FAQ NYC

Mar 07 2025 415 ep. 40 mins 442

FAQ NYC Podcast artwork

A weekly dive into the big questions about this city of ours, hosted by Christina Greer, Azi Paybarah and Harry Siegel, and produced by Alex Brook Lynn.

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Episode 405: 'Inshallah Mayor’ Zohran Mamdani Says It's All About Making NYC More Affordable

Mar 07 2025 35 mins

"Democrats in general tend to show up to gun fights with bar graphs," Queens Assemblymember and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said as he sat down with the FAQ NYC crewto make his case. That boils down, he explained, to driving down the cost of living for New Yorkers and "less lecturing, more listening." In a wide-ranging interview — the latest in the pod�

Episode 404: ‘Sometimes People Just Get Beaten to Death’

Mar 05 2025 46 mins

There’s a direct line from the Transit Police beating Michael Stewart to death in front of horrified art students to Eric Adams being elected mayor — one that intersects with Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Spike Lee and Tucker Carlson. Journalist Elon Green, the author of The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York, the first book-length acco

Episode 403: Cometh the Hour, Cuomo the Man?

Mar 03 2025 54 mins

Sally Goldernberg, senior New York editor for Politico, talks with hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel about Andrew Cuomo (finally) entering the mayor's race this weekend with a sometimes grim, nearly 18-minute video announcement about how only he can save a city in crisis, followed by a closed-off and carefully choreographed campaign event. They dig into why running in th

Episode 402: Whitney Tilson Says NYC ‘Needs To Make Crime Illegal Again’

Feb 25 2025 49 mins

Looking at the "different flavors of career politicians" running in the Democratic mayoral primary, "I didn't see anyone who could be independent of the machine that runs this city," said former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson. So he entered the race himself "to try and bring my party back to the center." In a wide-ranging sit-down interview with

Episode 401: Two Adamses, Two Tis(c)hes and Much Too Much Tumult

Feb 24 2025 31 mins

It felt like a year's worth of news happened in the week two weeks since the FAQ NYC hosts last convened, with another few years worth about to drop. They dig into the confusion and concern at City Hall and through the government, the increasingly angry mayor, the still far-from-settled field in the mayoral race, and much more

Episode 400: Michael Blake Has ‘A Very Different Vision of What Can Be for NYC’

Feb 19 2025 54 mins

"You simply can't trust Eric Adams nor those that are closest to him," former assemblymember and Mayoral candidate Michael Blake said as he sat down with FAQ NYC hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel on Tuesday. "And when you have four deputy mayors who have quit on him after Eric Adams quit on New Yorkers on MLK Day, it's a clear indication that it's

Episode 399: Time-Tunneling Into a Different Brooklyn with Jonathan Lethem

Feb 15 2025 54 mins

The author joins Harry Siegel and guest host Brian Berger of Straus News for a deep dive into his latest book, the excellent and almost undefinable Brooklyn Crime Novel. Lethem digs into his reasons on re-reexamining the Brooklyn he wrote about 20 years earlier in The Fortress of Solitude, but doing so this time with the tools of a journalist including long interviews conducted am

Episode 398: NYC Was in a Different Place on Monday Morning

Feb 10 2025 40 mins

When Katie Honan called in to discuss the latest New York City news Monday morning with co-hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel, she did so while posted outside of the David Dinkins Municipal Building where Mayor Eric Adams had convened his top commissioners and officials. Katie hopped off the call mid-way through the episode to get back to reporting, and then broke then news th

Episode 397: Zellnor Myrie Says ‘We Cannot Cower in This Moment’

Feb 06 2025 49 mins

“I've always represented a community that knew we could hold two things together at the same time: that we want to hold officers accountable when they step over the line but also that we need them as part of our public safety ecosystem,” state Senator and mayoral candidate Zellnor Myrie said in a wide-ranging interview. “I've never been a defund-the-police Democrat,

Episode 396: The Mayor Who Cried Wolf?

Jan 27 2025 36 mins

When Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy put out the news Sunday night that Mayor Eric Adams wasn't feeling well and was clearing his public schedule, it came just a week after City Hall's late-night news that he'd cancelled his Martin Luther King Jr. Days plans and was driving to D.C. to attend Donald Trump's inauguration. Sally Goldenberg, the senior New