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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast Business leaders, educators, and nonprofit donors across the country are intensifying efforts to revamp career and technical education in the United States. Recently, City Journal convened a panel of experts to talk about how these efforts can be applied in American high schools. Fixing America's crisis of long-term, persistent joblessness will also require major upgrades to K-12 education, where big spending increases and centralization of control in Washington have delivered disappointing resu...
Jun 06, 2018•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aaron Renn joins Seth Barron to discuss the divide between the country's economically-booming metro areas and its depressed suburban/rural areas, commonly known as the "rust belt." A new report from the Empire Center released last month highlighted the disparity in job growth between "upstate" and "downstate" New York: of the 106,000 jobs created between April 2017 and April 2018, more than 85% of them were in the New York City metro area. Similar imbalances in urban-rural economic development c...
May 30, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Max Eden joins Seth Barron to discuss recent mass shootings in American high schools and how misguided approaches to school safety can play a role in some of these massacres. In the aftermath of horrific shootings at high schools in Florida and Texas, the political debate has focused largely on the role of guns in American society. Mostly ignored is how school districts fail to take action on students with documented histories of threats, violence, or mental illness. The school district in Browa...
May 23, 2018•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Howard Husock joins Seth Barron to discuss the Fair Housing Act, racial discrimination in residential neighborhoods, and efforts to reinvigorate the law today. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark legislation signed by President Lyndon Johnson aimed to end housing discrimination and residential segregation in America. The Kerner Commission in 1968 stated that America was split into "two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." I...
May 16, 2018•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Long-term, persistent joblessness is the great American domestic crisis of our generation. City Journal grappled with the problem in our 2017 special issue, " The Shape of Work to Come ," and our writers continue toexplore the topic. Last week, City Journal convened a panel of experts to talk about the future of work. Audio from their discussion is featured in this episode of 10 Blocks. The panel consisted of Ryan Avant, a senior editor and economics columnist at The Economist ; Edward L. Glaese...
May 09, 2018•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rafael Mangual and Seth Barron discuss plans to close the jail complex on Rikers Island, home to the vast majority of New York City's inmate population, including some of the city’s worst offenders. Violence on Rikers has spiked in recent years, despite a marked decline in the city's inmate population. Last year, approximately 9,000 people were held on the island on an average day. According to the city’s own reporting , a larger share of inmates in Rikers are now "more violent and difficult to ...
May 02, 2018•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nicole Gelinas and Brian Anderson discuss recent disaster-relief efforts in the United States, the federal government's role in such assistance, and how national flood insurance and other recovery programs could be reformed. Since 2005, Washington has spent nearly $300 billion on disaster recovery, with state and local governments spending billions more. This figure doesn't even include last year's devastating storm season, which ravaged Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Feder...
Apr 18, 2018•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast E.J. McMahon and Seth Barron discuss recent corruption cases in New York and how the state government in Albany is attempting to revitalize struggling areas with "economic-development" programs. Last month, Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo, was found guilty on corruption charges for accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from two companies. Percoco's conviction reinforces the perception that New York politics operates on a "pay-to-play" model. Allegations of bid-rigging...
Apr 03, 2018•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dennis Saffran and Seth Barron discuss New York City's misguided family-reunification policies, which can have fatal consequences for children in distressed homes. In the Summer 1997 Issue of City Journal , Saffran wrote an article entitled " Fatal Preservation ," which chronicled attempts by New York's social-services agencies to keep children with their troubled and abusiveparents. The policy proved tragic for kids like six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, killed at the hands of her crack-addicted mo...
Mar 21, 2018•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Heather Mac Donald and Frank Furedi discuss the hostility to free speech that has provoked disturbing incidents on campuses across the country and the ideology behind safe spaces, micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings. Their discussion, from a Manhattan Institute event held in June 2017, was moderated by City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock . American universities are experiencing a profound cultural transformation. Student protests designed to shut downalternative opinions have beco...
Mar 07, 2018•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Daniel DiSalvo joins Brian Anderson to discuss public-sector unions, freedom of speech, and the upcoming Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Janus next week. If the justices rule for the plaintiffs, employees of state and local governments across the country will be able to opt out of paying union fees. Public unions are often powerful political players, and a sharp drop in funding or membership could deal a heavy blow to their influence. "The gener...
Feb 21, 2018•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amity Shlaes joins Seth Barron to discuss the competing goals of economic growth and income equality, and to take a look at how American presidents in the twentieth century have approached these issues. Polls show that support for income redistribution is growing among younger generations of Americans, but such policies have a poor track record of achieving their goals. As Shlaes writes in her feature story in the Winter 2018 Issue of City Journal : "Prioritizing equality over markets and growth...
