Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a best
Speaker 1: selling author and a staff writer for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Mahler's first book, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning,
Speaker 1: was adapted into a mini series for ESPN. His second book,
Speaker 1: The Challenge, won the Scribes Book Award in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine. In the world of sports journalism, Jonathan Mahler
Speaker 1: has been featured in the anthology book series The Best
Speaker 1: American Sports Writing, and has received numerous journalism and media
Speaker 1: awards throughout his career. Mahler's latest book, released this past summer,
Speaker 1: is entitled The Gods of New York The Tumultuous Eighties
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square Riots. Raised in
Speaker 1: Palm Springs, California, I was curious where Jonathan Mahler's fascination
Speaker 1: with New York originated from.
Speaker 2: I was born in New York. Both my parents were
Speaker 2: New Yorkers. My father was a working class Jewish kid
Speaker 2: from the Bronx who you got himself into Bronx science
Speaker 2: and went off to medical school, also in New York,
Speaker 2: and was offered a job out in California at a
Speaker 2: hospital out there, and you know, he had barely left
Speaker 2: New York, and I thought he was like, well, this
Speaker 2: is the dream, you know, moved to California, raised my
Speaker 2: family out there. So we moved to Palm Springs, and
Speaker 2: my mom hated it from day one and couldn't wait
Speaker 2: to move back to New York and find you way
Speaker 2: there for a while. I was there, really my whole childhood.
Speaker 1: I moved back.
Speaker 2: I was in college when they moved back, and they
Speaker 2: actually made a deal because my mom was a smoker,
Speaker 2: lifelong smoker, and my father's a doctor. My father said,
Speaker 2: if you quit smoking, we'll move back to New York.
Speaker 2: And then what happened next was that they moved back
Speaker 2: to New York. My mom quit smoking. She was so miserable.
Speaker 2: My dad said, please start smoking again. So she got
Speaker 2: everything she wanted. She got to move back to New
Speaker 2: York and continue smoking.
Speaker 1: What was it about New York that he he didn't
Speaker 1: want to go, he wanted to stay.
Speaker 2: Well, he just you know, he was a workaholic, and
Speaker 2: he was so devoted to his patients that he for
Speaker 2: him his life was going to the hospital, seeing patients
Speaker 2: in his office, making it a practice.
Speaker 1: He had a practice.
Speaker 2: He worked seven days a week, and so you know,
Speaker 2: he had a little, a little snippet of time on
Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon when he would sit by the pool and
Speaker 2: you know, read a medical journal. So for him, it
Speaker 2: was it worked out great. But my mom couldn't stand it.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to me that you have written three books, correct,
Speaker 1: The Box is Burning, Challenge, and then this book now
Speaker 1: Gods of New York. They were born in New York,
Speaker 1: but you're not a lifelong New Yorker. You know, a
Speaker 1: big part of your youth was outside New York. What
Speaker 1: is it about New York? Because I mean, we both
Speaker 1: everybody has their opinions as to why do we stay? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so challenging, it's so tough. Why do we stay? Yeah?
Speaker 2: It's funny because I grew up in California, but I
Speaker 2: always felt like a New Yorker because both my parents
Speaker 2: were in New Yorker. I'd rooted for the Yankees and
Speaker 2: the Giants and the Knicks. Really from birth, inherited that
Speaker 2: from my father, and we would come back every you know,
Speaker 2: of every chance we got. My mom would bring us
Speaker 2: back to New York, which was, you know, really every year.
Speaker 2: I mean we'd come at least once, so I felt
Speaker 2: always connected to New York. It was always like the
Speaker 2: place where I should be.
Speaker 1: Living, I think.
Speaker 2: And by the time I got out of college, my
Speaker 2: parents had moved back here, and so it became kind
Speaker 2: of naturally the place to move. And once you kind
Speaker 2: of settle in in New York, it's so hard to
Speaker 2: leave if it worked for you. Yeah, exactly, particularly because
Speaker 2: not only because it's so hard to sort of find
Speaker 2: a way to make it work that once you do,
Speaker 2: you don't want to give it up, but also because
Speaker 2: New York is it's always changing. You know, you're always
Speaker 2: going to new neighborhoods, discovering new neighborhoods, new restaurants. Your
Speaker 2: life here, I feel like it doesn't feel static in
Speaker 2: the way that it might in other places, so you
Speaker 2: just don't get bored with it.
Speaker 1: I think, well, I think that if you have an
Speaker 1: escape from New York, that makes everything a lot different.
Speaker 1: If you can't go anywhere else, if you have no
Speaker 1: other option, New York can be very very onerous in
Speaker 1: that way of your spending the summer there in the
Speaker 1: hot summer. But now for you, where did you go
Speaker 1: to College of Northwestern? I went to Northwestern? Yea in Chicago,
Speaker 1: And did you study journalism there?
Speaker 2: I studied English literature there actually, but I did start
Speaker 2: working on the paper there, so that's kind of what
Speaker 2: got me launched. So even though I was an English major,
Speaker 2: I worked on the college paper.
Speaker 1: Why, well, what attracted you to then? You know?
Speaker 2: I guess I feel like as I kind of worked
Speaker 2: my way through college and started to think about what
Speaker 2: I might want to do, I realized that the only
Speaker 2: thing I knew I was like pretty good at was
Speaker 2: thinking and writing. And then the idea of you know,
Speaker 2: going out into the world and not spending all my
Speaker 2: days kind of at a desk was appealing to me.
