Episode 140, with guests Joe Pompeo and Joe Hagan

Joe Pompeo and Joe Hagan are our guests this week.
Show produced by Katherine Caperton.
Original Air Date: March 1, 2014 on SiriusXM “POTUS” Channel 124.
PoliOptics airs on POTUS on Saturdays at 8 am, 4 pm and midnight and on Sundays at noon and midnight.
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Show also available for download on Apple iTunes by clicking here

Our first guest this week, Joe Pompeo of Capital New York, has the cover story the March issue of the new Capital magazine, “Downtown goes glossy,” all about Condé Nast’s move to the spanking new One World Trade Center and the transformation of downtown. For the last four years, my office in Lower Manhattan has overlooked the rebuilding of the 9/11 site. I’ve seen it go from an enshrined hole to the final stages of commercial rebirth, with Condé Nast at the leading edge of revitalization. This week, Joe Pompeo has the latest  chapter in the amazing story.

At the bottom of the hour, Joe Hagan uncorked a stunner earlier this week when New York magazine went live with its cover story, “I give up,” by Alec Baldwin, as told to Mr. Hagan. It’s an amazing read and an amazingly complex story to write in the “as told to” form. I’m unabashedly say I’m a big fan of Baldwin. While PoliOptics predated Alec’s Here’s The Thing podcast from WNYC, his style of thoughtful conversation is one that I’ve tried to emulate on our show. Baldwin’s 2013 is a quintessential Polioptics story. As Baldwin says in the piece: “In the new media culture, anything good you do is tossed into a pit and you’re measured by who you are on your worst day.” In this episode, Joe Hagen and I take Baldwin’s measure since the story went live.

If you like what you read from Hagan in New York, check out some of his other recent work, including his article on Tom Steyer in Men’s Journal and his piece on Charlie Rich in Oxford American.

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