Martha & The Mayor (of Swagger)

entering politics. Mayor Adams has the monumental task and I want to emphasize monumental task of guiding the largest and some say the greatest, and I say the greatest city in the United States, and I say in the world. I thought it would be great to sit down with the man who wields so much power and learn more about his plans for our great New York City. And who is he outside the office? We want to know.

It's a pleasure to welcome the one hundred and tenth Mayor of the City of New York my podcast here at Newstands Studios at Rockefeller Center. Welcome, mister Mayor. Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to sit down with you and talk business. Yes, yes, business of operating and guiding and improving and beautifying this great, great city. You have, as I said, a monumenttions. Yes, yes, and how do you feel right now? After what? How a year?

And here in three months we were entering March. But I think that to fully understand the fullness of the moment is, as you stated in your opening, oftentimes we see the glory. You see the former captain, former state senator, first black bell president, now the mayor of this city. That's the glory. That's not my story. And to be able to understand why at this moment I could take the weight of this awesome task is to really understand the story. And we you know, that's why I like

about your podcast. You get into the story, who's the person, and then you have a better appreciation of the journey. Yes, and we all want to know the story. We want to know what motivated you to become mayor of the most powerful city in the world. And you've never been a miryor before. CEO, this is a This is a corporation, yeah, major, and a very large corporation. Your yearly budget, you know, one hundred the last budget was one hundred and one

billion dollars. You know, we balloon over any of the location California probably as a budget larger, but this is a major financial institution. But you know, it's amazing how the lessons you learn from your parents come in a real useful way. Mom used to start the week, she would show how much money was coming into the house, and she'll sit down with all six of us and she said, this is this is how much is coming

in the house. These are all the bills. So when you start saying that you want a new past sneakers, tell me what item might takeoff? Do I turn off the gas? So I turn off the heat? Do I turn off the water? Do I don't buy food for the week. So we had a full understanding of her candid approach to well, a real budget, a real budget minded mother, right. Yeah, and she was a single mother, single mom of six kids. Yeah, amazing woman, never surrender,

never gave up. You know. Third grade education took us from Brownsville, Brooklyn, where she just knew that she wanted her children to be raised in the house. And I think she was a damn good housekeeper. That was her occupation too, right, Yes, she cleaned houses for people and then she was she was able to find a union job at Ampstead Daycare Center. I knew what the students were eating every day because she would put it in the type of where and bring it home file leftovers. Well,

it's it's nice to remember your parents. It's really nice to be guided by your parents. Yes, I'm one of six. Also, oh are you? Yes? I am that. Where Where are you belt Lee, New Jersey in the middle of second oldest okay okay, okay uh And we too. We lived on a very very strict budget, but we supplemented with a garden and we grew. We grew everything in the garden. It was only a fifth of an acre, but we

grew stuff. We can stuff. We went to our cousin's farm down in southern New Jersey and brought food back. So I know about budget, right right, think about that. Also, look how creative you are. You know when you do some of your food shows, your cannon show. All of that came from the foundation of what you knew of Grandma and Buffalo taught me all kinds of mother and homemaker tasks. Really great. So a mayor, I was driving

around the city today, so I asked the storekeeper. This is a store that's been on Madison Avenue for one hundred and ten years, Perez, It's called the seventies, upper seventies. What a beautiful store. A lovely elderly couple run the store. And I asked, what do you want me to ask me or Adams? And she said, all I want me or Adams to do for us is to make this city safe. Love it. No, So that's one. And then another person I asked, she said, all I want to

know is what is he doing about the rat population? Well, you know, I don't know if you heard, but I hate rats, and there's ways of doing that. We give me to announce our rats are. That's going to focus. It was a disjointed system previously and we're now going to focus on one person overseeing the entire operation. Okay, So eliminating the rat population which occurred, which really enlarged because why one number one, the pandemic, A lot of food was put out trash on our streets. We have

to move away from AUTHA. We have to move away from plastic bags that came during the sixties during the sanitation strike. We kept it. That is a failure process. We have to put our garbage and containers, okay, containers, garbage pails, yes, yes, again. So the other thing about the pandemic. I mean, I was the restaurants that are in the streets, all those exterior restaurants. Right our city

is starting to look like Moonbaie. You know, this is a really scary situation because sometimes I can't even drive down some streets because there's a restaurant on this side. In restaurant. What's happening with the sidewalk restaurants. You know, we have to take our hat off to the previous administration as they instituted what we call the COVID sheds

