For today's podcast, my conversation with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. He comes on my New York

show every week. Today, though, relevant to everyone, we talked mostly about whether to close the

public schools. Many systems are shutting down temporarily because of COVID-19, but some, like in New York

City, are not, a position the mayor passionately defends.

Our conversation suggests tradeoffs that many school systems are now grappling with.

It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Friday, March 13. As our world continues to change in this way that was

unimaginable just a few weeks ago, even just a few days ago, I mean the world changed a lot yesterday

afternoon with all the different closures and other announcements. So we're all

living to various degrees in a state of shock this morning. And I just wanted to acknowledge that

because I guess it's probably best to just say that out loud to each other, to help us face whatever

each of us is facing with this and to help us get through this together as a city,

as a country, as a world. I hope everybody listening right now has a good private support system.

We will keep trying to be part of your public support system and do our best to provide information

and community. But not everything is different and we begin begin, as usual, on Fridays with our weekly

Ask the Mayor Segment, my questions, and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor,

welcome back to WNYC. Thank you very much, Brian. And Brian, I want to thank you for what you

just said. I think it's really, really important that we acknowledge the shock we're all in. It literally seems to

change hourly a lot of the time. We have not been through anything like this. And people are fearful,

they're anxious, they're confused, they have every right to be. And I think it's really important

that people have places like your show to turn to for accurate information and,

you know, a real dialogue. And before we get into policy questions around coronavirus, let me ask

...