Journalist Anand Giridharadas On The Lost Art Of Empathy, Compassion, & Understanding Each Other
The Rich Roll Podcast
Anand Giridharadas joins Rich Roll to discuss his new book, Man in the Mirror, which uses the tragic 2023 subway death of Jordan Neely as a lens to examine America's crisis of empathy and
Key takeaways
- Jordan Neely's death on a New York subway became an American Rorschach test, compressing national tensions over mental health, homelessness, and policing into a single moment.
- Giridharadas credits his friend Sam Chaitoon for pushing him to abandon punditry and return to immersive reporting after feeling he had become a person with a teleprompter instead of a notebook.
Main topics
- Empathy and radical humanization
- Systemic failure vs individual culpability
Notable quotes
I feel like I've been on a spiritual cleanse by going back to this kind of reporting.
Conclusion
The episode offers a compelling framework for navigating modern polari
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) I'm trying to get you into the head of all these kinds of people, not because I like this one or I like this one or I think you should like this one, but because I actually think there is a real lost civic art in being able to mentally leap into someone else's head. Speaker 1 (0:15) Anand Giridharadas, everybody. Anand Giridharadas. Speaker 2 (0:17) Anand Giridharadas is a journalist who has written Speaker 4 (0:20) for The New York Times and many other outlets. Speaker 1 (0:22) The author of the new book out tomorrow titled Man in the Mirror. It reports on the case of Jordan Neely. Black, Speaker 2 (0:31) mentally ill, homeless man gets onto a train. He starts acting out. And within that 30 seconds, a white former Marine named Daniel Penny puts him in a chokehold. and continues to hold Jordan Neely for another five or so minutes, ultimately killing him. It just immediately was an American Rorschach test. Hero or vigilante, all of America felt like it was compressed into that subway car. And I think this is very important to understand. When... Speaker 3 (1:06) Such a delight to meet you. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. As have I. You're looking iconic. Very, very grateful to be here. Speaker 2 (1:15) In Speaker 3 (1:15) an affable mood to grapple with some serious issues, which your book very much is. Man in the Mirror. I mean, first of all, congratulations. It's a massive accomplishment. We were just talking about that before we were recording. You're on the precipice of the release. And the way that I'm... thinking about this book is that it's almost, I mean, certainly you've identified this story and I want you to kind of set the stage with that story, but it is a story that gets at the root of all the issues and topics that you care about, that you- have been talking about and writing about for a very long time. It is the perfect petri dish of clashes that elucidate all of these themes. And in many ways, it's... Speaker 3 (2:06) novelistic. It's almost like a Tom Wolfe story. It's like bonfire of the inequalities without the satire on some level and very much a New York story, but a story about America. Speaker 2 (2:19) That's Speaker 1 (2:20) a... Speaker 2 (2:21) Brilliant summary of it. You know, Man in the Mirror is, at the heart of it is a story that many people watching this will probably passingly remember, if that, right? There was a death on the subway in New York on May 1st, 2023. And the basic scenario was black, mentally ill, homeless man gets onto a train. He's a former Michael Jackson impersonator who had a little bit of renown. People would come to New York looking for him back in the day, but it kind of fallen on harder times, mental illness tightening its grip. He starts acting out on the subway. It's a very short ride, a 30 second ride from Second Avenue to Broadway Lafayette. He starts acting out, demanding food, demanding water, saying he's ready to go back to prison, ready to die. Some people felt he was making threats. Some people felt he was more kind of crying out in despair, different memories. Speaker 2 (3:17) And within that 30 seconds from one station to the next, a white former Marine named Daniel Penny comes up behind him, puts him in a chokehold, drops him to the ground. The Marine Daniel Penny kind of underneath him and Jordan Ely on top and is by his own account trying to restrain him. Within seconds, the train gets to the next stop. Speaker 2 (3:45) everyone gets out as you can imagine um and daniel penny continues to hold jordan neely for another five or so minutes ultimately killing him uh and for the from the moment this news wafted up It just immediately was an American Rorschach test. Hero or vigilante? Speaker 1 (4:08) Is Speaker 2 (4:09) this a story of, you know, progressive cities run amok or Donald Trump's, you know, encouragement of political violence or pick your poison? And the way you framed it is exactly right. This, you know, it was reduced in that moment. to this very easy clickbait story. And if people watching this remember, they probably