Part One: The Man Who Ruined New York

Robert and Bridgett Todd sit down to talk about Robert Moses, a man who loved racism almost as much as he hated public transit.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Oh boy, podcasts, which one is this? Robert now, Sophie.
Scholars have debated for years how to tell what podcast
you're introducing when you're introducing your podcast. Um, and I
think I hold with Robert Sapolski of Stanford University when

(00:23):
he said it is impossible to know the name or
the hour of the podcast that you host, Sophie. This
is Behind the Bastards. Our guests day is the lovely
Bridget Todd. Hi, Bridget, Hello, I'm so happy to be
here with y'all. I'm happy to have you here. How
are you doing today, Bridget? I am doing well. I

(00:44):
am in d C, where it is hot as balls.
It's like still winter here basically, so it's like sixty
and rainy, which is dope. But I remember you and
I met in DC when it was hot as balls.
That's right, the swamp as they say, it's hot as
balls in Los Angeles to it too, So yeah, it's

(01:05):
hot as balls everywhere, but where I am. And now, Bridget,
you're an East Coast girl, that's right, born in Bread
Uh huh, that's now. How do you? How do you?
How do you? How do you? How do you like
the Big Apple? The New the New of York's. Oh
I love New York. I lived there for two years. Um,
I loved it. I'm I'm a I'm an East Coast girl,

(01:28):
saffy mouth, you know, yelling in traffic, et cetera. Yeah, yeah,
I'm walking here, that kind of stuff. Well, the most
famous thing about New York culture is that scene where
what's his name is that? That's not the nero, is it? Um?
I want to say Dustin Hoffman. It's Dustin Hoffman from
Midnight Cowboy, right, where he's like walking across the street

(01:48):
with the other guy and like that dude nearly hits him.
He's like, I'm walking here. Well, that's a famous New
York moment. It's the thing everybody jokes about when they
pretend to be a New Yorker, And of course it
is a moment. What's what's depicted in that seen is
a man having an aggressive interaction with someone in a car. Right.
Because New York has famously heinous traffic problems. Um, not

(02:09):
quite Los Angeles bad, although the parking is worse than
it is in l A. Um, but pretty bad traffic.
And today we're going to talk about the guy who's
responsible for that, Bridget. Have you ever heard of Robert Moses?
I have not. Oh Bobby Mose. Yeah, this is um.
This guy is important if you're not if you've never
been to New York is um. The the lingering impacts

(02:31):
of the things that he did are like almost incomprehensibly Titanic.
But he is also known as the man who built
New York City. UM. Like all, a huge number of
the landmarks that are most famous about that town UM
were the result of this guy's direct work and spoilers.
He was a gigantic racist with a weird car fetish. Yeah.

(02:54):
I guess it wouldn't be bastards if it was like, Oh,
he was a really nice guy. You like to cook
like salads for people in hand them out. This is
just a podcast about a guy who made salads for free, Bridget.
I feel like they were all right, Bridget, we should
have done uh this before we did cool people who
did cool stuff with Margaret Kildrey, so you could have

(03:15):
the proper cleans for for What's interesting is, for a
long time people called this guy a cool person who
had done cool stuff, and notably the folks who did
were rich white people like I guess he was a
cool person depending on who you ask for some perhaps
he was cool in that way that like if you
have a movie and you have like the bad guy,

(03:35):
who's this like figure in government who's incredibly good at
like wielding power and like carrying out like you could
have made a good house of cards, Like uh, Netflix
series about how good this guy was it like um running,
like pulling the levers of government. Like, I guess he's
cool in that regard, But he is part of the

(03:56):
reason why we're all going to choke to death on
exhaust fumes. So that part, I would say is probably bad.
Bridget how do you feel about choking to death on
exhaust fumes? I don't love it. I don't love it.
Not not pro choking. Okay, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna
put I I keep a little keep a little tally
by the desk of people who want to choke to
death on exhaust fumes. So I'm gonna mark you a no.
Which is the first big disagreement you and Jamie Loftus

(04:18):
have had. Oh she's she's like, Oh, she's a huge
fan of choking on exhaust huge That's why she spent
so much time in Florida. Recently, the Ghost Church podcast
was just to cover listen to Ghost Church now on
the Heart Radio network. Okay, we should talk about Robert Moses.
What's Sophie? Come on, you're gonna plug it it. Please
plug the network it's on, which is ours, which is

(04:41):
called cool Zone Media. And that doesn't sound like us, really,
that doesn't sound like us. So bridget Bobby Moses. Robert
Moses Arms. Rob Mose was born in New Haven, Connecticut,
on December eighteen eight His father, Emmanuel was descended from

(05:02):
Spanish Jewish immigrants, His mother, Isabella, was German Jewish, and
her father, Bernard Cohen, was a wealthy New York businessman.
For nine years, he and his parents lived in Connecticut,
just a couple of blocks from Yale Um. And based
on the fact that they lived next door to to Yale,
you will not be surprised to hear they were comfortable
and quite affluent, right, Like, not a lot of poor

(05:22):
kids grow up in the shadow of Yale University. Yeah,
I mean the Yale is a dead giveaway that you've
got some money. Yeah. No, it was a rough neighborhood.
Skull and bones. Guys robbed us every night beat us
with diplomas. Um. Yeah, so he grows up next to

(05:43):
Yale UM and his dad the family business that his
dad isn't. His dad owns a department store and is
also a real estate speculator in Connecticut. UM. And he
was successful enough at these endeavors that in eighteen ninety
seven he sold his business, he sold his real estate holdings,
and he retired. He retires like pretty, he's not a
he's not a he's like kind of early middle age
when he does this. Um. And the reason he retires

(06:05):
is that his wife's father, Robert Moses, is m Grandpa
Bernard had died that year and he had willed his
daughter and her family his mansion in New York City.
So Robert Moses, his dad retires because their grandpa died
and left them a mansion. So they're like, well, we
have all this cash and now we have a mansion.
Why are we We don't need to really do anything else,

(06:26):
you know. So they moved to the mansion in New
York City and they've become fancy New York socialite people. Right,
So pretty easy run of it, you would say at
this stage. Yeah, just being given mansion's sounds sounds pretty sweet. Yes,
he has the upbringing of like of a of a
teenage girl and like a Hallmark Original movie. Um, where

(06:46):
it's like, oh, we have this surprise family mansion. Now
we're going to live in New York and be sudden socialites. Yeah. Um,
that's very much his background. Yeah, it's giving like what's
that Adam Sandler movie where he becomes wealthy? Um? Mr Deeds,
Like a little bit of Mr. Deeds. It's a Mr. Deeds,
but we all wish it was a Billy Madison. Um.