Speaker 2: The idea that I might have a career kind of
Speaker 2: engaging with people and thinking and writing reporting, reporting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I thought I would maybe be interested in giving
Speaker 2: it a try. So I did it at my senior
Speaker 2: year really at Northwestern, and then I graduated and thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going I'm going to give this a shot and
Speaker 2: see how it goes. Moved to New York and try
Speaker 2: to be a journalist and if it works out, great
Speaker 2: and if it doesn't.
Speaker 1: How did it begin?
Speaker 2: My first job was actually at the McNeil LAIRR News Hour.
Speaker 1: How did you pull that off? How?
Speaker 2: I just applied for an internship there and remarkably was
Speaker 2: able to get one, which I loved and you know,
Speaker 2: sort of sad to see what's happening to public television.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Of course that's a separate story, but I felt like
Speaker 2: I wanted to I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Write how long were you there with them?
Speaker 2: I was there about six months, I think, so recall Yeah,
Speaker 2: not very long, no, because it was an internship.
Speaker 1: It was just to get me. Well, what did you
Speaker 1: pick up on that in terms of I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I liked both of them and I liked that show,
Speaker 1: but it was among the starchiest news programs in my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those guys were pretty old school. Did you absorb that? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm here and what do they want from me?
Speaker 2: I mean what they wanted from me mostly was was
Speaker 2: lunch orders.
Speaker 1: And coffee, but it was that face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think I occasionally, you know, contributed
Speaker 2: some research to some stories.
Speaker 1: Was basically the extent of my work.
Speaker 2: It was a real inter yeah, true internship, but I
Speaker 2: mean those guys were amazing. I mean, Robert McNeil was
Speaker 2: an inspiring figure just because he had been a foreign correspondent.
Speaker 2: He had just he had this kind of gravatas, like
Speaker 2: the kind of qualter Cronkite type gravatas, and he was
Speaker 2: so cultured and so well read, and it was just
Speaker 2: he was a certain kind of newsman that you just
Speaker 2: felt like, Wow, that guy's amazing, Right.
Speaker 1: They took the obligation very seriously, totally. Yeah, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he loved it. Where do you go after McNeil?
Speaker 3: Lay?
Speaker 2: After that, I worked at the Wall Street Journal's wire service,
Speaker 2: the Dow Jones News Service, and I was a wire
Speaker 2: service reporter there. I mean a lot of people probably
Speaker 2: even know what a wire service is, because I think
Speaker 2: that them barely exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They were these kind of news services that provided stories
Speaker 2: to newspapers all around the world, and they worked on
Speaker 2: a very kind of hyperactive schedule. Let's say, I mean
Speaker 2: you were kind of writing all the time. Newsrooms would
Speaker 2: have these little kind of teletype machines and they would
Speaker 2: spit out these stories from the wire services, and they
Speaker 2: would rip them off and use them ass copy in
Speaker 2: their newspapers. So I did that writing about you know,
Speaker 2: financial news for four years and.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it was grueling, grouling.
Speaker 1: What about it made you stay? Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I was sort of moving up.
Speaker 2: I started as a real kind of general assignment reporter,
Speaker 2: where I was I was really just writing. I'm essentially
Speaker 2: rewriting press releases, you know, forty press releases a day.
Speaker 2: And then I became a proper reporter and so I
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, was able to kind of grow
Speaker 2: a little bit there, even though I didn't really love
Speaker 2: the job. So I was kind of looking for what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do next at that point, and I
Speaker 2: knew that I wanted to be writing less frequently and
Speaker 2: longer stories. And I found my way. I started freelancing
Speaker 2: for a newspaper, and then I kind of found my
Speaker 2: way there on Staff, which was a Jewish weekly newspaper.
Speaker 1: Called The Forward.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's an amazing institution. I mean it's been around
Speaker 2: for well over one hundred years, over one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years. It was a you know, it was sort
Speaker 2: of the newspaper for Yiddish speaking Jewish immigrants who came
Speaker 2: to New York in the early twentieth century and you know,
Speaker 2: a sort of a in the modern era. It was
Speaker 2: kind of reinvented as an English language newspaper. So so
Speaker 2: I worked there for a number of years and I
Speaker 2: love that it was.
Speaker 1: It was great. I remember reading in the book that
Speaker 1: you're Jewish and your wife Issima is not Jewish, although
Speaker 1: you convinced her to have a Jewish wedding. And she
Speaker 1: refers to the harrowing experience of you going to a
Speaker 1: New England Christmas.
Speaker 2: That was in an essay I wrote. I think, yes, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: she's a writer, she is an editor. So the first
Speaker 2: Christmas I went to her grandmother, who's no longer with us,
Speaker 2: but yeah, yeah, exactly. She had a little Christmas ornament
Speaker 2: with my name on it, which was you know, it
Speaker 2: was hard enough to be going to Christmas, but let
Speaker 2: alone have an ornament with my name on it.
Speaker 1: Was christ You know, it's a very sweet gesture. But
Speaker 1: I was. I was surprised how long went the forward,
Speaker 1: How many years I.
Speaker 2: Was there for?
Speaker 1: Five years? Wow, So you really build a foundation. I did. Well.
