Christopher F. Rufo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss an urban struggle with street homelessness and the political fight around it in the Pacific Northwest's largest city. Known as the “Emerald City” because its surrounding areas are filled with greenery year-round, Seattle has recently seen an explosion of homelessness, crime, and drug addiction. Municipal cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty needles from the streets, and tent-villages have become a regular presenc...
Jan 03, 2019•22 min
Heather Mac Donald discusses the decline of the university and the rise of campus intellectual intolerance, the subjects of her important new book, The Diversity Delusion How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture . She spoke at a Manhattan Institute event in autumn 2018. Toxic ideas that originated in academia have now spread beyond the university setting, widening America's cultural divisions. Too many college students enter the working world believing that ...
Dec 19, 2018•23 min
Naomi Schaefer Riley joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss how family court in New York fails vulnerable children and how reforms could improve child-welfare. In the New York Family Court System, judges adjudicate cases ranging from custody disputes to child abuse. As Riley reports, though, the whole system can feel like an agonizing series of hearings, trials, and meetings—often without any resolution. The process can prove detrimental to a child's emotional well-being, in additio...
Dec 19, 2018•11 min
John Tierney joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss what the debate over prescription drugs gets wrong and the cost that government-imposed price controls could have on one of the world's most innovative industries. The business practices of the pharmaceutical industry--or "Big Pharma"—are one of the most divisive political issues of our time. Leaders from both political parties, from Bernie Sanders to President Trump, regularly denounce drug companies for profiteering and call for ...
Dec 12, 2018•16 min
Nicole Gelinas joins Seth Barron to discuss the chaos that commuters and tourists endure on a daily basis in midtown Manhattan—especially during the holiday season. Every year, city officials are criticized for their poor handling of holiday crowds and the traffic that fills the streets. This year promises to be even worse. As Gelinas has documented , tourists visiting the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center are being funneled between police barricades and concrete bollards, while cars move fre...
Dec 05, 2018•21 min
Stephen Eide joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss how America's health-care system fails the mentally ill, and the steps that cities and states are taking to keep the mentally ill out of jail and get them into treatment. Urban areas have seen a disturbing rise in street disorder and homelessness over the last decade. Unfortunately, many of the street homeless suffer from serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Despite federalspending of about $...
Nov 28, 2018•16 min
Oren Cass joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss his new book, The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America . The American worker is in crisis. Wages have stagnated for more than a generation, and reliance on welfare programs has surged. Life expectancy is falling as substance abuse and obesity rates climb. Work and its future has become a central topic for City Journal : in 2017, the magazine published its special issue, The Shape of Work to Come . Cass's...
Nov 21, 2018•21 min
Nicole Gelinas joins Howard Husock to discuss the resolution of Amazon's year-long "HQ2" competition. This week, the Internet giant announced that it would open new offices in Crystal City, Virginia—near Washington, D.C.—and New York's own Long Island City, Queens. Located just across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Long Island City had struggled for years as a post-industrial neighborhood until the early 2000s, when rezoning allowed the construction of dozens of luxury residential buildi...
Nov 14, 2018•17 min
Steven Malanga joins Aaron Renn to discuss the results of this week's gubernatorial elections. States such as Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin flipped blue after eight years of GOP governance. In highly publicized races in Florida and Georgia and heavily blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts, Republicans prevailed. All told, Democrats gained seven governorships. Ten years ago, Democrats won a host of governorships during President Obama's first election, and 2009 proved be a record year for ...
Nov 08, 2018•12 min
City Journal's Brian Anderson and Seth Barron discuss New York's upcoming elections and the prospects of a state government run entirely by Democrats. New York's local politics have long been driven by a partisan split in the state legislature. With the help of moderate Democrats, Republicans have held a narrow majority in the state senate since 2010. This year, however, many of those moderates were beaten in the primaries by more progressive candidates. As a result, Democrats are poised to take...
