All We Have to Do Is Be Nice

Summary

Firewall with Bradley Tusk

Episode: "All We Have to Do Is Be Nice"

Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Bradley Tusk
Producer/Co-host: Hugo Lindgren
Location: P&T Knitwear, 180 Orchard Street, NYC

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Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

In this wide-ranging episode, Bradley Tusk and Hugo Lindgren explore the intersection of political culture, urban life, and social norms—zeroing in on the decay of everyday courtesy and the societal cost of prioritizing individual gain over collective wellbeing. The episode moves from Knicks basketball hype and NYC literary life to deeper philosophical questions: Is the freedom to act selfishly truly the path to happiness? What role do leaders and policy choices play in shaping communal norms? The episode concludes by probing New York City’s budget, the infamous pied-à-terre tax, and the delicate balancing act between progressive politics and economic pragmatism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Knicks Basketball Euphoria & Personal Trade-Offs

(00:07 – 04:00)

• Bradley and Hugo start with a passionate discussion about the Knicks’ unprecedented performance, personal memories of past basketball seasons, and how the playoff run is impacting Bradley’s own schedule.
• Bradley: “I’ve never seen them this hot in my life.” (01:21)
• The conversation shifts to ticket prices, the irrationality of the resale market, and a broader sense that major cultural events (NBA Finals, World Cup, Taylor Swift concerts) are reshaping city life and priorities.

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Gotham Book Prize & New York City Literary Nostalgia

(04:11 – 07:40)

• Announcement: Keith McNally’s memoir I Regret Almost Everything wins the 2026 Gotham Book Prize.
• Hugo and Bradley reminisce about McNally’s iconic restaurants (Pastis, Balthazar, Odeon) and their literary connections—e.g., Bright Lights, Big City.
• Notable quote:
  • Bradley: “People love restaurant books and stories... it’s kind of a rags to riches story as well.” (04:57)
• Spirited debate about NYC books/authors, with brief and humorous criticism of aging writers’ recent works.
• Exclusive: Prize event at Museum of the City of NY is not open to public, but firewall listeners can email for special accommodations. (07:55)

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Substack, Social Norms, & “The Freedom to be an Asshole”

(08:03 – 29:09)

• Bradley tees up his new Substack column, asking: “Are we sure we really want the freedom to be an asshole?”
• Societal shift from collective good to hyper-individualism, enabled by zero-sum thinking and technology.
• Bradley: “Sheer nastiness itself is not only accepted, but often now seen as a smart strategy.” (11:53)
• Examples of decayed norms:
  • Phone behavior: Public spaces slowed by people lost in screens; public safety endangered (315,000 car accidents due to distracted driving in 2024), everyday courtesy evaporates.
    • Bradley: “Sidewalks are so much slower… because everyone is now walking at a fucking snail’s pace looking at their phone.” (13:38)
  • Subway turnstile hopping: Not out of necessity, but disregard for communal responsibility.
    • Bradley: “You’re going to complain about the service and then you can’t pay your $3 to fund it.” (15:16)
  • Group sidewalk walking: Three or four abreast, blocking others.
  • Speakerphone calls in public:
    • Bradley: “What the fuck, man? Just hold the phone up to your ear like a normal person.” (17:10)
  • Gym etiquette: More selfishness, less willingness to share equipment.
    • Bradley: “I do think it’s a possibility that Equinox members are rich and therefore more likely to be assholes.” (18:36)
  • Parenting and role modeling: Efforts to raise grounded, considerate kids in Manhattan via meaningful work/volunteerism.
• Discussion of formative moments & the power of long-term cultural change—e.g., destigmatization of mental health, MeToo, LGBTQ rights, reduced drunk driving/smoking.
• Normative change often starts in culture, not government:
  • Bradley: “Changing social norms doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from the way things are portrayed by influencers in mass media.” (24:26)
• Notable exchange on the power and limits of government to mandate courtesy vs. fostering cultural shifts.

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Role of Leadership: Can Mayors or Public Figures Drive Normative Change?

(29:09 – 30:14)

• Question posed: Could leaders like newly elected Mayor Mandani use their popularity and tone to model a shift in public behavior?
• Tension: Mandani’s base comes from a political culture more comfortable with confrontation and shaming than positive reinforcement.

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NYC Budget Crisis & The Politics of “Pied-à-Terre” Tax

(30:15 – 38:06)

• NYC is facing a $5-6 billion deficit; state is considering new revenues, including a “pied-à-terre” (second home) tax.
• Key controversy: Instead of a simple policy push, Mayor Mandani singles out billionaire Ken Griffin (Citadel founder) to make a public example—resulting in Griffin threatening to move thousands of high-paying jobs out of NYC to Miami.
  • Bradley: “He did not need to do this for any substantive purpose, but he chose to do it anyway.” (31:26)
  • Bradley: “Now, not only are those jobs now likely gone, but then Apollo…said, we’re going to put them instead in Texas or Florida for the same reason.” (32:08)
• Political logic: For progressives, the fight is emotionally validating, even if the fiscal gain is minor compared to the potential economic loss.
  • Bradley: “It’s about emotional validation. And because Mondani tried and failed to convince [Governor] Hochul to raise income taxes, he had to get some kind of win to show his base that he succeeded in punishing the rich in some way.” (35:04)
  • The actual projected revenue: $340 million, a fraction of NYC’s $125 billion budget.
  • Hugo: “How could it only be that little?...It’s very hard…to understand these big numbers.” (36:21)

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Political Realities: Leadership, Ideology, and the Burden of Office

(38:06 – 49:04)

• The reality of leadership: Officeholders constantly balance the needs of their core supporters against greater civic responsibility.
• Bradley: “A good politician wins re-election. A great leader achieves real things, often by choosing a path that is not easy or popular, but it’s the right thing to do.” (44:17)
• Illustrative case studies:
  • Mandani’s wavering response on breaking up homeless encampments (led to avoidable deaths).
  • Controversy over using facial recognition for CitiBike age verification: Ideology vs. public safety.
  • NYC schools: $40 billion budget, poor performance, entrenched bureaucracy; reluctance to reform or cut inefficiencies.
  • The test for Mandani: “His courage, his leadership, and his willingness to put the eight and a half million people who live in the city first is still yet to be determined.” (48:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Social Decay:
  “Sheer nastiness itself is not only accepted, but often now seen as a smart strategy.” — Bradley (11:53)

• On Public Space Etiquette:
  “People now walk fucking three or four across on the street like they’re on a fucking Broadway choreographed dance.” — Bradley (16:15)

• On Parenting and Privilege:
  “It doesn’t matter what you tell your kids, it’s what they see you do.” — Bradley (18:40)

• On Policy and Emotional Validation:
  “It’s not about generating new tax revenue to help the poor...It’s about emotional validation.” — Bradley (35:04)

• On Leadership:
  “A good politician wins re-election. A great leader achieves real things, often by choosing a path that is not easy or popular, but it’s the right thing to do.” — Bradley (44:17)