Speaker 2: It takes a while, you think, so, yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: even believe me, right, Yeah, I guess in each of
Speaker 2: these jobs, I felt like I was still learning and
Speaker 2: kind of growing and you know, finding new things to do,
Speaker 2: so I could stick around. And also because I was
Speaker 2: sort of here in New York, there would have been
Speaker 2: opportunities at newspapers around the country, But if I wanted
Speaker 2: to stay in New York, it's harder.
Speaker 1: And the forward were you married when you did the
Speaker 1: on the forward? That was after the forward?
Speaker 2: That was after Yeah. So then I actually was at
Speaker 2: my next job where I met my wife, which was
Speaker 2: at Talk magazine, but Tina exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, and Tina said she thought that it could
Speaker 1: work if one for COVID and Harvey bailing out from
Speaker 1: his financial commitment to the thing. She thought it was
Speaker 1: a really worthy project. Did you agree? I did.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a great magazine. It really was
Speaker 2: just starting out. I mean, I think in the end,
Speaker 2: I started working there a year before launch, so to
Speaker 2: me it feels like it was longer. But I think
Speaker 2: that the magazine really only survived for two years. I
Speaker 2: loved working for Tina.
Speaker 1: It was fun. I'd never worked at a glossy magazine.
Speaker 1: It was a whole other world. Describe that it.
Speaker 2: Was just so different. I mean, particularly because I, you know,
Speaker 2: I was at a. I had come from this, you know,
Speaker 2: weekly Jewish newspaper where basically if you took a source
Speaker 2: out to lunch, that meant like splitting the cost of
Speaker 2: a tuna sandwich. And then suddenly I met, you know, this,
Speaker 2: this glossy magazine where you you know, you have a
Speaker 2: proper expense account.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, you want exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, even even raw tuna.
Speaker 1: So it was wild.
Speaker 2: I think the idea was that it was obviously kind
Speaker 2: of celebrity driven, but it was also literary and classy.
Speaker 1: And and fun.
Speaker 2: You know, I really enjoyed it, but it was coming
Speaker 2: at the tail end of the age of the glossy magazine.
Speaker 2: What was a story you wrote for her that you
Speaker 2: that you enjoyed. I'll tell you what I remember, because
Speaker 2: it's the one celebrity, real proper celebrity profile I've ever written.
Speaker 2: It was when Ridley Scott was making Gladiator and I
Speaker 2: flew over to London to profile Russell Crowe and to
Speaker 2: write about the movie. I was in London for what
Speaker 2: was in the end, I think an hour long interview
Speaker 2: in Russell Crowe's hotel room. I was in London for
Speaker 2: a week, kind of waiting to get the nod to
Speaker 2: come over and interview, and he obviously had no interest
Speaker 2: in talking to me. You know, it was kind of
Speaker 2: an education I think in the kind of journalism I
Speaker 2: didn't want to do, but you know, an experience like
Speaker 2: I'm glad I had.
Speaker 1: But did he come around when you were with him?
Speaker 1: Was he really for me? Was he? No?
Speaker 2: No, he was diffident the whole time. He had no
Speaker 2: interest in being there. I'm sure he had been forced
Speaker 2: to do it. And Ridley Scott was much better. Actually,
Speaker 2: I then went out to La and he was he's
Speaker 2: a salesman. He is a salesman, and I think he
Speaker 2: was interested in talking about his movie. Russell Crowe was
Speaker 2: not interested in talking about his performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: There was one other fun story that I did there.
Speaker 2: There was a moment in time when the Hermitage Museum
Speaker 2: in Saint Petersburg, Russia, had just made an agreement with
Speaker 2: the Venetian Hotel, which had just opened in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: and they were going to send some of their art
Speaker 2: over to the Venetian and so there was going to
Speaker 2: be you know, there were going to be paintings from
Speaker 2: the Hermitage in one of the world's most famous museums
Speaker 2: in the Venetian Hotel as part of this agreement. So
Speaker 2: I went over to Saint Petersburg and spent a few
Speaker 2: days in the Hermitage and interviewed people there, and you know,
Speaker 2: in the middle of winter, it was kind of just
Speaker 2: an unbelievable city, just the most beautiful city. And then
Speaker 2: from there I came back to the United States and
Speaker 2: went to Las Vegas to the Venetian Hotel. So it
Speaker 2: was the biggest kind of you know, contrast of reporting
Speaker 2: trips you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you read talk how long really until it folded?
Speaker 2: Which was three years, I guess in the end, because
Speaker 2: I started before launch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then where do you go?
Speaker 2: That's when I sold my first book, which was Ladies
Speaker 2: and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning. So I started writing
Speaker 2: that book, and I also started freelancing for the New
Speaker 2: York Times magazine. So I was sort of doing those
Speaker 2: kind of in tandem for a little while until I
Speaker 2: got my book done.
Speaker 1: Why the book about the Bronx was your first book?
Speaker 1: You've been writing for a while now, and you're going
Speaker 1: to write this your first book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was my first book. I mean, it goes
Speaker 2: back a little bit to what we were talking about
Speaker 2: before that. You know, New York had always had this
Speaker 2: kind of mythic hold over me, you know, because my
Speaker 2: father had.
Speaker 1: Grown up in both my parents had grown up in
Speaker 1: New York. My father grew up in the Bronx, and.