Oct 31, 2018•17 min
Oriana Schwindt joins City Journal contributing editor Aaron Renn to discuss Schwindt's seven-month-long journey to municipalities near the geographic center of every U.S. state, and what she found there: the curious "sameness" of American cities. Schwindt chronicled her travels in a recent article for New York . In gentrifying neighborhoods across the country, visitors are practically guaranteed to find high-end bars with expensive cocktails, coffee shops with tattooed and bespectacled baristas...
Oct 24, 2018•16 min
Andy Ngo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the recent outbreak of violence in Portland between far-left activists, commonly referred to as Antifa, and right-wing groups that gathered to oppose them. Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle have long been hotbeds for extreme left-wing political movements. Recently, video emerged of black-clad Antifa activists directing midday traffic and harassing drivers in Portland's business district. A week later, street brawls bro...
Oct 17, 2018•16 min
City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock is joined in the studio by Shelby Steele to discuss the state of race relations in American society, the history of black protest movements, and other subjects. Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. His books include The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (1990), which won the National Book Crit...
Oct 10, 2018•27 min
Mick Cornett joins Aaron Renn to discuss Cornett's time as mayor of Oklahoma City (2004-2018) and his new book The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros . America is full of midsize cities that have prospered through smart governance, including Charleston, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Sacramento—and Oklahoma City. Over the last decade-plus, elected officials and community leaders have made real progress on improving these urban centers, boosting civic vitality, and creating econ...
Oct 03, 2018•24 min
Bert Stratton joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to talk about Stratton's experience as a member of one of the most despised but important professions: landlord. Stratton is a musician and blogger, but he makes his living managing apartment units and retail space in a suburban neighborhood outside of his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He prefers to call himself a "landlord-musician." Stratton's first piece for City Journal , a quirky essay called " The Landlord’s Tale ," appeared in 2...
Sep 26, 2018•18 min
Robert Poole joins City Journal contributing editor Nicole Gelinas to discuss Poole’s new book, Rethinking America's Highways: a 21st-Century Vision for Better Infrastructure . Americans spend untold hours every year sitting in traffic. And despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent by transportation agencies, our nation's roads, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges are in serious disrepair. According to transportation expert Poole, traffic jams and infrastructure deterioration are inevitable outcom...
Sep 19, 2018•15 min
Edward L. Glaeser addresses the challenges of convincing skeptical millennials and younger Americans about the merits of capitalism in the Manhattan Institute's 2018 James Q. Wilson lecture . Young people in the United States are moving steadily to the left. A recent Harvard University poll found that 51 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29 don't support capitalism. The trend is visible on the ground, too. Phenomena driven largely by millennials—such as Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sand...
Sep 12, 2018•39 min
Aaron Renn and Rafael Mangual join City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's legacy, the Windy City's ongoing homicide epidemic, and its severely underfunded public pensions. Chicago's energetic leader shocked the political world this week when he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor. Emanuel leaves behind a mixed record: he enjoyed some successes, but he largely failed to grapple with the city's two biggest problems: finances and violent crime....
Sep 06, 2018•19 min
John Tierney joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the "First-Year Experience," a widely adopted program for college freshmen that indoctrinates students in radicalism, identity politics, and victimology. The First-Year Experience (FYE) began as a response to the campus unrest of the 1960s and 1970s to teach students to "love their university" with a semester-long course for freshmen. However FYE programs at most schools today are largely designed by left-wing college administrator...
Aug 29, 2018•12 min
Matthew Hennessey joins City Journal managing editor Paul Beston to discuss Matthew’s new book, Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials . More than a decade after the introduction of social media, it’s evident that Silicon Valley’s youth-obsessed culture has more drawbacks—from violations of privacy to deteriorating attention spans—than many of us first realized. For many millennials, though, who grew up with the Internet, there’s nothing to worry abo...
Aug 22, 2018•24 min
Judith Miller joins City Journal managing editor Paul Beston to discuss the life of Michael A. Sheehan, who passed away last month at age 63. A 40-year veteran of the U.S. counterterrorism community, Sheehan served as a top official for the State Department, the Pentagon, and the New York Police Department. As a military officer on the National Security Council staff for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, he urged officials to place greater priority on the growing threat of militant I...
