The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 143: Can Nithya Raman Fix Los Angeles?

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

With us this week is Nithya Raman, running for mayor of Los Angeles. She tells us exactly how the city is *actually* run, the problems it faces, and most importantly...how they can be solved. Follow Nithya on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/nithyaforthecity?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ== Follow Nithya on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@nithyaforthecity Follow Nithya on Twitter here: https://x.com/nithyavraman?s=21 Find more info about her campaign here: http://nithyaforthecity.com NEW MERCH OUT! Get 10% off when you sign up and also get bonus content, ad-free versions and more plus your first 7 days free at https://benandemilshow.com ***THE SOUTHWEST COMPANION PASS IS BACK GET IT HERE: https://www.cardratings.com/bestcards/featured-credit-cards?src=691608&shnq=520080,4028088,4048122,4028085,3006151,4048149,4028089,4048084&var2= The newest acid video is out now so check it out! https://youtu.be/7vkFY3f5kkw WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF EMIL'S NEW SHOW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHG9iIjhXvI Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it! And please leave us a comment! It helps us! ***Ben's new movies and tv podcast with Dillon is OUT NOW! GO WATCH the latest episode on our TOP MOVIES OF 2025: https://youtu.be/tbC-cMqcby8?si=tO0NK0PmpN2187ir **CHECK OUT EMIL'S LIVESTREAMS HERE: https://www.youtube.com/emilderosa __ SOME OTHER VIDEOS YOU MAY ENJOY: That's Cringe of Cody Ko: https://youtu.be/dTbEk0pVh2w Our AUSTIN VIDEO: https://youtu.be/yGSs56bFzRU Our episode with Kyla Scanlon: https://youtu.be/cIHWkY35cuc Big Tech is out of ideas (ft. ED ZITRON): https://youtu.be/zBvVGHZBpMw Arguing with a millionaire (ft. Chris Camillo): https://youtu.be/1ZUWTkWV_MM We bought suits HERE: https://youtu.be/_cM1XqA9n2U ***LINK TO OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/CjujBt8g ***Subscribe to Emil's Substack: https://substack.com/@emilderosa ***Trade with Ben at https://tradertreehouse.com __ HIMS: For simple, online access to personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://Hims.com/BAES CHUBBIES: Chubbies is here to keep you comfy and looking good year-round. Get 20% off with code benandemil at https://chubbiesshorts.com/benandemil! #chubbiespod __ Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we make housing affordable? We have a very expensive rental market right now, really expensive. We just rented a house and it is... Really expensive. It'll make you insane. Okay, don't tell me. The only other way that prices go down is when you have an economic crisis and I don't really want that. Yeah, let's not do it like that.

Let's not do it that way. Yeah, let's do it a different way. Let's do it the positive way. Like the fact that we haven't paved a road in a year and have no plans to? Yes. I actually challenge you to make it worse. Can you make it worse? No. a lot of that has fallen off.

The things that the city used to do well are no longer being done well because we're cutting all of these services down to the bone, right? But I'm here to say it's fixable. I feel pretty helpless right now looking at the national situation. And I think for a lot of people who felt like really betrayed by their federal government, I think had this sense of like,

oh, we can help our local government reflect more of what we want to see from it. But I really trust the voters. Like voters are smart. Yeah. Not me. I'm really one of the dumber ones. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of The Ben and Emile show. This week's going to be a little bit of a change from what we normally do.

We've got current L.A. City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate this year, Nithya Raman on. She's one of the progressive candidates this year, and she was nice enough to grace us with her presence. Really interesting to talk to her. Yeah. I think she has a real vision for the city. I think if you're from Los Angeles, you'll know what we're talking about when there's a bit of a palpable feeling like something is not going right in the city. And she obviously recognizes it too as a councilwoman and wants to do something about it and is running for mayor. And she has a really compelling vision for what L.A. could look like with someone who actually cares at the helm.

Yeah. Lots of controversial opinions in this episode. lots of um... And I think even if you're not an Angelino, you're going to find this interesting. I think there's this new string of progressive politicians who are rising the ranks who are saying, hey, government can actually work for people. You know, the, the Zoron of L.A. has been thrown around, obviously.

Yeah. And we're very excited to talk to her. And if you're new to the show, continue to join us week after week where we do very fun episodes on all kinds of current events. and there's bonus content you can find at Beninamielshow.com. Let's start the show. Yeah, I get this thing rolling. This is the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened on this show.

Well, then you're doing pretty well. Okay, wait. There we go. Oh, all right, six minutes and 59 seconds. Let's go. What's that? I don't know. It's just a...

It's this dumb workout clock we bought. Thinking that it was a different kind of clock. And now we have to, there's no good way. Oh, it's like a Tabata timer. Yes, exactly. To do Tabata workouts? We didn't know what Tabata is. I still don't know exactly what Tabata is.

It was so good. It's like a really good workout method. Oh. We thought that Tabata was some kind of broken translation thing. It's become an inside joke on the show because people yell at us for not knowing what Tabata is. And he's the Tabata man because it's his job to reset. the timer. Got it. Tabada man. Anyway, welcome. Welcome. I'm Ben. This is Tabataman. No, it's a meal, because this is a very serious one. This is a serious episode. We've got with us council member

Nithia Rahman, and she's not just council member anymore, mayoral candidate. That's right. And she's here today to tell us all about why we shouldn't vote for Spencer Pratt. No, no, no, that's not true. We did, unfortunately. unfortunately donate a good deal of money to him before you joined the race. We're trying to, we're trying to claw that back. But to be fair, we thought it was the fund that was going to convince him to not run. Just like here, enjoy some much love to Spencer Pratt, you know, I'm sure he's a great guy. Actually, not.

We're kidding around. I will say, as I was getting ready for the show, I kind of forgot he was even running and I spent like maybe 30 minutes too long scrolling through his Instagram and it scared me a little bit. He's a lot of direct-to-camera videos. and, uh, it's uncomfortable. But I also, I will say I understand his anger right now. Yeah. Lost his home in the Palisades. It's, I, I, I can't imagine the trauma he experienced and heart goes out to Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. Totally. Uh, but we're not here to talk about

no, we're not. Uh, I want to talk about your race. I want to talk about, uh, yeah, why you, why you're, maybe you could start with your background a little bit. I'm sure, because you are a city council member in Los Angeles. So, uh, I want to talk about, uh, yeah, why you're, why you're, maybe you're, So I'm sure everyone all around L.A. knows who you are. But yeah, some people definitely do. But I think part of the challenge of this mayoral race is I think a lot of people in my district know who I am. And now I have to get out to the whole city and tell them who I am and tell them why I think I'd be a better candidate than for mayor than our other choices. So that's a big challenge.