remember some version of that clickbait that they were fed. But in fact, what I found when I went deep into this story was the petri dish. You're exactly right. Which is every single challenge in American life, but also every single valiant act of trying to make things better, every crisis we have, every emotional undercurrent of this country. All of it. Speaker 2 (5:05) was condensed in that subway car and Speaker 1 (5:09) the Speaker 2 (5:09) doors closed and all of America felt like it was compressed into that subway car. And so what I spent the last three years doing is trying to... recover from what was reduced into clickbait. a real and profoundly human story, not just of a collision of two men in that moment, but all the things that led those two men to be there, all the things, all the systems and institutions that allowed Jordan Neely to be in the state that he was in, all the things that gave Daniel Penny both the sense of the need and the right to do what he did, and so on and so forth. And it is, to me, a story. of all the things in this moment in this country that are pulling us away from our sense of common humanity, but also with so many of the people I spent time with reporting over the last three years, all the people and forces that pull us closer to our common humanity, all the people who don't do the thing most of us do, which is walk by that distressed person on the street and keep walking and say, So sad and keep walking. There are people who don't do that. There are extraordinary outreach workers who try to figure out how to fix and save and heal one of those lives at a time. There are high public officials thinking about what does it look like to have mental health? taken as seriously as public health, the way we understand polio prevention to be public health, or the way we understand putting nutrition labels on food to be public health. Right now, mental health is not really in the pantheon of public health. So one of my main characters in the book was the health commissioner of New York. He was trying to think about how do you make mental health part of public health? So I spent a lot of time in the last three years thinking about some of the worst things that are happening in this country and that can happen between us, but also some of the most extraordinary acts of humanizing and humanity. And this book is a petri dish of all of that. And I think I wrote it in the hope that it makes people feel more alive in their connection. to that humanity. Speaker 3 (7:33) When you came across the story for the first time, was it immediately evident to you that there was a lot there to investigate or did that happen over time? Because this is, you know, in a moment, this flashpoint. that contains multitudes. Everything from mental health to your point, addiction, homelessness, how power operates. From the highest levels, Eric Adams, all the way down to the boots on the ground, activists. It's populated with every color on the spectrum of archetype. And in our current kind of journalistic environment, that gets reduced down to these, you know, Speaker 3 (8:18) undimensional character figures. And this is like fodder for endless page six or New York Post headlines, obviously. And you've taken this tack of trying to really understand everybody. But at what point during the unfolding of this ongoing story, because it kind of monopolized news here, at least in New York for quite a period of time, did you realize there's a lot here, maybe there's a book to this? Speaker 2 (8:45) I didn't realize this book Speaker 3 (8:46) was a Speaker 2 (8:47) gift. Speaker 3 (8:49) And Speaker 2 (8:49) it's an amazing story. I have many amazing friends in my life. One of my best friends is a guy named Sam, who's a brilliant journalist and editor. He now works at the New York Times. We came up together in journalism. We were actually both foreign correspondents in India together 20 years ago. Speaker 3 (9:09) And Speaker 2 (9:10) we were part of a group of friends who were all covering India. He was at the Associated Press then. I was at the New York Times then. And we were covering India in this period of crazy, remarkable growth and change. And we followed each other's work. We followed each other's lives. And the kind of work I used to do in India, I was based in Mumbai. So I was a foreign correspondent. I'd really tell human stories because I wasn't in the capital. I didn't have to do government, parliament, tax. I was just doing how in this country it's changing so fast. What does that mean for people? How is marriage changing in India? How are ambitions changing? How do the way people see themselves change? That became my thing. Speaker 2 (9:50) And Sam and I kind of grew and grew and went into different roles. He now is kind of someone who assigns and creates possibilities for others at the times. I became a writer. Speaker 2 (10:02) And over the years, Sam watched me kind of change and evolve, as we all do. And he liked some of the changes, but he didn't like some of the others. And he basically started to feel, and