Speaker 2: It was always, as I said, the place that I
Speaker 2: was kind of supposed to be. I you know, I
Speaker 2: had this kind of connection to it, but I also
Speaker 2: felt like I didn't know it as well as I
Speaker 2: wanted to, and I didn't know its history as well
Speaker 2: as I wanted to. So, you know, when you're when
Speaker 2: you're setting out, especially when you're setting out to write
Speaker 2: your first book, you feel like I need a subject
Speaker 2: that I know it's going to hold my interest because
Speaker 2: this is going to be hard. And so it was
Speaker 2: you know, New York, and you know New York in
Speaker 2: the seventies, which was when I had my first kind
Speaker 2: of when I first came here, my first images of
Speaker 2: New York were really New York in that era, in
Speaker 2: the seven yeah, exactly seven eight. And you stayed for
Speaker 2: how long on that trip as a child, we would
Speaker 2: come for you know, always a couple of weeks. We
Speaker 2: would stay in an apartment that belonged to a friend
Speaker 2: of my parents.
Speaker 1: Summertime.
Speaker 2: Summertime, we would go to you know, I go to
Speaker 2: Yankee Games. We would go to see you know, we
Speaker 2: went and saw show Sweeney Todd. We would see shows
Speaker 2: on Broadway. We would sometimes go to you know, Gilbert
Speaker 2: and Sullivan Light Opera. We would go to Rockefeller Center.
Speaker 2: We would just kind of do all the things you
Speaker 2: do here. I just felt like I knew it was
Speaker 2: a subject that had a kind of hold over me.
Speaker 1: Somewhat surprisingly, you maintain memories as a seven year old
Speaker 1: I did. I mean just so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, nothing too detailed, but just you know,
Speaker 2: almost like movie images that you sort of have a
Speaker 2: vague recollection of, and like kind of a sense of
Speaker 2: almost aesthetic memories in a way, especially with the first book,
Speaker 2: I mean, you really don't know what you're doing. I
Speaker 2: did so much research that didn't make its way into
Speaker 2: the book. I talked to so many people, I read
Speaker 2: so many books. I mean, in a funny way, a
Speaker 2: lot of that material didn't appear in the book. But
Speaker 2: you have to kind of master a subject in a
Speaker 2: way to write a book about it, and that does
Speaker 2: mean a reading widely and talking to people widely and
Speaker 2: going way really beyond the subject of the book to
Speaker 2: feel count yeah, like to just feel marinated in it
Speaker 2: and to feel kind of comfortable a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to stay out, ye, going to
Speaker 1: make the cut.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's exactly it. The book was sort of
Speaker 2: partly about the Yankees from that year, nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: because that had been again this team I followed from
Speaker 2: afar out in California, and I was kind of obsessed
Speaker 2: with in the way that you are when you're a kid,
Speaker 2: you become obsessed with sports teams. And then part of
Speaker 2: the book was just about the city and the life
Speaker 2: of the city, the nineteen seventy seven Blackout, the Son
Speaker 2: of Sam, and these were just things that I as
Speaker 2: I researched, I just got kind of more and more into.
Speaker 2: It's the great thing about writing a book is that
Speaker 2: you know, as you get to know a subject more
Speaker 2: in a way, it becomes more captivating.
Speaker 1: It sort of pulls you in. Who was the imprint
Speaker 1: for our Strauss and Jeru and how did you pull
Speaker 1: that off? Getting a book published? Stuff?
Speaker 2: I wrote a propose, I had a good agent. I
Speaker 2: rewrote the proposal a couple of times, and they bought it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then they published my second.
Speaker 1: Book too, Author and journalist Jonathan Mahler. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: conversations with intrepid writers, check out my episode with Lawrence Wrights.
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Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Lawrence Wright, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Mahler details how his first book, The Bronx, is Burning
Speaker 1: wound up becoming a mini series for ESPN. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Before joining the
Speaker 1: staff at the New York Times, Jonathan Mahler was a
Speaker 1: sports columnist for Bloomberg View. He then became a contributing
Speaker 1: writer for The New York Times, where he covered everything
Speaker 1: from baseball to politics. From Mahler, I wondered what it
Speaker 1: was like transitioning from freelancing to full time staff writer.
Speaker 2: Actually, for a while I worked from home, and then
Speaker 2: I rented an office for a little while in Dumbo
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn, and I would go there every day and write,
Speaker 2: and then eventually I went full time on staff at
Speaker 2: the time, So they gave you a desk, they gave
Speaker 2: me a desk. Yeah, Actually, now we don't even I
Speaker 2: don't even have a dedicated desk. We have kind of
Speaker 2: floating desks in the magazine for.
Speaker 1: The writers, and I, you know, I don't. You're still
Speaker 1: working with them now, I am still there. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: when you first walked into as I call it the
Speaker 1: kremlin there to work at the Times, what was the
Speaker 1: feeling you had. Did you feel the kind of halft
Speaker 1: of that experience?
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, and you know, initially the Times moved so
Speaker 2: it kind of, you know, just a few blocks, but
Speaker 2: it moved into this very kind of you know, beautiful
Speaker 2: sort of modern building.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an amazing office. I mean, I love it.
Speaker 2: I love being in the building. I love being at
Speaker 2: the Times. And it's like, you know, in particularly now,
Speaker 2: I mean, you feel like the work that the Times
Speaker 2: still does feels more important than ever and it's an
Speaker 2: amazing workplace filled with just very smart, dedicated people.
Speaker 1: And you still feel when you first got there, you
Speaker 1: felt you were with a very special crowd of.