(07:09):
So here his mom like, well, now that they're in
New York, their fancy socialite people, you know, they're they're
they're living it up, drinking tea with like all of
their fingers extended, all that that fancy ship. His mom
gets involved in what's called the settlement house movement. Now again,
they are rich, but they are they are the kind
of descendants of some of the first Jewish people to

(07:30):
come to the United States and given like again because
they have money, like a lot of their their ancestors
are some of the first Jewish folks who immigrate out
of Europe and into the Northeast. Um. Their ancestors are
doing pretty well. But obviously by the eighteen nineties, most
of the Jews who are coming to the United States
are not people with money. Right. If you remember your
history and you think about why a lot of Jewish

(07:52):
people are fleeing to New York in the eighteen nineties,
think back to our episodes on the Czars. They are
having trouble, right, Um. So these are are mainly immigrants
from like Eastern Europe, from Slavic countries, um. And they're
seen by so the kind of established Jewish community in
New York at this time is primarily German Jewish, and

(08:13):
a lot of them are are are kind of upper class,
and so they have deep sympathy for their Eastern European
co religionists, but they also are kind of bigoted against them,
right because number one, Slavs are are Again, this is
the attitude of like rich German's kind of unkimpt and
like dirty and stuff, right, Like they're poor, you know, um,

(08:34):
And they come from this like less civilized part of
Europe and the attitudes of these people and also a
lot of them are dangerously socialist, right. A lot of
like Jewish refugees in the eighteen nineties have left wing leanings.
And again, these the established Jewish community in New York,
like a lot of them have money, right, Like Robert
Moses family and their mansion are not socialists, you know,

(08:56):
I wouldn't be very surprised if they were. So there's
this there's this x of things and some of its
self preservation, right because people like Bella Moses, who's who's
Robert's mom um and other kind of wealthy um diaspora
Jews in the United States both are like, well, we
don't like this socialism, and we're not really fans of
a lot of these people's like Slavic customs. But also, um,

(09:16):
it's potentially dangerous if Jewish people in the United States
develop a reputation for being like left wing radicals, because
that ship has been very dangerous for Jewish people in Europe. Right.
So there's this decision among kind of the great and
good in the Jewish community that like, we need to
Americanize these folks fucking asap. Right. Um. So settlement houses

(09:37):
provide new immigrants with a place to live, um, where
they can learn English and like American customs like not
talking about socialists and reunionizing in your workplace, right, Um,
so these settlement houses are in a lot always very
positive things. These people are desperate refugees coming to the
United States. They need shelter, they need food, they need
job opportunities, clothing, all that kind of stuff, and the
settlement houses provide that. But they're also deeply paternal a stick,

(10:00):
as this quote from a write up by the by
Virginia Commonwealth University makes clear. Quote Underneath the giving of
money in time was an assumption that the givers knew
what was best for the recipients. The recipients did not
always appear grateful. Some have been leaders in their own
Jewish communities, some were educated, some were professionals, and some
have been political activists. But almost everyone had pride and
could sense when they were being patronized. So you get

(10:23):
what's kind of like, there's some yeah, this is this
is what Bob Moses family is involved, and they're the
ones doing the patronizing. Yeah, it's interesting that So that
that bit that you just read also shout out to
VC you. My parents both thought there, Um, yeah, it's
interesting to me that like they knew, they know when
they're being patronized. It I feel like we often pathologize

(10:44):
people of like, oh, like they don't really know what's
going on, Like you can just say whatever, But like
I really like that point that like, oh, they knew
what time it was, they knew, you know, what the
vibe wasn't how they were being treated. Yeah, they're aware
of what's going on, but it's also like, what are
you gonna do turn down the free food in the
place to stay? Like it's hard landing in America with
nothing but the clothes on your back. You know, you

(11:06):
need something. And so this is the community the people
who are again doing the patronizing. That's where young Bob
Moses grows up as this rich kid watching his mom
and she's fundraising, she's setting up these facilities where like
rich people plot out life paths for poor people. Um.
And he and his brother Paul attend several fancy private
schools in a military school. You know, they have kind

(11:28):
of the most privileged upbringing you can within this community. Uh.
And in nineteen o five, at age seventeen, Robert Moses
starts classes at Yale. So again doing great. Um, how
do you think he got in? You think he no? No,
he's His test scores were just like good as hell. No, no,
I think it was Aunt Becky from Full House. Oh yeah,

(11:52):
I mean no, these people. I think these guys have
the money that you don't need to Aunt Becky. It right,
like you've got the family. Now that said, we are
going to talk about it. It's actually not there's a
little bit because again he is Jewish, right, which is
a a you are not really white as a Jewish
person in in fucking nineteen oh five, you know, like
that has not come around yet. So he he's moderately athletic. Uh,

(12:15):
he's he's a good competitor. He's he's a runner, he's
a swimmer. Um. And he also from an early age
takes on his mom's activism bent but of course since
he's a Yale kid, his activism is like rich kid activism.
So like the first thing he organizes is a fight
to take some of the money budgeted for the school's
football program and diverted to what we're called minor sports,

(12:35):
which in the US was everything but football. Um, so
that's like his first piece of like community organizing. But
I like, I know, I feel like I know so
much about him just having having that information that that
was his forming into organizing of like, we need to
be funding lacrosse and squash and other sports too. He's
the kind of guy where if you'd like met him

(12:56):
a couple of decades later at a party and been like, oh, yeah,
I've been organizing a food bank, he'd be like, yes,
I have community organizing experience too. Let me tell you
about the squash team we funded. You did not have
a British accent, but I can't, like, if you're doing posh,
you just have to go English. So yeah, he's a
He's a good student. He wins awards for his performance
in Latin mathematics, public speaking. He writes for The Current,

(13:18):
which is their newspaper. He edits a volume of poetry. Um. Now,
obviously he's doing just fine. Right, This is not a
kid who is struggling tremendously in his early life. Um.
But again he's he is Jewish in this period, which
means he's not insulated entirely from how fucking racist upper
class society is. One of my sources for his early

(13:39):
life is an article in the Atlantic from nineteen thirty nine. Uh.
It extremely tactfully notes, because it's not it's ninety nine,
the Atlantic doesn't view racism as bad. Um it notes
quote a non fraternity man could hardly get further at Yale.
So it's basically saying like he did as good as
a man with not in a fraternity could do in Yale.
And you may be wondering, I wasn't he a fraternity