• On NYC’s Education Challenges:
  “Somehow they are spending $40 billion not paying teachers particularly well. So it’s all on fucking bureaucracy and middle management and aides to guidance counselors and all this stuff. That, sure, in a perfect world, sounds great, but it’s mainly an employment program for bureaucrats.” — Bradley (46:27)

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Recommendations Segment

(49:04 – 54:20)

• Books:
  • Bradley recommends Bob Spitz’s new biography, The Rolling Stones, praising its brisk pacing and focus on the core of the band’s story, rather than getting mired in childhood details.
    • Notable: “Spitz did not waste a lot of time on their childhoods…he pretty quickly got to how Mick and Keith…started talking about blues…By the time it was over, they’re like, let’s start listening to records together.” (49:46)
  • Also recommends Spitz’s previous Led Zeppelin biography.
• Movie:
  • Hugo reviews Devil Wears Prada 2 (watched with his daughter), finding it unexpectedly better than the first, but criticizes Anne Hathaway’s “unbearable” performance, while praising Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.
    • “At the beginning I’m like, oh my God, I’m not gonna be able to survive this. And then by the end, I was like, yeah, I really liked it.” (54:16)

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Episode Takeaways

• Everyday incivility, enabled by a culture of hyper-individualism and status-seeking, has substantial costs for urban life—in productivity, happiness, and civic trust.
• Changing these norms requires both cultural and leadership shifts; government action can help, but social stigma and positive modeling are often more powerful.
• Political leadership at the city level is a constant tension between pragmatic governance and ideological loyalty.
• NYC’s economic health is precarious; short-term political wins may have significant unintended consequences for jobs and services.
• Both hosts end with practical, accessible recommendations across books and film, blending the high and low of New York’s cultural scene.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Knicks & Event Culture: 00:07 – 04:00
• Gotham Book Prize & NYC Literary Commentary: 04:11 – 07:40
• Substack & “Freedom to be an Asshole” Theme: 08:03 – 29:09
• Leadership & Social Norms: 29:09 – 30:14
• NYC Budget & Pied-à-Terre Tax Controversy: 30:15 – 38:06
• Political Choices, Ideology vs. Pragmatism: 38:06 – 49:04
• Recommendations: 49:04 – 54:20

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Transcript

[A]

All right. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so with us is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how you doing?

[B]

I'm on an incredible high over the Knicks, who are playing the best basketball of. Well, I mean, we were alive during the 70s when they had those.

[A]

I was born after their second title, like, a few months.

[B]

So they're playing the best basketball of your life.

[A]

Yeah. Yes. I mean, the 94 team made the finals. No.

[B]

And the 99 team did, too.

[A]

It was like a weird.

[B]

It was such a great season, though. I love that.

[A]

But whatever.

[B]

They never played as well as this.

[A]

This is. This is insane. So for the Knicks fans out there, like, I just enjoy it. So here's my questions for you. One, are they really this good?

[B]

Well, right now, yeah, I think they are. I mean, I honestly, it doesn't feel flukish. It feels like they've just discovered the key to the team.

[A]

Right. It's been seven games in a row like this. Yeah. And they've been just blowing everyone out.

[B]

And it's Mikhail Bridges. I mean, there's a number of people playing, like, extremely well, but there's. He unlocked something, obviously, in the last, like, 10 days or whatever. Yeah, it's.

[A]

It's Bridges and his defense, which was actually the case in the playoffs last year, too, against Tatum, which is smothering against Maxi, and then really running a lot more of the offense through Cat. I mean, the reality is Brunson should be a shooting guard, not a point guard.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's not a pass first guard. And it's weird to have your center, but he happens. But Cat is a great passing center,

[B]

so Cat has gotten to a comfort level. It seems like he sort of embraced, like, the team being here. All these things have sort of come together at the.

[A]

Right. Yeah. And so then the other thing. Are you worried they're going to have at least a week off? So, though I literally searched every single AI platform to ask the same question about this.

[B]

Did you get any good info?

[A]

I mean, you know, part of the

[B]

problem is you talk about momentum, can they keep it up?

[A]

Yeah. Because the NBA some discretion. But it sounds like the. If. If Detroit wins in five. So game four is tonight. They're up to one, then game one, the earliest it could be would be Sunday, so that would be a full week off. But if Cleveland takes another game or two, it could go even later. So on one hand, OG's hamstring gives them more and more time to Heal. That's great. You know, and everyone's banged up, right? A little bit because it's playoffs. On the other hand, like, I've never seen them this hot in my life.

[B]

So the first quarter was just out of control.

[A]

All the threes, they couldn't miss any threes. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, it's super exciting. I've literally now started for the next, like, in first couple weeks of June. Somehow, like, there's just been an inordinate number of things I'm supposed to speak at. Go to.

[B]

You're canceling everything.

[A]

I've just started putting a caveat in saying if it's a finals game, I can't make it. Yeah, sorry. And like. And if it's a home.

[B]

So you're like Timothee Chalamet. You're prioritizing.

[A]

I'm in row 11, not courtside. But. But the. The. The. I'd love to have this problem, but I have World cup tickets for Brazil, Morocco, which I'm really looking forward to just because I've never been to the World Cup. But that would be a home finals game because we'll be the. You know, we'll be the away team seed. Right. So, like, that will be one of the home games. So, like, obviously I'm not. Not going to a finals game for the World cup. So I checked yesterday. The resale value of where my tickets are are, you know, def. Like 50% higher than what I paid for them.

[B]

Could. Is that real, though?

[A]

I just don't see. Geek.

[B]

Yeah, I just don't. I just don't believe. I feel like the ticket market's gonna fall apart. The prices are too high. I just don't get it.

[A]

But whatever, we'll see. Well, I'll tell you this, though. When somehow when the tail. When Taylor Swift came to the Meadowlands, we, like, won the lottery where we, like, we got the thing. And then I had other tickets. I ended up with actually extra tickets, and I sold them. And. And it was for. I couldn't believe how much money they sold for.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So maybe. Although Taylor's was probably more popular than soccer.

[B]

Well, not worldwide, but there's just something about the way they've structured this that I don't trust. I mean, you know, you have little.

[A]

I think FIFA's an honest.

[B]

Yeah, they're a criminal organization and they're running something and they're obviously like. It's like they're setting up their own country in our country, and I think that's bad.

[A]

But whatever.

[B]

Let's talk about the news, the big news which we've now buried with the Knicks, which is we have a Gotham Book Prize winner.

[A]

We do. We do. So it came out today in James Barron's column in the New York Times. Keith McNally, the famous restaurateur whose memoir is called I Regret Almost Anything is the winner of the 2026 Gotham Book Prize. It was actually one of the most one sided votes we've ever had.

[B]

I regret almost everything.

[A]

Yeah, I regret almost everything. It was. It. Almost all the jurors picked it and I think in large part because it was just such a fun book. It was so self aware to like. I'm not the easiest person on myself. Right. And like compared to him, I'm like totally oblivious. Right.

[B]

You felt a little liberated.

[A]

I mean I literally during the book kept saying to him in my head, like, stop being so hard on yourself. But. And you know, people love restaurant books and stories and all of that. And so he had a great story to tell and it's kind of a rag to Rich's story as well. And so anyway, it's a great book.

