Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast · Alycia Asai

Inside The Gods of New York: Johnathan Mahler on the Decade That Remade the City

·26 min·1 clip

Mahler says Donald Trump learned in the 1980s that shamelessness and tabloid attention could build power.

1. Civics & Coffee talks with Jonathan Mahler about The Gods of New York and the city’s late-1980s transformation. 2. Jonathan Mahler is a New York Times Magazine staff writer and author of Gods of New York, and Alicia hosts the interview as a historian of United States history. 3. The episode asks why the 1980s in New York became the period that made modern New York. 4. Mahler says a 2016 assignment on Donald Trump sent him back to Trump’s 1980s New York origins. 5. He names Ed Koch, Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Kramer, and Spike Lee as outsized figures in the city. 6. He also points to Howard Beach, Tawana Brawley, the Central Park Five, the AIDS crisis, and the crack epidemic as defining events. 7. Mahler says New York rebuilt itself after the 1970s around Wall Street and real estate. 8. He describes the title “The Gods of New York” as ironic and closer to Greek or tabloid gods than literal deities. 9. He says the city’s tabloids turned these figures into towering celebrities. 10. Mahler argues that the AIDS crisis became both a public-health emergency and a political problem for Ed Koch. 11. He says AIDS had spread from the gay community into homeless populations and intravenous drug users by the years he covers, 1986 to 1990. 12. He says crack cocaine arrived around 1985 and spread quickly because it was cheap and available to people with little money. 13. He describes a corrupt and understaffed police department that relied on arrest and incarceration instead of treatment. 14. He says Black Monday in October 1987 threatened the Wall Street-driven model that was financing condos, hotels, Broadway, and restaurants. 15. He contrasts the postwar working-class city of manufacturing, shipping, unions, public schools, and municipal hospitals with the wealthy city that followed. 16. Mahler says Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Al Sharpton, Larry Kramer, and Spike Lee each rose during these years through specific projects, prosecutions, activism, or films. 17. He says the interview has a conversational, explanatory style with Alicia pressing for concrete examples and Mahler answering in long, layered responses. 18. The tone stays historical and analytical, but the conversation moves quickly through AIDS, crack, Wall Street, and tabloid culture. 19. Readers interested in New York history, media power, and political backstories. 20. Readers looking for a light, nonhistorical celebrity interview.

As heard by us

A thoughtful look at how late-1980s New York helped shape the citys modern identity.

Jonathan Mahler uses late-1980s New York to frame the rise of modern New York, and the conversation keeps that shift in clear view. The strongest stretch comes in the contrast between the post-World War II city, shaped by manufacturing, shipping, strong labor unions, public…

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Press play if you want a history of late-80s New York and how that period helped shape the city we know now.

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