Aug 15, 2018•17 min
City Journal editor Brian Anderson joins Vanessa Mendoza, executive vice president of the Manhattan Institute, to discuss Brian's summer and vacation reading list. Summer is traditionally a time when Americans can catch up on books that they've been meaning to read (or reread). We asked Brian to talk about what books are on his list this year, how he decides what to read, and more. Check out Brian's summer reading list, in the order discussed: The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief , b...
Aug 07, 2018•25 min
Former NYPD and LAPD commissioner William J. Bratton joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss Bratton's 40-plus-year career in law enforcement, the lessons learned in New York and Los Angeles, and the challenges facing American police. Bratton began his career in Boston, where he joined the police department in 1970 after serving three years in the U.S. Army's Military Police during the Vietnam War. He was named chief of the New York City Transit Police in 1990, where he oversaw drama...
Aug 01, 2018•25 min
Steven Malanga joins Seth Barron to discuss the dismal economic and fiscal health of New Jersey, where individual and corporate taxes are among the highest in the country and business confidence ranks among the lowest of the 50 states. Jersey also has one of America's worst-funded government-worker pension systems, which led its leaders in 2017 to divert state-lottery proceeds intended for K-12 and higher education to its pension system. When Governor Phil Murphy wanted to boost taxes on individ...
Jul 25, 2018•21 min
Nicole Gelinas joins Seth Barron to discuss her research on New York subway ridership, the future of the city's subways, and the decriminalization of fare-jumping, a reversal of a critical policing strategy that helped fight crime. Subway ridership in New York has nearly doubled since 1977, but it's not tourists packing the trains: it's city residents. And New York's poorest neighborhoods have seen the biggest growth in annual ridership over the last 30 years. The subway's future looks uncertain...
Jul 18, 2018•22 min
Andrew Klavan joins Paul Beston on a special summertime edition of 10 Blocks to discuss faith, depression, and redemption--the focus of his memoir, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ . Klavan is an award-winning and bestselling author, Hollywood screenwriter, political commentator, and contributing editor for City Journal . But before his books became films starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas, severe depression took him to the brink of suicide. Klavan credits re...
Jul 11, 2018•36 min
Joel Kotkin joins Brian Anderson to discuss California's economic performance since the Great Recession, the state's worsening housing crunch, and the impending departure of Governor Jerry Brown, who will leave office in January. After serving four terms (nonconsecutively) since the late 1970s, Brown is one of the longest-serving governors in American history. While California has seen tremendous growth during Brown's tenure, the state has big problems: people are moving out in greater numbers t...
Jul 04, 2018•22 min
Nicole Gelinas joins Brian Anderson to discuss how cities with bike-sharing programs deal with theft and vandalism and how tech-based rental services like Airbnb are shaking up the housing market--and prompting new regulations. Bike-sharing operators are pulling back their services as urban riders confront an old problem: nuisance crime. From Paris to Baltimore, vandalism of bikes is widespread. In San Francisco and Portland, protests against gentrification sometimes take the form of wholesale p...
Jun 27, 2018•18 min
Milton Ezrati joins Seth Barron to discuss President Trump's talk of tariffs, China's vulnerability in a potential trade war with the United States, and the history of the global trade order. A tumultuous recent meeting of the G7 nations, trade disputes with Canada, and tariff threats against China all point to a shakeup of world trade. While the global economy would likely suffer in a trade war, Ezrati argues that the U.S. actually has the upper hand in trade negotiations with Beijing. Milton E...
Jun 20, 2018•21 min
Heather Mac Donald joins Brian Anderson to discuss how universities and the scientific community are being pressured to alter the gender and racial balance in STEM disciplines--science, technology, engineering, and math--and the implications for the American future. For decades, multiculturalism, quotas, and identity politics have been pervasive in humanities departments at most major universities--but not in scientific fields. Now that's changing, as the identity-politics obsession has penetrat...
Jun 13, 2018•26 min
