Jonathan Mahler: NYC’s 1980s Reinvention & The 40-Year Era it Spawned

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John welcomes Jonathan Mahler, New York Times Magazine staff writer and bestselling author of “The Bronx Is Burning,” to discuss his new book, “The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990.” Mahler unpacks the reinvention of the Big Apple in the second half of the Eighties; riffs on the outsized characters (from Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani to Larry Kramer, Al Sharpton, and, of course, Donald Trump) who played key roles in it; and argues that the rise of Zohran Mamdani signals an end to the 40-year era spawned by that transformation. He and Heilemann also reminisce about crossing paths as undergrads in 1987—first as teammates and then as cellmates. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:07.5	Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Hylam and a puck and Odyssey Joint,
1:12.7	featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people who cruise the quarters, power in America,
1:17.5	sculpting and shaping the ebb and flow of our politics and culture.
1:21.3	A few times and places in modern history have been more eventful and colorful, grand and garish,
1:30.0	comedic, dramatic, and operatic,
1:35.1	teeming with energy, brimming with danger, occasionally erupting into violence, and constantly threatening to devolve into chaos than New York City in the second half of the 1980s.
1:41.3	Writing from smack in the middle of the decade, Tom Wolfe painted an enduring fictional
1:45.7	portrait of the city in his classic novel Bonfire of the Bannities. And now, with the inestimable
1:51.1	benefit of hindsight and historical perspective, New York Times Magazine staff writer Jonathan
1:55.7	Mahler gives us the new book, The Gods of New York, egotus, idealist, opportunists, and the birth of the modern city.
	...

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