Charles Fain Lehman, Jesse Arm, John Ketcham, and Daniel Di Martino unpack the explosive rise of democratic socialism, spotlighting the Minneapolis mayoral race and Omar Fateh’s July 2025 endorsement, in which a Somali-American progressive won 43.8% of delegates. They explore how local elections are now test beds for socialist agendas, what America’s urban realignment means for conservatives, and how video podcasting is reshaping discourse in a media landscape. Along the way, they dive into cultural flashpoints—from concerts to classrooms—and why the right can’t afford to sit out the fight for the cities.
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Audio Transcript
Charles Fain Lehman: Welcome back to the City Journal Podcast. I’m your host, Charles Fain Lehman, senior editor of City Journal. Joining me on the panel today are Jesse Arm, responsible for all things external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, John Ketcham, responsible for all things cities at the Manhattan Institute, and Daniel Di Martino, who is abroad for the Manhattan Institute and also does immigration for the Manhattan Institute. Daniel’s reporting to us live from an undisclosed location in deepest Europe.
We can’t say more about what his mission is or whether he’s toppling communist governments, you can discern what his likely agenda is. I want to take us right into the news of the day. We’re going to turn our attention to the city of Minneapolis, where there’s a now-heated mayoral primary. The incumbent is Jacob Frey, who some listeners may remember from all the way back in 2020 when he was mayor of Minneapolis during the George Floyd protests/riots, which of course, Floyd’s death happened in Minneapolis, so it was a big deal. He cried over the gold-plated coffin. It was a weird time. He is now facing a challenge, a substantial challenge from the left in the form of Omar Fateh—Fateh, yes, I don’t know how to pronounce his name—who is a self-professed Democratic Socialist, the first Somali and first Muslim elected to Minnesota’s state Senate, and he is now challenging Frye from the left, running on a platform that includes a variety of progressive hallmarks: raising the minimum wage, increasing the supply of affordable housing, combating what he calls police violence.
So, most notably, over the weekend, the Minneapolis Democratic Party endorsed Fateh over the incumbent. It’s a little unclear to me why exactly this happened. It seems like there was a walkout by the Frey delegates or some other objection. They’re now planning to challenge the endorsement at the state level, but it’s an interesting sign to me and I think, you know, a common theme for us, which is the emergence of these left-wing candidates in major American cities. So I want to throw it to the panel: what do you guys make of this development? What should we read into this? What’s going on here?
Jesse Arm: Well, I don’t think Omar Fateh is just another left-wing candidate. I think he really is one of these self-described Socialists who draws on political instincts that are cultivated from the Third World. And I’ll unpack that a little bit. So yes, he’s another self-declared socialist who supports the full grab bag of progressive policies, you named many of them, freezing rents, abolishing the police, sanctuary cities, and really spending public funds to promote things like trans equity summits and environmental justice initiatives were some of the stuff that in researching this question I found. And yeah, this sounds like just another joke, but it’s not. It’s the emerging political coalition, or really, like, a political program and I think it’s exactly the same one that elevated Mamdani in New York, and it’s gaining steam in these cities across the country.
But to understand what’s going on with it. You do need to look behind or beyond the surface. There’s this tendency on both the center left and even elements of the center right. I read an interesting column in National Review about this that says just treat figures like Fateh as the more extreme versions of Bernie Sanders. Their ideas are bad. This isn’t just a progressive wing going too far. I don’t think that’s right. I think this is something else entirely. It’s sort of a fusion of third-world political instincts with American institutional power. So this guy isn’t the immigrant success story, trying to give back to his adopted country. He’s explicitly said his goal is to represent the Somali community here and back home. His words, not America, but Somalia. His political identity is rooted in this sort of transnational kinship ties, right? Group-based grievance, not universalist civic ideals. I don’t think that’s an incidental detail here. I think it’s the organizing logic for his campaign and Mamdani’s. It’s that people are enabling it who aren’t just fellow immigrants. The people who are enabling him aren’t his fellow immigrants alone. That is wrong. It’s these white, college-educated progressives desperate to prove their moral purity by elevating anyone who speaks in the language of resistance. And I do think that this is the new alliance. Islamist-adjacent identity politics meets Western cultural self-flagellation of some kind.
