City Journal Audio

Oren Cass  joins  City Journal  editor  Brian Anderson  to discuss his new book,  The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America . The American worker is in crisis. Wages have stagnated for more than a generation, and reliance on welfare programs has surged. Life expectancy is falling as substance abuse and obesity rates climb. Work and its future has become a central topi...

Nicole Gelinas  joins  Howard Husock  to discuss the resolution of Amazon's year-long "HQ2" competition. This week, the Internet giant announced that it would open new offices in Crystal City, Virginia—near Washington, D.C.—and New York's own Long Island City, Queens. Located just across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Long Island City had struggled for years as a post-industrial neighborho...

Steven Malanga  joins  Aaron Renn  to discuss the results of this week's gubernatorial elections. States such as Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin flipped blue after eight years of GOP governance. In highly publicized races in Florida and Georgia and heavily blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts, Republicans prevailed. All told, Democrats gained seven governorships. Ten years ago, Democrats won...

City Journal's   Brian Anderson  and  Seth Barron  discuss New York's upcoming elections and the prospects of a state government run entirely by Democrats. New York's local politics have long been driven by a partisan split in the state legislature. With the help of moderate Democrats, Republicans have held a narrow majority in the state senate since 2010. This year, however, many of those moderat...

Oriana Schwindt  joins  City Journal  contributing editor  Aaron Renn  to discuss Schwindt's seven-month-long journey to municipalities near the geographic center of every U.S. state, and what she found there: the curious "sameness" of American cities. Schwindt chronicled her travels in a recent article for  New York . In gentrifying neighborhoods across the country, visitors are practically guara...

Andy Ngo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the recent outbreak of violence in Portland between far-left activists, commonly referred to as Antifa, and right-wing groups that gathered to oppose them. Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle have long been hotbeds for extreme left-wing political movements. Recently, video emerged of black-clad Antifa activists directing m...

City Journal  contributing editor  Howard Husock  is joined in the studio by  Shelby Steele  to discuss the state of race relations in American society, the history of black protest movements, and other subjects. Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. His books inclu...

Mick Cornett joins  Aaron Renn  to discuss Cornett's time as mayor of Oklahoma City (2004-2018) and his new book  The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros . America is full of midsize cities that have prospered through smart governance, including Charleston, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Sacramento—and Oklahoma City. Over the last decade-plus, elected officials and community leade...

Bert Stratton  joins  City Journal  associate editor  Seth Barron  to talk about Stratton's experience as a member of one of the most despised but important professions: landlord. Stratton is a musician and blogger, but he makes his living managing apartment units and retail space in a suburban neighborhood outside of his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He prefers to call himself a "landlord-musician...

Robert Poole  joins  City Journal  contributing editor  Nicole Gelinas  to discuss Poole's new book,  Rethinking America's Highways: a 21st-Century Vision for Better Infrastructure . Americans spend untold hours every year sitting in traffic. And despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent by transportation agencies, our nation's roads, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges are in serious disrepair. Acc...

Edward L. Glaeser  addresses the challenges of convincing skeptical millennials and younger Americans about the merits of capitalism in the Manhattan Institute's 2018  James Q. Wilson lecture . Young people in the United States are moving steadily to the left. A recent Harvard University poll found that 51 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29 don't support capitalism. The trend is visible o...

Aaron Renn and Rafael Mangual join City Journal editor Brian Anderson   to discuss Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's legacy, the Windy City's ongoing homicide epidemic, and its severely underfunded public pensions. Chicago's energetic leader shocked the political world this week when he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayor. Emanuel leaves behind a mixed record: he enjoyed some success...

John Tierney  joins  City Journal  editor  Brian Anderson  to discuss the "First-Year Experience," a widely adopted program for college freshmen that indoctrinates students in radicalism, identity politics, and victimology. The First-Year Experience (FYE) began as a response to the campus unrest of the 1960s and 1970s to teach students to "love their university" with a semester-long course for fre...