So I'm grateful to you for giving me a chance to share that. Yeah. And I was at one of your events on Saturday, and I think your background is very pertinent to a lot of people's concerns about L.A. going forward. So I think maybe if you could tell people how you came to run for city council. Yeah. So actually, I'm an urban planner by training. I've done a lot of work on urban poverty issues, some in India and some in L.A. and I had started this volunteer group in my neighborhood because I saw a lot more tents on the streets than there were before. And so I found some other neighbors who were interested and we started going out and engaging with people and giving them, you know, coffee and a breakfast burrito. And then asking them, like, what else could we get them in terms of services? And we would call service providers and ask people to come out and talk to them.

and I just felt like there was a real role for the city to play here. Like, why are neighbors doing this on a Saturday? Why isn't the city going out and actually doing this work proactively in response to the crisis on the streets? And I tried to reach out to my elected representative at the time. He didn't meet with us. And more broadly, I would just say that I felt like he didn't share. I felt this like incredible sense of urgency. Like, you know, we got to be out here.

We got to be solving this problem. and I just didn't feel like he shared that urgency at all. And so I decided to run against him. And I guess in retrospect is a strange pathway to choose. I love it. Not everyone's pathway. But I also knew, like, L.A. has a lot of power to take action on issues that are really important. You know, I care a lot about the cost of housing here in L.A.

It's a driver of our homelessness crisis. L.A. can make it possible for us to build a lot more housing. LA can protect renters who are struggling. And it just wasn't using its powers to do that. And so I went out and talked to people about that. I talked to people about how we could clean our air, how we could make it safer to walk on the streets and ride your bike on the streets,

how we could make it safer overall, you know, deliver better public safety outcomes. And I feel like that message, when I was talking to people, we knocked on a lot of doors, we knocked on more doors than I think in any city council race ever. And that really, that really resonated with people,

this idea of this city as something that they could rely on and that was proactive and persistent in their lives to help them with the issues that most concerned them. And so that's how I ended up running and winning, even though before that I had never really thought about politics as a pathway for myself. That was a big, that was 2020, right? Yeah, so I started running in 2019 and won in 2020

and took office really in January of 21. Okay, right? during the pandemic. So it was pre-vaccine COVID when I started. And then we ended up getting the vaccine. And I think a lot of things changed in L.A. as a result. But yeah, I started in the middle of pre-vaccine COVID. Our council meetings were on Zoom.

Everything was on Zoom. I couldn't meet with constituents face-to-face. It was a people were angry. I mean, people are angry now. Oh, yeah. People were really angry then. Well, that was a, I remember that race. It was a big deal for people.

in L.A. I feel like it was a very big deal for people who identified as pretty left, I think. People felt lucky to have something to throw their energy behind after Bernie Sanders had stepped down and ended his campaign. And so there was a lot of energy. I think it was a DSA back thing. There was a lot of people going out and knocking doors. Yeah. And I think there was a real, I think there was a sense of, we, you know, we, people felt really helpless looking at the national situation. I feel pretty helpless right now looking at the national situation. And I think for a lot of people who felt like government could do good in people's lives and believed in government and felt really betrayed by their federal government, I think had this sense of like, oh,

we can help our local government reflect more of what we want to see from it. Active, present, compassionate, helping solve problems and not just waiting until complaints were coming in. Like, that's really, I think that vision spoke to a lot of people. And I think that is, yeah, that's a very broadly progressive vision. Like progressives believe in the power of government to do good. I really believe in that. Which, I feel like that's a good spot for you to kind of educate us or me in particular and maybe a lot of our audience on how the government structure in L.A. Can you do just like a quick overview of how like a top down what the mayor does,

the board of supervisors, the city council, and like what powers does the mayor have? Because I feel like a lot of stuff gets... Because it's unique here, right? It's not like other cities where the mayor has kind of broad power. The city council holds a lot of it. Yeah. So there's so there's, it's definitely a, so we just, this comes from history in L.A., right? So we, this is a newer city than East Coast cities. And, and, And the structure of L.A. and a lot of West Coast cities, actually, was in response to the earlier progressive movement that was really focused on good governance and anti-corruption and oppositional to what was happening in these really corrupt East Coast cities like Boston and Chicago. And you know, you just saw a ton of corruption there. And so here what they said was let's make government cleaner.

Let's make it decentralized. So they really, it ended up leaving us with a fairly fragmented system of governance. So city of Los Angeles is four million people, county of Los Angeles is 10 million people. The county handles, you know, public health, health services, mental health, you know, all of the things that, you know, we depend on the county for a lot of those basic services. they're charged with, in their charter, care for quote unquote, the indigent. And so they're really the ones that are funded for that from the state and federal government. The city of Los Angeles is four million people. It has, oh, and the county has, sorry, five supervisors who run it.

The board of supervisors. The board of supervisors. So each of them has a district that is two million people in it. We just voted in an expansion, but it's kind of caught up in some issues. the expansion vote negated an old vote. So they're trying to figure out how to resolve it. So it's maybe going to grow to nine supervisors and an elected CEO position. But it's still a relatively small number of people who run these enormous districts, right,

who are supposed to run many of the things that I would say the most vulnerable people in our city depend on, right? And in the county as a whole. Here in LA City, we have a mayor and 15 elected council members. Each council district has like, 250,000 residents, give or take. And yes, there is, in theory, a weak mayor strong council system, right? That's historical coming from this idea of decentralization and more power at the local level.

But there was a charter reform process a quarter of a century ago, which did give a lot more power to the mayor. and that gave them the authority to hire and fire general managers of all of our departments, which I think is the most important thing. Because so much of what I think works dealing with with LA City right now is not necessarily that we don't have the right policies in place. We do need to have some changes in policies, but that the departments are not delivering on what they're supposed to be doing for us. And I think an active mayor who has the ability to hold general managers

accountable can really push them to deliver on the outcomes that matter for Angelinos. They have the ability to set a department's priorities. They have the ability to bring departments together that need to talk to each other to resolve issues. Like if there's five departments that are in charge of fixing a sidewalk, the mayor can bring them together. No one else can. What about budgets?

