Why Is This Man Running for President? (Update)
A year ago, nobody was taking Andrew Yang very seriously. Now he is America’s favorite entrepre-nerd, with a candidacy that keeps gaining momentum. This episode includes our January 2019 conversation with the leader of the Yang Gang and a fresh interview recorded from the campaign trail in Iowa.
Andrew Yang, the long-shot presidential candidate who has now outlasted several prominent contenders in the Democratic primary, is the son of immigrants. He was born in Schenectady, New York; studied economics and political science at Brown; and got a law degree at Columbia. After law school, Yang worked at a prestigious law firm, then a few different startup firms, and then at a test-prep company called Manhattan Prep. Yang eventually became the CEO of that company, walking away with millions after it was sold.
In the American Dream sweepstakes, Yang has been a pretty big winner. But he has also come to believe that for every winner like him, there are thousands of losers. That’s why he’s running for president.
When I first interviewed Yang a year ago, he was relatively unknown. Since then, he and his supporters — the Yang…