[B]

Great piece in the Times too. It's really nice.

[A]

Yeah, really nice piece. So we're very excited. So if you.

[B]

Wait, let me ask you a question.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

McNally's restaurants, what's your favorite one?

[A]

It's a great question. Of all of them, I think I've had the most fun at Pastis.

[B]

Yeah. The old, the old location. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Balthazar has always felt too touristy for me.

[B]

It's great for breakfast. Balthazar.

[A]

I think. Yes. And I do like, I still sometimes, because it's right by my apartment, have breakfast there. I feel like I was too. I'm too young for the heyday of Odeon. Yeah, Manette is good. Like it. But I wouldn't say it's like as good. What are the other ones he has, he.

[B]

He has. What's it called on the Upper west side. I think he gave it to his Cafe Luxembourg. Cafe Luxembourg.

[A]

I think I've been there once.

[B]

Oh really? I was just. I love Cafe Luxembourg.

[A]

I think he had a. Oh, he had Schiller's Liquor Bar and do you remember?

[B]

Yeah. We toured that for the potential site

[A]

of the store, the bookstore.

[B]

Yeah. It was weird being in there because I'm.

[A]

Because of the history of it and also. Oh, you know, it's so funny. I think I just realized this. So Odeon is on the COVID of Bright Lights, Big City, which is, I would say a top five New York City book of all time.

[B]

Top five of all time.

[A]

I think so.

[B]

Wow. Okay.

[A]

Also, because I like it a lot.

[B]

I'm not against it, but any book

[A]

I've ever seen that successfully pulls off being written in the second person. Yeah.

[B]

How many of you read like that, though?

[A]

I mean, but just. It's almost impossible to do. And the fact that he did it was amazing. Now, he never. The problem for McInerney is, like, he wrote a bunch of books that were good, but, like, it was one of those situations where, like, he could never touch that ever. And I think that was his first or second book. So number one.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I think he might have written the other. The second book first or something.

[A]

But you know what? I also think now, thinking back on it, that Schiller's might have been on the COVID of Richard Price's Lush Life, which is also a great book.

[B]

You know, it's funny. It's funny you remember that. I think you're right.

[A]

And so you have two McNally books on the covers of great New York novels. Luckily, it's not as good as Bright Lights, but it's a very, very good book. I think both of those guys got old, and they should probably both stop writing.

[B]

Oh, don't say that.

[A]

Oh, I read a couple of weeks ago, they're writers.

[B]

Why should they stop writing?

[A]

It was fine. I mean, it was readable, but that you could say. And I thought Price's last book was terrible.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Like, flat out a bad book. He's written tons of great books.

[B]

Yeah, he's good.

[A]

But the last one, like, I probably won't ever read a new book by him again.

[B]

Oh, come on.

[A]

Not unless you try it. Crazy review. I don't know. Anyway.

[B]

Okay. We have a lot of other things to talk about today, too, so McNally, it's being the prize. There's actually, like, an event, right?

[A]

There's an event at the museum, City of New York. So thank you for them for hosting us.

[B]

And is that open to the public?

[A]

It is not. But if you are an avid firewall listener and you really want to come, shoot us an email and we'll figure it out for you.

[B]

Nice. What else are we talking about?

[A]

So I have a double substack coming out tomorrow.

[B]

Double? Why'd you do a double?

[A]

Because I worked on a column that I'd been thinking about for a little while. I wrote it, and then I'd been thinking about this piano terror tax, mainly because you kept texting me about it constantly. And Megan and I had a conversation on the firewall last Week, but it was about the California billionaire's tax, and it was such a long episode that I think that probably got lost in it completely. And what I just want to explain. We'll get to it. Is that I. It's important to understand the politics behind what Mandani did, which is very different than the substance. And I think what made it interesting to me was those two things writ large present to me the crux, the central crux in question of his mayoralty, which is will he choose what's best for New York or what's appealing to his base? And I think that's what he's always going to be juggling, because that will determine whether he is a fine or good mayor or whether he is a great leader. But we'll get to that. So the first one, though, it's coming out tomorrow or today, I guess, for you guys is, are we sure we really want the freedom to be an asshole?

[B]

And so are you worried about using asshole in the.

[A]

No.

[B]

In the. In the title. Can you do that? Obviously you can do it on subsect. Yeah.

[A]

All right.

[B]

All right. Just asking.

[A]

It's funny. When I wrote Fixer, I made the mistake of reading the comments on Goodreads and Amazon, and there were a couple of people who were like, I am so offended by the use of profanity in this book. And I'm like, it's a book about fucking politics, dude. Like, what do you. What did you expect?

[B]

Well, you did Goodreads in particular. You get a true middle American.

[A]

Someone called me a sociopath in one of those.

[B]

Just for the language or generally speaking.

[A]

Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm not a sociopath, but, like, in politics is literally a verb.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, it's not even considered a. A bad word. It's just a word.

[B]

Oh, okay. I thought you said verb. And I was like, what?

[A]

No, I did. I guess I mean adjective or something. Noun. I don't know. Whatever these days.

[B]

It definitely is a verb.

[A]

Yeah. Something.

[B]

One of the best.

[A]

So here's the thing. So, like, there are times where there are societal problems that you need government to try to solve, and whether government should have a role or not, anytime a politician sees the opportunity to get attention by proposing some sort of solution, they do so. Right. So when I was Schumer's communications director and I had to produce effectively, you know, at least five to 10 press conferences or news hits a week, you know, we made up solutions to all kinds of bullshit that had no role for government whatsoever. And we didn't really ever try to accomplish them. We just cared about getting attention for it. But oftentimes what you really need to solve a problem is not governmental intervention, but normative change. And normative change is hard because you can't just solve it with a piece of legislation, certainly can't solve it with a press conference. It requires an entire culture to think about an issue differently and then adjust their behavior accordingly. And sometimes government can help facilitate it, sometimes not. So in recent years, you've had some really positive normative change around things like destigmatation, destigmatization of mental health treatment, or the MeToo movement, or the decline in drinking and Monk Gen Z, and then also even before that, the decline in drunk driving. And all of those came from culture and drunk driving, probably also Uber to a certain extent. And there are other big normative changes that have happened, like LBGTQ acceptance and rights and the decline in cigarette smoking and the decline in drunk driving. They were also enabled by new laws or court decisions. And those are all really good things. But I think now, and I know we talk about this a lot in the podcast, but the zero sum culture that we live in, that drives our politics, drives our social media, drives our economy, has just penetrated the norms that drive our behavior. And in a world where we define happiness as something that can only come from success, and success means accumulating as much wealth and status as possible, I think we find ourselves. And again, I know I talked this a lot here, but moving away from the collective good and towards an every man for himself worldview and the notion that we're all in constant competition with each other and that winning means behaving however you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, is just accepted, even encouraged, more than any time I could ever remember. I mean, sheer nastiness itself is not only accepted, but often now seen as a smart strategy. And to me, there are a couple of different trends specifically that indicate this type of behavior. And I don't think these are things that can necessarily be changed by government action. They can only be changed by starting to return to the view that when we care for others, when we're considerate and decent, when we do things that give our lives meaning and purpose, and that's what produces happiness and that's what creates a society that we can all live in. So here are a few that I thought were worth so one is phone behavior. So like, we're all addicted to our phones, full stop. I believe that if, if all of us were given a test for add, you know, 90% of Americans or anyone has a phone would probably qualify because we are addicted to this screen. And there are certainly times in all of our days where we give our phone priorities over courtesy other people. And I'm sure that I do it, too, even. Yeah, I try to be mindful of it, but I know that I still do it. But it really does hinder the way we live. So, like, let's not even get into the true harm, which is of phones, which is distracted driving. So in 2024, 315,000 people were in car accidents caused by distracted.