Obviously these guys who are supporting trans equity summits with public dollars are not Islamists in and of themselves. But you can trace a lot of the intellectual foundations of this new coalition to, I think, guys like Edward Said, who helped mainstream this idea that every Western institution is a site of colonial domination and that liberation means repurposing those institutions in the name of the oppressed. I’m ranting, so I’ll shut up. But I think there’s something deeper going on here.
Daniel Di Martino:
I think those are very interesting points. I do think it’s important that we remark that Fateh did not immigrate to the U.S. He was born and raised here. He was born and raised here, from Somali parents, which is the community right where he comes from. And I think that’s important to remark because his victory in this election just shows that the massive failure of U.S. refugee policy with Somalis, just the massive failure of U.S. education policy with regards to assimilation and education about ideologies of native-born Americans because people voted for him who were native-born Americans who were not of Somali heritage. And that’s a problem. It’s a big problem because it’s the same story of Mamdani in New York City. Somebody who came here as a young person from Uganda, Indian parents, in his case, they were not refugees, they were highly educated. So we have two extremes here from very different parts of the world, very different religions and culture, or not religions, but just cultures. And that they also put the Marxism above the Islamism, right? Because you mentioned that yourself, they support using public dollars for trans, transing children. Do you think that trans children with taxpayer dollars in Somalia, how would that go with the Somali community in the Horn of Africa? I don’t think it would go very well.
Charles Fain Lehman: They don’t really have the taxpayer dollars in Somalia, but I take the point.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah, you get the point.
Jesse Arm: Well, that’s what’s interesting. They are building a political coalition with these whites who feel bad and just want to latch on to whatever grievance narrative that’s put in front of them. And some of these savvy politicians like Fateh and Mamdani are meeting that demand. And here’s where it gets worse. I do think the machinery of sort of the municipal governance in a place like Minneapolis is no longer equipped to resist this stuff at all.
Jacob Frey, the existing mayor, did everything he was supposed to do, right? During the BLM riots, went and wept at the golden coffin of George Floyd and wore his mask and went to every trans gathering and celebrated all of the right omni-cause leftist things that you’re supposed to do. But Minneapolis couldn’t even count the votes properly in this nomination. And there are weird political technicalities here that may yet end up giving Frey some second life here.
Daniel Di Martino: And Jesse, look, Matt Walsh was right when he asked the question, “Name one good thing that came from Somali refugees in the United States?” One, I can name two things that we got: Ilhan Omar and Omar Fateh. And they’re not good things.
Charles Fain Lehman: Some of the food’s good. No, I mean, think there is an interesting point here about sort of the ethnic enclave dynamic in Minneapolis, right? Which is like, and I think this is something that is unique to the Minneapolis, Minnesota context of a large population of recent Somali arrivals, Somali immigrants who have in many senses failed to assimilate or failed to acculturate. There’s a story I think last year about mass daycare fraud in the Somali community in Minneapolis where there were surprisingly large number of children identified as being autistic in this community. It’s very clearly just like a scam to get money from the federal government. So you know, I think that that is you know, one of those downside risks that you get that smart immigration policy is designed to ameliorate where it’s just like you want to bring people here, you want them to be effective, but you also want them to assimilate to the dominant culture.
I do think though that Jesse’s point about sort of like, what are the institutions, do they have the durability to respond to this? If you look at somebody who is, to Daniel’s point, like not an immigrant, the child of immigrants, he is in some senses like why is he looking to Somali identity rather than American identity? Well, in some sense it’s because American identity in Minneapolis has been like completely denuded of significance by people like what Fateh represents. That clearly happened over the past five years, so it’s of little surprise to me that they sort of can’t rally around anything else.
John Ketcham: What we’re also seeing here though is a dynamic similar to New York. We have an incumbent mayor, he’s got a mixed track record at best, and an apathetic or disillusioned base of support that really doesn’t look to be turning out. There’s a convention system in Minneapolis wherein a small group of very highly motivated supporters can really make a difference. So the left is finding a recipe for success in these spots where you have these low turnout, off-year, odd-year elections, and municipal governance allows for that kind of takeover dynamic that Jesse alluded to. Jacob Frey is a fairly weak individual, his persona, right? He wept at George Floyd’s casket. He let his city burn in May of 2020, right? An entire police precinct burned because he was just afraid to use force and potentially make the situation worse. How can it be worse when a police precinct is burning to the ground? It’s an affront to civilization. Government exists to protect safety and property.