(14:01):
man because he's again very wealthy, well, because he's Jewish,
and jewishman in nineteen oh five were not allowed to
be in fraternities at Yale. Right, you could attend, but
you could not. It's it's the same way that like,
up until pretty recently, there were quite a few there's
probably still are, like country clubs and golf courses that
like wouldn't let Jewish people in, you know. Um, So

(14:22):
while there had been Jewish people at Yale um since
the seventeen hundreds, they kept an official cap on Jewish
admission to the school, like they had a maximum number
of Jewish people who are allowed to attend. And I
want to quote now from a New York Times article
written in nineteen eight six. Not until the early nineteen
sixties did Yale at University in an informal admissions policy
that restricted Jewish enrollment to about ten percent. I did

(14:46):
not know that sixties. I mean, and obviously there's their
racist In other ways, Jewish people are not the most
discriminated group of folks at Yale. But like they kept
that ship going until the sixty as much later than
I would have assumed officially on the books, right, Like
it's an in for like they don't have a law

(15:07):
by law, But there was a book published by the
Yale University players being like, yeah, we found based on
like letters between people running the school that like, yeah,
they didn't allow more than ten percent of the classes
to be Jewish for up until the sixties. Um, it's
pretty pretty cool. Um. I found a book Joining the Club,
which began as a sophomore term paper by guy named

(15:28):
Dan A. Oran who's the nineteen seventy nine Yale grad um,
that documents anti semitism reaching from fraternity brothers to board
trustees at Yale. A lot of the unit of the
research is based on university documents. Um. And uh quote
here from again from that right up uh in um
the New York Times. One document, a folder now in

(15:49):
the university archives labeled Jewish Problems, contains a memo from
the admissions chairman of NINETO urging limits on the alien
and unwashed element. The next year, the Admissions Commission acted
the Limitation of Numbers policy, and informal quota Jewish enrollment
was held to about ten for four decades. So part
of what's happening here, he's allowed in again because he

(16:11):
is not seen as he's not seen as like a
fully a white person, but he's not seen as because
he's rich fully Jewish. Right. The thing they're trying to
keep out is Jewish people from Eastern Europe is like slabs, right, um.
And that's that's like the the alien and unwashed element
again ninety two. That's how Yale is describing these kits. Altho.
I love that the text is called Jewish Problems. Oh yes,

(16:34):
like just to be real explicit, real clear. At least
they didn't call it the Jewish Question, right, um, but
not that far off right. So that's that's the world.
Our boy Robbie comes up and he's simultaneously on the
very top of the social hierarchy in New York City. Right,
you don't get a lot more privileged than he is, um,
And he and his family you could almost look at

(16:56):
them as kind of like feudal lords in respect to
a lot of poor immigrant Jews, right, who are kind
of dependent on their large s um. And so he's
able to exist in the rarefied levels of white Christian society.
But he's also permanently uthered from it, right, He's not
fully accepted in it either. This is an interesting like
way to grow up. And you might think, because he
couldn't not be aware of the injustices of the era,

(17:18):
that he would be extra sympathetic to other people struggling
against bigotry. That you might think that that's not how
it goes down um, But we're building to that. So
after Yale Um, he goes to Oxford Um, where The
Atlantic recalls this occurrence in his early background. A terrific
outspokenness which never counts the odds against him, appeared in

(17:41):
one Oxford experience when he was selected to represent his
college at a World Congress on racial problems. His frankness
so infuriated some of the intense nationalist groups that once
he had to free from the platform and escape through
a rear exit. One of the delegates and an assistant
to the Cadive of Egypt, was so impressed that he
offered Moses a position as secretary to the cadive. Moses declined,

(18:03):
but later he had a classmate visited Egypt to study
what was being done under Kitchener and developed a profound
admiration for British colonial administration. So that carries a shiploaded ground. Right,
He's going to this like congress thing at Oxford and
talking about racism probably you have to assume racism against
like Jewish people, because it's the period of time that
it is um And he gets chased away by by fascists, right,

(18:25):
he gets chased off states by fascists for talking about
how racism is bad. And then he impresses the government
of Egypt, which at this point is like the British Empire,
and he goes and he's like, boy, these British sure
know how to govern a multiracial society fairly, Like that's
an incredible degree of like ship to cover, right, Wow,
I mean it really is interesting. How like if I

(18:46):
didn't know where this was going, I would think, like,
this is gonna turn out to be somebody who like,
is this like great leftist person who you know understands
why being you know, actively anti racist is a good thing.
And it's so interesting how it's like no part pivot.
Actually it is a hard and it's interesting because he
clearly sees the problems of nationalism and racism. But also

(19:08):
we're going to talk about this more in a second.
He he looks at the government of Egypt under the
British and he's like, this is how you run a
multiracial society. So he's he's he's only looking at it.
He's looking at the problems of race and is able
to see them as far as they affect people like him,
who are like upper class but kept out of the

(19:29):
highest level of the upper class because of an accident
of birth. But he's not able to see it anywhere
below that level. Right, that's going to be the guy
Bobby Moses grows up into. But first, bridget you know
who does see the problems of racism? Who the products
and services that support this podcast. That's why on violand
where you can hunt children, they don't see race. They

(19:52):
don't see race at all. They kidnapped kids from every continent, um,
from every from every financial group. You know, if if
you're a child, you might wind up child hunting island,
and it doesn't matter what your background is. You know,
that's the beauty of Bridget. This is a master This
was a masterful Thank you, thank you. Sophie says that

(20:13):
all the time, but I appreciate the additional support. She
loves it. It's your favorite bit. She's so because you
have then you love it. It's because I have to
make edit notes for editor to bleep the name. It's
very funny, and people people keep being like, people think
he's being real. They should do It's so funny. I'm

(20:34):
never gonna stop anyway, here's oh we're back now, Bridget.
If you were going to eat a kid, right, oh
my god, what do you the ribs right, like that's
where the softest meat is going to be, I would say,
so this just I just finished watching that show on

(20:56):
Netflix alone and it turned into a conversation. If I
had to eat somebody, how would I go about it?
I think ribs, I think some some some kind of
like fatty cut of meat, so like thighs, butt area,
because you're gonna want to have a lot of a
lot of fattiness. Anya, you'd want to slow cook it. Um.
I ate I kind of ate people. Once. I ate

(21:16):
a fish that had just been eating human corpses, and
it was pretty good. But that's as close as I've gotten.
I haven't just like having straight what Sophie, how are
we doing? I don't know. How are you doing, Buddy?
I'm kind of today I'm feeling fine. I'm feeling fine.
So you've said some wild ship today everyone's having a

(21:37):
good time on the old internet dot com. So we're
at an interesting point in Bob Moses's background here, Robbie Moses,
because um, we've seen him both like get chased off
the stage by fascists for their bigotry and also he
goes to Egypt and he develops this deep appreciation for
what is an extremely racist cast system imposed by the

