Podcast Summary: Can I Walk With You?

Episode: Can I walk with you, Raga?
Host: Thoraya
Date: November 13, 2025
Location: New York City

Overview

Season one of Can I Walk With You? launches in New York City—a place famed for its walkable streets and diverse communities. Host Thoraya invites strangers to take a spontaneous walk, seeking honest conversation and a slice-of-life perspective. In this episode, she meets Raga, a retired teacher and immigrant from Trinidad, who shares reflections on identity, gentrification, societal change, and the resilience needed to face modern America.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Meeting Raga and the Origin of His Name

• Raga explains his name’s roots in Indian music and his family's migration history from India to the Caribbean, and then to New York.
  • "[Raga] in Indian music is like concertos in Western music. My last name is Ragunat... I shortened it to Raga." [01:03]
• He emphasizes his choice in self-naming over time:
  • "People don't call me Sam anymore for a long time and I'm good with that." [01:53]

Life Story: Immigration, Education, Family

• Raga arrived in New York in 1970 after his mother paved the way for her children.
  • He pursued journalism and political science at NYU on a scholarship—an opportunity he recognizes as increasingly rare.
  • Now retired, he reflects on the importance of equal opportunity:
    • "All this bull about we don't need equal opportunity for people anymore. You know, it's all crap." [04:01]

Changing New York: Gentrification and Loss

• Raga discusses drastic neighborhood changes, the decline of working-class and immigrant communities, and how gentrification disguises inequality:
  • "People paying, I don't know, 4,000 for the same apartment, but they can afford it. If you can pay $4,000 for a tenement apartment, you're not losing anything. That's just a disguise to take things away..." [06:07]
• He notes a palpable sense of loss and questions where displaced communities have gone.
  • "Look at Harlem now, it's like—yes, where have all the black people gone? They're doing the same thing in Brooklyn. They did the same thing here with the Hispanic people." [14:41]

Hope and Community Resilience

• Despite pessimism about current trends, Raga maintains hope because he believes many people witness the same realities and can be a force for good.
  • "My thoughts about what I see, the reality I see is not something that's unique to me... I have a lot of faith in human beings." [07:03]

Politics of Change and the Concept of “Safe Zones”

• He critiques the politics driving change and the idea that gentrifiers are also escaping something, often ignoring the suffering their arrival causes:
  • "The same people who are crying that they're losing their country are the same ones that are destroying other people's communities." [11:52]
• Raga stresses that for minorities, urban communities in cities like New York offered a kind of safety that’s eroded when they are priced out:
  • "If you're a so-called minority person, this is almost a kind of like a safe zone, okay?... You move me out of here and I have to go to Florida… they're not going to be very happy with us showing up." [13:54]

The Experience of Displacement and Invisibility

• Raga describes subtle and overt changes in the social atmosphere—strangers avoid eye contact, making him feel invisible.
  • "I walk past people. They intentionally look— they're not going to make eye contact... That fear is that I don't see you... Some of us are still invisible." [21:15-22:50]

Intergenerational and Neighborhood Change

• He reflects on watching the city transform and the mental dissonance it causes:
  • "My memory gets, like, blown away, and I'm trying to figure out what used to be here... it's an assault on your memory." [09:38]

What Solutions Are Possible?

• When prompted for solutions, Raga is honest about the challenge:
  • He calls on newcomers to contribute positively, not just materially, but in solidarity with those harmed by displacement:
    • "Hopefully... they have a duty to fulfill, which is to be on the side of the victims—the people who are being victimized right now, by their presence even." [16:10]
    • "Don't just go make money... give back something... If we can foresee a group of people that have moved here... helped to make progress... that's a great change, isn't it?" [18:36]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Equal Opportunity:
  "Until you make right what you have made wrong for so long, you can't just stop things that were put in place to kind of alleviate the situation somewhat." [05:06]

• On Gentrification:
  "Gentrification... it's almost like we don't care anymore. We want you out." [13:54]

• On Feeling Out of Place:
  "I go into restaurants sometimes and I look around... I'm the only person that's of this color in this place. That doesn't feel good." [19:31]

• On Disappearing New York:
  "It used to be, you walk in a bar, a restaurant, all kinds of people in there. White, black, Chinese, everybody. That, to me, that's New York. And we're losing that." [20:29]

• On Hope:
  "I want to say 'this too shall pass', but it's been said before, and I think we can't afford to minimize things anymore. Lives matter. Everybody's lives matter. But some people's lives really matter in a different way." [26:58–27:43]

Important Timestamps

• 01:01 – Raga introduces himself and explains his name
• 02:17 – Raga’s background: Immigration, education, family
• 04:01 – On equal opportunity and social change
• 07:03 – Sources of hope and solidarity
• 09:38 – Reflections on changing neighborhoods and memory
• 13:54 – Gentrification as a destructive force
• 15:48 – On possible solutions and the responsibilities of newcomers
• 19:31–20:29 – Raga’s current sense of displacement in his own city
• 21:15–22:50 – On invisibility and the subtle social changes
• 26:58–27:43 – Raga’s final message to the audience

Closing

Raga ends the walk with a message of hope and a reminder to not minimize injustice, encouraging listeners to reflect on whose lives—and stories—matter in the fight for an equitable city. He also briefly plugs his music (“Tell Them Raga” on Spotify).

Thoraya thanks Raga for his openness, emphasizing the power of listening to real stories over abstract debates.

Episode Takeaway:
Through one man’s walk, listeners get an unfiltered look at the lived reality of change, community, and perseverance in New York City—reminders that cities, like the lives within them, are always in flux, and that it’s the people and their histories that shape their true character.