Episode Details

New York City’s youngest mayor in a century is facing a brutal winter, a 12.6 billion dollar budget gap, a nurses’ strike, and a skeptical city while trying to prove democratic socialists can actually govern. Sam Roberts talks with Jeff Mays of The New York Times about Zohran Mamdani’s first month at City Hall: free buses, universal child care, clashes over homelessness and public safety, tensions with Jewish New Yorkers, and whether his budget theatrics are bold truth-telling or an unforced error. Then Sam turns to reporter Graham Bowley to unpack President Trump’s second-term “war on culture,” from pressure on the Smithsonian and threats to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities to the upheaval at the Kennedy Center and new fights over what is allowed on TV, in museums, and in the stories America tells about itself.

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