Daniel Di Martino: John, this is your wheelhouse on the election front. So does Minneapolis have closed primaries too? Clearly they do have off-year elections, which contributes to low turnout, something you’ve suggested should be changed. But are there also closed primaries?
Jesse Arm: This wasn’t even a voting primary.
John Ketcham: There’s no primary, there’s a convention system for the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. it was some of the convention shenanigans in there that Frey was challenging about how many votes were cast and so forth. Apparently he is going to appeal to the state party. But it’s worth noting that in many conventions, there is no endorsee. So the party will simply exit the convention process without having selected a nominee. And that’s what happened in 2021. The general election is ranked choice, however. So it could wind up being a situation where Frey does turn out to win. He is an incumbent. He does have better name recognition. And with all of these Democratic Socialists, the big question is, where is their ceiling? If it’s going to be somewhere in the 30s or low 40s, then someone with name recognition like Frey could pull it off.
Jesse Arm: Well, this is what’s interesting, right? This guy Omar Fateh got through in the typically establishment-controlled convention nomination process. He didn’t even have to go and appeal to voters to score this win. So I do think like there’s a real appetite for this, right? What we’re seeing in some sense within the Democratic party, especially in these very blue, very broken, bureaucratic cities, it’s a sort of almost like a collapse of liberal proceduralism, right? And you’re seeing this rise of something much more tribal, something much more theatrical, a politics that wants to see candidates who are more about the vibes and solidarity with whatever the current thing issue is for the left, and a spectacle more than competence or cohesion. It’s the opposite of when the superdelegates came to rescue Hillary Clinton, you know, in 2016. And this is not, I don’t think it’s a slippery slope for the Democratic Party. I think it’s something much closer to kind of a controlled demolition. So we’re going to see more of this.
Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, we talked about this on prior episodes. I think John, the show that you and I and Judge and Reihan did, we touched on this. But there is this sort of like passing-of-the-baton dynamic going on here. And I think a lot about if you roll the clock back to the 1960s, often the sort of young campus radicals, the anti-Vietnam protesters, the people who ended up joining the SDS, the sort of farthest left young people who most of the young people despised and found incredibly unpleasant, garnered some of their strongest support from the sort of prior generation of institutional liberals, the folks who ran the universities, who ran the think tanks, who ran the groups like the Ford Foundation, who looked at them and said, “oh, this is the next, they have all the energy, This is the next generation. Maybe we don’t agree with their conclusions, but we see something of us in them and we think that they have the legitimacy of youth.” And that’s sort of an important liberal principle, right, is this idea that there’s wisdom out of the mouth of babes. There’s wisdom in what the young people want. And I think you’re seeing a similar dynamic here where an enervated democratic party is looking to either actively embrace this stuff or simply lacks the will to resist it, is unable to say we are offering something other than democratic socialism as an alternative vision. I don’t think they have it.
John Ketcham: Well, one of the issues is that some voters and a lot of voters really don’t know about policies like rent control, right? It’s unfortunately fairly popular when polled because housing tends to break people’s brains. They don’t really understand the underlying dynamics that housing works like every other good in so far as supply and demand determine prices. Prices are an effect. They’re not a cause. If you have too little supply and chasing too much demand, your prices are going to go up.
Many voters simply see prices as the cause of their problems and are asking government to do something about it. Now, the alternative to that is simply to allow the private sector to use private capital and build a lot more housing. But that is a lot more of an attenuated argument, right? You have to make some, you know, leaps of faith to say that greater supply will indeed yield a benefit for me in my life, in my situation right here, whereas rent control is just this immediate benefit. And the other big issue that divides Frey from Fateh is Palestine. mean, Frey said that he would not support a teacher union-backed group that featured a speaker who called any Jewish or Christian Zionist enemy number one, right? And so, again, we’re seeing it like in New York City with Mamdani, the Palestine-Israel issue is coming very much to the fore.