because our restaurants were closing and it really was a lifeline. Yes, now that COVID is in our rear view mirror for the most part, we have to re acknowledge and re examine the use of them. Counsel, when MAJII Velast squads is coming up with a new plan, you're going to see a smaller number and they're going to be uniform and presentation you know nice. Yes, I mean to have four or five of them on one street, which really restricts traffic, restricts us moving from one place to another,

really is very debilitating. We have to rethink it. It did his job, and now it's time to what do the restaurant toursday, do they want to keep them? Some like eating out doors, it's more eating out doors. So we should look at how we're going to use our names for half a sidewalk right, Yes, So it's exciting, But I want to go back to the crime because that's important. I say public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity. And we're hitting the result of our public safety plan.

And people must not only be safe based on the stats, say must feels safe. That's crucioot. So we see we have witness in this year and the end of last year, decreasing homicide, decreasing shootings. We're watching our major seven crime categories also decrease. The customer satisfactory subway. In our subway system, the numbers are extremely impressive, major riout. People are seeing a difference. Many of the employees who work with me, my colleagues take the subway, yes, and they are very

distraught about the number of homeless on the subways. They see a lot of policemen, but they don't see a lot of improvement in the subway. There's also still scary crime on the subways. So, and I think part of it is is that we highlight in our daily tabloids the worst thing that has ever happened in the city every day. I mean, if if it bleeds, it leads. I mean, that's the business. But we look at the number.

We have an average of six felonies a day on our subway system, six with three point six million riders. So that's okay, No, it's not. We want to give it all six But when you look at how many riders we get get to and from their place, million riders a day, three point six million million riders a day. People listen to this, three point six million million writers. So if you go to the average commuter, I write the trains the line and say have you had a

negative encounter? It isn't all. But I feel unsafe because you feel unsafe because you get on the plane, train, you pick up the paper, and you hear about something offered that happened on the system. So the police presence is to deal with the safety. Then we removed the encampments on our subway system. You don't see encampments anymore. Four thousand people that were homeless we took off the system, brought them aside. A stentire number of a thousand state

in care with rappermund services. Now we're zeroing in on those few that refuse to leave. So you were in the headlines this morning in our famous, fabulous New York posts. Yeah, I get the New York Posts just because I have to see the other side of the story. Murdoch listened to me, So I see you being mind for suggesting tuition for the migrant workers that are appearing in our city now. But tell Us says the gas stoves. Right,

That was misleading. Right, taken from a person that had to pay two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for his son's student loan. College is expensive. Yes, we are not giving people tuition to get their degrees in college. What we are saying is how do we take migrants and make them self sustaining. We're teaching them English with teaching them some skills, with a hundred of them to see how this would work on a suiting campus, and say we want to make you self sustaining. We don't want

you dependent on governmental subsidies. This is a small thing to do. It's not taking people to college paying for their college tuition. That is just untrue. So it's guiding them to certain coursework that they can take to help them improve their job ability to take a job because many of them cannot they cannot apply for jobs. What about the community colleges? Are they willing to do this? That's what we're looking at. This is this is a

pilot project. I'm saying, we want to teach English some soft skills to make to make sure that they are self sustaining. You don't want people depending on society. Totally misleading, Yes, yeah, you know. I mean imagine if you are miss Jones and you are saving up all your money to pay your child soony tuition. It gives the impression that the mayor is treating us unfairly, and that is not the

case at all. The other thing that really irks me and many other people in the city are the numbers of buildings under construction or in you know, in construction or being repaired with all the scaffolding. That's so dangerous. I look up all the time, wondering must be in my in my briefings, and here's the problem. He's the problem market that I looked into. You didn't give the permits. I know that because there was another mayor before you that gave the permits for all the stuff that was

going on. How can we improve the permit process so that not too many brickets are given at the same time. Here's the problem. We haven't we have an antiquated mindset. So the reason you see of those scoffoldings up is because they're loose bricks somewhere in the building instruction. For the most part, some of the new constructions. What we're saying to building owners that you have to cover the entire footprint of the building. What I am saying, let's

use drones. There's new technology out there that will allow a drone to go in to a scan of the entire building with infrared and determine where a loose brick is. Spirit right, you don't have to have that expensive scaffolding, which is dangerous. I know, years and years until the building can fix a brick exactly. I mean, I know how to fix bricks. I know I know how to dig out the old mortar and put in the new mortar. Believe you know, that's what we're looking to move towards.

