The Eighteenth Episode of The Get Stuff Done Cast Cast

This is The Get Stuff Done Cast Cast, I’m Dave

The mayor of New York, Eric Adams has a podcast. No one listens to it except a dog walker in Queens.

Ok, so at the top, this may be the first episode that you see in your podcatcher app, but it’s the wrap up episode, I uploaded all the episodes I've made so far at the same time, so for this one to make any sense, you really need to listen from the beginning. So, head over to the episode titled The First Episode Of The Get Stuff Done Cast Cast, listen in order from first to what is this eighteenth? and I’ll see you back here soon.

Right. For those of you who did that, or listened to some of the series and then jumped here, or who ignored what I said, whatever you did, thank you for listening, and I’d like to talk about what I’ve learned from Eric Adams’ podcast and where we find ourselves as I’m writing this, on November 12th, 2023.

So the immediate thing is the mayor seems to be in a lot of legal peril. An FBI investigation that is clearly pretty far along has raided his campaign finance chair, and has confiscated his personal phones. The investigation appears to center on the Turkish government’s efforts to influence the mayor, and it sure looks like they gave a lot of money to his campaign illegally, and it sure looks like he did them at least one reported favor so far. He visits Turkey a lot for a guy who has no reason outside of liking the country to go there.

It would be silly of me to say that there were clues in this podcast all along. Half the reason I spent this weekend self-harming by writing, recording, editing and releasing the bulk of this series is that this caught everyone by surprise, but if you’ve been paying attention to Adams just generally, corruption is sorta his jam, and if you’ve listened to his podcast it does feel a little like there are at least a couple guests in the mix whose stories don’t add up in a way that’s less about how terrible Adams is as a podcast host, and more about the type of people Adams feels most comfortable around.

What about Eric Adams? Well, his own podcast doesn’t paint a flattering picture. Adams is often unprepared, and seems to know very little about many of his guests or what they do. His comments often veer into cringey territory, he comes across as a bit of a Michael Scott figure at times, saying things that are inappropriate, but not so inappropriate that people are going to do anything pull a Pam looking at the camera with an eye roll. Some of his guests seemed interested in flattering him, and he appeared interested in being flattered by them, this seemed especially true of members of his administration. Interviews with his administration did not show him to be someone in command of policy or procedure; in one he asked a member of his administration to tell him about a bill that the city council had written. The writer of that bill was also on the podcast. He seems to really like restaurant owners. In 17 episodes, he interviews 4 of them.

His podcast still doesn’t have a reason to exist, in my opinion. There’s nothing that would keep it from being a radio show, except that it’s on an inconsistent release schedule and varies in length from 20-40 minutes, but honestly, given that he’s the mayor, a radio station would probably work with him on that.

But then, does his mayoralty have a reason to exist? One of the things I’ve hammered over and over in these episodes is that for a podcast about getting stuff done, the host has accomplished nothing as mayor. The episodes with his administration members are typically about celebrating a minor tweak to a website or administrative policy. He talks about personally volunteering to feed the homeless with a private food distribution for an entire episode; his episode with his food policy director, the most recent, references it, but does not talk at all about changing anything the city is doing to provide food for the homeless and hungry.

Obviously, I’m not a big fan of Eric Adams, and there are a lot of reasons for that that aren’t captured in his podcast. I think I’ll leave those alone for the time being, and simply say that as of now, what reasons are there to like the guy? What’s he accomplished? Is the city more just, happier? Do people seem to feel like there’s a lot of opportunity here? More than there was before? Or less? Have the things about this city that concern people gotten better or worse? Three years after the BLM protests, where are we on crime, and criminal justice reform? Why are the cops getting praised by Adams for their restraint when they pummel but don’t shoot people? Why is Rikers still open? Why are stops and frisks rising? With Adams acknowledging on his podcast that rents are too damn high, have rents come down? People are desperate to move on from COVID, but aside from (unsuccessfully) telling everyone to go back to the office (vacancy rates remain about 20%, the highest they’ve been in over 20 years), what has his administration done to help people avoid the virus and safely gather? Climate change is here and the mayor is sleeping in on days when the city floods, and trying to delay the implementation of new building codes to limit fossil fuel emissions from large buildings because a lot of his donors own large buildings.

Ok, I guess I did talk about why I don't like him, but he didn’t interview anyone involved in climate policy, or policing from any side of the issue. He didn’t interview anyone currently working on public health policy, or activism. He didn’t use this platform for anything useful. He didn’t even make it a platform, no one listened!

I know how it sounds, but I really have started to wonder if there’s some podcast services company that’s been lining their pockets in the mix. Look, if the mayor can say that he thinks illegal weed shops are backed by venture capital, I can just ask some questions of my own here.

At any rate, here we are. Three major stories about the investigation of the mayor have come out in the last week. Tomorrow is Monday. If the mayor releases more episodes of his podcast, I will, of course, talk about them. If other stuff happens that seems relevant, I’ll talk about that.

I really appreciate that you’ve listened to this, and I hope you liked it. If you did, please tell a friend, and, alright, just this once, if you want to rate or review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, I guess there’s probably no harm in that, but try to take a walk or something later. Get outside. That’s as much for me as for you.

Transcripts of this show are available at:

https://stuffstuffcastcast.wixsite.com/stufftranscripts

I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at:

stuffstuffcastcast@gmail.com

See you next time.