Speaker 2: People totally from the beginning till the present day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is. It's a special place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now when you write the book Challenge and you're immersed
Speaker 1: in this, a Guantanamo correct Yeah, is one of the
Speaker 1: big backdrops there, exactly. I've asked other writers who write
Speaker 1: to kind of embrace difficult material. How do you manage
Speaker 1: your feelings while you're doing some of this work? You
Speaker 1: do ever get really really down and kind of overwhelmed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that
Speaker 2: you sort of learn and I don't even know if
Speaker 2: you learn it, it just you learn it in the
Speaker 2: way that it's just sort of necessary is a certain
Speaker 2: degree of detachment. I think, not so much that you
Speaker 2: become kind of inured to you know, what you're seeing
Speaker 2: and hearing, but there's a sort of a pursuit of
Speaker 2: a story. There's a kind of a mindset that I
Speaker 2: think you get into when you're sort of on a
Speaker 2: story and you're pursuing a story. And it's funny because
Speaker 2: I think for journalists who sort of do this, you
Speaker 2: don't even really think about it until you kind of
Speaker 2: step outside and you know, you're asking a question like
Speaker 2: that question, because it doesn't feel like you don't feel detached,
Speaker 2: but it's what you have to do to to kind
Speaker 2: of pursue the story and to not feel defeated by
Speaker 2: it or crushed by it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: In the case of Guantanamo, I mean I think I
Speaker 2: just you know, I spent some time down there. I
Speaker 2: spent some time in Yemen because the sort of main
Speaker 2: one of the main characters of the book was a
Speaker 2: Yomeni detainey, and so I wanted to go over and
Speaker 2: meet his wife and meet his family, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was being held on Guantanama Bay with you know,
Speaker 2: his future was very uncertain she had no contact with him.
Speaker 2: I mean it was, you know, it was obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of powerful and sad to be kind of reporting
Speaker 2: on it. But at the same time, I felt like
Speaker 2: I had a job to do. I felt like I
Speaker 2: needed information I needed for my book and for actually
Speaker 2: for a magazine story I did before the book, And
Speaker 2: so you just sort of find your way through it.
Speaker 1: Is there ever a situation, it doesn't matter whether it's
Speaker 1: The Times or the Wall Street Journal, that you want
Speaker 1: to do something and you check yourself. Do you say
Speaker 1: to yourself, I don't want to bother pitching this idea
Speaker 1: because they're probably going to say no, do your censor yourself.
Speaker 2: I don't quite censor myself. I would say that for
Speaker 2: an idea to work, it has to be something that
Speaker 2: people other than me are going to.
Speaker 1: Be interested in.
Speaker 2: So I try to sort of edit myself, I guess,
Speaker 2: rather than censor myself. Though I think it's also okay
Speaker 2: to kind of go with the passion project now and then,
Speaker 2: or try to go with a passion project. I probably
Speaker 2: should try to do more of it. In fact, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's harder.
Speaker 1: How did ESPN become the venue for the Bronx's Burning series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the book kind of moves back and forth between
Speaker 2: the Yankee season and the year in the life of
Speaker 2: the city. So they were interested in obviously in the
Speaker 2: kind of the Yankee story, which is an amazing story
Speaker 2: because it's kind of Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin are
Speaker 2: just locked in this kind of you know, amazing like
Speaker 2: duel over the course of the time. Yes, yeah, it
Speaker 2: was some crazy stuff. And Reggie Jackson was this like,
Speaker 2: you know, this kind of larger than life figure in
Speaker 2: the city, and so is Billy Martin in his way.
Speaker 2: So they were in did in the baseball story. Of course,
Speaker 2: when they came to me to option it and develop it,
Speaker 2: they also said, oh, we're going to you know, we're
Speaker 2: interested in the city stuff too. All that kind of
Speaker 2: I think kind of fell out along the way and
Speaker 2: it really became a kind of a story of the
Speaker 2: Yankee season with kind of the city and the kind
Speaker 2: of against the backdrop of the city, you know, So
Speaker 2: it was sort of half the book in a way,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Then you had the movie adaptation of the Challenge and
Speaker 1: that was in clooney Land or whatever it was. And
Speaker 1: then what happened exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it never it sort of it died in
Speaker 2: clooney Land, as I guess sometimes happens. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what happened. I know that there was a script.
Speaker 2: Aaron Sorkin actually wrote wrote a script, right, and I
Speaker 2: don't know quite what happened, but you know, they renewed
Speaker 2: the option and then I guess for whatever reason, the
Speaker 2: script didn't work out, and then it just kind of
Speaker 2: somehow died.
Speaker 1: So when you do this book, now, when you're doing
Speaker 1: The Gods of New York, you use I mean, most
Speaker 1: writers are very specific and very intentional with their words.
Speaker 1: What was it that you felt the word gods applied
Speaker 1: to these people? Why did you choose that word? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's funny.