And you're going to see instantly a substantial decrease of the sheds that are And I know during COVID, it was very hard to build. It was very hard to do the construction on fifty sixth and Park. There's a building that has been building for years. I know, the one on the right hand side going up check and my Cairo projectress. She has lived with ear deafening sounds and noise for three years. Awful. How does the mayor

fix that? It's about expediting the process. The Department of Buildings good work is, but the processes were horrific and so we are really expediting getting your permit files and then we're looking at use new technology. We I'm a strong believer that many of the things we were doing is just using eight track methods. In the iPhone age,

we need to think about government and agencies are running differently. Remember, cities are run by agencies, and if those agencies are misaligned, disjointed, or not using new methods, then you'll never get the product that tax pass deserves well in your agencies that are that are now working for you as a mayor, has there been a lot of turnover? Yes, yes, yes, And do you feel that you're putting more and more

educated people in those jobs? Three twenty thousand employees be the largest employer in the city, and COVID has changed the mindset of workers. We get ready to hold a major conference with behavior scientists to examine what has COVID don has done to you know, what employees want to do. Just in our office, I mean three day a week work week, it's ridiculous. A city can't run on three days. No, you can't. I can't. Are you on a three day work week? No, we're have five days sold, you know.

But what we want to seven days mayor what we want to do is to look at how do you modify work days. Some people want to do twelve hour days, you know, and then didn't take off the friday. Some people want to come and do that work hours overnight. So we want to be more flexible and what a work environment looks like. Yeah, I think that's the only way to go. We have to accommodate the workers and make sure that they're making their salaries, but they have

to be working for thoselves. I think people want to do that. And what people don't understand when I tell my younger employees, I need you. I need you because things are changing, not need you to be around me to keep me abreast of the changes that mentoring and learning from each other, the cross pollination of ideas, that is what work environments should be about. That's why I wanted to talk to you today, Mayor, because I like

to hear those words coming out of you. I think it's very important to encourage and to get people to really continue to act like human beings we are. We are a collaborative race and we can help each other. And if we don't get people to do it, we're never going to clean up the act to this city. No, it's all right, and it's about, you know, creating a healthy, trusted environments where people can get the emotional intelligence that

they need. We often focus on people being academically smart, but we need to really lean into the emotional intelligence of creating healthy environments for children, families and workplaces. Oh now this is something dear to my heart. What about the composting system that you're envisioning, Oh, love it, love it. You know, we did an experiment in Queens. Two things came out of that experiment. We've reached unbelievable goals with

people composting. But many people thought South Jamaica, Queens, the African American Caribbean community would not participate. They led the entire borough in compost rate. Yes, yes, it's a real one. We're going to expand it citywy. We're really excited about how many tons of garbage does New York produce a year. That's a good question. I can't give you that number.

I lose that question on a huge amount. And most of that goes into land waste, landfill, it goes into the ocean probably, that's probably doing a lot of damage to a lot of areas. But if we could encourage half that trash is compostable, yes, and it could easily be turned back into something useful. What we turn our compost in at the farm and where I live, I call it black gold. It is so valuable and it

doesn't take very long to happen. No, and that's the goal, the goal we want to We're going to have a citywide composting a program. I was composting in harm when I was about president. And you know, my parents come from the South Side. Are people Are people really gonna go for the composting? Yes, yes, we see it, we see We witnessed what happened in Queens. It was success beyond believe. We have an amazing commissioner over at the Department of Sanitation, Jessica Tih. She is bringing a level

of ingenuity and get stuff done atmosphere. Ood I like to hear that. Back to the crime issue, because again that's every single day, on every front page of every tabloid or news alert or whatever else we get. Major crimes are down, including assaults and robberies, but in twenty twenty two, they rose like twenty three percent in twenty twenty two, and now they are you say, coming down, Oh,

without a doubt, we're trending in the right direction. February of twenty twenty two, we were seeing a forty percent increase in many of our major crimes, thirty percent in some areas. We started trending down. Police Commissioner Kishan sul put in place with a new team there of Chief Magi and his team, and you're really seeing not only the actual major crime, but you're seeing some of the

other issues. Motorcycles in three wheels on our streets, illegal plates, just the quality of life issue that really impacts our city. What about shoplifting, I hear, I hear that that's becoming a major problem. That's why I said take off the masks. Wow, that's why I said take off the masks. Pull it down for three seconds before into the shop. To me, repeated offenders committing crimes using COVID as a reason, this is a good way to have public health and public

safety together into your store. When you when you expose the face of someone that committed the crime, you would cut the time that person is apprehended in half, if not even more. Do you feel What do you think about the police department right now? Oh? I love these guys and ladies. They when you look at the record number of closing cases, arrests, really the city is able to handle a protest or parade. They are just you know, it's amazing. I'm so happy I was part of that profession.

