One might imagine that jokes about slavery would be off the table in 2026. “Not at all,” Mr. Cross said. The bit, in which he imagines that he would have been a generous, benign slave owner, grew out of an exchange he had during preparation for an earlier tour. At the time he needed a setup for it, he said. “It felt like it was like, ‘Oh my, I’m trying to be shocking.’” Then he thought of tying it to a hike on the Inca Trail, built by enslaved workers. With that context, he said, it worked.

“I’ve done plenty of stuff that is, for lack of a better word, button-pushing,” he said.

Is that fun for him?

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t. It makes the set that night memorable and interesting and potentially dangerous. I mean, it’s live. That’s part of the fun of doing a live show.”

“How are you feeling about answering some questions from New Yorkers?” “It depends on the questions, I guess.” “Your first question is from Emma.” “OK.” “My question for the mayor is are we going to see the citywide grocery stores because I’m dealing with a lot of inflation?” “Yes, we are. We are hard at work at delivering on our pilot of one city-run grocery store in each borough with reduced prices for New Yorkers, and we will be excited to share some more news soon.” “Mr. Mayor, I think you’re doing an amazing job so far in terms of allocating budget towards housing unhoused folks. My question for you, though, is it seems to be a bit more temporary leaning. So what’s your long-term plan to get New Yorkers off the street?” “It’s a very important question. We are looking to build as much housing as possible. And so we’ve already approved thousands of new units of housing across the city. And some of this housing, we’re building it to be affordable enough to rent. Some of it we’re building it to be affordable enough to own. And this is kind of all-of-the-above approach we’re going to take to make sure that New Yorkers can continue to afford to live in the most expensive city in the United States of America.” “How is he going to go about the free buses?” “So we’re going to make buses fast and free. The city controls the streets in New York City. The state controls the M.T.A. So our job’s first is to make them fast. We’ve made more than 100,000 bus-rider commuters faster over these last 100 days, and we’re working with the state to start to make those buses free.” “The mayor on the campaign trail pledged to increase public library funding to half a percent of the city budget, but the preliminary budget was released and, in fact, the public library budget was reduced even from what Eric Adams gave us in the last administration. So my question is, will the mayor plan to uphold his campaign promise to increase library funding to half a percent?” “Some of the percentages are ones that we will achieve over a period of time. However, the conversation around increasing library funding is far from over. We’ve had a preliminary budget, we have an executive budget, and then we have an adopted one.” “Hi, Mr. Mayor, I’m wondering if you plan to utilize the N.Y.P.D. services in a better way than having them stand around in the subway stations doing nothing?” “Thank you, Hector, for your question. I will say that we have hard-working members of the men and women of the N.Y.P.D. who have been a large part of delivering record-low crime numbers across our city over these first three months in office. We’ve seen record-low numbers of murder in recorded history, joint-record lows on shootings in recorded history, major crimes being down, as well as burglary. And that’s the focus that’s going to continue. The most important thing is that our work actually be informed by New Yorkers themselves. We have to get out of City Hall and hear from New Yorkers, directly. And these are the kinds of questions that we need to be answering. So I appreciate The Times for putting it together.”