(21:59):
British and their colonial project in North Africa. Now we
should talk a little bit about what's going on here,
because so what you kind of so the Ottoman Empire
still exists, right, this is prior to World War One,
you know, and if you're not aware, the Ottoman Empire
they're the ones who kind of end the Eastern Roman Empire,
very powerful for a few hundred years and then like

(22:20):
the sick Man of Europe is the term used for them,
for like five years, right, because they're just kind of
like this failing empire, but they govern basically the whole
modern Middle East, right um. And they technically are in
charge in North Africa, but they're bad at projecting power,
and so the British kind of come in and are
running Egypt and a chunk of it that this is
the whole history here is more complicated. But technically this

(22:43):
area is under the government of the Ottoman Empire, but
the British are like helping them maintain control through force
of arms. Um. And it's it's effectively a British colonial project,
right um. And the the guy who was responsible in
this period for imposing colonial rule by the British on
North Africa is a dude named Lord Kitchener. Um. The

(23:04):
reason Kitcheners in charges he had there had been this um.
We'll talk about this one day. It's a fascinating piece
of history. So there's this guy um in the lady
eighteen hundreds who early nineteen hundreds, who calls himself the Mahdi, right,
And Mahdi is an Islamic term. It means um uh
Messianic messiah basically, right, So like the Mahdi is like

(23:26):
supposed to be the Islamic Messiah and there's this dude
who claims to be the Mahdi and he creates it's
kind of like the Islamic state, right, an early version
of it. He creates like this, We're going to finally
go back to true Islam. Um. And he wins a
bunch of battles against the colonial forces. He massacre several
British armies. It's a really fascinating piece of history. We've

(23:46):
talked about this a bit when we talk about um
the Maxim gun and some other stuff. But so he
this Mahdi has this big uprising in Sudan, um and
there's this this vicious war and Kishener Kitchener crushes the
war or brutally in this battle called omdurman Um with
where Winston Churchill shows up and shoots a bunch of
people too. So this is like an important piece of

(24:08):
like colonial history. Um. Kitchener is also the guy who
by this point had orchestrated the war against the Boers
in Africa, where he had pioneered the military use of
concentration camps. He was really the first guy, since like
the Spanish too, to use them in a really modern way. UM.
So that's who Kitchener is right. He's this guy who
crushes the modest uprising. He's this guy who puts concentration
camps in South Africa. Um, he's a he's a pretty

(24:31):
fucked up dude. We'll talk about him more at some
point in the future. What's relevant now is that after
he takes over, after like he crushes the Modests, he's
in charge in North Africa for a while, he's like
running things for the Brits and he helps them establish
a framework for governing Egypt. That because again, they don't
on paper control Egypt the way they do India right,

(24:53):
Like India is like a possession of the crown, right,
that's not entirely what's going on. So they have to
have this illusion of na of rule um. But they
don't want like obviously they're not gonna let Egyptians run
Egypt like that's the kind of thing. Of course, not
Africans in charge in Africa. It is the early nineteen hundreds.
That ship is not happening. Yeah, no, no, no, So

(25:16):
Kitchener creates something called the condominium um and under this
he basically carves out an Arabic empire run by the
British from the hind quarters of the dying Ottoman Empire.
And I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote from the
book A Piece to End All Peace that describes how
this functioned in practice. The cabinet, which is like the
governing agency of the condominium, in this instance, allowed Kitchener's

(25:39):
agency to establish the prototype of the form of rule
that the Field Marshal and his staff eventually wanted Britain
to exercise throughout the Arabic speaking world. It was not
to be direct rules, such as was practiced in parts
of India and Kitcheners Egypt, hereditary prince and native cabinet
members and governors went through the motions of governing. They
promuligated under their own name decisions recommended to them by
the British advisors at hatched to their respective offices. That

(26:02):
was the form of protectorate government favored by the Kitchener group.
So they build like a fake shadow government that is
supposed to on paper exercise all the power, but then
kind of extra legally it's it's white people pulling all
the strings and actually running everything. You know. Um, So
this is what Bob Moses looks at as a as
a young man, he goes to Egypt, he sees the

(26:23):
way this is a setup, and he's like, this is
the ideal way to run a multiracial society. This is
how you do it right, Like, this is a good call.
You know, they've built the British have built a perfect
uh society free of racial conflict in Northern Africa. It's
so stunning, how I think it's exactly what you said.
We're like the ability to sort of like understand and

(26:47):
contend with racism really does stop insofar as it like
no longer directly centers him in this situation. He's just like, oh,
this is great, Like we need to we need to
like build on this model. What a great system. Yeah,
And it's obvious sleep the tour as this like upper
class kid who gets like recognized by the cadive for
his courage at the speaking engagement. The tour he's getting

(27:08):
of Egypt. He's not like backpacking around and talking to
the common people. He's visiting like the folks who are running.
He's visiting like the Arabs who are working with the
British Empire and and living very well as a result.
And they're telling him like, oh, no, are people like
people love living this way like this whole everyone's very happy,
like you have this perfect division and nobody wants anything

(27:29):
to change. This is an idea. It's that kind of
vision of the Middle East. This is that that period
like when you watch ship like um um uh, the
like a lot of the media that comes out pre
World War One or kind of into World War one
and World War two where it's like white people vacationing
or traveling around like the Middle East to Northern Africa,

(27:51):
and it's this very like uh, this like colonial kind
of porn basically totally um. You get bits of that
in the Kenneth Branda poiro series, although I do think
he I mean, it's not primarily focused on that, but
like there's pieces of that in it, Like it's this
is this is forever the period that like a certain
kind of white person will look back on and be like, oh,

(28:12):
it was so much nicer back then. Oh yeah, that's
even today. People still romanticize that ship and like, like
I've seen some pretty atrocious, you know, rightly panned sex
theme weddings were like, oh the theme is essentially colonialism. Uh,
pretty corross thing to romanticize. Yeah. Um and and Bobby
Moses is like romanticizing it while it's happening. So he

(28:34):
he comes back from Egypt. Um. You know, he's he's
studied law at Yale and Oxford. He does a post
graduate course on political science at Columbia when he gets back, UM,
and he gets his first job in government in nineteen thirteen.
He's twenty five years old. Um. He'll receive his doctorate
in political science a year later. And this initial gig
is with the New York City Municipal Research Bureau UM,

(28:56):
which at the time is focused on reforming the city's
civil service. Now, if you remember your American history, right,
Tammany Hall and Ship is big. In this period, New
York is like one big cesspit of graft and corruption.
You know, everybody is bribing everybody. The police are just
like hired goons for different like elected leaders who are
basically gangsters. So it's it's the same as it is today,

(29:17):
but we use different terms to describe it. Um. I mean,
you're not wrong, you're joking, You're not I'm not really joking.
It's I'll say it's probably in terms of the actual
political corruption, it's broadly speaking, worse than it is now.
Although it is different, Like I guess at this point,
one of the big differences is the police are literally

(29:40):
just hired goons as opposed to now the police are
a power block in their own right that controls the
city with like an iron grip. That is different right
at this period of time, that does not has not
like the NYPD is not like a massive power in
its own right. You know. So in a lot of ways,
it kind of sounds like it's worse. It might be
like that's really going to be a matter of opinion. Um.