Would you say that they like you? I like them. I think if you if you go around to the average police officer, he'll tell you we have a mayor that he has our back. I'm not going to send my troops into the field of battle and abandon them. I'm want to lead them into battle. They had a tough job and in spite of what they went through,

they remained true to protecting our city. I want you to know that I actually employ several retired policemen who are fantastic gentlemen and uh and it's really nice to hear some of their stories. They are well trained, polite, nice and I certainly hope that the that the force remains loyal and urge working because we need a good police. You do as I stated, the our prosperity lies in public safety, and we're prospering of our jobs. Recap covid A back Broadway last week had one of the one

of the greatest showings. We we we have one of the highest bond ratings, in increasing our bond ratings because of our fiscal responses. What about rents? Our rents, Our building is becoming more occupied list and I have to borrow from the person who ran for governor once then it's too damn high. It is expensive to live in this city. Of that's why we need to build more affordable housing. And so we need our local electors to

allow housing to be built in that community. And we had some major projects, well it's point projects over two thousand affordable units Bronx out in innovation Queen. So we're going to keep pushing. But we need to find pathways to home ownership like we had in the past with the Mitchell Lama type program, right, that would be very useful. So what's your relationship with our new governor? Oh? Love cafter you going the whole cool? You know she is a steady hand at the at the helm art Y. Yes,

she is. We did when I when I went to her last year around February and stated that we need to do something with the subway. She helped me with the subway safety plan. That's how we got to decreases we're witnessing. When I told her we need to do something with mental health, severe mental health illnesses on the street, she came and helped with opening news like theatric bads. She has been just a real partner. And I think the state is happy to see the governor and the

mayor that actually likes each other. And tourism, is it on the increase red hot fifty six million tourists last year. We think we're gonna get somewhere about sixty five million this year. Once fully occupied. Yes, yes, we we are top in the major twelve hotel markets. We're doing very well. That's why we're fighting to get the d and C, the Democratic National Convention here. What was the last time we had a convention? Two Clinton one, that's right, I

went to that. I went to that convention. That was some big convention. Yea. Tourists bring so much they spend, they go to our restaurants, our theater. Is we're going to encourage them to visit the outer boroughs. Now you live where personally, well, some people say in New Jersey. I don't know why they believe that. Right now, May's living great mansion. I still have my home and Bethi Stuyveson.

I'll never leave there. I love it, but I mean Gracie Mansion and don't let anyone for you Gracie mansions they have it has goals, you know. The first time I went there with Mayor Lindsay. Wow. Mayor Lindsay worked for a law firm in Race here in Rockefeller Center. He worked for Webster Sheffield and my husband wasn't an associate at the time. Wow. So I have pictures of me with Mayor Lindsay at Gracie Mansion, which was beautiful, and we were gowns and we were dancing and eating

delicious food at Gracy Mansion. It's a beautiful place. Yeah, and then Mayor Bloomberg didn't want to live there. But why because of the ghosts? You thing? And you know it's the best about greasy Man. What. Oh isn't it beautiful looking over the Yeah it is. And I don't know why Mike didn't like living there because it was inland. Yeah. I love the water. Have you done anything to the mansion. It's slight renovation which ryan to raise money so that we can come in and have a mock to Stewart

type renovation. It's like it's like a museum. It is, and it's and it's a beautiful, beautiful house. That's actually that's actually Palks property. Yes, I know. It deserves to be taken care of and every will maintain. So you're you're lacking funds. Yeah, So we want to raise funds privately to do a complete renovation. And we opened it up. I call it to people's house. We encourage the White House, right, Yeah. We encourage people to holy events there to come visit.