Matthew Hennessey  joins  City Journal  managing editor  Paul Beston  to discuss Matthew's new book,  Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials . More than a decade after the introduction of social media, it's evident that Silicon Valley's youth-obsessed culture has more drawbacks—from violations of privacy to deteriorating attention spans—than many of us...

Judith Miller  joins  City Journal  managing editor  Paul Beston  to discuss the life of Michael A. Sheehan, who passed away last month at age 63. A 40-year veteran of the U.S. counterterrorism community, Sheehan served as a top official for the State Department, the Pentagon, and the New York Police Department. As a military officer on the National Security Council staff for Presidents George H.W...

City Journal  editor  Brian Anderson  joins Vanessa Mendoza, executive vice president of the Manhattan Institute, to discuss Brian's summer and vacation reading list. Summer is traditionally a time when Americans can catch up on books that they've been meaning to read (or reread). We asked Brian to talk about what books are on his list this year, how he decides what to read, and more. Check out Br...

Former NYPD and LAPD commissioner William J. Bratton joins  City Journal  editor  Brian Anderson  to discuss Bratton's 40-plus-year career in law enforcement, the lessons learned in New York and Los Angeles, and the challenges facing American police.  Bratton began his career in Boston, where he joined the police department in 1970 after serving three years in the U.S. Army's Military Police durin...

Steven Malanga  joins  Seth Barron  to discuss the dismal economic and fiscal health of New Jersey, where individual and corporate taxes are among the highest in the country and business confidence ranks among the lowest of the 50 states. Jersey also has one of America's worst-funded government-worker pension systems, which led its leaders in 2017 to divert state-lottery proceeds intended for K-12...

Nicole Gelinas  joins  Seth Barron  to discuss her research on New York subway ridership, the future of the city's subways, and the decriminalization of fare-jumping, a reversal of a critical policing strategy that helped fight crime. Subway ridership in New York has nearly doubled since 1977, but it's not tourists packing the trains: it's city residents. And New York's poorest neighborhoods have...

Andrew Klavan  joins  Paul Beston  on a special summertime edition of  10 Blocks  to discuss faith, depression, and redemption--the focus of his memoir,  The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ . Klavan is an award-winning and bestselling author, Hollywood screenwriter, political commentator, and contributing editor for  City Journal . But before his books became films starrin...

Joel Kotkin  joins  Brian Anderson  to discuss California's economic performance since the Great Recession, the state's worsening housing crunch, and the impending departure of Governor Jerry Brown, who will leave office in January. After serving four terms (nonconsecutively) since the late 1970s, Brown is one of the longest-serving governors in American history. While California has seen tremendo...

Nicole Gelinas  joins  Brian Anderson  to discuss how cities with bike-sharing programs deal with theft and vandalism and how tech-based rental services like Airbnb are shaking up the housing market--and prompting new regulations. Bike-sharing operators are pulling back their services as urban riders confront an old problem: nuisance crime. From Paris to Baltimore, vandalism of bikes is widespread...

Milton Ezrati  joins  Seth Barron  to discuss President Trump's talk of tariffs, China's vulnerability in a potential trade war with the United States, and the history of the global trade order. A tumultuous recent meeting of the G7 nations, trade disputes with Canada, and tariff threats against China all point to a shakeup of world trade. While the global economy would likely suffer in a trade wa...

Heather Mac Donald  joins  Brian Anderson  to discuss how universities and the scientific community are being pressured to alter the gender and racial balance in STEM disciplines--science, technology, engineering, and math--and the implications for the American future. For decades, multiculturalism, quotas, and identity politics have been pervasive in humanities departments at most major universit...

Business leaders, educators, and nonprofit donors across the country are intensifying efforts to revamp career and technical education in the United States. Recently,  City Journal  convened a panel of experts to talk about how these efforts can be applied in American high schools. Fixing America's crisis of long-term, persistent joblessness will also require major upgrades to K-12 education, wher...