They set the budget. They set the budget. The mayor does. The mayor does. And then the city council does approve the final budget and makes changes to it. But most years, they only change like two. percent of the budget. And a lot of the budget is personnel expenses anyway, so it's largely determined by who's in the workforce and how it's spent. But yes, the mayor definitely

has the ability to set the initial budget, and then they have the ability to make sure that their budget priorities go through the council process intact, and they have the ability to really hold departments accountable for outcomes. Hey everybody, we got to take a quick break to thank a sponsor of the show. It's Hymns hair, man. You know, neither of us have this issue, fortunately. But for some of you out there... But we know the importance of it, you know?

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Yeah. Oh my God. It's driving me crazy. Well, I owe you, an I owe you an apology. I live in your district. And I raised a ruckus because for 10 months on my street, I think you know which street probably, or maybe not, because I don't know how many were affected. But for 10 months, my street was without streetlights. And I learned a lot about exactly what you're talking about, especially the whole budget part.

Because ultimately the streetlights and the copper. that was stolen from them getting replaced falls on the Bureau of Lighting services. Yeah, Bureau of Street Lighting. Bureau of Street Lighting. Thank you. And I thought it was the DWP. And it's like, well, no, it's the ones that are concrete are the DWP and the ones that are wood are the BLS. And I was in contact with people in your office multiple times. And they were like, we've got multiple, you have no idea. We're well aware. And I hope that they weren't impolite about it. No, not at all. Okay, good. Okay. Good.

They were perfect sweet angels. I hope he was polite about it. I was polite about it. Because every time I was pissed, but then they'd be like, sir, we're aware, we've got tickets in. And I was pulling my hair out because I was like, how is the Bureau of Lighting Service? And they're like, they've got hardly any budget. They've got a backlog of like 10 months.

It was shocking. It was dangerous. When he was describing it, I was going, how bad could it be? It's L.A. There's lights everywhere. And then when I saw it, I was like, oh, my God. Dangerous as a peddle. dangerous as a driver. Like, I would come home at night and be like, I can't see.

But eventually it got fixed. And boy, was I singing. I was like, stopping to talk with the guys. I'm like, thank you so much for letting up. And they welded. They welded the... They fortified it. Yes.

And the guy was like, 95% of these that we weld shut or fortify. Yeah. They don't come back. Right. So that is something that I assume that you're going to be like, let's jack up those effing budgets on the BLS, right? Yeah. Give them all the money they want.

Well, and I, 100%. We have, we've, we also have not paved any streets this entire fiscal year, like zero miles of street. Yeah.

And we don't really have plans to because the budgets are so bad. And the budgets are set, you know, by the mayor, but they're driven by, I think, sometimes very political motives.

And that's, That's what I was talking about at the event. Yeah, could you maybe give like a little bit of a overview of some of those things you were talking about? Because I'm sure people on the show have heard me complain about L.A. I'm a bit of a pessimist. And I talk about how there are a lot of problems here. And it can be very frustrating living here. And as a pessimist, I went to her event and was listening to her talk about things.

And I was literally like poking Sarah being like, what? How is that even possible that it's that bad? It's like we don't have a government. It's insane. Yeah. I mean, well, look, but I want to, I want to change that. And I think it's possible to change that. Like the fact that we haven't paved a road in a year and have no plans to. Yes. I actually tells you to make it worse. Can you make it worse? I just was like, what are you talking about? Yeah. No. See how bad we can get. So, so here's, so here's what happens, right? So we have, we have a lot of city workers. And the biggest group of city workers are our LAPD, right?

And what ended up happening in the last, but in the last mayoral election was that they supported Rick Crusoe, spent a lot of money against Mayor Bass. And so when their contract negotiation came around, the mayor and a bunch of people on the city council agreed with this. They awarded them even more than the union was asking for, which like never happens in contract negotiations as far as I know. They just gave it to them because. Well, because they spent, they spend a lot of money on a lot of money on.

elections, right? So if you want to get their support, you support their requests. And that had knock down effects that basically replicated itself across the entire workforce of the city. And I'm, you know, my husband's a union member. Like I believe in, you know, this is an expensive city, cost of living increases. But I also think we have to make investments that are sustainable. And when we passed those contracts, I voted against that contract. We knew that it would leave us in debt, hundreds of millions of dollars in in the whole right and that's exactly what happened so we we passed those contracts then we passed a budget and then last year we had a billion dollar budget deficit one billion and is that historical by the way is that like the most it's ever been

right i don't know but it seems pretty substantial seems pretty seems pretty high you know that's a good question i i shouldn't know that but yeah it was really big we were the mayor the mayor's budget that she presented included 1,600 layoffs of city workers. And we staved off those layoffs, but we stave them off by cutting every single city service down to the bone. Everyone, right? And so that's what you're feeling on our streets. So three years ago, and this is part of why I decided to run. Three years ago, when we were coming out of COVID, we had money to invest in infrastructure, in services. I was able to house. people living on the streets, clean graffiti. I was able to fix streetlights. I was able to

respond to issues. I was able to provide additional services for people who are facing eviction. Like I was able to do a lot in the city. It felt active. It felt like we were making forward progress as a city. But since we made these decisions, I have to say, I have to look at my constituents in the face and tell them, I can't fix your streetlight for a year, which to me, in a second largest city in the richest country in the world feels absolutely outrageous

and particularly outrageous given that we made the decisions a city leadership made the decisions not me but the city leadership made the decisions that got us in this particular position and now to fix it

what we're doing is going back to residents and saying we need more taxes in order to fund these services that we no longer have because we decided to make politically influenced decisions about the budget

instead of actually looking out for residents. Right. And that's, that to me is the analysis of what's, what has been a challenge with L.A. Like, I think it is possible to look out for residents and to make sure city workforce is good and, and, and is paid appropriately. You can do all of that, but you have to make that your goal. And if your only goal is your political future,

then it doesn't work. And it hasn't worked, as you can see. Right. What do you think the city does well? It, uh, there's, there's, there's, there's things that it does well. Like, our 311 app is pretty damn good. I got to say. It used to be amazing. Yeah. We did a revamp and now it's worse. But I think, yes, our 311 response system is really good. Our graffiti removal program, which works with, um, contractors and nonprofits to get rid of graffiti when it's funded works amazingly well. But, and again, we used to do trash pickup really well.

And if you saw illegal dumping, like 3-1-1 would get it very quickly. A lot of that has fallen off. The things that the city used to do well are no longer being done well because we're cutting all of these services down to the bone, right? So that, but here's what I'm saying. Like, this sounds depressing, but I'm here to say it's fixable. Hey guys, we got to take a quick break to talk to you about Chubbies. We know that on the East Coast over there, you guys got your first day above 60s.

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So here's the thing that we used to do that we don't do anymore. We used to have a chief data officer in the city. We used to have data collected from every single department that would tell us when things were going well and warn us when things were going poorly. We don't have that anymore.

