BIG INTV: Zohran Mamdani, the Internet’s Mayor

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mere months ago, New York's mayoral frontrunner was polling at the same level as literally "someone else." Zohran Mamdani talks to Katie about building a social media juggernaut, Big Tech capitulation, and what he learned from outgoing New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wyard's big interview. I'm Katie Drummond.
0:08.0	Zoran Mamdani is, quite literally, everywhere.
0:12.0	The 34-year-old New York State Assemblyman went from political rookie to Internet Darling
0:17.0	and the presumptive winner of New York City's November mayoral race.
0:20.0	He's already graced the covers of Time, New York, Vanity Fair, and The Nation, among other publications.
0:26.2	He's sparred with newscasters on CNN and NBC.
0:29.1	He's riffed with Stephen Colbert.
0:31.2	And he's bantered like his life depended on it with the hosts of The View.
0:35.5	Mamdani's assent to political superstar wasn't fueled by those print pages or broadcast interviews.
0:40.3	Instead, his meteoric rise is arguably the byproduct of a single element of his mayoral campaign.
0:47.3	A really, really good social strategy.
0:50.3	I wanted to ask him about it.
0:52.3	So on a rainy Monday morning, Mamdani and I caught up for 45 minutes in a conference room at his Manhattan campaign office. This is that conversation. Mr. Mamdani, welcome to the big interview. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for being here. So we always start these conversations with some rapid fire questions. It's Monday morning.
1:11.6	We're going to warm up a little bit.
1:12.6	Are you ready? I'm ready. You're ready. Okay. What is your screen time average in a given week? Don't lie to me. It's too early in the interview for that. I'm going to be honest, I haven't looked at it, but mostly out of fear. Okay. So it's extremely elevated.
1:26.6	Elevated is a very kind word.
1:28.6	What is your internet guilty pleasure? fear of what it could be. So it's extremely elevated. Elevated is a very kind word.
1:28.7	What is your internet guilty pleasure? Probably say TikTok. Same. You know, it's been quite
1:36.0	concerning now. A lot of my algorithm is AI videos of Jake Paul speaking Punjabi.
1:42.3	Sounds like quite a guilty pleasure to me.
1:46.0	If you could design one civic app for New Yorkers, what would it do?
1:49.0	Hmm.
	...

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