Merry Christmas from the editors of City Journal. In another special episode of 10 Blocks, editor Brian Anderson extends his best wishes to all our listeners during the holiday season, reflects on a year of terrific guests, and more.
Audio Transcript
Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks Podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. I want to wish a Merry Christmas and happy new year to all our listeners and thank you for tuning into the show, leaving reviews, and for all the kind words you've extended when we meet in person as we do from time to time.
As we wrap up the year, I want especially to thank all our other hosts here at 10 Blocks. It's definitely a team effort. My fellow editors at the magazine, Seth Barron, Paul Beston, Charles McElwee, and Steve Malanga have all recorded shows and other colleagues have filled in for us from time to time, including Nicole Gelinas and Michael Hendrix, so thanks to them, too. We've been doing the podcast regularly for almost four years now, hard as that is to believe, and it's amazing to see how much 10 Blocks has grown in that time.
The big reason for that growth, our terrific guests. To name just three who stopped by in 2019, Theodore Dalrymple, or by his real name, Anthony Daniels, one of our longest running contributors at the magazine flew across the Atlantic to join us in the studio for the first time earlier this summer. New York’s elected city council speaker, Corey Johnson, came on the show for a discussion about the state of New York's transit system, and of course, our interview with Heather Mac Donald on San Francisco's homelessness crisis, which was our most popular episode of the year. You can find those interviews and many more in our archives.
If you're listening to the podcast, but you're still new to City Journal, I want to share a little bit of our history with you. We published our first issue in the autumn of 1990 as the New York City Journal, at a time when the city was really at a low point, with very high crime, disorder spreading, struggling schools, and countless New Yorkers stuck in long-term dependency on public assistance. By the mid-nineties we were known solely as City Journal and, under the direction of my predecessor Myron Magnet, expanded our focus not just to New York but to other cities across the country and the world. The ideas advanced by City Journal have been credited with helping revive New York's fortunes and that of other cities as well. Our parent organization, the Manhattan Institute, is a public policy think tank based in New York. While we can't thank you enough for tuning into our podcast every week, we're still a nonprofit and count on the support of donations large and small to keep the lights on.
So if you're feeling generous this holiday season, I urge you to consider supporting the Manhattan Institute and City Journal. To do that, you can visit manhattan-institute.org/donate. We'll have a link to it in our description where you can find more information about how to support us. The $250 donation will get you a complimentary subscription to City Journal for a year. If you've already donated on behalf of the people here at MI and CJ, thanks so much for your vote of confidence and I hope you'll continue as we enter the new decade.
One last thing before we close out, if you haven't already, make sure you follow City Journal on Facebook, on Twitter, @CityJournal, and especially now on Instagram @CityJournal_MI. Our team has worked hard over the last couple of years to bring the beautiful visuals that we commission for the magazine, whether illustrations or photos, to social media. I suspect we'll be posting even more content on Instagram in 2020 so you'll want to follow us today. That's @CityJournal_MI for Instagram, @CityJournal on Twitter, and of course, we're on Facebook as well.
Again, a wonderful season's greetings to all of our listeners and we're looking forward to exciting shows in the year ahead.
Photo: brytta/iStock