We strip those positions away and haven't invested in that kind of oversight and accountability. For trash pickup, we used to have something called Cleanstat in the Bureau of Sanitation. we just don't have that anymore. Yeah, I think on Saturday you said something about,

like we're a city that doesn't, we do no planning around our infrastructure and we have no, we have no plan to start doing that. Well, yeah, and that's the other thing. So we need the data and I think if we get the data, we can hold a system accountable for improvements. And I think that's actually good for city workers because city workers get a lot of complaints

and angry people reaching out to them. But if you collect the data and you show that you're, making improvements, you can actually reward your workforce for doing the things that residents want them to do. And we don't have that system set up right now. But yes, the other big thing that we don't do is we don't plan. We are the largest city. It's a massive city. It's crazy. It's a massive city without a capital infrastructure plan. So we haven't looked across the entire city and said, here's where our roads need repairing. Here's where our sidewalks need repairing. Here's where our waterline infrastructure needs repairing. And because we haven't, here's where bridges need

replacing because they're potentially, you know, susceptible to earthquakes. We don't have a plan for that. We don't even have current, we're supposed to have. We still don't have a capital infrastructure plan just for the Olympics. We're two years away from the Olympics. And so we just have not done the work to say, here's what we need to protect our infrastructure. And then we can make other budgetary decisions once we've secured the funds for all of this work. Like that's the kind of work that you can do. It's really straightforward. I think it's really progressive. I think it's really positive. And it's like a vision of Los Angeles as a city that can fix things. And I think it's, it is doable. What sucks is. Well, I just want to, I want to get into the nitty-gritty of something,

because I want to make sure we don't miss this. We did a little, well, we were actually talking about before we had the episode. And I was like, what are the, what are the top things that the mayor would have to, the incoming mayor would be faced with. Like people on the street would be asking for. And we were talking about it. And I was like, why don't I just ask, I'm sure you're familiar with Reddit. Okay.

There's an Ask LA subreddit. You ever heard of Reddit? There's a Los Angeles subreddit. So I was like, you know, I'm not from here. I moved here like everyone else. And I was like, I don't want to speak for people. But when we were talking about, the big three for us were homelessness, public infrastructure, and housing. And the number one upvoted thing is homelessness, infrastructure, and housing.

And by far, when you go through it, pretty much, some people just wrote homelessness three times. Right. And not sure if they wanted more of it or less. And pretty much, it feels like most answers include homelessness. Right. I think that is um yeah that is by far

some other ones traffic deaths of oh yes which is which I didn't know until this person put this traffic deaths drivers uh drivers pedestrians and cyclists they now kill more people in L.A. than homicides which is crazy but I want to talk about I mean I'd love to talk about all this but I do want to talk about

the homelessness thing because I think anyone who lives honestly anyone who's visited L.A. has felt it. It's a it's a thing. It's horrible. You know, you feel bad for everyone who's experiencing this. You feel bad for everyone who just like has to, has to live like this. Everyone has, everyone has their own stories with dealing with it. And yeah, can this really be solved? Is it something where we can build the city

where people feel comfortable and, you know, not horrible, just bearing witness to suffering all around them and all that. Yeah. And safe. You know, I think it's a safety issue as well. And I know your background is obviously relevant in this. So I think it can.

I don't, there's, I think there's always going to be challenges in big cities with, with, with homelessness. There's, but I think we can do so much better than what we're doing right now. So much better.

Yeah. And I think I talked about this a little bit in, but, you know, in one of the big things, that drives the way in which our homelessness crisis plays out here is the fact that we don't have a lot of shelter. In New York, they have a mandate to build a shelter bed for every person who's experiencing homelessness. They have more people to court mandate from the 80s.

They have more people who are homeless in New York on any given night than we do in L.A. A hundred thousand. Yes, I know. Right? If 100,000 people are homeless on any given night in New York City. In the county of L.A., it's like 70-something thousand. in the city of L.A. it's 45,000. But they have 100,000 shelter beds. In the city of L.A., we have a third of the shelter beds that we need for our total homeless population. And so two-thirds of our homeless population

is on the streets, 30,000 people, 30,000. In New York, 100,000 people are in beds. And the people who are on the streets tend to be the sickest people, right? The people who may be unwilling to go indoors and may need real engagement with the mental health system and potentially involuntary conservatorship or other kinds of efforts, right? So they have like 3% of the population that's on the streets. Here it's two thirds that's on the streets. It's just an enormous difference, right? And you can feel it in every single neighborhood. There's people who are living on the streets everywhere. But we can do a lot better. And in my district, we have actually seen progress because we've worked the system really hard.

So we, we, when I first was elected, it was post-COVID or during COVID. And there were huge encampments all over the district. My district spans the valley and the basin. We had huge encampments on Hollywood Boulevard, you know, across from Go Get Em Tiger. We had huge encampments. And we housed everybody there. That, you know, that's gone and it stayed clear. We had a huge encampment at Hollywood and Burrendo across from Barnesdal Park.

We had a huge encampment at the 5 and the 134 on the bike path. It's wild that I know exactly where all of these are. Right? I mean, you can vividly remember them, right? On the corner of Highland and Franklin. Now it's on the way up to the Hollywood Bowl. That one was a long time. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there was one under the Coenga underpass, huge, including a structure that an anti-vaxxer artist had made called, I think it was called like something fun house. I think I remember this. structure that, you know, I, and in each of these places, we were able to triple access to shelter in the district. And then we just, I hired a staff that was focused on this. And we went out and forced outreach workers and the system to come to each encampment, offer shelter as soon as we had

it. And then we were able to move people indoors and into safety. And then once they were in, we cleared those areas. And because we didn't just shove people down the street or, you know, arrest them or whatever, those areas have almost entirely stayed clear. And then when a tent pops up, we're able to go out and do that same thing again. And it's much easier because it's one person or, you know. So we were able to do that across the whole district. What is that process like of the, how are you freeing up shelter space? So we actually increased the shelter space that we had.

We opened up a new shelter in the district. And then we also actually built it? We didn't build it. We converted a hotel. Oh, okay. And so we have multiple people in the hotel rooms and it's a shelter in Hollywood. So is that something that's replicable all across the city? Yes. And we also did things like we applied for and got grants from the state government for motel and hotel voucher.

