FAQ NYC

The Election Night results are in: Zohran Mamdani will be New York City’s 111th Mayor. Our hosts react to Mamdani’s big win over Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, with over 1 million votes out of more than 2 million cast, and discuss his rousing, defiant victory speech and what comes next. — FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming to you every Tuesday through November, fe...

Alex Brook Lynn, FAQ NYC's original executive producer, rejoins the podcast to talk with Harry Siegel about New York City's election, and how and why Paris — which has all the same big urban issues — has taken a different approach to providing things like affordable housing for working class people, childcare, and more.

In episode six, we’re focusing on affordability, housing and the related ballot proposals. We’re joined by housing experts Jamie Rubin (Chief Investment Officer of Aligned Climate Capital & Chairman of the Board of NYCHA) and Alicia Glen (Founder and Managing Principle of M Squared & former Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development), who share their thoughts on what the next Mayor...

Ric Burns, director of the epic New York: A Documentary Film, joined the FAQ NYC hosts on Thursday evening for beer and cider at Schneider’s Saloon inside the Tenement Museum to talk about 21st century scandals and hopes in the space where German immigrants huddled to do just that in the 19th Century.

In episode five, we debrief the first mayoral debate and preview the second one as Andrew Cuomo struggles to gain ground against frontrunner Zohran Mamdani with wild card Curtis Sliwa also in the mix. Plus, two-time former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton joins to explain why he wouldn't advise Jessica Tisch, or anyone else, to run the NYPD on Mamdani's watch. Remember: early voting begins on Saturd...

The legendary illustrator talks with LIT NYC hosts Amy Sohn and Harry Siegel about what he wants to illustrate now that he no longer needs to take assignments, how New York City shaped his work, why he thinks being called "the Vermeer of the Borscht Belt" is a misnomer, and much more.

In our fourth episode, we discuss the federal indictment of New York Attorney General Tish James, how the mayoral candidates are reacting, and how the next mayor could influence President Trump’s approach to the city. Then, DSA-backed City Council Member Alexa Avilés of Brooklyn, chair of the Council immigration committee, joins us to talk about Trump’s immigration crackdown, her hopes for a Mayor...

In episode three, we talk about the massive infrastructure cuts trickling down from the federal government – one of the many developments that have us holding our breath for what’s to come in our city. We’re also joined by ‘Gridlock’ Sam Schwartz, who gives us the lowdown on the past, present and future of transit in New York. — FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming...

In our second episode, the hosts debrief about Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to drop his re-election bid. New York Attorney General Tish James also joins us to talk about the cases she and Donald Trump have brought against one another, and her support of Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani. FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming to you every Tuesday through November, feat...

"The tabs were this incredibly paradoxical force in New York during these years. On the one hand, they were totally polarizing, turning the world into into heroes and villains, good guys and bad guys — like comic books for adults. On the other hand, everyone is reading the Post and the News and Newsday, and they were unifying all of New York around these storylines." Jonathan Mahler joins LIT...

In our debut episode, Public Advocate Jumanne Williams joins us to talk about his arrest outside of 26 Federal Plaza, what the mayor and other elected officials can and should be doing in response to President Trump's threats, and why Williams thinks it's time for New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs to step down. FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming at you ev...

Laurie Gwen Shapiro, the author of "The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon," joins Harry Siegel and Amy Sohn to dig into what they don't tell you in the children's books about the life and death of the world's most famous female flier.

While Eric Adams says Andrew Cuomo is spreading fake rumors that he’s out, even Donald Trump seems resigned to the idea that Zorhan Mamdani will be New York City’s next mayor — and is threatening to punish the city and the state now that Gov. Kathy Hocul has endorsed the Democratic nominee. The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more from another jam-packed week in New York City.

The incumbent mayor polling in the single digits regained the spotlight after Labor Day as he insisted he was running to somehow win a second term, not auditioning for a job as the Trump administration's new ambassador to Saudi Arabia. But even then, he seemed at least as concerned with dragging down Andrew Cuomo as he did in lifting himself up. The hosts run down all that and more more from a wee...

The summer’s done, Jerrold Nadler is ending his storied Congressional career at the end of his term, nodding at the need for generational renewal in the Democratic Party, and it looks like Eric Adams might be out of work soon, too, as Zohran Mamdani has maintained a healthy lead in the mayoral race entering its final two-month sprint.

Just two lawyers have remained inside 26 Federal Plaza every day as it’s become the epicenter of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda in New York City, with “large masked men with guns” stationed outside of courtrooms to drag away people showing up for civil hearings. Allison Cutler and Benjamin Remy of the New York Legal Assistant Group’s Immigrant Protection Unit talk with Harry Sieg...

Katie Honan never wants to be the story and is "tired of telling the story" but she recaps and reflects on a very weird week, why she's "filled with sadness about Winnie," and the film-noir feeling of getting left, quite literally, holding the bag full of crumbled chips and $300:

It's an Off Cycle episode, with photographer Stanley Greenberg sitting down with Harry Siegel and guest host Lizzie Walsh to talk about the epic new Waterworks: The Hidden Water System of New York. He discusses how the DEP tried to stop his first edition of Waterworks from being published after 9/11, how COVID helped lead him to create a totally new second edition, and much more.

How did the mayor end up so far behind the 8 ball that he's polling in the single digits in his independent run to win a second term? His press strategy, if that's even the word for it, is one part of the problem, and the signs of a city for sale as he's likely on his way out aren't helping.

What is Andrew Cuomo thinking with his weird new approach to social media, and wild swings at Zohran Mamdani? Will yesterday's leaders ever clear the stage, and will tomorrow's likely leaders get seriously vetted before they're vested with tremendous power? The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more, including the Trump pressure test on his old hometown that's just ramping up, Kathy Hochul's...

Hosts Katie Honan and Harry Siegel dig into a stunning Midtown shooting — the second in seven months in which a gunman traveling to New York City to murder businesspeople — and how the mayoral candidates responded to that. Plus, Katie goes deep on one simple trick for getting free drinks in a bar: Finding a gun left behind in a bathroom . And she explains how a “no moshing” sign at a nightclub led...

In the latest episode of LIT NYC, host Alyssa Katz talks with J. Hoberman about his new opus, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop. “Certainly the cheap rents are essential. And the fact that there were areas of the city, of Manhattan, which had been in a way deserted because various light industries had left and there were spaces tha...

The FAQ NYC hosts dig into the Trump administration’s latest demands for compliance, why Mayor Eric Adams insists New York is powerless to enforce its own laws and ordinances inside of the federal office building in lower Manhattan now doubling as a makeshift jail, and how the Department of Homeland Security has the city and the country totally krossed out, and wiggida wiggida wiggida wack. Stick...

In the latest episode of LIT NYC, host Katie Honan talks with author Radha Vatsal, a speechwriter at city hall by day, to discuss her new novel about old New York, No. 10 Doyers Street, and “a past that was not as black and white as we make it out to be today.” Vatsal, an immigrant herself, explains how she came to tell a story of Chinatown in the early 1900s as seen through the eyes of Archana "A...

The last police commissioner is suing the mayor and the NYPD for running what he alleges was a crooked operation with Eric Adams’ cronies peddling promotions for payoffs. Incredibly, City Hall and one of those cronies responded by claiming the mayor’s pick, storied FBI agent Tom Donlon, wasn’t mentally up to the job — and on Monday Donlon put in a notice of claim against Adams and former NYPD Spok...