[B]

315,000.

[A]

Yep. 3,200 people died in car accidents caught by distracted driving. But just put that aside. Let's just go to basic courtesy. So, you know, you disagree because you live here just like I do. But I would say the sidewalks in, like, New York City, which, it's probably the worst here because we're the biggest walking culture. But it's true everywhere where anybody is walking, even in a mall, I'm sure, are so much slower and more congested because everyone is now walking at a fucking snail space because they're looking at their phone. And, like, I would love there to be some sort of norm that says, like, you want to look at your phone, by all means, but don't stand in the middle of the street. Just walk over to the. I try to. I don't always do it, but I try to kind of pull over to the side, do what I need to do, and then get back on the road because I'm just slowing down. Everyone behind me, or. I'm sure you have this experience. I certainly do. People staring at their phone in the middle of the doors to the subway, and no one can fucking get in or out because they're too engrossed in their, like, Instagram feed or wherever the fuck it is, or, you know, they're blocking the middle of a stairway or they're, you know, we're trying to get up the New York City subways, I think, move, what, three and a half million, four million people a day? Yeah, they. Everyone has to behave by a certain set of rules for it to work. And part of that means that you have to move up and down the stairs quickly. And look, they have elevators so that if you are disabled or injured or old or whatever it is, like, you know, great, use those. But for. If you're going to use the stairs, you can't, like, look at your phone and move up one stair every 30 seconds because you're ruining the entire system. And by the way, on the subways also, I'm sure you see this just. I just endlessly see people that hop the turnstile that unquestionably could afford.

[B]

Yeah, I feel like that I agree with you. I feel like that has declined somewhat.

[A]

I don't know really for some reason.

[B]

So, I mean, I just seen it less, but it doesn't.

[A]

It's purely whatever reason, I don't know why, I don't know if I'm looking for it there or it just keeps happening. But when I go to and from the Garden from my apartment, I take the Ace at Canal and I somehow feel like I just every single time I'll see it. Actually I'll see it tonight because I'm going to the Garden to the go with Josh, the Springsteen concert. Invariably someone hops a turnstile and there's someone like dressed up to go out in soho or Tribeca that stops kind of right on the border of the two. Like, what the fuck? Like you're going to complain about the service and then you can't pay your $3 to, you know, fund it. Like it just. Like, who does that? Like, it's just such a clear disregard for the well being of anyone but yourself. So, you know, all of that, to me it just is. Is a norm. Also, if you notice and this doesn't involve the phone, people now walk fucking like three or four across on the street like they're on a fucking Broadway choreographed dance. Like what? Get the F out of the way. And they're variably like linking arms, like walking slow. It's really hard to get around.

[B]

I think some of this is that you live in soho because. Because that is obviously a purely out of town behavior. No, no, no, no. Regular New Yorkers walk three abreast or four breasts linking arms. That is something that like people on a bachelorette visit or something would do.

[A]

Go to Nashville, don't come to New York. Also on the phone, people holding calls in public on speakerphone.

[B]

Yeah, right. You talked about this.

[A]

What the fuck, man? Just hold the phone up to your ear like a normal person.

[B]

Do you ever listen in to see if they're saying anything?

[A]

No, because whenever, like a couple weeks ago, I was at LaGuardia. Some asshole. The entire TSA line is holding a car.

[B]

Oh, really? Just talking out loud.

[A]

Like the conversation is invariably fucking inane. Right. It's not like they're discussing like the next invasion of Iraq, Iran, maybe they're betting on it market, but they're not discussing it on the speakerphone and like, then this fucking same asshole gets on. I'm sitting in my seat and then as he imports the plane, still on his call, it's like, what the fuck, man? So there's that, there's gym behavior we've talked about before. But you know, three times in the last few months I've asked someone to work and they said no. And then even on Friday, have you

[B]

thought about going to a different gym? Maybe? Well, maybe the gym should market itself as like the non asshole gym.

[A]

Yeah, well, I do actually split it up among three different equinoxes because it depends on where.

[B]

I think this is one of the reasons why people like those private gyms that are much, you know, maybe.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I was at the Equinox on Friday on 20th and Broadway and the cable pulley, things are always crowded, so there's a woman using them. And I said, oh, can I use the other one? I said, no, I'm gonna need both. I said, okay. And I said, well, how much do you have left? And she just said, four sets. And it wasn't like, and let's work in together.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Just like, you'll have to wait. And at this time, because now I've been through this multiple times, like, all right, fine. What?

[B]

So if you think you went to the. Why would this behavior be the same? Maybe not.

[A]

I do think it's a possibility that Equinox members are rich and therefore more likely to be assholes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Look, I mean, if you, if you subscribe to the Trumpian mentality of a zero sum worldview, it is quite possible that Equinox attracts more of those people. And I do think a lot of the behavior we're talking about are by younger people. So that is clearly somewhat symptomatic of social media, for sure. And also though, you know, as parents, doesn't matter what you tell your kids, it's what they see you do, right? And if they see you not showing regard for other people. Like, I have always been concerned about raising rich kids in Manhattan, right? When my kids were born, we certainly were not wealthy at all, but then I did really well really quickly. And, and that's one of the reasons that we chose a Quaker school for them to go to. It's one of the reasons I've made both of them work here at the bookstore, made them both volunteer at the soup kitchen. But like, my feeling is I can tell them all the right things, but unless they see me do it and unless they experience it themselves, it's not going to sink Through, Right. So hopefully my kids aren't doing any of the things we're talking about. I haven't noticed them doing them, but who knows?

[B]

They're also young and they might make mistakes from time to time in some

[A]

of these for sure. And we all do. I'm sure that if someone trailed me, they will find a time where I am on the street, slowly walking, looking at my phone and not getting out of the way.

[B]

However, you have not ever jumped a turnstile.

[A]

No.

[B]

It's crazy, right?

[A]

Why would you do that?

[B]

No, I agree.