So we were able to bring people in and we placed them in motels and hotels across the entire region. And we were also able to really make sure that people, once they went into the, those locations had resources to be able to find their next step, right? So we connected them to long-term housing or we were able to reunite them with their family and we were able to monitor that through our offices work, right? That system, you can build that system out and replicate it across the whole city. You can make sure that our shelters, shelters are expensive and be very, very expensive. There are programs like short-term voucher programs that are actually cheaper and actually more effective for bringing people indoors. So you give someone a voucher that they can use

in an apartment and then they can be in that apartment for some time. And then that voucher tapers off over time and you provide case management to get them everything from their benefits like disability benefits or veterans benefits or whatever it is or you get them connected to jobs or you get them connected to family or you get them connected to if they need long term care like mental health services, you actually get them connected to that and you work with them to get them the resources that you need, but you have to build out that system. And what I found at City Hall was we didn't have any information. We have all these beds that we've funded. We had no information about what was happening in those shelter beds. Is that the Lassa? Is that where the Lassa controversy comes in?

Because that's been a big headline lately. Lassa has been a very, so what we did in the city of L.A. Because we're not the county, right? We're not funded to do this work, but we fund it because we know we need to do it because it's a crisis on our streets. So we gave money to the, this authority that was set up, which was a city-county agency called Loss at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. That agency used to have a very small amount of money. And really since a couple years before COVID, and especially during COVID, their budget increased by something like 20 times. Yeah, I think in that LA Times article, it said they had something like $700 million or something like $700 million or something like that. And I don't think that they were set up to be accountable for

spending all of that money effectively. Right. They used to manage like $20 million. Now they they're managing like 700 billion. Yeah, which is this, I feel like that's a big aspect of why people are so angry too, I think, and which unfortunately I think is giving people like you an uphill battle because when you go and say, oh, I want to do all these things to solve the homelessness crisis, they're going to go, well, what the hell? We just spent $700 million and they threw it away. Well, I have a little bit more faith in Angelinos, right?

Like, I do think that if you go and tell them, actually, we can spend it appropriately. and here's how I've demonstrated it and here's what I'm doing to fix it. I actually do think that people are very, very receptive to that. This is a place that has taxed itself multiple times to address homelessness the right way. And I think if you can demonstrate to them, like I desperately care that this system works

because I want you to trust the system, right? I do think that that's what they want more than anything else. I mean, the voters will have to tell me what they want, but that I really believe in the spirit of Angelinos and their ability to think about this city as a place that cares for people who need care in the right way. So what I've done over the last year, year and a half on the city council is actually create the data that we need to hold the system accountable. I now know how long people are in these shelter beds. And we're finding that people are in the shelter beds for a year or more a lot of the time.

Like there's 2,000 people out of the 8,000 shelter beds that we fund who've been there for a year for longer than a year. 500 people who've been there longer than two years. Wow. Which means that they're just not getting the care that they need in those sites. And so now I'm working to make sure that they're getting that care and fixing it. But you have to create the system and you have to really push to make sure that the city desperately wants the system to work, right? Right now what we're doing is putting very expensive band-aids over the problem, right?

We're doing the most expensive things and we're not worried about that system at all. I want to actually build that system. And every time I've tried, I've faced resistance or just slow walking from City Hall, right? Just an disinterest in making sure that the money given to us by Angelinos, the tax dollars given to us by Angelinos is going towards the outcomes that they need

in the most effective and efficient way possible. I don't take it lightly. Right. And that's, I just, I want to go out there and fight for the system that works. And you have the track record that shows you've been able to do it before in your council. Yeah, in my district,

we've really had... In my district, we've had results and we've sustained those results. It's not perfect. I know that. We can do better. But unless we have a system that really works underneath us, we're just not going to be able to build the change that we need. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to actually run? Because as an outsider, there's a little bit of confusion, at least for me, just reading some stuff in the Los Angeles Times, it looks like maybe you had originally endorsed Karen Bass. And then decided, I think it was the last day you were able to file for running is when you filed for it. Can we talk about that a little bit of just how that decision went down? Well, I've been really frustrated over the last two years in particular. Like the first three years that I was in office, I felt like we were making progress and that things felt better in L.A. than they did before. Things were opening up again. I feel like, you know, we were able to deliver results for consistent.

in ways that felt really productive and positive for me. And then over the last couple years, I felt more often than not that I've had to say things that I really don't like saying to constituents, you know, like the services are worse. You're not imagining it. Things are worse than they were before. And so I've been getting increasingly frustrated. I've been pushing back on things like the mayor has a program called Insight Safe,

which is her kind of signature program on homelessness. And I think it's a good program. I think that work is really important, but it costs way too much. We're paying for some of the hotel rooms in that program $100,000 a year. How the hell does that happen? Sometimes you see some of these things and you're like, it feels like we could just pay everyone's rent who is currently living on the street. And it would be cheaper. But that's what the voucher program that I'm advocating for is.

You know, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's crazy. But that's exactly what I want to do, right? is to say, hey, we want to fix this the right way. Let's make sure that we're doing it in the most effective and cost effective way, right? Still treat people who are at the core of this crisis with humanity, but really get the results that we all want. And it is totally possible.

We just have to work at it. Like these are big bureaucracies that are reluctant to change. You have to push really hard to make them change. You have to push really hard. I push really hard. Here's an unpleasant question. Yeah. And just in, this is anecdotal, but I feel like plenty of people have had experiences with homelessness where it's clearly like a drug situation.

Yeah. And mental illness brought upon by by drug use. Unchecked addiction that's gone on for however many years. Is there something when you talk about the services necessary? I'm assuming that that also includes addiction. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Good. sure. And okay, so the count, so here's a place where, and you did, you asked me a question about my late entry into the race, which I'm happy to answer, but I do want to talk about this issue. Yeah. So we depend on the county for delivering mental health and substance use services to people who are on the streets and in our shelters, right? This is part of what I'm talking about pushing the bureaucracy to work. We have 20,000 beds between the city and county that we funded across Los Angeles, shelter beds. The best data that we have about how, many people in those shelter beds are getting intensive mental health services is 800 out of 20,000.

And to me, with the crisis that I'm seeing on our streets and the challenges that I know a lot of the people that our office works with, I feel like that number should be significantly higher, right? it is only through my work that we even know that number because I pushed really hard on the county to provide that data. And now I want to use that data to fight for what we need in terms of mental health and substance use services from the county. If we don't demand that they show up on our streets, that they show up at every encampment, that they show up at every shelter and provide those services and really be present and offer them in ways that people are taking them, we will not make progress. but no one is making that ask right now. Is it laziness? Is it ineptitude?

Yeah. Or are they trying to, is it better for them to keep the number lower so they don't have to spend this much money? They didn't have that information before. I asked them, for example, they didn't collect it. But they produced it because I asked for it.

