

  No, please, I understood what you were saying.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Um, I think-

• 55:41Speaker 01

  If you knew earlier, you should have cut me off, dude, because I'm fricking, what are you doing out there?

• 55:46Speaker 02

  You think I'm gonna be like, I got you, man, I got you. No, I'm gonna let you finish your question.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Please, and also another thing I'm lobbying for, word life guards. I want them in the streets when somebody can't get through a sentence, a word life-

• 55:56Speaker 02

  What do you want them to do?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Come up and just help you get there, is what I need.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Do they stop you, or do they give you the word?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Whatever, just put a little buoy on you and help you get to the end of a sentence sometimes.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Don't worry, brother, this is how it ends.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Okay, there we go, yeah, that's it. Uh, anyway, if you can answer that-

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Word life guards.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Answer that question, because, because you've had to make, because you needed federal funding, right? For some, you have to, you have to, you have to maintain that you keep your federal funding in the city.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Okay, good, thank you.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  All right, um, a couple of things. First is, you have to be honest about the fact that you still have disagreements. If you campaigned saying you have disagreements, then you get elected, and then you're like, actually, we're all good. It's like, you're just a part of the problem, you're part of why people don't believe in politics anymore. And so, the president and I still have disagreements, we talk about them whenever we meet. And also, the point of those meetings is not just to say, I believe this, you believe that, it's also, okay, where's there a place where we could work together to deliver on something? And so, when we met recently at Gracie Mansion, uh, I brought up this idea we talked about in the White House called Sunnyside Yard.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  It's a rail yard in Queens in a neighborhood called Sunnyside, where you could build a platform over the rail yard, and then you could build housing on the platform. And in this city, the number one driver of the cost of living crisis is a lack of affordable housing. So this project would create 12,000 homes, 30,000 jobs, be the most homes in a single project since the early 1970s.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  You can only do it with the federal government. So the president and I, we spoke about this, I pitched it to the president-

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Why you can only do a federal government because they own the rail yards?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, anthrax, federal authorization, and also the scale of funding required.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Okay, got it.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Um, and so when I went to the White House the last time, I pitched it to him, I brought him, uh, a mock-up of a newspaper, there was a famous Daily News newspaper headline, the president Ford said, it said Ford to New York, drop dead. And I brought him that, and I brought him a mocked up version where it says, Trump to New York, let's build. Like, this is what the future could look like. And then in this last meeting at Gracie Mansion, he agreed, okay, let's set up high-level meetings between your housing and operations team, and our White House about how we can move forward on this. And that doesn't mean we don't have disagreements on other issues, you know, we talked about them in that meeting, we talked about them before. But it also means, if there's an opportunity, take it to deliver for people, because that's also my job.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  I don't just want to be a person who tells you about what I think, I want to also be a person who proves to you that you can trust and believe in government. And, and to the point of, the way that you were describing some of the president's early platform, you know, when we were talking about cheaper groceries, we were talking about the working class, we were talking about making for a city you can afford, about 60,000 New Yorkers who voted for the president, voted for us in, in the election. And that, to me, shows that for all of this impetus in politics where you want to judge someone, and you want to cast them off as if, oh, they voted for them, you could never talk to them, or things like that, there are a lot of people who are just looking for someone to change their material reality.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  And your time is better spent listening to them than lecturing them. I mean, that's the point of political office should be to listen to people, and then work on what they've told you.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  I think we keep getting all these questions of like, you know, what is the Democratic Party, where is it headed? This, that, and the other, what does this consultant think, what does this ex-Democrat think? To me, it's like, what is the Democratic Party if not its voters? And you're hearing from Democratic voters across the country, they want change. You even heard it from Republican voters.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Well, they're all the same voter these days, people will try to pigeonhole, like, yeah, when pigeonholing's kind of bizarre, like, people would pigeonhole me as like this sort of MAGA guy, like, um-

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Do you know where the term pigeonhole comes from?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  No, uh, let's look it up.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  I hope it's not a sexual thing.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  I, I pray to God.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  If it is, probably-

• 59:58Speaker 02

  If it is, you're reading it.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Well, if it is, it's someone in your line of work who's been involved in it, I'll say that. The phrase pigeonhole originated in the 1500s as a little, literal term for a small nest, recess or opening in a dove coat-

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  -where domesticated pigeons live, or a dove soot, what's a dove soot? In a dove soot, or is it dove, dove coat? Can you look up dove soot for me?