Daniel Di Martino: You know what’s interesting about this issue of rent control and specifically about Minneapolis, John, is that actually, you Minneapolis is part of a metro area, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and I was checking just to verify that this was the case, but it was St. Paul that had already implemented rent control very recently, and they published this study of how, yes, they implemented rent control. What happened is that building totally collapsed in St. Paul and all building moved to Minneapolis.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right. Right.
Daniel Di Martino: So that’s, by the way, what’s going to happen in New York City if you expand rent control. It’s all going to move to New Jersey. And then what’s going to happen in Minneapolis is that it’s all going to move to the suburbs. So people are going to flee Minneapolis, at least the people who can’t find an apartment, the current tenants will be fine, but it will become a stagnant city. And my concern overall really about Fateh, we talked about Mamdani, just the socialists and the immigration parties. It feels like the country is going to face just a Democratic Socialist party in the end, in the long run.
And I don’t think Americans are socialist overall. I think this is going to be a really bad political play for the Democrats, right? Because this is driven by a small minority within each party, a very vocal one in primaries, in conventions, and it’s going to be a political disaster for them. But where they win, it’s going to be an economic and social disaster for us who live there.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right, I want to take us out there and actually, Daniel’s, let’s use the segue before we go on to the next topic. The question I have for everyone is, it seems like 2026 is ripe for sort of a backlash. You get thermostatic backlash whenever to the incumbent party. Maybe that won’t happen, but if it does,
Do we expect to see a broader democratic socialist shift, a broader democratic socialist wave in 2026? Are you thinking of some of these primaries, for example, in New York State, where they’re trying to be going after somebody like Ritchie Torres or Hakeem Jefferies? Do we expect that to happen or is it going to be limited to a few big city mayoralties? Jesse, what do you think?
Jesse Arm: Yes, I think there will be a far-left backlash in 2025, but I don’t think it will wear the kind of Bernie Sanders sweater or speak in the language of an old red like him, right? Appealing to old school Marxism. I think it’ll look like Omar Fateh or Zohran Mamdani. It is kind of a post-American politics that fuses this transnational grievance with white elite cultural guilt and this is not going to really be about reforming the country. It will be about dismantling it with a big smile and a pride flag, and unless someone in the Democratic Party is willing to name that coalition and confront it directly and competently, it’s going to keep advancing, especially in the cities where civic confidence has already collapsed.
Charles Fain Lehman: John, what’s your take?
John Ketcham: I think yes, because the far left is not a pragmatic bunch. They do not operate, in many cases, on the basis of weighing odds of success. They are motivated by their zealotry. And so they’ll give it a shot, and this is going to open up a real rift in the Democratic Party nationwide. The GOP might have just gotten a better chance of keeping the House next year.
Daniel Di Martino: I think it will be limited to a few cities. Charles, like you said, it’s not a nationwide thing in part because the Democrats are essentially a party of urban cores now just because of geographic polarization. But I’ll just say this if I want to give a concise prediction. I think The Squad will grow in Congress in 2026 after a minor setback after October 7th, 2023 and 2024, right? Because Jamaal Bowman lost, other people retired. I think that really gave them really a bad rap, but I think they’re going to grow to their biggest number yet after the 2026 midterms and this is just the first small step into the transformation of the Democratic Party into a Socialist Party.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, you know, I think that that’s certainly the first prediction that we’re going to see an increase in the Democratic Socialist contingent in Congress in ‘26 is correct. And to me, the interesting question is, can they organize for 2028? Is there a viable candidate? People talk about AOC. I don’t think she wants it. Maybe she does. The reporting is that she doesn’t want it. And then the question is who? Who’s the…. You know, Zohran Mamdani is ineligible. Maybe Omar Fateh will run for president in 2028. Who knows? Big city mayors don’t usually do very well in the presidential primaries, but there are exceptions. Not really.