Bit of a classic LA government situation where they're like, we actually don't plan around that type of thing. Yes. But okay, so here's another thing that. I asked, for example, how many people in my district are getting referred to mental health services?

and then how many of them are getting the mental health services after that referral, right? A couple hundred. Well, they said we don't collect data on referrals. Oh, got it, got it, got it. Well, they're working in the dark. Right. But, like, you know, that kind of stuff feels really essential to me. And I come to this from a perspective of believing that the government can care for people.

but if you don't talk about the needs and if you don't deliver on those needs, I just don't know how you actually deliver on the goals of what government is supposed to do. And that goes from everything from mental health services to streetlights. You know, like that's, that's so you asked why I got into this race last minute. I, you know, I've been really frustrated. And I'm not from politics and I'm not going to be in politics. You know, like this is my what I'm doing right now. it's my way of serving the city that I love so much and that has given me and my family so much.

I love it here so intensely. It's not a launch pad. It's not a launch pad. This. I don't want to go to Sacramento and I don't want to go to D.C. You know, like those are not places I want to be. I don't have aspirations for higher office than this. This is what I want. I love L.A. You know, I'm an urban planner by training. I love cities. Like, this is, and it's such an incredible city. Like, there's so much that is just. I think that's the most. frustrating thing about it is you look around and you're like, why do they just continue to mess it up? But we don't have to. We don't have to. And so for me, I was feeling this incredible sense of frustration. I hated what I was telling my constituents and forced to tell my constituents. Because I don't control a lot of the reasons that got us here. And I'm trying to do my best. But I'm one of 15. And I did not see leadership and urgency in the mayor's office, trying to address what I.

think are the biggest issues facing LA. The cost of housing or homelessness crisis and accountability around that homelessness crisis around basic services, essential services for people. I just didn't see that responsiveness there. And I was waiting to see there were so many people who were thinking about getting in the race. You know, I thought, okay, we're going to have a conversation around this. We're going to talk about where L.A. is going and whether we all think it's going in the right direction. And I think there's a pervasive feeling that we're not going in the right direction. And I was like, great, we're going to talk about that, you know? And suddenly it was the last week of filings and there was nobody in the race. I will say that I think government experience is really

important. City Hall is a maze. Understanding it and making sure that it works well is really important. And I will say I am the only candidate in the race that really is talking about housing costs and how we need to build a lot more housing. And that includes both deeply affordable housing, publicly funded housing, but also market rate housing. We need it. Can I ask you one more question regarding how it works in L.A.? Speaking of two progressives in a race, is there, is it ranked choice voting? No. So the way it works in L.A. is you have, it's a nonpartisan race.

So all of the, it's not Democrats vote for one and Republicans vote for another. It's like everyone who's on the ballot for the mayor is on the same ballot. And the top two, either one person gets more than 50% of the vote. And it's almost usually the, almost always the incumbent. But if that person doesn't get 50% of the vote outright in the primary, which is on June 2nd, top two vote getters go on to the general election, which is in November. So that's how it works. If someone gets 50% the whole thing could be over in June?

Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I didn't look at the rate. as it was that last week before filing ended. And I thought, I didn't, basically I looked at that, the field and thought, oh, there's a very good chance that, you know, that that Mayor Bass, who's the incumbent, we'll get more than 50% of the vote.

And that gave me, and they get, that gave me real pause, you know, I just, I felt like this is an opportunity to have a conversation about the future of the city. And I wanted, we deserve that. We deserve that right now. Is there any chance that it's, is it bad that there's two progressives in the race that could potentially split that vote? You know, I really, I, I've always said this, but I really trust the voters. Like, voters are smart. Yeah. And.

Not me. I'm really one of the Denver ones. Well, I don't believe that. But, but I will say, I really, like, voters are generally pretty smart. And they're good at kind of figuring out what they, you know, what they need. what they want. I may not always agree with the outcome, but I always know where people are coming from. What do you think Mayor Bass is messing up? You know, I think the mayor's office has a lot of power to take leadership, right? So even in the system that we have where the council has more power

than in the city of New York, for example, the mayor's office has the ability to set the goals for the city. What are we going to get done? And they are the only entity. And they are the only entity. really in the city that can convene the departments and push them towards those goals. Right. To me, there has been an absence of goal setting and vision for the future of Los Angeles and there has been an absence of pushing the departments

to deliver on those outcomes. We still have, for example, a lot of the same general managers that were there during the Garcetti administration despite the fact that I think a lot of our departments are not delivering on the outcomes that we want. Yeah. Like we should be setting goals

and when leadership doesn't deliver on those goals, they should be fired and replaced with people who are really good at their jobs. This is an incredible city. We can recruit real talent to work here and we can hold them accountable for outcomes. You'd mentioned a little bit the housing stuff when we were talking about. Because that's another, that was another one of the three things. Actually, before we do that, if you had to do your three things, I honestly got the idea from the Zoran Mamdani campaign, which I'm sure, actually I don't want to assume, I'm sure you've maybe heard the like Zoron of L.A. term that people throw out. So like what would your three, if you had to hit him with the free bus,

child care? You know, making housing affordable. Yeah, making housing affordable. Addressing homelessness and making the city work. Like these would be my three things. So how do we make housing affordable? So I think we need to do two kinds of things. people. One is that we are, we have a very expensive rental market right now, really expensive.

We just rented a house and it is really expensive. It'll make you insane. I, okay, don't tell me. It's crazy. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. And housing follows the laws of supply and demand and we do need to increase supply. And where we've seen cities increase supply, we do see that costs flatline or they lower. The only other way that prices go down is when you have an economic crisis, and I don't really want that. Yeah, let's not do it like that.