(30:04):
But elections and stuff like it's all basically decided by
you know, you have these bosses who like wrangle votes
together based on like the different things that they're able
to hand out, and like that's what determines who gets
elected on the local level. And it's there. It's not
really democratic in any meaningful way. Um. And this has
started to change in the early nineteen hundreds. American cities

(30:24):
are kind of starting to embrace the idea that local
government should be slightly different from the mafia. Um And
and Robert Moses is kind of one of these big
reformers in terms of the way the civil service works
and the specific thing he pushes is a massive reform
of the hiring system. Um. He thinks that people should
be picked for jobs in civil service because of personal

(30:45):
merit and their qualifications, not because their uncle runs a
numbers racket and owns a bunch of police officers. Right.
That's his attitude, which is like fine. Um. So he
pushes this, like, let's hire people who know how to
do the jobs we want them to do thing um.
And this doesn't go well because Tammany Hall is still
quite powerful in this period, and the people who don't

(31:05):
want this patronage system to change and want to keep
handing out jobs like candy. Um. They fight back and
they win, and Moses quits his his first gig in government.
But the fact that he'd suggested such a bold reimagining
of civil service earns him attention from Bell, Moscow Witz Um.
And Bell is a reform advocate who advised a politician
named Alfred Smith. Now in nineteen eighteen, four years into

(31:28):
Robert's government career, Smith is elected governor of New York State.
So Bob starts like advising him and whatnot on reform,
and Smith campaigns and becomes governor of the entire state.
Uh miss Moscow Wits who had gotten him the job,
like basically helps bring him further and further into the
halls of democratic party power, as like uh Alfred Smith

(31:48):
starts his career actually running the state UM and Robert Moses,
he kind of gravitates towards the park system. So he's
he again, this is all very much how rich people
take and and you could a also not democratic because
nobody of her lex Bob Moses, like some rich lady
who's advising the guy who becomes governor likes him, brings
him in. He starts going to parties with these people

(32:10):
and talking to him about his ideas on government, and
they start giving him jobs, right, and because he's really interested,
he's fascinated by the park system, which at that point
New York doesn't have a park system. There's like this
chaotic mess of wildlife preservation areas and like parks that
rich people had donated and local projects that like a
neighborhood put together, but there's no park system, right and

(32:31):
like in broad for the state or for the City
of New York. UM and he feels like that should
be changed, right, we need like to centralize it, we
need to have like a more efficient way of managing
and taking care of our parks um. And he he
talks the Governor Smith into doing this, right he and
again none of the systemic and nobody elects this. They
don't like go for a plebiscite. He's just like, hey,

(32:52):
I think this is a good idea. And Smith is like,
you're right, that is a good idea. And he creates
the Long Island Commission on Parks and the State count
solon Parks um. And these positions are invented by Bob
Moses with Smith's Smith's backing, and he's just put in
charge of them um. So he doesn't necessarily have any
background in this, just a just an interest. No he

(33:12):
has he has he has like his PhD and stuff
like he's like interested in public service. But he's not.
He has no like parks. Now that to be fair,
nobody really do because there's not like a parks department
that like this is like the era in which we
start to have an idea that there should be a
park system like nationally, there's not like this is all
coming together in the early nineteen hundreds, you know, Teddy

(33:33):
Roosevelt's hiking with John Muir and the Weston Ship. Um So,
this is all pretty new. So to be fair to him,
there's not really like no one has much experience. But
he is like as this guy fighting against um corruption
and like patronage and people just like getting handed jobs.
He's just handed this job because he's like friends with

(33:53):
the governor, you know, like that's why he and he's
he's going to be the he's going to be the
chairman of the Long Island Commissi on Parks in the
State Council on Parks in New York State for forty years. Yeah, yeah,
for forty years. He will be in charge of both
of these things. Um And this is like, you know,
the nineteen twenties when he gets these positions, the early twenties,
so up until through the sixties, he's going to be

(34:14):
running the whole state park system. He never gets elected.
Um So, Smith, who's again the governor, comes to know
Robert Moses as the absolute best bill drafter in politics.
That's the thing that like really gets him popular among
other people in power is that he's able to like
write these bills for things that should be to basically

(34:36):
basically to craft what's going to be the administrative state
of of the of the State of New York up
until the present day. Like he is the one building
the legal basis of everything that exists in New York today.
Really um by putting out these bills saying, hey, we
should be in charge of this. Hey, the government should
be regulating this. Hey, we should be building this kind
of thing. Hey, we should be in like over time

(34:57):
building again, what is New York's proba? Probably like one
of the most centralized state governments in the United States
right now. Bob Moses builds it with Albert Smith and
and together they create what is certainly at the time
the most centralized government in the United States. In nineteen seven,
Smith makes Moses the Secretary of State for New York. UM. Now,

(35:18):
this doesn't last for long. Franklin Roosevelt gets elected governor
the next year to meet, defeating Smith UM. And as
he leaves, Smith makes one request of FDR, which is
keep Bob Moses as Secretary of State UM and Roosevelt
actually declines. UM. And this is due to the fact
that this is not due to any good reason on
Roosevelt's part. Bob Moses had refused to hire Roosevelt Secretary

(35:40):
Lois howe to a position in the Council of Parks.
So FDRs like funk that guy. Um, So he loses
his he's not Secretary of State for very long, but
Moses continues to be the chairman of basically the whole
Parks Department. UM. And FDR when he comes in, sees
how effective and powerful this this centralized cittical machine that

(36:01):
Bob Moses and Smith have created is and he kind
of he falls in love with it, and the government
of the State of New York becomes the model of
the new deal government that that FDR is going to
build when he becomes president. Right, he's very consciously using
the state government of New York that Moses and Smith
build as like this, this is how to centralize an
exercise power as an executive because it it works really well,