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Colmarium.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, it's taken us, this is what it's doing, see, this is how it happens, this is politics.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Colmarium T S T S.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Is, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a, a colmarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Um, so, just-

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  It's okay, no, it's good. Dude, what are you talking about? Um, but yeah, people try to pigeon, people try to pigeonhole, they try to pigeonhole voters. I don't think voters are, think that they're Democrat or Republican anymore, but everybody I talk to is like, there's not a side anymore. All of this is run, it feels like, by a higher cabal, that's every, because it doesn't feel real anymore. It feels like Bernie got railroaded by his party, they never even had a primary. We tried to have Kamala on our podcast, she didn't want to come on, right, so Trump would come on. But everybody does want to pigeonhole, I guess it makes it easier for us, I mean, I probably, I'd probably do it too, I'm sure, you know, I'll have to read up and look on it.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's easier to categorize if you put everybody in a box.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Right, it's easier to categorize.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  And it also absolves you of responsibility.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  What responsibility does it absolve you of?

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  If you're a politician, and you look at a voter and you say, well, they're in that box, it means that you don't have to try anymore.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  You don't have to reckon with why they might have chosen that box.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Right, so often people talk about this like it's faded, like people are forever that thing. And to me, it's like, every day is an opportunity to win someone over. And if you're just caught up in the fact that someone wasn't always with you, then you're never going to actually build something bigger than yourself. If you just want day ones all the time-

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Then it's like, well, how many people were your day ones, like, shout-outs to your day ones? But you also need to build a coalition that goes beyond that.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's interesting, and some of it is just for safety, it's, some of it is operating systems that we just use for safety, and because it's been, what's always been done, you know? And some of it is familial as well, you, your parents were this, and so you're that. But I think people believe that these walls have dissolved, that there isn't really, that there's not really two sides anymore. It's, from what I gather, just as, I'm a pretty, I feel like I'm a pretty regular guy, um, that, and that's a crazy thing to say, that sounds crazy for even a guy to say that, so I'm probably not. But it seems like, um, people don't believe that there's any side anymore. Just so you know, and it doesn't matter, what I'm saying, just so you know, fuck, I don't know, but what I'm saying is,

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  it seems, it seems like that, like, people don't believe either one of these sides anymore is like a real side.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  Can I ask a question to the team?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  How many people voted in the last presidential election?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Two, two of five.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, sorry. I didn't mean how many people in here. I mean, how many people in the United States of America?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Your owners didn't even vote.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  I was like, PS 41, what does that have to do with this?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  What is happening here? In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% of the city voting age population was registered to vote and 65.3 voted, according to new voting and registration tables. So 65.3% voted in the 2024 presidential election.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  So almost about a third did not vote?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  And I mean, I think the reason I asked that was.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Could be disinterest.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  When you're talking about people don't see themselves as part of a side, people are choosing a new side, which is to be uninvolved.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  You know, it goes back to that early thing of like, you get my money, you don't get my time. And, and I think that there's a lot of times when you get closer and closer to election day, where it feels like a politician is lecturing you, like why you need to vote. And it's like, actually, I need to convince you that this is worth your time, because time is the most precious thing you have. I need to show you that this is relevant to your life. A lot of people look at the struggles in their life and then they look at the politics they're offered and they're like, this has nothing to do with me.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  And to me, it's how do we, how do we eliminate the distance between the two? So that's why we're just as focused on a pothole as we are on universal childcare, because you look outside your window, you see a pothole, you're like, how could I believe that that same government that can't fix this could do that? It has to be one that does both. And, and then you will slowly start to get people to believe again, but they don't owe you that belief.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, I love hearing it and I'm hopeful that, yeah, that anybody can do something different. I think that's what people are like, people at this point would be shocked if somebody can do something different, you know? I think that, I feel like that that's how kind of in a place that people are. And I don't think they're in a place of disarray, like hopelessness for themselves entirely, but I do feel like there's a hopeless melee, there's, there's somewhat of a hopelessness sometimes for a society and the democracy that we have. That's what I feel like. And also, who gives a shit what I think?