Speaker 2: That's a good place to start because the title is
Speaker 2: kind of a little controversial, because you could read this
Speaker 2: as what, you know, are you calling you know, Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and Rudy Giuliani gods? And I think the idea is, really,
Speaker 2: I know, the ideas is the kind of the Greek gods,
Speaker 2: the sort of the gods who can be vengeful, who
Speaker 2: can be narcissistic, and so really the ideas just these
Speaker 2: were larger than life figures who were elevated to this stature,
Speaker 2: you know, by the kind of culture of the city,
Speaker 2: by the tabloids, and so they kind of loomed over
Speaker 2: the city like gods in a way. So it's it's
Speaker 2: not it's very much not not a god in the
Speaker 2: sense that they are all powerful, but rather that they're
Speaker 2: these these kind of towering figures who are kind of
Speaker 2: hanging over the city, you know, on their own kind
Speaker 2: of mount olympus.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of the shots exactly. The picked that
Speaker 1: specific time, which is interestingly, the last two years of
Speaker 1: Reagan's second term and the first two years of Bush's
Speaker 1: only term. Yeah, that eighty six through ninety Why that period?
Speaker 1: Why did you home in on that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I sort of started with a
Speaker 2: kind of a wider lens thinking about the eighties, and
Speaker 2: then I kind of came to see that, you know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to narrow the narrative down a little bit
Speaker 2: just for storytelling purposes. I didn't want it to feel
Speaker 2: like kind of a survey history of the eighties. So
Speaker 2: and I felt like the story of those four years,
Speaker 2: which which were really there, it's the story of really
Speaker 2: Cotch's last term as mayor when when everything he's done
Speaker 2: over his first two terms unravels and the city unravels.
Speaker 2: And so many crazy things happened during this just this
Speaker 2: four year period of time. I mean, from Howard Beach
Speaker 2: to Black Monday, you know, the stock market crash, to
Speaker 2: the Tauana, the crazy Tawana Brawley story, to uh use
Speaker 2: Hawkins Jogger use of Hawkins. Plus it was the sort
Speaker 2: of the AIDS crisis and and the birth and rise
Speaker 2: of Act Up and this kind of whole new activist movement.
Speaker 2: It was when Crack arrived in the city. It was
Speaker 2: when you know, New York had its first black police
Speaker 2: commissioner ever who was presiding over this unprecedented kind of
Speaker 2: drug epidemic. It's when homelessness really became an issue in
Speaker 2: the city. It was when Spike Lee May Do the
Speaker 2: Right Thing, which is you know, kind of an iconic film,
Speaker 2: and I really captured the city in this moment. It
Speaker 2: just so many things happened in this four year window.
Speaker 2: Plus I had kind of Cotch's final term as a
Speaker 2: as a sort of a narrative spine that it just
Speaker 2: felt like both from a you know, really from a
Speaker 2: storytelling end, kind of a more Geshtalty perspective.
Speaker 1: It was like the right the right period, author and
Speaker 1: journalist Jonathan Mahler. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Jonathan Mahler talks about the breaking
Speaker 1: point New York City faces today and how it mirrors
Speaker 1: that of the nineteen eighties. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
Speaker 1: is Here's the Thing. Jonathan Mahler's most recent book, The
Speaker 1: Gods of New York, chronicles how New York City dramatically
Speaker 1: changed during the tumultuous years of the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: The book also details why he believes that period of
Speaker 1: time served as a prequel for the New York City
Speaker 1: of today. Talking to Maler Now in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: an historic mayoral election, I wanted to know his thoughts
Speaker 1: on Zoran Mamdani's unlikely political ascension and what his win
Speaker 1: says about the current state of New York City.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it certainly tells us that the city
Speaker 2: is at a kind of a breaking point. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that this is in many ways kind of
Speaker 2: the story of my book, right It's the story of
Speaker 2: New York is emerging from the kind of dark days
Speaker 2: of the seventies, the fiscal crisis. The subways are covered
Speaker 2: in graffiti. You know, it's a disaster the city's and
Speaker 2: a death spiral.
Speaker 1: And then it's.
Speaker 2: Reborn in the nineteen eighties. And at the center of
Speaker 2: that rebirth is Wall Street and is the real estate industry,
Speaker 2: which kind of lives off of the Wall Street bonuses.
Speaker 2: And you know, New York kind of goes through this
Speaker 2: transformation and becomes the capital of global finance. But the
Speaker 2: problem with that transformation is that a lot of people
Speaker 2: are left out of it, a lot of people are
Speaker 2: squeezed out of it. And you know, I think that
Speaker 2: that cycle it sort of exacerbates over the course of
Speaker 2: the decades since then, the wealth gap widens and you
Speaker 2: get to a point of crisis now where you have
Speaker 2: a you know, you have people who are making you know,
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year, can't afford
Speaker 2: to buy an apartment in a you know, in a
Speaker 2: neighborhood they want to live in, and are kind of
Speaker 2: struggling to live in the city, and then you have
Speaker 2: people who are making a whole lot less than that,
Speaker 2: who are on a waiting list to get public housing
Speaker 2: for years on end. And so you know, it's maybe
Speaker 2: that not surprising in that context that someone who is
Speaker 2: really proposing much of it is not not realistic, but
Speaker 2: still proposing you know, pretty radical policies here. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, and by radical I mean I don't mean
Speaker 2: that in a negative cast necessarily, but big change, let's say,
Speaker 2: and you know, from from doubling minimum wage to providing
Speaker 2: free childcare for every New Yorker from six weeks to
Speaker 2: five years. I mean that is a you know, the
Speaker 2: idea that that's you know, a lot of money, A
Speaker 2: lot of money, yes, a lot of money. I think
Speaker 2: it speaks to really the sort of extreme income inequality
Speaker 2: that's kind of become just like the fabric of the city.
