Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Coming up on today's show, we'll play the audio from a virtual event we hosted this week to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the

magazine. I was joined by some of our longtime writers, Heather McDonald, Steve Melanga,

Nicole Jelineas, as well as a pre-recording of Fred Siegel, and we talked about the

history of City Journal, the issues that they've covered over the years, and the future of New York

and other American cities more generally. It was a great event. The conversation was about an hour,

and the connection on the live stream wasn't perfect, so we tried to make some improvements

for our listeners on this podcast.

There'll be a quick transition, and then we'll open the event. We hope you enjoy.

Today we're joined by three veteran and well-known writers for the magazine.

Heather MacDonald, she's a City Journal contributing editor

and Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She's the author of the prescient

bestseller, The War on Cops, and the equally timely, the diversity delusion. Steve Melanga,

City Journal's senior editor, and the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Shakedown,

the continuing conspiracy against the American taxpayer.

And Nicole Jelinea, City Journal Contributing Editor, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow,

and author of After the Fall, Saving Capital capitalism from Wall Street and Washington.

So to start, you know, I'd like to ask each of the panelists to talk about how they began

writing from City Journal when they first came to the magazine.

And we'll start with you, Steve.

You were executive editor of Crane's New York business before you came to the Manhattan Institute in the eventful year of 2001.

Can you tell us a bit about how you joined the magazine?

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