[A]

I understand. Like, think about it. Unless you are truly a sociopath, like the person of Goodreads seem to think I was. You have a conscience, right? Why would you feel bad about yourself even at some super subconscious level for $3? Right? I understand that if you were truly homeless or poor or whatever it is, maybe those $3 mean something to you, in which case you still shouldn't do it. But at least it's a different. Yeah, calculus, calculus. But when it's someone who just is doing it because they just don't give a shit at all. Like maybe they're truly a sociopath and it doesn't matter, but if they are not, then at some level you're going to know you did something wrong. So it's just a stupid trade off. Like, I really do think that part of the problem we have societally with unhappiness is that it's not only the zero sum mentality, but just people who are societally shitty at math. Like in the sense of the return on investment for doing any of these things compared to what you get out of it. Like any bad feelings you might have about yourself, however subconscious they might be, is clearly worse than the benefit of doing these things. Like another one is airplane behavior, right? Like just wait till your group is called. You know, like you have to try to jump the line. Like the plane literally can't take off until the boarding time and everyone. Until the departure time, everyone's on anyway, right? So what are you gaining?

[B]

People are paranoid about getting overhead space in the.

[A]

So what I would do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is what they used to do and they should do. Which is instead of like all right, platinum now. Platinum plus. Now if your last name starts with a Q. Now if you have. What you should do is board from back to front. And look, I. I tend to sit in the front and it means I have to wait longer to board, but that would still be a far more efficient way to do it.

[B]

Well, there, there have been studies, right? It's you actually stagger it a little bit there. There are mathematical ways to. To board the plane that would be most efficient.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But they don't do it so.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They do it by.

[A]

And you know, it's funny, of the different airlines of the, you know, United tends to be the one I choose to fly the least. And one of the reasons is they have like a zillion categories before they start boarding. And it's like, this is just ridiculous.

[B]

You know, I think it's hilarious. It's like a. It's like a. It's like a little, in a nutshell, a distillation of the, of the, of the culture. Like these faux status symbols and like, weird, like, cultish ideas about, like, belonging to, like, a higher level and whatever. It's crazy.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And then kid sports, and this is not a new thing, but just like I remember Lyle played in the Stuy town Little League and these. That's going backwards dads. He only played for a year. Fortunately. It's like they all thought that they were like the bench coach for the Dodgers or something. And they're all like, want all the second strategy. Yeah. It's like, dude, I'm pretty sure no kid from the Stuy town Little League has ever played professional baseball.

[B]

Oh, I'm going to. Yeah.

[A]

Stopping.

[B]

We should get that on Couchy, I think. Will one ever the year? No.

[A]

I signed up to be an assistant coach, and so did Kat Sunstein, who I, you know, took a lot of classes at law school, and so it was fun to see him there. But we both ended up giving up our first and third base coaching jobs because the other dads were so aggressive and so desperate. We're like, all right, dude, fucking have at it, man. This is. If this is truly the most interesting, important thing in your life, like, fucking go for it. And they're yelling at the kids like they're eight. Who gives a shit? And look, I don't even use social media, so I can't imagine how bad that must be along those lines, by the way, because I've noticed, you know, we do maintain a LinkedIn and an Instagram account from the office. And then people come to me, say, well, you never liked my thing or responded or whatever. And it's like, I don't see it. So, like, it is not the way to reach me. Like, I don't look at it, I don't see it. I don't know the passwords, but I have to imagine that everything I just complained about is like a fraction of what you must. What's happened on social media?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're a little bit past the period of like total, like endless toxicity. But I also don't look at it that much either, so I don't really know.

[A]

And so just to bring it back, changing social norms doesn't happen overnight. I remember once when we were in law school, Bob, this was like the mid-90s, mid to late 90s, Bob and I were talking about same sex marriage. And Bob made a really trenchant point which said, he said it will happen because shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy become popular. And he was totally right, which is that, you know, the normative change comes from the way things are portrayed by influencers in mass media. If there's enough stigma, those are the kinds of things that do it. So like right now, if someone lit up a cigarette in the bookstore, probably wouldn't need anyone who works here to even tell them to put it out because I think every customer would feel comfortable doing so. Right, right. Those norms changed. Right. And it took a while. Mike Bloomberg was the first made New York kind of the first big city to ban indoor smoking in like 2002. So that's 24 years ago now. So it took time. But ultimately, if you can get to a point where someone says, hey, go look at your phone over there, or don't block the door at the subway, or don't walk for a cross or don't not let people work in, and it becomes so clear, then people stop behaving that way.

[B]

Yeah, but people are really fearful, I think, of making those kinds of statements. I mean, I think if someone did light up a cigarette in the store, I think people would sooner leave the store than maybe tell the person because first of all, it would be such a hostile act. Right. So the person doing it would be doing it knowing that they were, you know, they were, they were breaking the convention and they were causing, you know, distress to the people around them. They would know that it wouldn't be

[A]

an accident because the person doing it. But that's of how much it has changed.

[B]

Yeah, I know. I'm not contesting your point.

[A]

I just, I don't, I don't agree with you. I do, I really do think, let's do an experiment. Next time the store is busy, you light up a cigarette.

[B]

See if I get punched.

[A]

Yeah, I don't know. No, I don't think so because.

[B]

So I like a tackled and like

[A]

thrown out to bring this full circle. When I was in law school, I took a ton of classes with, with Cass Sunstein, who's sort of one of the foremost behavioral economists in the country. And I wrote a paper about how you could use behavioral economics and stigma specifically to change behavior and adherence to the leash law in New York City parks. And then after law school, I went back to work at the Parks Department and I showed the paper to Henry Stern, who was the commissioner, and I said, I'd like to do this. And Henry, you know, had some bad qualities, but he had some great qualities too. And one of them was like, yeah, sure, go for it. And. And Ed Schuyler and I, because Ed was. Our press records at the time, put together this whole campaign that was a combination of real stigma for a period of time. We had the parks police sort of swooping down on horseback and giving people tickets and things like that. We built more dog runs to give people more places to do it, but we also did things like, we put up signs in, like, languages, depending on neighborhood, we're in the same, like, if you don't clean up after your dog, you don't deserve to own one. And we applied so much stigma. And I remember one day the New York Post had a front page story photo of a parks police man on horse, parks police on horseback, giving a hundred or a thousand dollar fine, whatever it was, to someone. And like, the ripple effects were massive. And at least for a period of time, it really worked. Adherence went up to from like 33% to 80%. I'm not quite sure what happened after I left. I think probably it declined a bit simply because no one was focused on it. Right, but you really can use social norm theory now if you have the combination of the right theory that was informed by people who really know this shit, which I had the benefit of. All Johnstein's comments to my paper, combined with the power of government, you know, in certain cases, like leash law, where it's actually a law, right, you can really maybe move a little faster. But I just think that, like, if we want to live happier lives, then we have to sort of have concern for collective good, not just because it'll make our actual total lives easier and better, despite what we think by taking all these stupid shortcuts, but also because when you care for others, that's what gives you meaning and purpose. And that's one of the absolute critical ingredients for happiness, for eudaimonia, wellbeing, whatever you want to call it. And so we might think that the key to happiness is having total autonomy and agency. But I Don't think the freedom to be an asshole is a path to happiness. I think it's the road to misery. So, you know, hopefully others agree.

[B]

And do you think the fact that. So one of. One of Mamdani's qualities, right. Is he is a nice guy, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He's conscientious. You know, he's. The tone of his.

[A]

He's not Rudy Giuliani.