(36:24):
um for that kind of thing. Right, there's as we're
going to talk about a lot of criticisms from it,
but it's very easy for an executive to exercise power.
And the government that Moses and Smith build And that's
what I mean, you know, FDR, right, Like that's what
he does, you know, yeah, it is. It is fascinating
to me that this guy could sort of just luck
his way into these positions by being wealthy and well

(36:44):
connected and then have these this decades long impact on
the on a city like New York. Like it's just
that is so that is so fascinating to me that
like that's how power is is amassed and the influence
that it has. I mean, that's still to a significant extent,
how it's amassed. Right, Um, at the highest levels. You know,
it is about like who you know and who your

(37:05):
friends are. It's why you get these It's when you
get Joe Biden saying that, like, Hey, you know what,
I I've talked a lot. I've known Mitch McConnell for years.
He's an honest man, Like, Right, it's because they're like
they're friendly, you know, even though I mean I don't
know that Mitch McConnell is capable of friendship. Um, but
that's like how everything works. And Moses is the thing

(37:27):
that he's good at. We're gonna talk about his many
shortcomings in a bit. He's really good at centralizing power
and building an apparatus through which the state connectxercise power
over geography. Right, He's very good at that. Like, this
is not a thing where he's like incompetent. He knows
what that's why FDR is like we should, we should
take this model and expand it across the country. Um

(37:48):
and Moses again, he gets kind of pushed out of
potentially what might have been more of a political career,
But nobody ever stops him from being Chairman of the
part Commission, and he grows more and more comfortable over
time exercise power in this unelected position. He realizes early
on that people like him right because he's building parks,
you know, um and being seen as the champion of

(38:09):
people who like parks, who want green spaces, who want
like nice areas where they can go like walk around
and like sit and stuff. He realizes that like being
the guy who's building that gives him this tremendous amount
of soft power that can allow him to to exercise
actually a lot of control over New York even though
he's unelected. And I'm gonna quote now from Robert Carrow's
The Power Broker, which is a book about Bob Moses.

(38:31):
Quote this lesson Moses would often recite to associates. He
would put it this way, as long as you're fighting
for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion
on your side, and as long as you have public
opinion on your side, you're safe. As long as you're
on the side of parks, he would say, you're on
the side of the angels. You can't lose. Oh my gosh.
That is also so interesting because I think it's still

(38:52):
true today that you know, there are some there are
some things that do give you this element of soft
power where people are always going this would be on
your side. And I think it's interesting that like we
as we know that, like you know, green spaces and conservation,
like all of all those things are great, but they
can also historically have been used to sort of usher
in like a little bit of racism or like a

(39:14):
little bit of you know, they're used to wall people off,
as we're gonna talk about, and they're used to There
was just an article that like people. I think it
might have been I don't think it was The Times,
but it was It was about in in here in California,
or not here in California, but down in California and
the Bay Area. This woman who like described yourself as
a nimby and who'd been a community activist for forty
years to like stop new housing from being built, and
she's like, look, I just think people need to think

(39:36):
before they build new housing. You know, ecology is important.
We have to care about the environment. I don't want
this hill near my house to like be covered in
like developments because that And it's like, yeah, nobody wants
green spaces to be replaced with like condos. But also
because of the way you have fought this and weaponized
the value of green spaces, Um, you've actually like done

(39:58):
tremendous harm to the state and made it impossible for
people to afford living there and like ratchet it up
the and like forced people out. And actually, if you
just built bigger, denser urban areas with more housing, less
in total of the state maybe would be being used
and you you would have a much more efficient use
of the land that exists, and overall it could even

(40:18):
be significantly friendlier on the environment. But because you fought
to keep to keep like these sprawling suburban developments, um
be the only way people can live, nobody can afford
to live there. And these sprawling suburban developments keep pushing
further and further and further out every year. Anyway, Um,
so yeah, it's it's that like, that's that's how that's

(40:39):
Bob Moses is like the start of that. He's the
first guy who's going to figure this out. And yeah
he's going to use it for racism. Um. So one
of his tactics in order to like again, this is
part of how he exercises power. He can't he can't
like force people to fund him, but he can ask
for funding for a public works project like a park.
He can ask for much less money than he actually

(40:59):
needs to be old it right. That's one of the
things he always does because it's easy to get people
to agree to pay to something for like a park
or something for barely any money. And once the government
has agreed to start funding the construction of this park,
this playground, the swimming pool, they kind of have to
continue funding it even if it turns out he's like, oh,
bi always going to cost three times as much, Like
I need a lot more money now, but we've already started.

(41:20):
What do you not want us to finish this thing? Well,
that's a good talk. I'm gonna quote again from Karo's
the power Broker. Once they had authorized that small initial
expenditure and you would spend it, they would not be
able to avoid giving you the rest when you asked
for it. How could they If they refused to give
you the rest of the money, what they had given
you would be wasted, and that would make them look
bad in the eyes of the public. And if they
said you had misled them, well, they were not supposed

(41:41):
to be misled. If they had been mismiled, that would
mean they hadn't investigated the projects thoroughly and had therefore
been derelict in their own duty. The possibilities for a
polite but effective form of political blackmail were endless. Once
the legislature gave you money to start a project, it
would be virtually forced to give you the money to
finish it. The stakes you drove should be thin pointed,
wed shaped, in fact, on the end. Once you got

(42:02):
to the end of the wedge for a project into
the public treasury, it would be easy to hammer. In
the West, it's like a polite shakedown. Yeah yeah, yeah,
he's this is like this is like an upper class
white people shakedown, right, Like, okay, so you like this,
you like this little park we belt, Well, unfortunately, it's
going to take another like six million dollars to finish it.

(42:23):
Um but you're good for that, right, Like you don't
want to just leave this unfinished, right, that's kind of
an isore in the middle of this neighborhood, you know. Um,
that's how he's able to like again, he's able to
exercise power over state spending as an unelected leader by
doing ship like this. Right, even though he doesn't actually
have the power to like, you know, commission taxes or

(42:45):
take money out of like the government treasury, he's able
to make the situation why or by the people who
are elected will look bad and maybe not get re
elected if they don't agree with him, because he's smart. Yeah,
and this is more or less the way that Robert was.
This unelected chairman of a park's board is able to
exercise power over generations of elected leaders. Now, before we

(43:06):
discuss what he did with that power, we should probably
talk about the New York subway system in this period.
And I'm gonna quote from a write up and curbed
On March, York Mayor Robert A. Van Wykee broke ground
on the city's first subway line, which today corresponds to
the four, five, and six lines. It traveled from City
Hall in Lower Manhattan to West in Harlem, and construction