this is a conversation we started to have over years, the kind of conversation you can only have with a true friend. He sort of felt I'd lost my way. We spent a lot of time together in COVID. A lot of these conversations were in COVID. Speaker 2 (10:24) He felt that I had gone from being someone who can understand everybody. Speaker 2 (10:30) who can really get into the head of it. I wrote a book about, you know, the Texas book was about white supremacists and it's a deeply empathetic portrait. I'm not a fan of white supremacy, but I prided myself on being able to render it in a way that people would recognize the heart and soul of that person. And I think with the Trump era. Speaker 2 (10:49) Like a lot of people, I felt like, no, it's important to take stands. Journalism, my profession is too weak and doesn't call things what they are and doesn't say, you know, doesn't call spades a spade. So I sort of became of this view that it's really important to like make a case. And I sort of, you know, and I found success. My third book, Winners Take All, made a really passionate case against kind of oligarchy in American life. And I became known for that. And I sort of, you don't necessarily, you know this, you don't choose your destination, you just choose your next step and then the next step and the next step. And after some years, I had just chased each thing and chased each whim and chased each decision. And I had become not the person who tries to understand everybody. I'd become the kind of person who says, that leader's bad. These people are good. They should win. They should, you know. I'm caricaturing it slightly. I think I had a little, you know, but that was the direction. I'd become more of an advocate. Speaker 2 (11:52) And Sam... was the only friend who was like, I'm worried about you, dude. I think you've lost your way. I think you, I think a lot of people can go on social media and just say, these people good, these people bad. Trump's an idiot. Like anybody can do that. He's like, I remember when we were in India and you would ride the train. Speaker 2 (12:16) with migrants from the heartland of India to Bombay, 17 hour train ride. And you could get inside what it is that possesses people to leave their village and everything they've known. And then you'd spend the first three days with a migrant showing what it is like to arrive in a city of 20 million people and you don't know anybody. Do that for America. Why did you stop doing that? I thought there was truth in what he was saying. I was also annoyed by what he was saying. I also felt like, I was like, you're at the New York Times. Like you guys are always soft peddling this Trump stuff. You know, it was what my wife, Priya Parker, calls a worthy grapple, a worthy fight over years. Speaker 2 (12:55) And one day he called me a few days after the Jordan Neely Daniel Penny case happened. Speaker 2 (13:03) And I've been complaining as I'm always complaining about not having my next book. And he's like, I got your next book for you. Speaker 2 (13:11) It took me a second. I said, it's a little bit of a municipal level. I'm not like a city reporter. I don't. And he said this. Speaker 2 (13:19) He said, this is an everything book. Speaker 2 (13:23) But this conversation we have been having over these years. getting back to reporting, getting onto the street, literally sitting your butt on the pavement and understanding the person sitting across from you, this will jolt you back into this thing that you say you agree maybe you should go back to. And I remember I texted Sam within days of starting on this project because I just hit the streets. I started reporting on the case, but also just on homeless people in New York and on NYPD sweeps. of homeless people and clearing encampments and city hall. Speaker 2 (13:58) I had to buy a bunch of notebooks, journalist notebooks, which I didn't have a stash of because I'd kind of become more Speaker 1 (14:04) of someone who just like makes a case on Morning Joe. Speaker 2 (14:08) And I remember texting Sam saying. Speaker 2 (14:11) I know you're from LA, so this language will be familiar to you, but it's not really how I talk. I was like, I feel like I've been on a spiritual cleanse. Speaker 2 (14:20) by going back to this kind of reporting. I felt like I had, I realized that I had sort of allowed myself to become a person with a teleprompter instead of a notebook. Speaker 2 (14:32) The teleprompter is filled. The notebook is blank. Sure. Speaker 3 (14:36) You're performing Speaker 2 (14:37) a Speaker 3 (14:37) role and it's been this kind of hero's journey back home to really connect with what got you animated about this field in the first place on some level. That's so interesting to hear because my, you know, kind of just from an arm's length perspective, like looking at your work, like how did you make this decision on some level? It's surprising to hear that you had to be jolted out because it feels somewhat of an extension from Persuaders. This idea that you start off as this man of the people journalist, then you