Speaker 1: Now. See, I wonder with holmlessness, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: when do we say to ourselves that it isn't working
Speaker 1: the policy is, and then they have to be taken somewhere.
Speaker 1: It could be decommissioned army bases or something in upstate
Speaker 1: New York where you can get a shower and a
Speaker 1: meal and get cleaned up and get I mean, or
Speaker 1: do we just lay on the streets? Has laying on
Speaker 1: the streets worked? I don't know. I'm looking for someone
Speaker 1: to maybe help now.
Speaker 2: Though, now, I mean, those are good questions to ask.
Speaker 2: I mean, I tell the story actually in the book
Speaker 2: of Really kind of the beginning of New York City's
Speaker 2: homeless policy, which is kind of an amazing story. This
Speaker 2: guy Bob Hayes, who was at the time a young
Speaker 2: associate at a Sullivan and Cromwell, a kind of a
Speaker 2: fancy white shoe law firm. You know, this is in
Speaker 2: the late seventies, is you know, struck by all the
Speaker 2: people he sees who seem to be kind of living
Speaker 2: in Washington Square Park and on the streets. And because
Speaker 2: this is you know, New York did not have a
Speaker 2: homelessness problem per se until this period of time. I mean,
Speaker 2: they were what we're called like bums and whinos on
Speaker 2: the street the Bowery. Yeah, but you didn't have you
Speaker 2: didn't have people sleeping on the streets. So this guy,
Speaker 2: Bob Hayes, is sort of curious about this, and he
Speaker 2: starts talking to them, and you know, he learns that
Speaker 2: they're people who've found themselves on the street, either because
Speaker 2: they were in a mental hospital that they were sort
Speaker 2: of pushed out of, or they were living in a
Speaker 2: single room occupancy hotel, a welfare hotel that they got
Speaker 2: they got pushed out of, or you know, they found
Speaker 2: their way to the streets and there was nowhere for
Speaker 2: them to go. And so he decides he's going to
Speaker 2: file a lawsuit on behalf of these people, these homeless people.
Speaker 2: One of the plaintiffs literally lists his address as a
Speaker 2: cardboard box on Park Avenue, and he is rooting around
Speaker 2: in the NYU Law Library to try to figure out,
Speaker 2: you know, how he's going to make his case. And
Speaker 2: he finds a piece of legislation that was passed during
Speaker 2: the Depression, that was sort of pushed by LaGuardia that
Speaker 2: says New York State shall provide you know, care, housing
Speaker 2: and care for the needy. And he's like, bingo, paydirt.
Speaker 2: He adds that to the lawsuit. He's the guy that
Speaker 2: honor he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2: Kach realizes that he's cooked, he's lost. He signs a
Speaker 2: concree saying that he will do this, and suddenly the
Speaker 2: city is desperately trying to house literally thousands of people
Speaker 2: who are sleeping on the streets, and so the story
Speaker 2: of homelessness kind of begins there. And I think in
Speaker 2: the beginning there was the sense of like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this is just a you know, we'll figure this out.
Speaker 2: It's just a logistical issue. We just have to figure
Speaker 2: out how to find homes for these people. And needless
Speaker 2: to say, that did not happen, and forty years later,
Speaker 2: we're still trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 1: What does the next mayor need to do in terms
Speaker 1: of we've been kicking the can on so many issues
Speaker 1: in the city, and we've been you know, one day
Speaker 1: you turn around, it seems like yesterday people were saying
Speaker 1: the subway is great, and we've invested in the subway,
Speaker 1: and the subways on time, everybody's love of the subway's
Speaker 1: just really really humming along. And then it's like ten
Speaker 1: years ago, by the like, the subway's a disaster. Whatever
Speaker 1: you do, don't take the subway. I mean, obviously COVID
Speaker 1: was a part of that whole episode, but I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder, what is the thing you think, Mom, Donnie Adams,
Speaker 1: whoever that comes in what's the issue that we can
Speaker 1: no longer forestall?
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think it's the affordability issue. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that this city, it can't be New York
Speaker 2: City if it isn't giving people a foothold, if it
Speaker 2: isn't giving people a chance, right, I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: like I am all for endless opportunity, boundless opportunity in
Speaker 2: this city. I think you should be able to come
Speaker 2: here and get as rich as you can get, be
Speaker 2: as successful as you can be. But I think it
Speaker 2: has to also find a way to give people a foothold.
Speaker 2: It has to give them some kind of leg up
Speaker 2: to try to make it or I think it's just
Speaker 2: going to lose so much.
Speaker 1: But we have to have a net. You got to
Speaker 1: have a net for people. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I'm an acting school at NYU, and I'm going and
Speaker 1: then years go by and I understand that every maid,
Speaker 1: every guy that works in a shop, every bus driver, everybody, cops,
Speaker 1: even everybody's coming from somewhere else. New York is that
Speaker 1: strange place where I went to GW and they taught
Speaker 1: us when we took DC Culture and Politics, where they said,
Speaker 1: this is a city where all the rich people live
Speaker 1: outside the city. They go on the trains out to Virginia,
Speaker 1: Super Virginia, Maryland and so forth. And it changed over
Speaker 1: the years, and the Manhattan has always been, for the
Speaker 1: large part, maybe with some lapses, the place where the
Speaker 1: rich people lived in town exactly, and everybody else who
Speaker 1: didn't have money lived out of town commuted. So we
Speaker 1: have to make that work for them. I can't stand
Speaker 1: to see people, even some I work with who work
Speaker 1: take care of my home, struggling with their costs like that.