All right, let me move us on to our other topic for the day. Let’s be meta for a minute. The New York Times’ Joe Bernstein on Sunday had an interesting new piece on the rise of video podcasting. Apparently nearly three quarters of podcast consumers play podcast videos, even if they minimize them, compared to that a quarter who listen only to the audio. I will admit that I’m sort of bringing this onto the show because I find this phenomenon baffling. But also we are actively recording a video podcast as we speak, which is why this is a meta topic. But we’re doing it because that is what the market demands. I’m curious what people make of this, of this emergent phenomenon and what it says about the way in which we are consuming media. You know, it’s interesting to me that people’s attention spans are such that we want to consume video so actively. And what it says about sort of the changing media landscape. One common theme is just that in the interviews that the Times did is just that people feel like they want to make a connection with the person that they’re listening to and the video facilitates that. You know, A, what do you make of this emerging dynamic and B, what do you think it says about media in the 21st century? Very broad questions. I’ll throw it to the panel.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Jesse Arm: I think the rising video… Go ahead, Daniel.
Daniel Di Martino: Yeah. I think it’s about the connection. I like watching podcasts over listening to them.
Charles Fain Lehman: Daniel’s a zoomer.
Daniel Di Martino: I listen to a few podcasts, but I mostly watch and it’s not that I’m watching a hundred percent of the time. I’m usually doing something else. Like I’m in the kitchen, I’m cooking or I’m eating and then I have my phone on and then that’s where I put YouTube with the podcast. And I think it’s just more entertaining, right? Listening is not as interesting. I like seeing facial expressions. I like seeing hand gestures. That is a cool thing, I think.
Jesse Arm: I think the rise of video and podcasting is a little bit of like a realignment in how Americans are engaging with culture and authority. And I’m going to tie this to something else in sort of media news right now and say that I think the clearest signal that we’re in a new era is not necessarily the million plus view clips of Joe Rogan, but it’s this quiet burial of Stephen Colbert and the kind of late-night show format, right? So here’s a guy in Colbert who I think once clearly had real comedic genius, sharp, fast, fearless. And by the end here, he’s kind of fronting a $40 million a year loss operation for CBS with a show that’s become unwatchable, not because comedy died, but because this old format did.
And none of it, I think… It all feels condescending, right? Whereas in contrast, like a three hour hang with the president and Theo Von felt feels more like a cultural event. So yeah, these video podcasts, I think sure they’re winning, but not because people are dying to stare at talking heads for five hours. It’s that they’re winning because they offer something late night couldn’t, a sense of sort of unscripted authenticity, the production is sort of intentionally janky a lot of the times in this New York Times article that you referenced Charles and made reference to that. The jokes aren’t punched up the same way. The emotions aren’t filtered through like an audience warmup guy. You’re just sort of in the room and people are starved for that. I will say, Charles, I’m more like you. If I’m being honest, I feel like Spotify keeps trying to shove video at me and I find it kind of annoying. I still default to audio, but they’re not wrong to push it because video is reshaping the medium. And while I don’t seek it out, I do watch, especially when I hear something like particularly funny and I glance down.
But when it’s like a big, you know, like right after the election, for example, David Shor, the prominent pollster went on Ezra Klein. Like I watched that because there were graphs. It felt relevant to my work. And I sat down and made it a thing. Now, regularly with a lot of the podcasts I consume, I don’t do that. I don’t sit down and pop it on the TV like I would an episode of like Succession or Severance or something. But it is, it’s kind of more ambient. It’s like company. It’s like a person in the room. And increasingly as these platforms are sort of shoving it on me and doing the whole like, you know, minimized video in your corner thing, I’m finding that I do engage with the video a little bit more.
John Ketcham: I’m a true millennial…
Charles Fain Lehman: You’re the real old soul on this recording, John.
Daniel Di Martino: You’re older in the soul than millennial, John. You know it.
John Ketcham: The soul goes way back. I’ll prove it right now, but I only listen. I’m not really a watcher. I listen when I’m doing chores or when I’m driving. That’s the best use of that time to learn something. It’s very important for people in our line of work. But to me, this goes back to Aristotle. You know, human beings are social creatures. We need interaction to flourish. Americans, though, they’re not really going to local bars and hangouts. A few years ago, I wrote a piece about the decline of the third place, a place that’s not home and not work.