ascend into the halls of the New York Times and the Atlantic and broadcast news and all that. And then you get kind of fetid for speaking truth to power from inside the halls of power. which is interesting in its own right, but then you become more of like a pundit, right? And you're trying to reconcile your activist advocate tendencies with how to actually forge real change and realizing that the fringe side of the spectrum of activism isn't actually all that. helpful in terms of forging policy change, right? You have to figure out how to enlist people and excite them and recruit them to your cause. And that makes you somebody who's suddenly kind of in the middle, I suppose. And maybe that's compromising your values on some level, but you're making the argument that it's necessary in order to have the bigger picture in view. And so this book and this story is a lens. Speaker 3 (16:23) onto the front lines of... Speaker 3 (16:27) The latest battle in a war that's been going on forever Speaker 3 (16:32) over who are we, essentially? Who are we as a culture, as a society? Who belongs? Yeah, who belongs? What does it mean to be an American? But it's also a war that's been going on from the inception of humanity in every culture and civilization. The story is timely, but the themes and what you're getting at are timeless, right? And the way to understand that is to return back to the... Exactly. But it isn't quite the progression that I thought it was. And you didn't have that kind of awareness. You had to like be jolted out of it to get back into that Speaker 2 (17:07) mindset. Speaker 3 (17:07) I think so. Because Speaker 2 (17:08) I think what happened to me. Speaker 2 (17:11) And I don't, I can't speak for anybody else, but I don't think I'm the only person this has happened to in this. I would say the Trump era is one way to think about it, although it's not the only thing that has contributed to this. I got into the work I did out of curiosity as not just like a trait that I had, but as like an animating Speaker 4 (17:35) force Speaker 2 (17:36) in my life, right? My job in its core is like, it is a license to go as you are doing right now. It is a license to sit down with people and ask them anything, right? Regular civilians can't do that. It's considered rude to ask people the kinds of things you and I. have feel like a license to ask people, right? And so I got into the work I did to fill the empty, nope, all those years ago, right? These were not even assignments. I genuinely am curious about how do you leave a tiny village in Uttar Pradesh, India, having literally only seen a big city in movies. Speaker 2 (18:18) And then just take a train to that city knowing nobody. And then how do you become a taxi driver in that city? How do you, where do you sleep? Like just real curiosity. That's what animates my reporting. And I think what happened to me over the years, partly it is what happens in journalism is a certain success gets you promoted into punditry. That's just like a weird structural thing that happens. The people who. have a little bit of luck in it. are asked to like, what should the president do instead of what happened? What did you see? The real core question of our profession is like, what did you see? But you can get promoted into like, what do you think should happen? And like, I guess as a man, you're kind of like, well, let me tell you, you know, what I think should happen. But the Trump era also for me was an assault on that sense of curiosity I had because it encouraged this other thing, which I think we all also have. which is certitude. Speaker 2 (19:21) the conflicts of this era, the things that were just not right. And you almost felt like you see this thing, you see that thing. And it's like, I'm almost a race to say as quickly as possible, that ain't right. That ain't right. That ain't right. And I think we'd all agree. Like there's a bunch of things that are not right, that it's really, it feels really important to say it. And it feels like being a good person in this era has demanded, like, are you saying all the things that are not? You're waking up every day in a fucking deficit because of all the things that happened overnight that you now on social media need to, on the record, say are not right. Fine. What I felt started to happen to my brain, I felt like I was getting the brain of. someone in like a religion or a cult where you're not allowed to think contrary thoughts because it was just like mantras. And the mantras were true as far as I could tell, but they just felt like to keep repeating that this person's bad and this idea is bad and this is dangerous and this is destructive. It's actually an enemy of thinking at some level. And I felt like my thinking muscles were atrophying from all the things that righteously one wanted to like take a stand about. And so this book, it's not me walking, like I'm very glad some people are still doing that, but I felt like my gift and skill in this world is not that. Everybody can do it. A lot of people can do that. People can do that better than