This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from IHeart Radio.

My guest today is a best-selling author and a staff writer for the New York Times.

Jonathan Mahler's first book, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx's Burning, was adapted into a mini-series for ESPN.

His second book, The Challenge, won the Scribes Book Award in 2009.

In the world of sports journalism, Jonathan Mahler has been featured in the anthology book series, The Best American

Sports Writing, and has received numerous journalism and media awards throughout his career.

Mahler's latest book released this past summer is entitled The Gods of New York,

the tumultuous 80s from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square riots.

Raised in Palm Springs, California, I was curious where Jonathan Mahler's fascination with New York

originated from.

I was born in New York. Both my parents were New Yorkers. My father was a working class Jewish kid from the Bronx who, you know, got himself into Bronx science and went off to medical school, also in New York, and was offered a job out in California at a hospital out there. And, you know, he had barely left New York. And I thought he was like, well, this is the dream, you know, moved to California, raised my family out there. So we moved to Palm Springs, and my mom hated it from day one and couldn't wait to move back to New York. And finally, you were there for a while. I was there really my whole childhood. I moved back. I was in college when they moved back. And they actually made a deal because my mom was a smoker,

lifelong smoker. My father's a doctor. My father said, if you quit smoking, we'll move back to New York.

And then what happened next was that they moved back to New York. My mom quit smoking.

She was so miserable. My dad said, please start smoking again. So she got everything she wanted.

She got to move back to New York

and continue smoking. What was it about New York that he, he didn't want to go, he wanted to stay?

Well, he just, you know, he was a workaholic and he was so devoted to his patients that he,

for him, his life was going to the hospital, seeing patients in his office, making grounds. He had a practice. He had a

practice. He worked seven days a week. And so, you know, he had a little snippet of time on Sunday afternoon

when he would sit by the pool and, you know, read a medical journal. So for him, it was, it worked out

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