And perhaps most of our listeners won’t even recognize this reference, but the show Cheers was a perfect example of what a third place could be, where you join a group of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life as equals because you’re all buying in to a common activity. And the buying in is really important because that shared activity means that your other social characteristics, your race, your socioeconomic status, your profession, those all fall to the background. And what matters is the conversation and what you bring to it. So there’s a sense of like merit, but there’s also a sense of egalitarianism. And those places are in decline. The suburbanization of the country in part has led to some of that because suburbs mean that you have to drive everywhere. And driving imposes intentionality on what you do. You can’t just walk down the block or walk to your work and, let’s say, grab a beer with a friend you see on the street. It’s much more intentional and directed.
So video podcasts make us feel like we’re in the room with some of these folks in a way that we would have felt with our peers, with our neighbors and our friends in previous decades. And so it’s speaking to this deeper human need for social interaction. But I don’t think it’s quite the same thing as having a couple of pints with your buddies from the neighborhood after work.
Daniel Di Martino: I’ll say it is kind of cool.
Jesse Arm: It’s really interesting that you bring in third places and the kind of dialogue around that. I’m going to bring to the table here and raise an exchange I saw on X the other day, which is kind of the new third place for everybody. I feel like, at least everybody who’s following the discourse as closely as we are between a friend of the pod, Daniel Tenreiro, and not so much friend of the pod, Matthew Zeitlin, who posted, Zeitlin raised that the decline of third places is almost entirely fake in explaining why people hang out less. It’s the phone and always-available video entertainment. One thing this does is pulverize people with media telling them that there are structural causes for everything bad in their life. And Daniel, I thought, raised a really interesting point. He says, it seems to me that the level of intimacy fostered by continuous text conversation, even without any physical contact, far surpasses what you get from regular in-person encounters. I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but I just thought it was a really interesting exchange, and I do feel like I have these rich social relationships and parasocial relationships because of what my phone has introduced to my life. For example, I have these friends who I don’t see very frequently in person, but who I am communicating with constantly, more than daily, about heavy matters of religion, politics, philosophy, things I care deeply about. And it’s rich and it’s going on all the time. And almost sometimes, when I do see them in person, it’s almost less rich because we don’t have like everything we can sort of pull out and the depth of the text we’re sourcing from or reacting to articles the same way.
And I also think I have these parasocial relationships, right, with some people who I listen to, you know, Commentary Magazine Podcast goes on five days a week. I’m listening to it, you know, three or four of those days. So I don’t know those guys, but like they’re in my year, you know, I’m engaging with them. It’s creating interesting dynamics for society, for sure. It’s probably, I don’t know, I’m a conservative, so I tend to think it’s probably a worse thing than it is a better thing. But I think our friend of the pod, Daniel, here, who makes the point about we are getting something rich out of this constant conversation. It’s a point fairly taken.
Daniel Di Martino: Jesse, have you seen the meme about male friendship and how it’s just constantly sending each other memes until you see each other like once a year? That’s essentially what technology has allowed us. And this reminded me because I just came from Spain and I saw one of my friends that I’ve known since preschool, by the way, but we haven’t lived in the same country since we graduated high school. And I went and visited him, went to his place and like we’re in constant communication thanks to technology. And it’s the same with so many friends that have made through social media. Now on the video part, I just think that also this is a more basic human instinct than all the philosophizing we’re doing. We’re visual beings. And some of us are more visual, some of us are more auditive. And I think that that partly affects what’s going on here.
Charles Fain Lehman: I do think to stitch together John and Jesse’s arguments, there is sort of a touchy-feely version of the story, where it’s just like people want connection and they desire connection. But there’s also something about credibility that comes to Jesse’s point about the credibility that comes with giving somebody five hours of uncut interview footage. Like you know that everything that Donald Trump said to Theo Von and visa versa was in that podcast because they were talking for very long time. Same thing with Donald Trump on Joe Rogan and this is what people like about Donald Trump, right? Is that he is unfiltered you have sort of the you have a the hermeneutic of embarrassment, right? It’s like Donald Trump says ridiculous stuff and that’s how you know that he’s genuine and that’s why people trust him, for better or worse So, you know, I think there is arguably a similar dynamic going here to John’s point about third spaces. It’s like, you know, those spaces are made possible by thick networks of sort of subtle normativity, the shared rules about how we operate together, that everybody knows even though they’ve never really been written down. Those are only possible through, you know, again, that system of robust trust. That is an interesting framing I had not thought about before, which is just like, we live in an era where people are, as a general rule, distrusting where institutions have relatively low trust, and so you know video is just one component of a broader signal of “we are not hiding the ball from you, our listener,” which I think is a thing that particularly younger people value a great deal quite justifiably because they feel like many establishing figures has spent a lot of time lying to them over the past five years.
