How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Society & Culture

4.4 • 679 Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough to make him the front-runner to lead the largest city in America. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Eric Lach about the surprising protagonist of this year’s mayoral race. Together, they contextualize Mamdani’s persona within a long history of New York characters, from Batman to Bill de Blasio, and consider the hold these narratives have on observers within the city and beyond. “The history of New York City mayors is not a litany of successes and heroes. It’s mostly fuck-ups and rogues,” Lach says. “Often, it’s this tug-of-war between the machine and the reformer.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Zohran Mamdani’s “Uganda Miss Me! (But I’ll Be Back Soon)”
“Gangs of New York” (2002)
“The Gangs of New York,” by Herbert Asbury
“Low Life,” by Lucy Sante
“Serpico” (1973)
“The Dark Knight” (2008)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker that explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker.
0:10.3	I'm Vincent Cunningham.
0:11.3	I'm Alex Schwartz.
0:12.6	And I'm Nomi Fry.
0:13.9	Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.
0:19.4	And today, it's our first installment of what's becoming an annual tradition over here at Critics at Large Central.
0:27.0	Our summer interview series.
0:29.5	Yes, we have so many wonderful New Yorker colleagues writing about all sorts of wonderful things.
0:36.0	And over the next three weeks, we're each going to sit down one-on-one with a colleague to bring you a morsel.
0:42.8	Maybe more than a morsel.
0:44.1	Maybe a bit of a feast of culture from the wide world of the New Yorker.
0:49.3	Yes, indeed.
0:49.9	I'm going to be talking with Lauren Collins about Americans in Paris.
0:54.4	I'll be sitting down with Richard Brody to talk about the movies, specifically autourism.
0:59.6	But I'm up first today talking with our colleague Eric Latch.
1:03.6	Me and Eric are going to be talking about how New York City politics has been represented in culture historically about the storytelling that politicians have to do
1:12.6	and what kind of figure they cut.
1:14.6	And of course, the mayoral candidate who's captured everyone's attention right now,
1:18.4	Zoran Mamdani.
1:19.8	Ooh, I can't wait to hear your conversation.
1:21.7	I can't wait.
1:22.6	Eric is one of my favorite New Yorker writers.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.