Feb 07, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Tierney joins Seth Barron to discuss the Trump administration's plans to reform how infrastructure projects are managed and funded. Civil engineers and other experts (including here at City Journal ) have warned for years that the country's roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and rail lines are in serious need of repair. Thanks in part to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, infrastructure is now at the top of the national agenda. But does the Trump administration actually have a workable s...
Jan 24, 2018•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Max Eden joins Seth Barron to discuss student discipline and suspension policies, and how discipline "reform" has led to chaos in many classrooms. In January 2014, in an attempt to reduce out-of-school suspensions, an Obama administration directive forced thousands of American schools to change their discipline policies . Proponents of the new discipline rules say that teachers and school administrators have been racially discriminatory in meting out punishments, creating a massive disparity in ...
Jan 10, 2018•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nicole Gelinas joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss how New York City saved its subway system after decades of decay and rampant crime from the 1960s to the early-1990s. This episode originally aired on October 20, 2016. Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal , and a columnist at the New York Post . Her story " How Gotham Saved Its Subways " appeared in the Summer 2016 Issue of City Journal ....
Dec 27, 2017•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nicole Gelinas joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the recent bombing at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and how the city is managing the streets in midtown Manhattan to handle not only gridlocked traffic but also the threat of vehicle-based terrorist attacks on pedestrians. On Monday, December 11, New York City was stunned when a 27-year-old man from Bangladesh attempted to detonate an amateur pipe bomb during the morning rush-hour commute. The incident took place less t...
Dec 13, 2017•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Eide joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the New York Police Department's "crisis intervention team" (CIT), which trains police officers to respond to situations involving people with serious mental illnesses. In 2016, NYPD officers responded to more than 400 calls a day concerning "emotionally disturbed persons," some of whom are suffering major psychiatric episodes. Officers receiving CIT training are better prepared to de-escalate these encounters. CIT training ...
Nov 29, 2017•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast City Journal managing editor Paul Beston joins Matthew Hennessey to discuss Paul's new book, The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring . For much of the twentieth century, boxing was one of the country's most popular sports. Even long after the sport's heyday, the men who dominated the ring still hold a place in American culture. The Boxing Kings chronicles the history of the heavyweight championship in the United States, from 1882 to 2002, examining the lives and careers of 34...
Nov 15, 2017•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Judith Miller joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the most recent Islamic terrorist attack in New York City. Shortly after 3:00 p.m. on Halloween, a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan, Sayfullo Saipov, drove a rented pickup onto a Hudson River Park bike path in Lower Manhattan. Within ten minutes, eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured. NYPD officers responded quickly after the attack began, shooting Saipov in the abdomen before he could cause more mayhem. He ...
Nov 01, 2017•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Heather Mac Donald joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the dubious scientific and statistical bases of the trendy academic theory known as “implicit bias.” The implicit association test (IAT), first introduced in 1998, uses a computerized response-time test to measure an individual’s bias, particularly regarding race. Despite scientific challenges to the test’s validity, the implicit-bias idea has taken firm root in popular culture and in the media. Police forces and corpo...
Oct 18, 2017•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast John Tierney joins Aaron M. Renn to discuss the federal government’s efforts to limit electronic cigarettes (vaping), and the corruption of the public health profession more generally. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public health officials combatted epidemics of cholera and dysentery through improvements in water and sewage systems. In its modern form, however, this once-noble profession acts largely as an advocate for progressive causes, with trivial priorities including ...
Oct 04, 2017•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Seth Barron and Nicole Gelinas join Brian Anderson to discuss the upcoming New York City mayoral election and some of the challenges facing the city today. Bill de Blasio won the New York mayor’s office in 2013, pledging to take the city in a different direction from his successful predecessors, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. From policing and taxes to housing and welfare, the mayor has pursued policies in opposition to those that helped turn the city around after decades of decline and ma...
Sep 20, 2017•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Labor Day, we honor the American labor movement and the contributions that workers make to the strength and well-being of the country. It’s been more than 80 years since Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) guaranteeing the right of private-sector workers to unionize and bargain collectively for better pay and working conditions. Today, the NLRA still governs the relationship between organized labor and employers—but in 2015, less than 10 percent of American workers belonge...
Sep 04, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Matthew Hennessey joins Aaron Renn to discuss the fading of the baby boom generation, the rise of tech-savvy millennials, and the challenge for those in-between, known as Generation X. This 10 Blocks episode is based on Matt’s essay from the Summer 2017 issue of City Journal , “ Zero Hour for Generation X .” While the baby boomers are finally preparing to depart the scene, “millennials could conceivably jump the queue, crowding out the more traditional priorities and preferences of the interveni...
Aug 23, 2017•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