John Ketcham: But social media does have a dislocating effect, right? A traditional, physical third place would bring you together with people in your neighborhood or your city. You may get richer, more sort of targeted types of conversations, Jesse, with people who are more like-minded. You may get into deeper conversations, but they’re not necessarily people who are living close to you, right? And I think that does have effects writ large.
Jesse Arm: I think that’s right, and I think that’s right on the money. And I’m actually going to draw an analogy that I believe Charles will appreciate. I think a lot of this could be analogized to alcohol. It’s sort of like a social lubricant in some ways, but it’s very easy to abuse, much like in the era where the third place that a lot of men frequented was the bar. And it was a very healthy thing, societally, to come together for one or two pints and blow off steam and connect with people who live in your broader community. It was easy to abuse. And a lot of people did abuse it and created worse lives for themselves and their families because they didn’t know when to leave the bar. I think the digital bar or the digital third place is sort of similar in a number of respects. You can get valuable, rich community building and conversation out of these forums if you’re using it sort of in moderation, but it’s also very easy to get sort of sucked into a dark hole where you only keep going deeper and deeper and you create tragic consequences for yourself and your community and your family.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right, I want to…
Daniel Di Martino: This is why I think the next third place should not be bars as somebody who doesn’t like drinking but instead the coffee shop. That is the best place. This is why the Italians have got it right. We just need to drink coffee. It’s a less-bad drug. I hope Charles will not want to ban this drug. I want to ban all the others but not coffee, please.
Charles Fain Lehman: Caffeine, it’s very hard to become addicted to caffeine for medical definitions of addiction. You can develop a tolerance, but you don’t have… anyway. I had very heated argument with somebody about this recently. It doesn’t meet the standard definitions. It’s very hard to find someone with caffeine use disorder.
Daniel Di Martino: Okay, okay.
John Ketcham: London coffee shops were a civilizational building force. It took people away from ales and yeah, it really did mark the renaissance of the English literary culture and scientific culture.
Charles Fain Lehman: That’s true.
All right, I want to take us out, so I’m going to ask everybody, is the video phenomenon, I mean, the interesting thing about podcasts, right, is that like, they were a thing 10, 15 years ago, and then they vanished, and then they came back as technology evolved and we sort of transitioned to this new kind of podcast. So I’m going to ask everybody, is this sort of video podcast thing, is it a flash in the pan? In five years, are we still going to get constant video pops up on Spotify? Is it a flash in the pan, or is it here to stay? Daniel?
Daniel Di Martino: I don’t really know. I think things are going to change. They change so rapidly with the media. I have to say I don’t know.
Charles Fain Lehman: Fair. Jesse?
Jesse Arm: I don’t think video is a flash in the pan. I think it’s probably the new baseline. But the key isn’t the video itself. It’s authenticity. So whoever figures out how to use video to feel more real rather than more polished, I think is going to kind of win this new media landscape. And whoever does not will go the way of Stephen Colbert.
Charles Fain Lehman: John?
John Ketcham: Video is about building a brand, a persona, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I could see AI fitting into this by allowing participants to talk to an avatar of a particular social media influencer. And that’s a way of them building out their own media brands and being another lucrative revenue generator.
Charles Fain Lehman: Fair. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it’s a little bit like 3D, right? That’s the other analogy, which is that vanished for a while. And the question is, like, does the technology get good enough? And it seems like the technology is now good enough, such that people will want the additional dimensionality. Okay, I’m persuaded I now understand the phenomenon. I’ve been educated by the City Journal Podcast.
