Lit NYC

Photographer Stephen Yang joins Alex Brook Lynn and Harry Siegel for a conversation about capturing private moments in public settings, the differences between photojournalism and street photography, why tabloids have traditionally frowned on high-contrast shots (spoiler: those require too much black ink to print) and much more.

Ben Smith talks with Azi Paybarah about Silicon Alley, the internet of the early 2000s, and why local politics is less scalable than it used to be.

Years before the NYPD targeted Muslims, Black radicals and other groups with specialized and sometimes undercover operations, the Italian Squad prompted pushback for its aggressive tactics, and from Italian-American leaders concerned about their community’s public image as immigrants sought to assimilate. Paul Moses, author of “The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the...

Host Greg Glassman and fellow trumpeter James Zollar play together, and talk about what it takes to make it a musician in the Big Apple and much more.

Dr. Steven Thrasher — curator of the Viruses on Film series screening at BAM — talks about the experience of people coming together to watch movies about something that's everywhere but can't be seen. .

Gary Weiss talks with Harry Siegel about his wild history of New York City's original retail gangster.

Rusty Zimmerman is spending the year making oil paintings of and collecting oral histories from 200 people living in South Brooklyn. That includes Harry Siegel, who joined Rusty for a conversation about the project, how people can support it and see it, and why he's giving the portraits away for free to their subjects.

Trumpeter Greg Glassman sits down with saxophonist Stacy Dillard for a conversation — along with the two of them improvising on their instruments — about what it means, and what it takes, to make it as a jazz musician in New York City.

Open New York is an organization advocating to make it easier to build and manage housing in New York City — and now it’s broadening its agenda to also support advances in tenants’ rights. Will that be enough to change state laws and neighborhood politics to get more housing built? Alyssa Katz talks with Open New York Director Annemarie Gray about her group’s game-changing ambitions.

Daily News legend Susan Watts and THE CITY's Ben Fractenberg talk with Alex Brook Lynn about the art of shooting the news in New York, and share the stories behind some of their most powerful photographs.

New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, author of The Intimate City: Walking New York, joins Alyssa Katz in the latest installment of her occasional series asking the big question: What Is New York For?

Pervaiz Shallwani dipped a hot dog into New York’s melting pot, and what came out was the delicious chaat dog.

Jeremiah Moss, the author of Feral New York, talks with THE CITY's Alyssa Katz about the "tremendous community connection and and oftentimes joyfulness in a moment of tremendous trauma and tragedy” for the people out in the streets amid the city's shutdown and reopening.

Ann Nocenti, the writer, journalist and filmmaker who wrote and edited some of the most iconic Marvel comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s — and who created the iconic characters Elektra and Longshot — joins the FAQ NYC podcast to discuss her early years in New York as “the girl who lived behind the fishtank,” quite literally. She digs into how her work in asylums influenced her stories about...

Alyssa Katz talks with America’s “least known great documentarian” about his 86 years living here, his work during the pandemic editing his footage of the city from the 1950s (and that you can see over the next two weekends at the Museum of the Moving Image), how graffiti trains inspired his film Stations of the Elevated, and the big question: What is New York for?

Biographer Andrew Kirtzman talks with Harry Siegel about his quarter-century covering “America’s mayor” and the inevitable question: What happened to Rudy Giuliani?

Twenty-one eulogies for the City of New York, in large or small part, collected for Alex Brook Lynn's installation “Eulogy For New York,” which ran during the month of October in the West Village.

Artist and musician Issa Ibrahim talks with Alex Brook Lynn about a song he wrote in New York's Creedmoor psychiatric facility, eulogizing the neighborhood he grew up in.

Photographer David Godlis and writer Luc Sante talk with Alex Brook Lynn and Harry Siegel about Godlis Streets, his new book of 1970s street photography, and the different ways that shooters, and writers, captured glimpses of that city and the sometimes alluring "generalized small-time crumminess of so much of that decade."

Jazz great turned boxing manager Charles Farrell visits the pod to talk with Harry and Vice's Tim Marchman about his memoir that covers, among other things, playing with Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, fixing fights for the mob, "the Moby Dick of boxing" and lots more. Stick around to the end to hear him play a little piano, too.

Author Elon Green joins Nolan Hicks and Harry Siegel to talk about Lost Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York and how a city crew including Rudy Giuliani's mom, Bernard Kerik, Robert Morgenthau, Linda Fairstein, William Bulger and Mike McAclary all tie into that story.

A conversation with Alec MacGillis, the author of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, about Amazon and, among many other things, its expansion in New York City AFTER the collapse of its HQ2 plan here as the brave new pandemic economy has accelerated America's great divergence.

Dave from the "DOPEY," podcast shares a few stories with Alex Brook Lynn about drug addiction and recovery in New York City.

Susan Watts, director of visual content for Scott Stringer, sits down with the FAQ gang for a look back over some of the shots from her 25 years as a photographer for the Daily News, New York's Picture Newspaper.

Journalist Julie Satow, author of The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel, joins Harry and Alex Brook Lynn to share some of those secrets.