Let's not do it that way. Yeah, let's do it a different way. Let's do it the positive way. So I think we do need to build a lot more housing. We need to make sure that our public housing and our affordable housing programs are working as absolutely well as they can, which there's a lot to be done on that

and to lower costs there and to make it really, really generative. We also need to make sure that we are encouraging the private real estate sector to build more. And the way we do that as a city is by providing zoning and planning regulations that really work for that. And also by removing red tape. The city of Los Angeles adds two years more than other cities do to every apartment complex. We need apartments. Like it's like we're all yelling about a housing shortage and then being like, let's make it as hard as possible.

to fill the housing short-bush. But I do worry that there's a good amount of constituents who are maybe not into that idea without knowing. I think they're like, build more housing. And then a bunch of people in, say, you know, the east side of Los Angeles are like, oh, is that what it means? There's going to be apartment building. So I think there's ways to think about that housing and setting the rules of the game for

where that housing is built that concentrates new housing development along our major. streets. So like along Wilshire, why are so many buildings along Wilshire one-story strip malls? It's because we prevented them from being higher for a very long time. We made it impossible to build. Why are so many buildings along Ventura Boulevard, one-story strip malls? Like, we limited heights along our major corridors and prevented new housing from being built that would have, I think, satisfied a lot of needs here in L.A. And I think we can undo those, regulations, we can make it better. And we can also protect neighborhoods that are dealing with gentrification pressures. So I know that there's, you know, a lot of neighborhoods, like in Boyle Heights,

for example, where residents are saying we are being priced out. Communities are being pushed out, right? Similar to what happened in Hollywood a few years ago. Are you okay? Yeah, but we can design our planning regulations such that you can actually incentivize new growth in the places where we want it and limited in places where communities, I think, may be fearing that new growth will actually push them out. And that's totally possible. Like, I just want to talk about one little change that we made, which was really exciting to me. A lot of the new housing construction that was coming up was studios, which, yes, there's a lot more single people who are living alone. That's like a fact of urban life nowadays. But we do need family-sized apartments. We changed our

planning regulations to incentivize two- and three-bedroom units, family-sized units. And guess what? New entitlements that are coming in are applying for two and three bedroom units. So you can actually create regulations that build exactly the kind of city that you want. And you can go out to neighborhoods and talk to them about that and get people excited about it. And I think there's a wider acknowledgement now that housing is necessary. And as someone who was forced to live in the, in East Hollywood as a single man and was really unhappy about it, I want to pull the ladder up behind me. You guys can go live in East Hollywood.

Do your time. No studios for you in Echo Park. I just put in one humble request. There's been a lot of new buildings in and around where I live. And they all seem to be done by the same soulless, just, I don't know, shitty architects who just make the facade the same flat fake brick thing. And they all have a name like the Eleanor or the so-and-so. and they're all just, they don't have any kind of... Life and charm. They don't have any life.

They don't, there's got to, I remember hearing... You want to preserve the beauty of the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we, for the love of God, man? Yeah. At least make it nice to look at. Build the housing, but Jesus. Yeah, so, you know, I've been thinking a lot about kind of what it would mean

to have density that we welcomed in our neighborhoods. And so one thing that humans really resonate with, people really resonate with, people really resonate with is when a lot of the housing is the same height. And so, for example, if you're in Paris, I think a lot of those are six-story buildings. Oh, sure, yeah. Right? But they're all the same height. And so it feels calming. It feels pleasant to be there and to experience it. It, I think that we can think about our planning regulations in ways that really respond to our basic human need for consistency and beauty. and change those regulations such that you're actually generating that kind of housing. It's work, but we're not doing that work right now.

And we need to do that work. Similarly with the kinds of construction that you're talking about, we have a lot of regulations that require that buildings have two stairwells. And there's been a push to actually legalize single stairwell buildings, not for not for buildings that are high-rises or anything, but for smaller buildings. And a lot of buildings in Europe

that feel very aesthetically pleasant are single stairwell buildings. And if you can just have one stairwell, you can have bigger apartments, you can have frontage, you have more space that would be taken up by the second stairwell or a hallway between the two stairwells

that can be used to make the building more beautiful. And I think you can make interventions into housing planning that really generate places that feel calming and pleasant to be around instead of the opposite. Yeah, the housing thing is massive. I honestly didn't quite grasp it until I heard you talking about it where it's obviously I knew it was connected to other things. It's obviously very connected to the homelessness crisis. The reason we're in this mess is because no one can afford to live.

But it obviously has trickling down effects with, it makes traffic worse because you have people like going out to, and then you're creating all these choke points. Oh, yeah, totally. Like, so we have an increased population in L.A. for the last decade, right? We've kind of stayed flat. We lost a little during the pandemic and now it's back to where it was. But traffic is worse than ever. And it's because people still work in L.A. but they live in other parts of L.A. County and they drive into L.A. to their jobs because they can't afford to live here. And so we have even more traffic on our streets than we did before. And so there's a counterintuitive relationship between traffic and housing. Everyone thinks a new building comes up on their block.

Traffic is going to get worse. Actually, if that new building is close to some kind of transit near a bus line, near these big expensive public transit investments that we're making, it may actually have very little impact on traffic. And building it over time can actually reduce some of the impacts of traffic on our city. And we're having worse environmental impacts because of it. It's terrible. I mean, the worst, we have really bad air quality here. And one of the biggest drivers of that is our transportation system. And if we can, you know, reduce the impact of that, if we can get drivers out of their cars and into other forms of transit, that would be amazing. You have to make that transit safe. You know, you have to make the buses safe. You have to keep everything clean. You have to make the trains clean and safe. And I think there's ways to do that. But the more ridership that's on them, the safer these places become. double-edged sword there.

I used to live near the red line and I'd... Yeah. I would take it sometimes and then I would... I would learn that, oh, if I take it and stay at where I was too late, I'd be coming back at night and it was... Treacherous? I actually did... It's just not a thing I would want to do. Yeah, I did the same thing.

I used to take my... I lived in Silver Lake and worked in Santa Monica and I used to take two trains. If I could get a ride to the first train with my husband when he went to work. two trains there. But if I came back later than 7 p.m., I would often have to take an Uber because I didn't feel safe. And that's not great for L.A., right?

So... You know, as we're talking about all of these things, I keep thinking about how there's not enough responsibility put on the people of Los Angeles. And I'm talking about... He's going libertarian mode real quick.

I'm talking about, why should I need a driver's license? All right? What's next? I need a toast. What did that guy say? I need a license to operate my toaster. But I think of, I think the 6th Street Bridge, the Viaduct Project, is a perfect, is a perfect representation of some of the things that are wrong with this city. It's immediately gotten all of its copper wires stripped from it.

It's already tagged up. And like people have no sense of civic pride. And I find that very frustrating. and I wish that there was something, it's obviously such a nebulous thing that a mayor... I don't know if it is that nebulous, though. I feel like it can be top down. Like, I think it's weird hearing you talk about

how little it seems that the people who work for the city care about it. And I think... You said, like, two perfect examples on the opposite end, I think, is like Donald Trump and Zora and Mammani. I think, like, Donald Trump, you could see like a meanness in this country.

That's horrible. I hate it. And it's like, there's something that's changed. And then, but I also, I spend a lot of time in New York. And with his campaign and then his, his win, you see people like just interested in like, what's going on in the city and like getting there, like a massive amount of people signing up to shovel snow because they're like, we're all in this together. I also just realized I'm answering the question for you.