me. The thing that I think I can do in a special way is to inhabit a lot of different perspectives. And I don't know why, and I grew up, in Ohio. I grew up in the DC area. I grew up outside of the US. I lived in India all those years after college. I think I can understand lots of different types of Americans. And a lot of this book is actually using language to do that. So it's not just the facts about them or how they think, but you're dealing with Daniel Penny's Republican lawyer, and you're dealing with Ashwin Vass and the health commissioner is a progressive. mental health reformer, and you're dealing with outreach workers, you're dealing with homeless folks, you're dealing with cops. Speaker 2 (21:35) I'm trying to get you into the head of all these kinds of people, not because I like this one or I like this one or I think you should like this one, but because I actually think there is a real lost civic art in being able to mentally leap into someone else's head and understand the way the world looks to a cop or to a this or to a that. Speaker 3 (21:53) Well, Speaker 2 (21:53) also an Speaker 3 (21:53) appreciation of the value of that, which we have lost touch with. Your internal conflict is a microcosm of the kind of macro tension and conflict that permeates the book, which is when we're in our siloed states and we're preaching to the choir, are we really affecting anything meaningful? And it's a reflection of our social media, state of affairs, etc. It's intoxicating to kind of ascend society. You have been successful. you find yourself in certain rooms and suddenly you have these opportunities that maybe you didn't even think you would get and you relish them and you're playing a role. There's a lot of gestalt behind that. There's momentum, right? And you're just kind of moving upward as you do this thing and you're celebrated for that and there's expectations. that you set for yourself internally, but also by your tribe. Like, hey, when you go on Morning Joe, these are the things you're going to say. And if you say something differently, you're going to get exiled from your tribe, right? So there's stakes as well. At the same time, you're no stranger to this. Like when you kind of in your Aspen Institute days, like kind of talking about like what was actually going on there, that was risky for you. And it kind of... advance your career, ironically, but then you find yourself in this position again. And the solution... to that is to seek understanding and lead with curiosity. I mean, these are things that I learned in the program of recovery, where you're surrounded by all different kinds of people and in this incredibly nonjudgmental space. And I tend to live in the gray areas as well. And when I do this podcast, I'm not looking to judge anybody. I'm not looking to... take a stand or have a debate or an argument, I'm seeking to understand this person. And the more that I can model that in these conversations, I have to believe that that is like, without saying it outright, I'm demonstrating that this is a way to be in the world that I think is more beneficial than shouting at each other. Because certainly the way that we're doing that right now isn't solving any problems. And I'm sure when you write these books, there may be a publisher's voice who's saying, well, what's the solution to this? Instead of having bullet points at the end of each chapter, here's your takeaways. You're demonstrating a way of being with people that I think is the antidote to essentially everything that's ailing us. If we want to find a positive way forward, this is the way you do it. You can't just entrench the bulwark of your particular point of view. You have to, I mean, I hate that word reach across the aisle, but you have to understand the deeper dynamic. that's at play. And one of the things that my wife always says to me is, every man is right from his own perspective. And if you walked in their shoes throughout their entire life, you would make the same decisions that they did. And your kind of recurring mantra in this book is like, you have to meet people where they are. That's Speaker 2 (24:56) exactly right. It's not the same as the mushy middle or the center always has the truth. What I'm actually saying is different. which is wherever you land, wherever you vote. You can have a Speaker 3 (25:07) point of view. Absolutely. Be ardent in that. But if Speaker 2 (25:10) you are not intelligent and insightful about the other ones that are in the conversation. Speaker 2 (25:16) then we have a problem and you're not going to be very effective. And I think that's what's actually happened. So I am not making a case for like, the truth is the mean point between whatever opinions are out there. But this is, and I've always felt this reporting on this country. And I think a lot of people who maybe live in my bubble in New York that don't get to be reporters don't maybe appreciate this in the same visceral way if you do this work. This is a really large country. I can't overstate that, right? The range of types of lives lived, the