[B]

He's not Rudy Giuliani. He's not de Blasio. I mean, he's even. Even someone like Mike was not the warmest guy. Right.

[A]

Mike's not warm. Right. So.

[B]

So do you think that has some ability to make people.

[A]

Not.

[B]

Not then it's. We're gonna. I guess we're gonna talk about, I think, making videos like, targeting people.

[A]

I think that he is at a moment where he has enough popularity, enough following the right personality, that if embrace social normative change in the right way, it could be very effective. Now, part of the challenge is the world that he comes out of is the opposite. Right. They love nothing more than to hector people and shame them and cancel them and tell them how terrible they are. So he would have to do it differently. But that's how he ran for mayor and it worked. So, yeah, he could be a great leader in this type of effort.

[B]

All right. Speaking of him, Donnie.

[A]

Yeah. So the context is this. Albany is still working through the state budget. One of the things that they are trying to do is find some ways to help New York City, because New York City is facing a 5 to 6 billion dollars budget deficit, which sounds

[B]

a lot, which it is, but it's also in the context of $125 billion budget. Right. So it's what, 4%, 5% of the budget?

[A]

5%, yeah. So, like. Right. So they should be able to. To fix this, but, you know, we'll get to that. But one of the ideas was a pied. A terror tax. So if. If you have a second home, and your second home is in New York City, not your primary residence, and it's valued over $5 million, there can be a proposed tax of up to 4% per year of. Of the value of the home. And in pushing this out publicly, Mandami, rather than just saying, like, you know, here's why this is good public policy, by the way. I don't have a problem with the policy, quite frankly. He did something very different, which is Sir Ken Griffin, who is the owner of and founder of Citadel, which is a giant hedge fund. And he's probably one of the 20 richest people in the world. And he is a Miami resident, but he owns the most expensive apartment in New York city. It's like $238 million. And he employs 2,500 people right now in Manhattan and was planning to build a new $6 billion headquarters that would create another 15,000 jobs. Mondami made Ken Griffin the face of his entire argument and attacked Ken Griffin personally and publicly and aggressively and really humiliated Griffin completely when from a substantive standpoint of getting the tax included in the state budget, that was not necessary at all. Right. He did not need to do this for any substantive purpose, but he chose to do it anyway. And Griffin, who's no shrinking violet, said pathetically, go fuck yourself. I don't have to create these jobs in New York. And now he's talking about instead, and he seems like that's the choice. He's leaning publicly towards it, creating those jobs in Miami who would be very happy to have those jobs and would say thank you as opposed to publicly humiliating him. And then not only are those jobs now likely gone, but then Apollo, is

[B]

that a done deal? He's not.

[A]

It's not a done deal. But I've been following this closely. In the most recent publicly reported, I don't know anyone there. So he has indicated that he is likely to choose Miami now. Not definitely, but likely. Hopefully he will change his mind for New York's sake, but I understand where he's coming from. Why would you choose to do this thing for a city where its mayor publicly chooses to humiliate you? And Apollo, which was going to create a thousand new jobs, said, we're going to put them instead in Texas or Florida for the. For the same reason. And from a substance standpoint, it's hard to see this as anything other than a fiasco for New York. So 1% of New York City residents pay 50% of the local taxes. So when those taxpayers leave, or as new high income jobs originally intended for New York created elsewhere, the tax base declines, and then money needed to help poor people goes away. So whether you're a hardcore capitalist who just wants to see the financial sector grow, or you're someone who just wants to see the city about to help people in need with programs like Medicaid or public housing or food stamps, it's a really bad outcome because it just leads to less jobs and less money, which means less help for poor people who need it the most. But I don't think Mandani sees it that way, and I don't think his team sees it that way. So Mandani ran for office promising to tax the rich. And that's one of the things that helped propel him to the mayoralty and then especially promised then use that money to make everything free. And look, the guy is really smart. He knows his base incredibly well. And one of the things that he knows and that we know is progressives. Even though they argue that they are for the most disenfranchised and poorest among us, they are not the poorest among us. They are typically in the second or third decile of wealth. They're often highly educated and often highly frustrated that they did not succeed enough financially to be able to easily afford to live in New York City. New York City is an expensive city. And unless you make, you know, seven figures, quite frankly, it is a place where you have to really be mindful of your spending because things are incredibly expensive. And when people sort of don't achieve that, but they were in position to do so, they had the kinds of education, the kinds of jobs that could have allowed that. They have a choice, right? They can blame themselves for their own career choices. Oh, you know, it sounds very noble to want to be a journalist or work at a nonprofit or whatever it is when you're coming out of college and then when you have two kids and you're living in a one bedroom, you might not feel that way. Right? They could blame themselves for not working hard enough, not taking enough risk, not being talented enough, or the far easier thing to do, which is what Donald Trump does every day, is just say, anyone who did better than me is wrong. And in their case, they say that anyone who succeeded where they did not is corrupt and greedy and evil. And psychologically, that's the easier thing to do. Right. Than to take. They're the anti Keith McNally. Right? And social justice means punishing those who did better than they did. So their demands for tax increases, regardless what the money is used for, matters a lot to them. Because it's not about generating new tax revenue to help the poor. It's not about setting tax policy to provide the best government services. It's about emotional validation. And because Mondani tried and failed to convince Governor Hochul to raise income taxes, he had to get some kind of win to show his base that he succeeded in punishing the rich in some way. And that's where the pied a terror tax came in. Because it's not. It's 300, and according to Mark Levine, the comptroller, it's about $340 million in revenue, which is not nothing. But it's still like, how could it

[B]

only be that little? Like the. I guess there just aren't that many apartments.

[A]

There aren't that people who are second homes. Right. There are some. I mean, it's not an insignificant amount of money. But Levine, who by the way is a Democrat, he's not certainly looking to piss off progressives. He doesn't have to. It's not like he's a Republican trying to, you know, poke at them. That's not. But he also, also a very, he's been on his podcast before. He's a very down the middle guy, you know.

[B]

No, I'm not distrusting number. I'm just, I'm just surprised. I mean, it's very hard to always over these tax things to understand these big numbers.

[A]

Right? So if madame just supported the Pieterra attacks and said, hey, this is good, we need it, that's normal. But by choosing to make Ken Griffin the face of evil, while he did cost his own city thousands and thousands of jobs, he also made the fight far more exciting to the media to cover. And he made the fight far more.

[B]

But what's the fight over? Like, like if he created it.

[A]

No, there's no actual. But by naming. Well, that fight now is between Ken Griffin and Mandani. Right. The fight now is.

[B]

Except Ken Griffin was like, I'm not fighting, I'm just going, I'm saying goodbye.

[A]

Fine. But then Mandani's basis says, well, that's just more evidence of how evil you and all of your compatriots are. Right. And so Mondami's goal here was, yes, to get the revenue. But far more important than that, he needed something that was as controversial as possible at got as much attention as possible because then that then makes the base feel like it's significant. Right. If it's just the piano terror attacks with no controversy around it, the people who are demanding social justice to feel better about themselves probably aren't feeling all that differently. But because it became such a big fight that made progressives feel better about what's actually a relatively meager win.

