FAQ NYC

When Zohran Mamdani urged New Yorkers to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees, echoing what mayors before him have advised during heat waves for decades, his critics again lost their minds. Hosts Katie Honan and Harry Siegel talk with Alex Brook Lynn, FAQ NYC's original producer calling in from Paris, about heat waves, sharks in the water, swimming in the Seine and much more.

A sudden City Council push to hold up the budget due Tuesday if City Hall doesn’t increase funding for the wildly popular — and thus wildly expensive — CityFHEPS housing vouchers represents a big new test for Mayor Mamdani and his incredible winning streak. Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel discuss all that and much more, and Straight Arrow News senior politics reporter — not to...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani put a lot of his newly won political capitol on the line to try and shift the shape of the Democratic Party in New York City and beyond, and won big — proving that his theory of the case didn't end with his election. An hour and a half after the polls closed, FAQ NYC taped a special episode along with Ben Max and with Katie Honan calling in from Claire Vadez’s exuberant electi...

Is the Knicks win after more than 50 years  a good omen for summer? Co-host Katie Honan talks with Rachel Holliday Smith, the managing editor of The City Reporter, about summer 2026. Then she speaks with Janet Fash, a longtime New York City lifeguard whose memoir "Lifeguard: A Love Story" comes out June 23.

Bex Max joins Christina Greer and Harry Siegel for a FAQ NYC-Max Politics crossover just after game four to put down politics for once and talk about the Knicks' incredible comeback and a city that’s dizzy with excitement and overdue for a celebration. .

The New York Knickerbockers will come into Madison Square Garden Monday night for the first NBA finals game at Madison Square Garden this millennium having last lost a basketball game 46 days ago. That’s roughly four times as long as peak Lin-sanity and full four Scaramuccis. Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel talk about the city’s blue and orange tinged euphoria, the orange man w...

Gwynne Hogan joins FAQ NYC to discuss The City Reporter’s big investigation of months of street arrests in and around New York City,and her coverage of the violent scenes playing out now outside of where many of those immigrants are detained at Newark’s Delaney Hall: Plus, hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel dig into the news from another jam-packed summer week in New York City inc...

Hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel discuss the suddenly unstoppable Knicks, the indefatigable mayor’s efforts to tap into the city’s surge of sports energy, a rainy start to what could be a long, hot summer, and much more.

Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel join guest Jeff Coltin to look ahead to summer in the city, consider the state of political goss in this town, the strangest Congressional race playing out in Manhattan and much more.

Will New York State ever pass the budget that was due more than a month ago? And how is New York City supposed to work out its own budget, which it’s legally required to balance and pass by the end of June, without knowing how much money the state is providing? Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel dig into that and much more, including a grim projection about New York City’s shrinki...

Zohran Mamdani’s first political endorsement since becoming mayor predictably didn’t pan out, but Lindsey Boylan wasn’t the candidate he’s betting his political capital on.  The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more, including why bringing casinos to New York is such a terrible idea, what’s so good about bodega cats and bad about restaurant dogs, and much more. 

Which came first, the state budget or the city’s spending plan? As the Mamdani administration pushes for new taxes and more money from Albany the FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more, including how sports and politics are getting mushed together first between the NBA Playoffs and the coming “Trump Station,” and between the World Cup and a looming “weekend of hell” and the Mamdani administr...

The former president with a supposedly funny name who was smeared as an African-born socialist made a surprise appearance at a Bronx pre-school that opened up on a Saturday so the tots could hang out with him and New York City’s actually African-born socialist mayor with a supposedly funny name at a very sweet and tightly stage-managed event open only to invited press. The FAQ NYC hosts discuss th...

FAQ NYC hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel visited the Greene Space in Soho on Thursday night for a sold-out live recording, hosted by ABNY, talking about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first 100 days. “I would give him a B,” said Chrissy. “I'm a harsh grader, so I think that's a solid grade. We're seeing someone grow in real time. We are out of the campaign phase and deeply into the gove...

The new mayor captured City Hall with historic support, and polling shows he’s only become more popular since then. But now the question is if he can deliver – despite the resistance of the City Council and Gov. Kathy Hochul to let him cash in on the “tax the rich” revenue he promised to deliver. The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more, including City Hall’s new racial equity plan and a h...

Zohran Mamdani has been Hizzoner for just 88 days, and he’s already navigating the “poisoned chalice” of a big budget deficit he inherited while the credit agencies that could make it much more expensive for the city to borrow money are taking an increasingly dim view of its finances on his watch. Hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel discuss all that and much more, including the mayor’s differen...

An epic art show at the Lexington Avenue Armory made a young Marcel Duchamp, who was back in France, one of America’s first modern celebrities even before he first arrived in New York City for what became decades of painting, conceiving, chess-playing and love-making — though not always in that order. John Strausbaugh, the author of Duchamp Takes New York, joins the LIT NYC podcast for a wide-rang...

The new administration is cutting off the private legal support Eric Adams extended on the city’s behalf to himself and his police officer pals, and rolling out a new Office of Public Safety that’s a far cry from the ambitious Department he’s promised. The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more, including Zohran Mamdani’s pretty weak — not to mention all-male — list of his all time favorite...

Can former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s fortune help his former staffer, Micah Lasher, prevail in the wide open race for a rare open NYC Congressional seat, and mark an inglorious end to the Kennedy dynasty in the process? Does America’s attack on Iran make a Mayor Mamdani ally the favorite in his primary challenge to a Congressional incumbent? And how far into March Madness can the Blackbirds and the J...

NYC Department of Records Associate Commissioner Kenneth Cobb and Research Associate Marcia Kirk visited Lit NYC to explain how the Municipal Archives came across the death ledger for the town of Newtown, Queens where George Rex, who froze to death in 1885 at the age of 89, had his occupation recorded as “The Last Slave,” what the Municipal Archives has found since then about his life, death and f...

A police-punching Jan. 6 rioter and far-right agitator pardoned by Donald Trump showed up outside Gracie Mansion this weekend with a couple dozen supporters for a “stop the Islamic takeover of New York City” clashed with about 150 counter-protesters there to “run the Nazis out. ” And that was before two alleged ISIS sympathizers drove in from out of state to throw bombs that smoked but didn’t expl...

Geographer, cartographer and urban explorer Andrew Lynch, the chief operating officer of QueensLink, joins Lit NYC to discuss the group’s vision to transform the borough for the better by extending the M train from Queens Boulevard to the Rockaways on a railway that’s abandoned for 60 years while surrounding that with new parks and trails, how he got involved in this crusade, and much more.

The FAQ NYC hosts discuss the messaging from Zohran Mamdani about America’s new war, the mayor’s meeting with the president days earlier and much more. Plus, New York Working Families Party Director Jasmine Gripper joins the pod to talk about its agenda, “how the left ecosystem in New York is evolving in a beautiful way” and the split between the WFP and Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America...

Joe Flaherty was a dock worker and high school dropout on the wrong side of 30 when he found an unexpected writer’s life beginning as a columnist for the Village Voice. A couple years later, he was running the 51st State campaign of Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin as two of the city’s most famous writers made their bid to run it on a 51st State platform built around the idea of giving New Yorkers...

One more storm, many more mountains of snow for winter-weary New Yorkers to slog through and a second chance for Zohran Mamdani to show he's up to his endless blizzard of a job. FAQ NYC hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel dig into all that and more, including Mamdani's dubious threat to raise property taxes in the city if Albany doesn't hike taxes on the rich and what that shows about who's mis...