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  But I do, I mean, people do, but, but also what you're describing is what a lot of people share.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Like, a lot of people have shared a sense of hopelessness. And we have to remember there, there's this writer and organizer, her name is Mariam Kaba, she talks about hope is a discipline. You have to practice hope. And you can't, you won't just wake up one morning and naturally feel it. It comes from what you do. And, and to me, it's also, we have to make it easy for people to hope. And that comes from, from our work. That's our job.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Recently, they had Netanyahu was in town, right? The big dog, or some people call him, or the genocider. That's kind of, that's one of the terms I'll loosely use a lot of times when referring to him. But he was in town and you, you guys had talked about, you guys had talked about having to arrest him when he came into town originally. But that wasn't something that you actually had a jurisdiction that could do, or, or tried to keep him out of New York City? Was that the case? That it wasn't like a?

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  It was, when we, you assess all of the, the legal framework that you have, it is the federal government that if they were to join the International Criminal Court, they could enforce a warrant. So just to the point here.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  The ICC, right? That people talk about, but we're not a member of that.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  We're not. But I believe that we should become a member, that we should enforce its warrants, because I think this gets back to the question of, you know, when you're asking, can you hold greed to account? Can you hold impunity to account? And the more people see someone break a rule or a law, and it is, there is no accountability for that.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Or a morale, or a thing of moral conscience, maybe? I don't know the terms.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  It calls into question whether that has any worth anymore. And we always speak about the laws, the international laws of, of the world, the things that started to be created after World War II, the United Nations, the idea of multilateralism, and the lack of enforcement of it also calls it into question. So that's what I believe, that the US government should join the ICC, it should enforce its warrants for everyone that has, that has been issued. And when it comes to the prime minister, it's been issued for crimes, alleged crimes against humanity and, and war crimes.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  A lot of people are upset about what goes, what's going on in Gaza, right? And I think specifically because it's been one of the most, it's been the first genocide that's been heavily kind of televised, I'll say, like on our phones and in social media. How do you keep people from like misdirecting energy that's against Israel towards like their Jewish friends, right? Cause I'll talk about it with my Jewish friends. So we have like a good relationship about it. Like they know how I feel and I know how they feel. And so it's like a comfortable like existence. But I think some people maybe don't have some of those conversations and they don't know if it's okay to maybe bring them up or they don't know. Or sometimes it's their boss and they don't know if they can talk about it. What do you, like, how would you manage some of that? Because you also have

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  to manage it on an even larger kind of scale, because you know, you're the mayor in like a city that's like, has a large Jewish population.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  And, and that's one of the things that I'm proud of, is that we live in the most Jewish city in the United States of America. And to me, it's, it's being very clear. One, that no Jewish person in New York City is responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. And if you want to hold anybody accountable, it's the people who are making those decisions, the prime minister, the state of Israel, also our complicity as American taxpayers, given that we know how many billions of dollars we have sent in bombs and continue to send. And then I think it's, it's also being very clear about, you know, actually just today, we released the first plan at a municipal level anywhere in the country to combat antisemitism and listing out the ways that we would do so. And one of the

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  things is not only ensuring that, you know, when antisemitism takes place, that you condemn it, but also that you do the work to prevent it. And, and, and also being very clear that critique of the state of Israel, the, you know, the policy actions, the genocide, that in and of itself is not antisemitic.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. Speak up about it. You know, if you feel something, you should be able to say something. We're alive. This is our only chance to be alive.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  And, and we're talking about, when you asked me about the prime minister, we're talking about the architect of a horrific genocide. And I think what's so, there have been all these attempts, you know, people talk about a ceasefire. Just last week, the Israeli military killed an 11 year old boy, Palestinian boy in Gaza, in a section that's considered to be a safe zone. This is continuing and.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Oh, it's unbelievable, man.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  And, and last week I had a number of Palestinian families from Gaza come to Gracie Mansion, where I live as, as the mayor of New York City. And to hear from them about the way that their lives have been shattered. You know, you, you meet two sisters and their mother, and they tell you that the same airstrike that injured one of them ended up killing two of their brothers, that, that they lived in a tent, that their father, that the father in that family is still there. You speak to an older grandmother and at the end of the meeting, she just comes up and says like, can you bring my son here? And having to tell

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  her like, I will try, but as the mayor, I, I can't promise you that. And, and all these people want is what everybody wants. They just want their family, they want safety, they want dignity. And to know that not only have we watched as that has been stripped from them, but that we're financing it.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  It is this conversation that you and I are having about faith in government. One of the reasons people don't have faith is they look at the kinds of things that governments do. They say, why would I believe in that?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why would I even associate myself with it at times?