Speaker 2: What are you planning on doing next? You have another
Speaker 2: book on the boiler nothing yet. I have to say
Speaker 2: I wrote this book. It took me eight years, and
Speaker 2: I was working full time at the Times throughout.
Speaker 1: It is very.
Speaker 2: Difficult to write a book while working at the New
Speaker 2: York Times. So I think, for a little while at least,
Speaker 2: I'll just take a break from the book writing.
Speaker 1: Because your wife, your editor.
Speaker 2: She yes, she does, she does, she always does. She's
Speaker 2: the best editor.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's cool. Yeah, Well, this book the
Speaker 1: Gods of New York. I haven't read a book or
Speaker 1: been aware of a book that's encapsulated the cauldron of
Speaker 1: New York at that time. I mean, New York was really, really,
Speaker 1: really tough. What's an excerpt that you favor?
Speaker 2: How about I'll start with this two paragraphs of my
Speaker 2: introduction of ed Koch. At five point twenty five in
Speaker 2: the morning on New Year's Day, Edward Irving Koch was
Speaker 2: awakened in his king sized bed at Gracie Mansion by
Speaker 2: the knock of a police officer on his door, just
Speaker 2: as he had been nearly every morning for the past
Speaker 2: eight years. He did not have a hangover, but he
Speaker 2: did have a head cold. Still, no running nose was
Speaker 2: going to keep him from enjoying the historic day ahead.
Speaker 2: His historic day. In a matter of hours, he would
Speaker 2: become the third person in modern history to serve three
Speaker 2: terms as mayor of New York City, and he'd been
Speaker 2: re elected in a landslide with seventy eight percent of
Speaker 2: the city wide vote. Koch's success was a tribute to
Speaker 2: him his w work, ethic and unerring political instincts, but
Speaker 2: also to New York and really America. His father, Louis
Speaker 2: nee leb, had arrived at Ellis Island in nineteen oh nine,
Speaker 2: a Jewish child of peddlers from a dirt, poor hamlet
Speaker 2: in the Austro Hungarian Hungarian Empire. He started as a
Speaker 2: lowly pantsmaker in a Lower east Side sweatshop, even sleeping
Speaker 2: for a while in the factory, and eventually built a
Speaker 2: solid middle class life for his family in a leafy
Speaker 2: section of the Bronx. His mother, Joyce nee Yetta, was
Speaker 2: a Jewish immigrant from similarly humble roots who had come
Speaker 2: to New York in nineteen twelve. She also worked in
Speaker 2: the garment trade before they were married and had their
Speaker 2: second child, Edward, in nineteen twenty four. Kotch had benefited
Speaker 2: from the Cities and Countries Largesse, enrolling at the tuition
Speaker 2: free City College of New York in Uptown Manhattan when
Speaker 2: he was just sixteen before being drafted to serve in
Speaker 2: World War II in March nineteen forty three. Three years
Speaker 2: and two commondations later, he was back in the city,
Speaker 2: living with his parents on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. Instead
Speaker 2: of finishing college, he went straight to New York University
Speaker 2: School of Law courtesy of the GI Bill. At law school,
Speaker 2: he fell in love with Greenwich Village, its inexpensive restaurants,
Speaker 2: tree lined streets, and countercultural ferment. He was no beatnik
Speaker 2: but he had progressive ideals. He took up folk guitar
Speaker 2: and was involved in the Right to Sing Committee, which
Speaker 2: campaigned against the ban on musicians performing in Washington Square Park.
Speaker 2: He also fell in love with politics. Kotsch was now
Speaker 2: running his own law practice, but at lunchtime during the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two and fifty six presidential elections, he could
Speaker 2: be found atop a soapbox on busy street corners extolling
Speaker 2: the virtues of the Democratic candidate Adelai Stevenson. Derided by
Speaker 2: Republicans as an egghead, he soon discovered that he was
Speaker 2: a natural public speaker, shrill and nasal, but compelling and persuasive.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to me to read that. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you read that because it highlights for me in
Speaker 1: my lifetime in New York, how some mayors were mayors
Speaker 1: who had a distinct personality. Yeah, and coach No one
Speaker 1: had more personality, so to say, than coches. And some
Speaker 1: of them I wonder if they survived, not because they
Speaker 1: don't have any personality. You don't really know very much
Speaker 1: about Adams other than he's a cop. That's true. Policies.
Speaker 1: The Blasio was kind of in negative integers. In terms
Speaker 1: of his personality, Bloomberg had a personality, but it was
Speaker 1: always framed in dollar bills, in terms of his wealth,
Speaker 1: his wealth, his smarts. I Bloomberg is an exceedingly bright
Speaker 1: man and successful man, but that eclipsed everything in terms
Speaker 1: of what we know. What was he?
Speaker 2: I mean, he had a profile, but not a personality
Speaker 2: in a way, right.
Speaker 1: Right, coach may be the last. Coach may be the last. No,
Speaker 1: I can't think of anyone had a very bright personality anyway.
Speaker 1: My thanks to you, the Gods of New York, a
Speaker 1: great analysis of New York in eighty six to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and my best to luck to you with whatever
Speaker 1: you're gonna do next. Thank you so much, Alcol, so
Speaker 1: much fun. My thanks to author and journalist Jonathan Maller.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.