range in particular of geography, like when you get out of this, right? The most dense assemblage of human beings, one of them ever created, diverse, et cetera. And then, you know, you spend time in rural Texas. Like it is physically. Speaker 2 (26:12) and psychologically different, right? When I spent a lot of time in Texas for that book, The True American, the notion of why people might want a gun. when they live 45 minutes away from a police response. I'm not, I didn't change my view on whether we should do gun control or not. My opinion is probably the exact same as it was before. But spending a lot of time in that landscape and realizing I live 30 seconds away from police being at my house if I need them. And there are people here who live with like a response time that is 90 multiple, 90 times that. Is it possible that they might have a view about the need to provide their own defense that would be different? Is it possible that that difference is not about their being good or bad or whatever types of people, but just literally the structure of our kind of psychic geography being so different? And you could go down the list of tribes and groups and places. Speaker 2 (27:15) This is a country of fighting faiths, to quote that old Supreme Court phrase. And part of what I wanted to do is to use the power, the artistry of this kind of narrative nonfiction writing to say these people of these fighting faiths are actually one people. They may not feel they are one people with each other. A lot of my characters, I've been, I am still. Speaker 2 (27:43) in good standing with everybody I wrote about in this book. I promise everybody I wrote about in this book. You said Bonfire of the Vanities, which, you know, Tom Wolfe, amazing book. I read it as I was starting this. Oh, that's so interesting. It was the first thing I read when Sam told me to write this book. I go, the weekend, take Bonfire and start reading it. And I had two thoughts. One, this is completely what I want to do, but nonfiction. By the way, Sam had said this is potentially... 2023 Bonfire of the Vanities. My agent, Lynn Nesbitt, was the agent on Bonfire of the Vanities a long time ago. But my second thought was, I want to do it in a completely different spirit than this. He, and I love Speaker 3 (28:25) that book to be very clear, but he tore everybody down. It's a mockery. He's making a mockery of everyone. Everybody's an idiot, right? Everybody is pulled down, right? Speaker 2 (28:32) I wanted to kind of see if you could do the opposite, not in a Pollyanna-ish way, but to your wife's point. Speaker 2 (28:40) What is a cop's view? of what it's like to clear an encampment of homeless people. Speaker 1 (28:49) I Speaker 2 (28:49) understand what I feel about that. I already know that. I don't need to go do research to find out how I feel about that. I got that. And then what's a homeless person's view? Speaker 2 (29:00) I write in the book about Choco, a homeless man who... I witnessed the kind of one hour of his being swept by the NYPD from a block street pavement. at the end of a block that he grew up on. He was probably in his 60s or 70s. He'd grown up on that block in housing. And then at the end of his life, ended up living on the pavement of the same block he grew up on. Speaker 2 (29:24) And I'm watching for an hour as the NYPD comes, they offer him a chance to leave, they offer him shelter, he doesn't want shelter. He doesn't wanna go back to those places. I watch him say no, then I watch him start to gather up his things. He moves 15 feet around the corner, which satisfies the legal requirement that he wasn't at the initial thing. 10 cops, garbage trucks, they throw away a bunch of his stuff. He takes what he wants, he goes 15 feet around the corner. Cops leave and he goes right back to where he was. And... A few weeks after that, he actually did accept shelter. He goes to a shelter. He tells them very clearly, I'm just saying, he lost a few toes to frostbite. I can't do stairs. They don't listen. They take him to a place with stairs. Takes him, you know, an hour or something to go down one flight into this space. He's like, this is not going to work. Goes back downtown. He left a bunch of his stuff that he thought he'd get later. All gone. Social security guard gone. Photos gone. And I remember Choco telling me, you know, they took all my photos. And he remembered the number. And he said, you know, I've had a chaotic life, but I know the number of things I have. I know the number of photos. I always keep things in order. I keep, you know, and he described for me this photo that particularly pained him to lose of him, the young kid, five years old or something, as a ring bearer at a wedding. Speaker 2 (30:57) He held a little box and was the ring bearer. And I just sat there thinking like, he's sitting at the end of his block. Speaker 2 (31:07) mourning the loss of this photo that was also This kid of promise who maybe wouldn't have ended up like this Who did and to be able to hold in your mind is as an exercise for me both someone like that who We have