(43:27):
took four years, six months, and twenty three days, a
timeline that is inconceivable today. The newest subway extension, the
Second Avenue line, opened nearly a decade after its most
recent official groundbreaking, though construction on subsequent rail lines would
rarely move that quickly. The city had a very specific
attitude towards rail development and the four decades following that
groundbreaking to never stop building. As Joe Raskin, author of

(43:50):
The Routes Not Taken, puts it, the idea was to
allow the subway system to expand and let the city
go around it, he says, and so subway lines stretched
quickly by today's standards anyway, and to un developed areas
of Manhattan and the outer boroughs, with the assumption that
housing and commercial development would follow. Despite setbacks, financial shortfalls,
the clashing agendas of mayors and borough presidents, and battles

(44:10):
with local community groups, it's how New York City got
the expansive, complex rail infrastructure that's now seen on modern
subway maps. This period of major growth lasted until the
late nineteen forties, when annual rideships steadily increased year over
year and hit its peak in nineteen eight with just
over two billion passengers. So that's all good, right, Yeah.

(44:30):
I mean, I so I've lived in many big cities,
and I will say I will sing the praises of
New York subway system all day long. When I lived
in New York, I lived on the l the Montrose Stop.
It I feel like no other city I've ever lived
and can compete. So they definitely did something right there.
In my book, they did a lot right. It's it's
fucked up in a lot of ways. Now, as they

(44:51):
kind of pointed out to add, like a mile is
going to cause billions of dollars in take ten years
right where they built most of it in like this
very rapid period, right, and we're going to talk about
why it's so hard to expand the subway and why
it's so hard to maintain it, right, because this is
another complained people have today is that like, yeah, we
built this great subway system and we're not properly maintaining it. Right.
So that's definitely that is the story when I just

(45:14):
read as the story of like how New York subway
got to be such an impressive piece of public works
and now we're going to talk about how it got
sucked over. Um, But first, you know who else got
sucked over? Bridget, tell me the products and services that
support this podcast. Sophie seems fine with us. Okay, we're going,

(45:37):
Oh boy, how you doing, Bridget. I'm doing well. You're
doing well. I'm doing well. Let's talk about the subway.
So the period in which the subway is growing in
its fastest rate is also the period this is, like
the thirties and in the early to mid forties, in
which Bob Moses is centralizing power around him within the

(45:57):
increasingly influential Parks Department, and the chief triumphs that he
carries out in this period are well known to anyone
who lives in or is even visited New York City today,
particularly the well loved Jones Beach State Park. He's the
guy who builds that ship. Um. But here's the thing
that sent many a fun evening there. It's a lovely park.
Here's the thing. Bob Moses hated the subway system, and

(46:20):
he hates public transit in general. It doesn't like busses either.
He never learned to drive himself. But since he's again
he's rich, he always has like a driver, and that's
how he prefers to get around. And he doesn't really
think people should have public transportation, doesn't think it's a
great idea. So when he starts work on Jones Beach
in the late nineteen twenties, it opens a nine subway.
And this is that period again in which subway in

(46:42):
public transit access is massively expanding in New York. But
inside Jones's plan, moses plans for Jones Park is contained
a major strike against the idea that poor citizens should
have access to the same parts of the state as
wealthy ones. And I want to quote now from a
write up in the Yale Law Journal. Moses set forth
specifications for bridge overpasses on Long Island which were designed

(47:04):
to hang low so that the twelve foot tall buses
in use at the time could not fit under them.
One consequence was to limit the access of racial minorities
and low income groups who often use public transit to
Jones Beach. Moses is widely acclaimed public park. Moses made
doubly sure of his result by vetoing a proposed extension
of the Long Island Railroad to Jones Beach. Moses biographers

(47:24):
suggest that his decision to favor upper and middle class
white people who owned cars at the expense of the
poor and African Americans was due to his social class
bias and racial prejudice. So he built this park and
then makes it very difficult for black people to get there. Well,
it's exactly like what you were saying, how like land
use and public parks sound really great and everybody can

(47:44):
get behind them, but they are also so effectively weaponized
to you know, further racism and classism and all those
other isms that we all hate. Like it's such a
it's such an effective way of you know, consolidating power
and keeping people out. And it's it's also you can
see how Mark what he's doing is because he's like,
I'm not banning people from the park, right, this is
not a segregated it's in New York, you know, you're

(48:06):
not kind of it's not segregated here, Like, this is
not a park in which black people are not allowed,
nor is it a park that poor people are not allowed.
But it is a park that I'm going to veto
train access to and I'm going to make it physically
impossible for buses to reach it. And thus, as a result,
it becomes a park that only middle class and upper
class people can get to because they have the cars,
you know. Um, and that's smart. That way you get

(48:28):
to be like, well, here in New York, we're not like,
we're not like they are in in in in Atlanta
or Dallas or anyone's like segregated racist Southern states, and
people in the people in York love to say that
ship like, oh, like the South, they're so racist, They're
not here in New York. No. And every now and
then you're gonna get like, you know, some a black
family who does well and has a car, and it's like, look,
they could go to Jones Beach. Of course they can

(48:50):
go to Jones Beach. You know. It's like, so there's
no problem here. Yeah, um yeah, it's cool. Uh So,
instead of garnering support to pass a law bann poor
people or people of color from the places where he
did not want them, Moses used his power as an
architect to make it difficult for individuals to reach the
places that he desired to exclude them from. In his
creation of Jones Beach Park, Robert Moses becomes the founder

(49:13):
of a discipline that is today called exclusionary architecture. The
basic idea is this, if the government cannot legally stop
people from being somewhere, city planners can accomplish that same
goal by designing communities in such a way that it
inherently excludes undesirable people. So in Portland right now, there's
a couple of parks that like homeless people have been

(49:34):
camping in and after the cops beat them up and
cleared them out, rich people in the neighborhood have illegally
been putting out like planters and stuff and filling them
with like gravel and dirt in areas where like otherwise
it would be possible to lay down um to claim
to like, no, we're just trying to beautify our neighborhood
by putting in like plants and stuff. And it's like no, no, no,
you guys are illegally adding a bunch of infrastructure to

(49:56):
the park in order to make it more difficult. It's
like putting in a bench and then like illegally or
like adding in like those things in the middle of
it to stop people from sleeping on it or something
totally here and d see, they have this thing they
do where they install sprinklers, but there's not really green space.
It'll be like on concrete plazas where on howse people

(50:16):
just happened together and it's like, no, no, we're just
watering the concrete sidewalk constantly. Nothing nothing to see here.
It's just a normal sprinkler, not on grass, and it's
obviously exclusionary architecture. Who knows, Like it's impossible to say
like we're the first people who ever did it. I'm
sure you could find examples of this in many societies
throughout history. But Robert Moses is the one who kind