Before we go, I want to do one more story. Daniel’s been asking me if we’re going to talk about the CEO who was caught on the kiss camera at a Coldplay concert cheating with the head of HR at his company. And I was like, I don’t have 12 minutes on that. I don’t have 15 minutes on that, but I can ask everybody, what is your most notable memory from a concert or sporting event? It can be on the kiss camera or otherwise. Jesse, I feel like you have one.
Jesse Arm: My most memorable concert memory was from my first concert. Eminem and Jay-Z did “The Home & Home Tour.” Two shows in New York at Yankee Stadium and two shows in Detroit at Comerica Park. It was my first concert. think I was, probably not even in high school yet. I think was the summer before high school. My mom was super cool. She took me and my two friends to the show. And there was just a really remarkable stench when I got in there. And I was wondering, like, wow, like, what is, were there skunks in here? Like, what? What is this? And she laughed and she said, “no, that’s pot, that’s marijuana.” So Charles, I thought you would appreciate, that was my gateway drug experience to learning what marijuana smells like. It must have been middle school, not high school, or before high school because I definitely figured that out.
Charles Fain Lehman: It’s all been downhill since then.
Daniel Di Martino: What did you say was the concert of?
Jesse Arm: Eminem and Jay-Z. And it was awesome. was like pretty much every rapper during that time came out for a cameo as well. So it was great show.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I know that era. John?
John Ketcham: I hate to be more of a downer, but I went to the last Mostly Mozart concert ever. And Mostly Mozart was an amazing concert series in the summer. It was more laid back, more low key, more geared to young people exploring classical music and a lot of popular works, right? So it’s not these esoteric contemporary composers writing for the academy, but Mozart’s 21st piano concerto, right? And it got shut down couple of years ago because of woke influences in the cultural scene and the symphonic scene in Lincoln Center and you know the Mostly Mozart concert organizers had gone to great lengths to include more composers of color, more performers of color, but it’s just never good enough. And so they had to just nix it for everyone. But that last concert performed the Mozart’s final three symphonies, 39 to 41, and it was just an amazing experience. The energy, the verve of the symphony, everyone was just 100 percent turned on. The audience was listening so intently. And Louis Langrée, the conductor, he performed the Fugel Coda of the 41st Symphony, the Jupiter Symphony, and then the music went silent forever, much to my sadness.
Charles Fain Lehman: Wow, Jesse, you’re a real Philistine. John massively outclassed you.
Daniel Di Martino: Wow, that was deep.
Jesse Arm: That’s what keeps it fun. That’s what keeps it fun.
Daniel Di Martino: That was so deep. I’m not going to be as deep. I just got to say that the last concert I went to was Luke Combs concert that was delayed from the pandemic. And it was in Madison Square Garden. And believe it or not, this was during the Biden term. The end of the concert was people chanting, “Let’s go, Brandon,” And I could not believe how many people were telling, “let’s go, Brandon” in Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was mostly because half of the attendees were not really from the city or from out of state. but it was very memorable and very fun.
Charles Fain Lehman: Fair enough. That’s pretty good. I’m going to take a sporting event. My favorite moment, I grew up, I’m from Pittsburgh. I grew up going to Pittsburgh Pirate games, baseball games, and midway through the game they always had this like spin the wheel, win a prize thing. You had to trivia, and if you got the trivia question correctly you could spin the wheel, and then you could exchange your prize for whatever was in the box of mystery. And sometimes the box of mystery was really good. was like season tickets or an autographed jersey, and I will always remember the time that somebody swapped for the box of mystery and opened it to receive, I believe, three pounds of pigs’ ear, which somebody had bought at the supermarket that day. And for some reason that has always stuck in my head as the reason not to take the risk. It’s like, yeah, you could, you could end up with something good, but you could also get three pounds of pigs’ ear.
On that note, that is about all the time that we have. Thank you to our panelists. Thank you to our step-in producer, Olivia Caponiti. I think I got your last name right, Olivia. I apologize if I didn’t. Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, or even if you didn’t, don’t forget to like, subscribe, ring the bell, click all the other buttons on YouTube and any other platform where you’re listening to us. Don’t forget to leave us comments and questions and rate us five stars. Until next time, you’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon.
Jesse Arm: Or watching, listening or watching.
Photo by MADISON SWART/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
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