[B]

Do you think there's nobody in City hall just be like, yeah, why do

[A]

we seem like it? Why do we do this?

[B]

Like, what's the actual upside of like how many people really look at a video of him showing Ken Griffin's apartment and think like, ah, cool, that's great stuff. Like, that's, that's what I want.

[A]

I mean, not their voters.

[B]

People want. Well, people want like the free buses or they want the grocery stores. He didn't. He didn't run on, like, let's run all the rich people out of town, right?

[A]

No, but he did run on a let's make them pay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

See, to get. Look, he was at, like, 1% in the primary, and then to get the kind of support he did, part of it entailed persuading and mobilizing progressives, and they needed to hear. It's the same thing that every demagogue does, whether it's Bernie Sanders or AOC or Donald Trump or whoever else, which is, your life is not what you want it to be, and it's not your fault. It's because other people are screwing you over. And vote for me because I will deliver.

[B]

I get all that. I just don't see why, like, a dumb video really pleases people. Like, I don't see that as being, like. As you were talking about people scrolling on their phones, like, stopping on the sidewalk.

[A]

But it did.

[B]

They see one video and they're just like, oh, my God, my tax dollars at work. Thank God.

[A]

But this guy, meaning the mayor, knows his base. He knows social media. He knows what they respond to. He knew exactly what he was doing.

[B]

And I think he must have had no idea of the consequences.

[A]

I don't think so. Well, I think he didn't know about the consequences economically, because I don't think there's anyone in his administration that understands comics in the slightest. They don't even have someone running edc. But I do think he fully understood that he had to be seen as delivering a win for social justice, and the win had to be seen as significant. But if video's a win, the fight. Well, it's not just the video. It's all of the resulting press conferences.

[B]

Okay. I mean, I get the idea of the tax. I don't actually agree with the tax because I think the city has to do a real serious job of figuring out what. What they can deliver in terms of quality of services and focus on those things and make appropriate cuts where they're not doing a good job. And I think that has to be the starting place. And then you can talk about, like, okay, for these things, we need extra. I get it.

[A]

Revenue. If you're the governor and you have you still. It's. It's still a democracy. She has to get a deal done with the legislature. The legislature. It's super progressive because as we discussed a billion times on this podcast, they the. Because the districts are gerrymandered. The primary Only matters. And the people who vote in their primaries are very, very left wing and they demand social justice. So she had to throw a bone. Right. To kind of get her own budget done and get through all of this. And so she had to do it. And he had to not just get the revenue from it, but he had to make it feel meaningful to his base. And that required. So maybe not the video, but there's been a ton of press coverage around it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that has taken something small and made it feel big.

[B]

And do you think there's a phone call from Hochul? Hey, how about you not chase big employers out of the state? Like, I mean, it's.

[A]

She is super pissed at him. Not just over this, but I think she thinks he. Keep in mind, when. When he was a legislator, he was nothing. He wasn't significant at all. But he wasn't a player, you know, he was just a gadfly. Right. An ideological gadfly. And now here he is, the mayor, and I think she thinks he is way out of his depth. Has mainly appointed a lot of people. Now, some are good. A lot of the operational people at Jesse Tisch, for sure, but a lot of his staff are.

[B]

Which was forced on him.

[A]

Yeah. You know, are ultra, ultra ideological. And I think she's very frustrated with it. But also, keep in mind, this was. If Mandami was ever going to have real leverage over her, it was this year. So she's up for election in November. You know, I don't know how old she is, but she's what, in her mid-60s, I'm guessing, something like that. So, like, odds are. And she's not to her great credit, like a Totally.

[B]

She's 67.

[A]

Right. So she would be 71, 72 at the end of the next term. I think it's unlikely that she would run again. So odds are this is her last election. She doesn't strike me as someone that absolutely cannot live without the validation of public office.

[B]

You don't see her doing a Pataky like thing and running for president.

[A]

No, I mean, probably not. Plus, I also think you're likely to have a Democratic President win in 28, which means she's not gonna primary the nominee. Right? Only ideologues do that. She's not one. But the point is this, this is one. If he ever is gonna have leverage over her, it's now, right? Right. If she's not running again, she doesn't really matter if the base is mad at her, because it's not her base anyway. Right. And so this is his moment. And after November, his leverage evaporates pretty much completely. So that meant he had to take the Pieter tax and make it into as big of a deal as possible because he's now gonna have to hang his hat on this thing for the next four years to be able to show his base that he actually did deliver what they cared about. But I think even more important is really what this means in the bigger context. Right. Has he learned from any of this? I agree with you that they did not foresee or understand the economic consequences of what they did at all. They understood the political implications of it. And I think he has to make a choice. Do the eight and a half million people who live here come first? Or is it the handful of people that voted during the primary? And look, turnout was high this year, but it was still tiny compared to the overall percentage.

[B]

So you won a million votes. First one since the 60s. Right. To get a million votes in the general election.

[A]

General. But in the primary it was less. It was a lot.

[B]

Oh, sure, but I mean, in the general election it's still one out of five registered voters and one out of,

[A]

it's 12% of the total population. Right. When you're the mayor, your job is to represent people, whether the register voters or not, children or adults, you know, whatever it is, your job is the best interest of them as a whole. So. Right. So his, the, the mandate he got is still, and I would say really, it really came in the primary. So it would have been like one out of, you know, 20 or something like that. Right, one out of 18. So is he unusual in that way? No. The vast majority of elected officials across the ideological spectrum put their own political needs ahead of any substantive good. And that's why we see their special interests or ideological extremes control the agenda at every level of government, city, state, federal. And as a result, either nothing gets done or only one sided policies advance. And none of that is good for anyone but those narrow groups and interests. So a good politician wins re election. A great leader achieves real things, often by choosing a path that is not easy or popular, but it's the right thing to do. And whether it's job growth or public safety or affordable housing or the budget or a dozen other topics, Mandani's going to consistently face a conflict between what's best for him politically and what's best for New York City. And we've seen examples of both. So keeping Jesse Titch as police commissioner, he did what was best for New York to the Anger of his base. The crime stats back this up. They're better than ever. She's doing a great job. Humility in Ken Griffin was certainly best for him and his political needs at the expense of constituents who need jobs. The question presented itself this winter when Mandami, ideologically, for ideological reasons, refused to break up homeless encampments during the depth of the winter because progressives don't believe in that. 19 homeless people froze to their death. Eventually, he changed his mind. I'm living this right now. Whereas, you know, we were able to work with the previous administration to force Citibike to do real age verification for E Bike rentals. Mondami has now come out against that because although they've never seen the technology, they argue that facial recognition is racist, so therefore it can't be used. I said, well, what about kids dying? That's not really their concern. That would be an example of picking ideology. We are. We will hopefully come up with a solution on this. I do think it is possible to have a solution this. It's not involved facial recognition, so I'm still holding out hope. But it's clearly another example of picking ideology over his actual constituents. And now we have the budget, right? And like you said, it's $127 billion budget. There's a roughly five and a half to $6 billion budget deficit. You can easily clear that with budget cuts that don't hurt real people. But what it does hurt is the dogma of the left because they truly believe that government should be as. As bad big as possible. There are people celebrating May Day last week because they wish that we were like the Soviet Union on the left. And it would mean pissing off organized labor. It would mean they're gonna run ads against you and go after you, just like they do every mayor who doesn't do what they want. And it would really mean that you would take the sacrosanct belief among us base that spending more on everything is a solution to everything all of the time, except when it comes to policing. But he doesn't want to do that, right? So like you said, New York city is a $40 billion budget just to run its public schools. And yet we have some of the worst outcomes of any major school district in the country. Half of the students who manage to graduate and only 2/3 graduate to begin with are college ready. And then of those who do graduate, 38% of them drop out of college in the first six months. And since COVID enrollment has declined by 123,000 students, and yet somehow they always seem to need more money. And with all that said, the average teacher salary, I think Ravi Gupta told me the other day, is $61,000. So somehow they are spending $40 billion not paying teachers particularly well. So it's all on fucking bureaucracy and middle management and AIDS to guide his counselors and all this stuff. That, sure, in a perfect world, sounds great, but it's mainly an employment program for bureaucrats. It is not meant to educate kids, because if you did that, you would look at the system to work best. Like some charter schools like Success Academy, which has the best test scores in any school in the state, you know, including every public school district in Westchester. But they don't do that, right? They just pick the bureaucracy over everything else. And if you're going to choose efficiency over dogma, you know, you need political courage. And that's what this is, the test of his mayoralty, right? It's still early. We're only in couple of four months in from his mayoralty. He didn't come into it with any matter of experience. And it's an incredibly hard job for anyone, right? Mike Bloomberg could not have been a more seasoned manager. Hard for him, hard for everyone. That's what it is. And it's very different from being a legislator where you can just choose ideology and your base without any operational consequence, mostly with time. So we know the mayor is incredibly talented politically. I don't think anybody would dispute that. But his courage, his leadership, and his willingness to put the eight and a half million people who live in the city first is still yet to be determined.