(50:37):
of like turns it into an art form, you know,
because he's good at this ship. This is not this
is not putting out a planter. This isn't crude. This
is like artful designing of a city in such a
way that you both expand its green spaces and like
beautify it while also locking certain people into areas where
you want to keep the poor. You know. Um, he's

(50:58):
very good at this thing that he's going to do. Now,
I should not hear that Moses is biographer. Robert Caro
is the first person who starts making these claims about Moses.
He writes this massive books, like fourteen hundred pages called
the Power Broker, which is like, after Moses's retirement kind
of blows a hole in the guy's legacy because he
had been seen as like the man who built New York.
And then Carol writes this book. He wins a Pulitzer

(51:20):
for it. Um, it's a pretty groundbreaking piece of reporting.
And if you have the time to go through thirteen
hundred pages about like this guy's life, it's it's pretty
interesting read. Um. Now, in recent years, some individuals have
sought to rehabilitate Robert Moses and and critique and because
Caro again wins a Pulitzer, Um, there's very little that

(51:40):
they can kind of criticize, so they'll kind of poke
around the edges of his research to claim that, like
he's exaggerating the degree to which this guy was, like
to which this guy they're not. You can't argue that
he wasn't racist, but you can like be like, well, actually,
the consequences of his racism weren't as bad as Carol claims.
And one claim that these folks will make trying to
defend Robert Moses today is that Moses is his bridges

(52:00):
were not too low for buses to pass underneath. Um,
and it is true that a number of the bridges
on the route to Jones Beach Park are tall enough
for twelve foot tall buses to pass underneath. But Thomas J. Campanella,
a Cornell University historian of city planning, wrote an article
for Bloomberg in two thousands seventeen where he tests all
these theories once and for all. He studied twenty bridges, viaducts,

(52:22):
and over passes on other parkways built elsewhere in New
York State at the time and compared them to the
twenty original bridges and overpasses that Moses built for the
Southern State Parkway, which is kind of on the way
to the Jones Beach Park. And he finds that the
clearances on all of the bridges Moses had built in
the Southern State Parkway are way lower. Quote. The parkways
I looked at were built in roughly the same era

(52:42):
as the Southern State, especially Sawmill and hutch In fact,
the Westchester Parkways set most of the standards for parkway
designed for years in the United States. The lower overpasses
on the Southern State Parkway are a substantial deviation from President.
So He's like, if you actually look at these like
the bridges he built in the specific area are notable
the lower um. Now, the Washington Post quotes a guy

(53:03):
named burn Ward George's, a German sociology professor, arguing back
against this, and and George's initially had claimed like this.
This Washington Post article is funny because it's talking about
the guys who are defending Moses. And then like the
people who have repeatedly proved that no, no, no, he
did do this in in an exclusionary way. And like
first the Post quotes him as saying that, like, Moses

(53:25):
didn't build any bridges lower than his colleagues did at
the time, Like that's a lot. He built the same
size bridges as everyone. They were just shorter back then.
And then when the Washington Post brings up camp in
Ella's research and was like, no, like this guy studied
them and his bridges are way shorter. Um. When they
tell George's that, he responds, quote, Okay, true, the bridges
were low, but each had to be built low differently.
Moses took great care that each and every bridge was

(53:47):
individually fitted into its natural context. Standardized unicity, as it were,
was part of an artfully laid out nature. One can
show more generally that when it came to parkway building,
bridge building, culture was connected to a specific politics of nature.
So first he's like, his bridges weren't any lower than
anyone else. Is that's a myth? And then when people
are like, well they were though, he's like, well he
had to because it was pretty right, Like he had

(54:09):
to because it looked good. Oh, and I think, I mean,
like you're talking about how I mean, the word artful
is the only word I could really used to describe it.
But you know, I think it was I can't remember
who it was, but um, some shitty right wing politician
was like, oh, they're saying that the highways are racist.
And the plausible deniability here of what he's doing of like,

(54:31):
you know, you know, you don't have to come out
and outright say I am trying to keep poor people
and black people and brown people out. But because of
the way that it's it's done, even now, people deny
that the reality of what's going on, and it's so
easy to deny I think it really, it really is
an art form. Yeah, it's he's very good at it.
And again, like when you actually challenge people and like

(54:54):
do the reasons like again you can you can show yes,
he obvious, like these were built with racism in my
and um, and they just keep moving the goalposts like
they do forever, and like the argument of these like
biggots always comes down and again, not all of them
are racially bigoted, some of them just hate the poor. Um,
but the argument always comes down to, like, well, it's

(55:14):
prettier this way, right, it's prettier if we keep certain
people out. And don't we deserve we we've spent so
much money on our homes. We we deserve to have
our home values increase. We deserve to live this with it.
We deserve to have it be prettier. And maybe that
means other people can't afford houses. Maybe it means the
homeless crisis expands. Maybe it means that like folks are
like forced into certain neighborhoods where they lack access to
grocery stores and other kind of like necessities. Um, but

(55:38):
don't we deserve to have pretty things? You know, And
it's not pretty if they're here, it's not pretty. If
they have housing they can afford, it's not you know,
Like that's the thing. Anyway, bridget you got any pluggable
to plug. That's part one. Oh yeah, I guess I
should plug my podcast. There are no girls on the internet.

(55:59):
You can check out my heart radio. Um yeah. You
can follow me on social media at Bridget Marie in
d C or at Bridget Marie on Twitter. Well you
can follow her and you can check out her podcasts,
and eventually you're gonna be able to hear Bridget in
a new podcast. But where we are bound by sacred

(56:21):
oaths to keep that silent until now the CIA has
a gun to my head. Um, I'm not allowed to
say anything else but um, the CIA being Sophie. Um.
The face that Sophie just made, I knew it was coming.
That's why I was like, alright, sometimes is my fault?
Got it? Next? Yeah, like all powerful men behind me

(56:46):
as a woman that I'm blaming for things for no reason.
How are we doing, Sophie. I'm gonna need like three
weeks of their Peter process was a lot. That was
a lot. Um, Well, thank you for coming on, Bridget.
I'm excited to tell you more about Bobby mos S

(57:08):
in part two. But um, thank you all for listening.
I have a novel After the Revolution. You can find
it on a k Press if you go to their website.
You can find it on Amazon. You just just google
After the Revolution Novel and you'll be able to buy
it some fuckingwhere anyway. Go to hell, shit sorry. Behind

(57:28):
the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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media dot com, or check us out on the I
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