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  And, and so you have to stop those things if you ever want anyone to believe. And you have to stop them also for the morality of it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Do you think, what do you think is this, like, yeah, how do we move forward from that? Like this as a regular citizens, like?

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think I've been asked about where do we go from here? And, you know, we have 2028 coming up and a big question of, of what happens after this administration?

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  And I think that there has to be a commitment to a different kind of future. There has to be, you know, we're talking about reckoning with this. What will you do that's different? How will you deliver something else other than thousand pound bombs? And I hear that from New Yorkers all the time. And I hear it from a wide variety of New Yorkers. And, and I think it has to be a big part of, of what comes next, is a politics of humanity, not just for the people that we represent at home, but also the people that were bombing abroad.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  But if you had your say, we would have arrested the guy, you think?

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  If I had my say, the US government would have joined the ICC, honored every single warrant that they've issued.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Fuck yeah. Sorry to say it like that, but yeah, I don't know. It's just crazy to see that guy speaking on our, on our country. It's almost unbelievable.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  I was, I was, I mean, he.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  And he called you out too?

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Was that weird? Was that scary?

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  It was, it was strange. I mean, I was, I was having a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands at the LGBTQ Center in downtown Manhattan. Then I.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  And he's a gay guy?

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  The Prime Minister? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  I've never seen him before.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  He's, he's very handsome.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  He is? Okay, good. I don't know. I, I don't, yeah, I'm trying to be, yeah. Hello, sir.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Very nice guy.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, good guy. But so you were, you were meeting with him and?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  I was meeting with him and, and the director of the LGBTQ Center and a number of, of younger queer New Yorkers. They were talking about what that center meant to them, to have a place where they could go and be themselves and learn about, you know, the history of the queer community in New York City. And then I get back from that meeting and it's like, oh, by the way, here's, here's what he was saying at the UN. All right.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  It's so bizarre.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Did it feel personal then?

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  I mean, he, he'll, all of this is an attempt to distract.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  From responsibility. Name as many people as possible, try and make it into a back and forth. It's not about me and him.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  It's about the fact that he's the architect of a genocide.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  And it's like, yeah, if I was the architect of a genocide, I would probably talk about anything but that.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's a good point.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting time to be alive. I think it's probably an interesting time to be, uh, deep, going further into politics. You know, a position that a lot of people don't trust these days.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Understandable.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Um, and yeah, I don't know exactly where all my laurels lie, but I do love getting to learn about it, you know? And, um, yeah, and thanks for just, thanks for talking about the, about a little bit about the genocide. Yeah. And just what's going on over there. I do feel like it's okay to speak about it. And, um, and then it's gotten, people have been more comfortable with speaking about it. And, um, yeah, and a lot of people are afraid to speak about it in politics.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  And, and I think, one thing I would just say is, your curiosity is a beautiful thing. It is, because that is also how you understand the world. And none of us are experts on any of these things.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's our first time being alive, you know?

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  So people try to shame others for not knowing the answer when they're asking the question. But there's a beauty in asking the question.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  The question is also such a critical part of it. And then listening to someone else for the answer. And, and I think to, to your point, to, the reaction that we're talking about is also a human reaction to watching something horrific, seeing it, knowing that we're complicit in it and asking ourselves, what is there to do? And I think raising your voice is one thing. And I think understanding that no matter what box you put yourself in, that there's a complicity across both parties when it comes to this. And to me, you know, I, I think about, there's, there's a book that came out by a writer named Omar Al Akad. One day, everyone will always have been against this.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  And the reason that stays in my head is it's such a succinct way of describing the fact that the more years pass, the more people will feel comfortable coming forward and saying, that was horrible. And we'll eventually get to a point where some of the people responsible will start to say, that was horrible. And just know that you are not crazy in thinking these things. And our job is not to pat ourselves on the back for when we got to it. It's about to do everything that we can to bring an end to it.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  And bring an end to this and, and make it easier for people to hope again. That's the work.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Cool, man. Well, yeah, thanks for thinking about it.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  That is hope. And you have to, you have to stay hopeful. That's a thing that I just, it won't disappear from us for some reason. That's something pretty special, isn't it?

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Well, you gotta believe.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  That, yeah, that somehow we always are able to keep some hope. That's exciting. That makes me think, yeah, that, yeah, that's exciting.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, Mr. Mamdani, thanks for your time. Good luck in politics, bro.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Mr. Vaughn?

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  TSTs.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  TSTs. Thank you.