Have a big tent we put in the backyard during the summer. It's used far more often than it has ever been used. Good. Good, Maybe I'll have an event from my Center for Living at Mount SINAI. I would love that. So you're dealing with the migrants in terms of helping them get jobs, but how are we housing them? How are we thinking about real, real, real challenge? You know, think about this amount. In January first, twenty twenty two, when I became mayor, we had thirty five thousand people

in our homeless system. Thirty five thousand for all the years in one year. We received close to that amount in one year when now up to fifty thousand people went to our system. Wow, So that's the fifty thousand homeless people plus the thirty five thousand that was there. We had thirty five thousand I was there already. On top of that, we have fifty thousand migrants, thousand people. Never had that number, looking for an end in the cold,

running the web, looking for places to stay. That's why we see them sleeping on cardboard over the events, the heating events from the subways and stuff. But many of them are not asylum seekers. Of what we have done for our asylum seekers, no other city or state has done anything like this. Not only do we get them place to sleep, we make sure they have health kid we hit. Almost thirteen thousand child went into our school system,

mental healthcare, food laundry service. So we are anybody starving on our streets they should not have to because there's access to food, pantries, food soup kitchers, volunteers, local community. Based on there a numbers about people who like die overnight sleeping, we're not we're not seeing numbers like that. That's a rarity. That's a rarity. Okay, that's encouraging. And what is it costing the city to help all almost five people? Almost We spent from last year to this

year six hundred and fifty million dollars. We think we're going to spend about one point four billion dollars of this year close to that number. And we're not getting the help that we deserve from the federal government. We need help from the federal government and the state government. The governor has included resources in her budget. We want to we want to make sure it gets passed through in this budgetary cycle. Do you have a list that you look at every angle day? Your list must be

about ten pages long. You know what's interesting about this role as man, it's not that as hard, it's the volume every day Martha. All day something is happening in your phone is ringing, it never stops, and I can It's amazing that you arrive at a place in life without realizing the things you did before that prepared you

for it. Little did I know that meditation and breathing exercise it will pay such a place, such a role for me right now to allow me to have that that tranquility, that peaceful You can zone out and recenter right, recenter and just understand that you know, be present in the moment. Don't try to hope for days that's free from crisis. Pray and meditate on having the ability to deal with those crisis as they come up. And your staff, how many people work just very closely with you and

in and around your office. We have three and twenty thousand employs, but righting in city Hall you have probably roughly anywhere from seventy to eighty that are there with me and I have an amazing team. We have done things that have never been give a daily meeting every morning eight am. Um. First time in history we have an African American woman who's the first deputy mayor. First time we have a woman as a police commissioner of women as a fire commissioner. And we're good, aren't we? Oh?

What Yeah, women know how to run multitask No, they know how to get stuff done. Yep, we are I love my team. How can you run a family and and have a job and be married to a difficult man and uh and try to make a pretty home if you're not like that? Right, once you have a family and once you married, you're a difficult man, and then you can work for me. Well, you know, because I'm I'm I'm an optimistic third grader. Well that is something. So the typical day starts at eight am. Oh that's

the time of the media at the meeting. Okay, when do you get to the office. I'm up at five normally I'll do my meditation, my exercise, make my green smoothie. What's your exercise combination? Calistatics, little lightweight train and stretching, you know, and then I'll just go into a breathing I'll say my prayers, I'll read some positive affirmations, you know. Then I'll do a quick google and see what good drinks Matha Stewart has online. Dan, you have a green

smoothie every morning? Everybody what's in your green smoothie combination? Blueberry, spinach, kale maka powder, some ginger, ginger, little celery. It's a nice good makes it for you. I'll do it myself. So and you should put some collagen in it, marine collagen powder. It's tasteless and it really helps. I start my day with a green juice. Also, okay, okay, that's why you look fabulous. I try. But it's it's energizing, Yes it is. It is instead of that heavy on

the road with bacon. I forget that. Once you break that habit. It's unbelievable. Your energy level when you do a healthy man in the morning. Oh yes, this morning, I was already at pilates at six fifteen. And uh. And then I go home and I take care of the chickens, and then I have my green juice. I have one cappuccino. That's my cappuccino. And so then after you have your juice, what do you do? Then? I read all my papers, you know, in my way on my way into the office. Sometimes I take the train

to throw up over the New York you know. Actually like the pose. I know. I read sports are great, right, Page six is great? I have to read page six to see what's going on. No, but I'll you know, zip through the papers, find out what's going on in the city, listen to some of the talk shows that are coming on, and then uh, you know, by then it's eight am, and I'm being to breathe by the team on what the day looks like. And you know what we have on our plate? Yeah, a lot on