No, I love that. I love that answer. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I think what about a politics of, what about a politics of loving L.A.? What about a politics of lifting up L.A.? To me, that feels really generative. Like, that was what my initial foray into politics was about. It was about engaging with the city that we call home. People had looked away from the city for so long. It was just the context in which they lived, right? but I do feel like there is both a willingness to engage in it and a desire to engage in it.

And no one is ever going to be, I mean, not everyone in the city is going to behave perfectly, right? But I do think we can inculcate or we can develop a civic culture of love for L.A. that I think is already there. Like, anytime there's an opportunity to give back to your neighbors, Angelinos show up in droves. They showed up after the fires. They showed up after the ice raids. They really do show up for each other. And I think the more that we can create opportunities for people to give back to each other in the context of Los Angeles and engage with one another, I think that the city can only become more of a place that people want to care for.

Yeah. Good answer. I don't want to keep you too long. You can tell me if you guys have to go. But it just reminded me I really wanted to ask you about. the ice stuff. Oh yeah. Oh no. It's usually I talk I, you know, I talk about it a lot because it's really we already had one and it's so scary. It's just horrific. Obviously it wasn't even close to what

people in Minneapolis went through. It obviously seems to be ramping up. So I think there's a lot of people anxious that you know what happens if they do come back. Right. Yeah. Is that something you're thinking about? Is that something you're planning for? I do think Mayor Mumdani and Governor Pockel in New York are actively engaging with the Trump administration to protect their residents. I want that in my leadership.

And if I'm elected mayor, that's what I will do. We have a, you know, potential points where the federal government, federal law enforcement is going to be invited into our city for the Olympics. That's part of, that's part of our agreement, right? And the World Cup. And the World Cup. They'll be here, right? What does it look like to have federal law enforcement here in a way that keeps Angelino safe? That, to me, requires intensive engagement with our federal partners and intensive engagement with all of the other

people, whether it's FIFA or whether it's the Olympics Committee and all the corporate donors, or not donors, corporate investors that fund that. I mean, in this case, our, interests are aligned. Like they want to safe games, right? So let's go there and talk to the federal government, use every point of leverage that we have to fight for games that are going to keep Angelinos safe. And also, we need to be talking to Angelinos. And the city needs to be saying to them, our mayor needs to be saying to them, I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I will do whatever it takes. That is my primary goal. And that's what I'm engaging on every single day. Yeah. And I'm not, I want to hear that from her. I want to hear that from, from, yeah, I want to hear that from, from, yeah, I want to hear that from her.

We're going to have to get you those, those little fake newspapers to bring down to Trump. I don't know if you saw as well. Yes, that was a good, that was a nice little. This is great. How long have you lived in LA, by the way? I've lived here since 2013. Oh, wow. And where from? I grew up outside of Boston. I was born in India. We moved to America when I was little, and then I grew up outside of Boston, and then I came here. And I think L.A. is so different from where I grew up

in weather, in the people, in how receptive they are, to just, like, being happy. That I really fell in love with it. I really, like, really love this city. I love that. That seems like a good place leave it. But if you want to, if you want to leave, him with any message to Los Angeles voters or people in the or people in the United States because

honestly like Zoran's campaign, I think people are looking to these progressive, you know, leaders to be like, oh my God, there's hope in this country. There's people who care. I just, you know, this city is really, really precious. Like the spirit of Angelinos, their generosity to each other. Their willingness to stand up for each other. It is just really, really a special place. and, you know, I just want to fight for it. And I think it needs someone fighting for it right now. So I hope that I get the chance to be the city's next mayor. Yeah, as much as we're decrying the problems here,

the first ice raids here really did prove that point where people are like... They're fighting for each other. Yeah, like fuck ice, get the hell out of here. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to ask if you wouldn't mind just looking into that. hammer and saying when I'm not running for mayor of Los Angeles, my name is Nithy Rahman. When I'm not running for mayor of Los Angeles, I'm running to my phone to listen to the

Ben & Amiel's. I feel like that would just be fun. But no, you don't have to do that. We're going to- I encourage everyone to listen to our show. To listen to the Ben and Emile show. Wow. Thank you so much.

You heard it here, folks. We're going to put links to all your websites, socials, places to go donate and volunteer. And volunteer, and I do want to say the entire political machine is against me. Oh, they're not happy with you. They are not happy with me. They are very unhappy with me. But I think a lot of Angelinos might be happy with me.

So if you want to see this spirit in City Hall in the mayor seat, I need your help. I need your money. I need your support. Please help me get the word out. And your vote. And your vote, of course, June 2nd. I read a very funny quote from, I think the police union was that that was like, if backstabbing like this was a crime we'd lock her up or something. It's, it's psycho. But all those links will be

in the description. You can find out more about Nathia and you can you can follow her and donate and go volunteer and do all those things. Thank you very much. This is very illuminating. I learned a lot. And it's it's my first time talking to a real life Los Angeles politician and it's, you set the bar high. Thank you. I sincerely appreciate the time. Thank you. All right. Folks. We'll see you next time. Coming up on this week's episode of Ben and Emile show.com. He says it. It can't be both. But, I mean, the color coding clearly indicates it's pets. Pet smart.

Okay, I don't care about that. My question is, how the fuck did John Legend get involved in this? You should work with your hands. You should be like a woodworker. Now, these hands. You wouldn't last a day. These hands. I would last a day. I would last longer than a day. sure. Woodworking? I love that. Oh, no, no. Woodworking is not the like in physical labor.

Yeah, I can handle that. You can? Yeah, when I do physical stuff, I don't bitch. I'm like, all right, cool. And I like to work up the sweat. Doing it as a job is different than doing it. Doing it is a job is different. It really wrecks your body. I'd get up in there when he put a fresh puck in that floaty thing. And I'd sniff it. You love bad smells.

It's not a bad smell. It's a good smell. Like what it smells like paint in the studio. I like that. Oh, man. Man, I love that smell. This kind of reminds me of when I was... Gasoline. My friend got... Jet fuel. Keep going.

A rat cage feed. Okay. Like, they're not feed, but the saw... Sawdust. Like, that'll be in a guinea hamster. Dude, man, I love that smell. Guinea pig. Fish food?

Yeah, we've... We've gone over that. Yeah, fish food flakes. Oh, God, that shit's milk. I should buy some just to have to sniff. I should buy some fish food pellets. have them around yeah

someone comes over oh do you have a fish oh uh no oh sorry did it die no I just like to snack