[B]

You got some recommendations? I have one, too, but I want to hear yours.

[A]

I have one. If you like biographies of musicians. Bob Spitz is one of the great writers of that, and he just came out with a book called the Rolling Stones. And it's a long book, but all of his books are very long. It's just about 600 pages. And I thought it was great. I really enjoyed it. One of the things I realized I really liked about it is I don't like biographies or memoirs that go way too long on the childhoods. Because the reality is, unless there was something so significant in the childhood that shaped everything else, it just feels like it's boring and it's a waste of time. And frequently I quit biographies and memoirs.

[B]

I know when you told me this

[A]

one, I was shocked that you'd read it, but, well. But Spitz did not waste a lot of time on their childhoods or a little bit, but I thought Just enough to set the scene, but he pretty quickly got it to how. You know, Mick and Keith, literally, they had met before, but. So they knew each other, but they ran into each other on the tube and started talking. They were a little standoffish at first, but then they started talking about blues, I guess they had a long ride and by the time it was over, they're like, let's start listening to records together. And then it was, let's start jamming together. And out of that came the Rolling Stones, along with Brian Jones, who was the leader of the group for a while. And then he sort of fell into massive drug addiction and died. The book says he was murdered. I think it was a scene that he had died in a drowning accident, but the book argues that he was murdered convincingly. They have someone saying that they did it.

[B]

Yeah, A drugged out guy floating in a swimming pool seems like.

[A]

Could be. Right. But either way, it's just a great.

[B]

And he was murdered by his drug dealer or like.

[A]

Like a guy, like a hanger on who had been stealing from him and maybe was mad that he was getting caught, that kind of thing.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Not by another Rolling Star, not by Mick Jagger. No. But it was just a great portrayal of all of them, especially Jagger and Richards and who they were and what made them tick and just incredible stories. And this is a band that is, you know, many ways the most successful band in the history of music in the sense of not just their output and longevity, you know, their popularity, the number of credible songs, their iconic nature. They're still around, right. Like, even the Beatles only lasted like a decade. Right.

[B]

Not even.

[A]

Most great bands don't really get past like a decade because either a key person dies or more likely they just all start fighting with each other and break up. And the Stones certainly had tensions and they would take a year off here or there, but at the end of the day, their love for, if nothing else, the music they made together. And I think there's a.

[B]

And their love of money.

[A]

And money. And there's a bond between them also. All of those things between Jagger, Richards. There clearly is one.

[B]

It's funny, I interviewed Keith Richards once. I wouldn't say there's much of a

[A]

bond anymore, but, you know, Spitz argued there was. Oh, really? Interesting.

[B]

I mean, I guess that's true. They're not really friends, but.

[A]

No, but they're like siblings. Yeah, is the way he described it. And then, you know, I, you know, because I was listening to what I was reading, I was like, why don't I make a Stones playlist of my, you know, favorite songs just to listen to while I'm reading. And it was just incredible how long my playlist was.

[B]

Okay, give me the unorthodox favorite of yours.

[A]

Can't you hear me knocking?

[B]

Can't hear me knocking. Okay, I'm gonna give you Moonlit Mile. I was listening to that. We were listening to Sticky Fingers over the weekend in the car, and I was loving that song.

[A]

Yeah, no, they just didn't. And by the way, they made a lot of bad songs, too. But. But there.

[B]

Do you like the Black and Blue album?

[A]

Not really. No. There might have been. There was something on there that's a

[B]

little bit of a litmus test.

[A]

Maybe Midnight was on there or something like that. Some. It was like I went through Memory

[B]

Motel is like the song that people.

[A]

I went through the whole discography when I was making the playlist, and I remember not taking much from that one. Okay, so anyway, but if you like, you know, books about musicians, it's a really good book.

[B]

I'm read it. I've read a lot about the Stones, but there's a great memoir of the like by one of their roommates at their first apartment.

[A]

Oh, that place was supposed to be

[B]

the most disgusting apartment. And the guy wrote a really funny memoir. It has a funny title, too. I can't remember it.

[A]

And also, just if you do other stuff, Spitz's last book, Led Zeppelin, was also fantastic.

[B]

You read that also? Yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Thank you. For you. Damn. I want to recommend a movie I saw watch with Orly yesterday. One of my daughters, she wanted to see it. I would not have seen it without her encouragement, but we went to see Devil Wears Prada 2.

[A]

Oh, how was it?

[B]

You know what's funny? I really liked it better than the first. You know, I saw the first one but so long ago. The only difficulty with it, which is a big problem, is that Anne Hathaway is unbearable, however unbearably.

[A]

Just a.

[B]

I think the part is poorly written, too, but she's so goofy, and it just doesn't quite track at all. But Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci are freaking awesome, and Streep still has it. Yeah. I mean, it's not the hardest part for someone as good as she is, but she's good. And then it becomes kind of like an episode of succession at the end. And it actually really works. The movie just gets better and better. At the beginning. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm not gonna be able to survive this. And then by the end, I was like, yeah, I really liked it.

[A]

Sounds great. All right, there you go. Two recommendations. Thank you.

[B]

Thanks.

[A]

Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new [e-mail] thanks again for listening.