that plate. I hope it's like a great big charger play. They make him, they make him sixteen inches now. But it's it's exciting, you know. And and I say all the time to the team, like, how could I complain? I'm the mayor of New York. This is the greatest city on the globe. And and you know, twenty eight years ago, MARKA, when I stayed in January for his twenty twenty two I'm going to be the mayor. People used to say, what's wrong with this guy? You know, well,

you're here, you're here, and you're doing it. People who lead such busy lives that I don't think there's anybody around here that leads a busier life than New mayor. But I don't feel it. I don't feel it good. You look very You look so well. The mayor looks rested, he's smiling, he's laughing, you can hear him laughing. But he is um and fit. You look very fit. So diet is very important, and h and just being not always not always been like that. We'll talk about your transformation. Yeah,

And it was a couple of years ago. Woke up Martha and I couldn't see the alarm clock. I thought it was sleep in my eyes and it was a very frightening experience. And at the same time, was having pains in my stomach. I thought it was colon cancer because I just lost a good friend of colon cancer. My my hands and feet were tingling. I went to the doctor. He checked my stomach and my colon. He said I had an ulcer. That was the pain I

was feeling. But that also saved my life because he said, Eric, your real problem, the reason you have vision laws is that you have late stage diabetes and you're gonna lose your sight. Was that an hereditary thing for you. That's very interesting that you say that, because that's what I thought. And he says that you know that tingling you're feeling your fingers and toes is you have permanent nerve damage. You're gonna lose some fingers and toes. Right. And I

met a doctor, doctor Esselton. He wrote a book of preventing reversing heart disease. I called him up Cleveland Clinton. He treated Bill Clinton for his heart disease. And he told me your food. He said, you changed your you could put this in remission, changed my diet. Three weeks after going plant base, my vision came back. Wow, a nerve damage went away. The altar went away in three And you heard a lot of rumors. And let me

put those rumors to rest. Cops like donuts. We were eating every type of doughnuts, sweet and so what I learned it's not your DNA, your dinner. Mom and I shared the same dinner, not that we shared the same DNA. That food impacts our health. And it just put me on an amazing journey of health as well. What has been your most difficult day as mayor? When office of Mara and Rivera they were assassinated. You know, that was just really hard, you know, and went went families, yes, yes,

and being in the hospital watching the pain. It was hard. These were young men, they were you know, first generation New Yorkers. They can into the police department to make a difference. It was just a very very painful moment for me. How are the families still strong? Strong? I really take my hat off to them. They dealt with the initial pain and now they're very engaged and help in any way they can. And you know, you know, Mommy told me now I was a little boy, you're

gonna be in dark places. You know, it's either either going to be a burial or planted. We have to turn pain into purpose, and they have turned the painful moment into a purposeful moment. What's your biggest perk about being mayor? I wish I did, you know, if I get it? If I get a perk the New York posted right about me, or the New York Times, they would say, you know, Eric got a free token, you know. But the most joy about it, it's like people. This

city is made up of amazing people. It's a Shakespearean tragedy. If you live only in your own little kakum, you know, there's so much advantage, isn't there. This this place is amazing. That's why I would never move to another city, right, I would never ever, ever, No, that's why I'm saying. It's just like it's just like an incredible place. And that's why I want it. I wanted the sparkling, clean,

infestation free Gotham City again. I am with you. I'm going to bring you Okay, Well, I will help you in any way I can. Mayor Adams, I think you've gotten off to a good start. You have to keep that chin up, that's right, and uh, and keep fighting because it is a big fight every day, isn't it. It is? It is, but it's an enjoyable one, okay, and I enjoy just I'm a blue collar guy, and you know, like you said, your parents and families, this is a blue collar city, no matter, no matter how

prosperous we are individually. If you look at our lineage, there's someone that made it for us. And their hands were dirty from the rope that they did. I don't even call it dirty, just they were just used. So that's that's right, well said, right, Well, use hands. Well, good luck. I don't want to keep you from your office too much because I know you have so so much work to do. Um. Eric Adams is a very busy man. As you can hear, he seems to be

on top of it all, doesn't he. He's talking really well, and he seems to have those numbers and those challenges and everything pretty clear in his head. Keep that list going, keep those checklists happening, and check them off as you as you accomplish your very daunting tasks. Adams, Well, thank you so much. Good to see you. Thank you,