Joe Weisenthal

I'm Joe Weisenthal.

We're still here in Madrid, Tracy.

How are you?

Still here.

You having a good time?

Yeah, I'm going to turn into a jamon by the time I leave.

I'm certain of that.

So we are at the Bloomberg City Lab conference.

You know, it's funny, like the mayoral level of politics, not something we spend a ton of time.

typically on.

But I would say like it definitely, you know, when I think about it, when I'm like here and like listening to a lot of the conversations, it's just so obviously like connected to a lot of the themes we talk about, because so much of our discussions have to do with something related to, you know, innovation or technology or implementation of policy and how it spans both the public and private sectors.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's exactly right.

And I think maybe there's something like, you know, I don't it feels like to some extent the mayoral level of any governance is sort of maybe the least ideological and the most like, you know, we talked to the Baltimore mayor, for example, and so much of his theme was just like talking to other mayors, like what's working in your town, what's working in your city and what's not working and so forth.

They all have such similar challenges.

So many things have been like repeated, you know, one time after another that like they all can sort of speak the same language and all have the same issues.

Yeah.

You know, you hear like these stories, right, of a governor, a governor sometimes or a mayor will go to like another country like, oh, we can like learn from what the city did on transit or whatever.

But no, you don't really hear that the same way at the real national level, which is where a lot of our discussions tend to sit.