Our guest is Jonathan Mahler, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of the new book, Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990. With New York on the verge of electing a socialist, Muslim, anti-Zionist mayor, I asked Jonathan how the city has changed over the last three decades, and how those changes enabled the rise of Zohran Mamdani.
Topics include:
The nature of the anxiety of Mamdani’s opponents
What a Mayor Mamdani could and couldn’t do to effect change
New York racism, past and present
The evolution of black politics in New York
What Mamdani’s ascent tells us about the future of the Democratic party and the DSA
