MAILER V MAMDANI
From Quality Lit Game by Quality Lit Game
November 3, 2025 · 1h 10m · Season 1 · Episode 4
About this episode
The episode discusses Norman Mailer's failed mayoral campaign and various cultural topics with guest Sloane Crosley.
On a new episode of an intergenerational podcast, guest Sloane Crosley and co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen discuss the 1970 documentary Norman Mailer vs. Fun City, USA , about Mailer’s failed 1969 campaign for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, and tomorrow’s mayoral election. Topics discussed include: the co-hosts’ whereabouts and the origins of their names; the time Matt Damon met Prince and the time Sloane avoided meeting Matt Damon; a visit to a Brooklyn cheese shop with two movie stars; Meghan McCain’s literary collaboration with Michael Ian Black; NYRB singles meet-ups; Arthur Hammerstein; the alliance of Sloane’s grandmother with New York Mayor Ed Koch; Simon & Garfunkel’s 1980 concert in Central Park and all the joints smoked in the audience; Howard Hughes, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio; the nature of charisma; speaking in paragraphs vs. speaking in sentences; Norman Mailer’s dialectics; his notion of an experimental city where the entire population took LSD daily and whether after four years it would result in an epidemic of liver cancer; public housing towers of 50,000 units built of Legos; the…
People in this episode
Hosts: Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, Christian Lorentzen
Guest: Sloane Crosley
Topics covered
- Norman Mailer
- New York City mayoral election
- documentary
- intergenerational discussion
- literary collaboration
- charisma
- public housing
- socialism
Keywords
- Matt Damon
- Prince
- Brooklyn cheese shop
- Meghan McCain
- Michael Ian Black
- Arthur Hammerstein
- Simon & Garfunkel
- Howard Hughes
- Michael Bloomberg
- Bill de Blasio
- Curtis Sliwa
- Andrew Cuomo
- Corinthian leather
- Zohran Mamdani
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Legos, LSD, Ghostbusters 2
Books & works: Norman Mailer vs. Fun City, USA, Ghostbusters 2
Places: New York City, Brooklyn, New York, Central Park
More episodes of Quality Lit Game
- EPISODE 13: SQUIRREL HOUR · March 23, 2026 · 1h 10m
- EP. 12: DOGVILLE, ON "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" · February 20, 2026 · 1h 13m
- EP. 10: AN AFTERNOON IN THE DARK FT. A.S. HAMRAH · January 6, 2026 · 1h 11m
- EP.9: REVENGE OF THE TREES · December 29, 2025 · 56 min
- EP.8: THE TRAGEDY OF HAMNET · December 19, 2025 · 53 min
- EP.7: SUCCESS, SWEET & OTHERWISE · December 9, 2025 · 56 min
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