FAQ NYC

Episode 118: Down Ballot Doings

City and State's Jeff Coltin gives a bird's eye view of all the other races on New York City's very crowded ballot.

Episode 117: Rent Relief

State Senator Zellnor Myrie returns to explain what New York's new evictions moratorium does, and doesn't do, for tenants and landlords.

Episode 116: Smack Talk Special

Professor Greer has some words to share with several of the guys running to be mayor, and much more as the gang gabs.

Episode 115: New York’s New Choice/s

Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York and Sean Dugar of Rank the Vote NYC explain the genius of ranked choice voting. Plus a cartoon, read aloud, in our first-ever Brickhouse crossover with brand-new comics site Awry, and Alex Brook Lynn mourns her lemon of a classic Cadillac no longer worth the squeeze.

Episode 114: Confessions of a Psycho News Guy

“Going to a job, going to a fire is almost as good as an orgasm. Going to a shooting is almost like a heroin fix to me.” Newly retired multimedia journalist Todd Maisel looks back on 38 years shooting and covering New York City.

Episode 113: Schoolhouse Whiplash

Professor David Bloomfield runs down Mayor de Blasio's unsteady approach to the schools, and much more.

Episode 112: The David Dinkins Interview

David Dinkins, the city's first and so far only black mayor, sat down for nearly two hours last year with Chrissy and Harry to talk about his life and career. Here's that interview, very lightly edited.

Episode 111: An 'Obnoxious and Offensive' Schools Closure

What the hell are de Blasio and Cuomo doing here, and why can't they get on the same page? Plus, Steven Romalewski of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research at CUNY'S Graduate Center returns to the pod.

Episode 110: A Bridge in Brooklyn to Toll You

Councilmembers Joe Borelli (R, Staten Island) and Justin Brannan (D, Brooklyn) talk about how the return of two-way tolls to the Verrazzano looks from each side of the bridge, the second wave of the virus that’s looming, and more.

Episode 109: Election 2020

Harry, Chrissy, and Alex talk with Ben Max of Gotham Gazette & The Max & Murphy Show about what the election means for NYC and what election New Yorkers have to look forward to in 2021. We also talk Cuomo, a COVID vaccine, and privacy law with Albert Fox Cahn of The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

Episode 108: TRUMP ACDC

Morgan Pehme, the director of 'Get Me Roger Stone' and 'Slumlord Millionaire,' has made a film about the rise and fall of Trump's casinos in Atlantic City using archival footage.

Episode 107: Local Focus and the National Picture

David Plotz explains City Cast, the network of local pods he's launching this winter in cities across the country to “connect you with the city you love” and, knock on wood, help listeners “stop being obsessed with the question of Trump, and instead “reengage with the questions of daily life that are played out on the streets of American cities.” And speaking of Trump, Walter Shapiro, in the midst of covering his eleventh(!) presidential campaign, talks about how campaigns and campaign cove...

Episode 106: A Health Crisis and a Fiscal Crisis

Jacob Kornbluh breaks down the public health picture, and the political one, inside the Orthodox community. And Columbia Professor Ester Fuchs goes deep on the fiscal crisis of 1975 and the one New York is facing now.

Episode 105: Imbalance of Power

State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi talks about her bill to reset the balance of budget power, and much more.

Episode 104: The Mount Vernon Tapes

A deep dive with WNYC investigative reporter George Joseph into police impunity and its consequences just north of Bronx.

Episode 103: The Relentless Trump Hunter

Eileen Markey, editor of the new Wayne Barrett collection Without Compromise, joins FAQ and guest interviewer Michael Tomasky for a look back at the muckraker's decades exposing the Donald and the rest of New York's endless rogues' gallery.

Episode 102: School Daze

As parents wait for school buildings to reopen, we take a tour of New York City's public school history with CUNY professor emeritus of education Stephan F. Brumberg,

Episode 101: Supportive Housing and the Brickhouse

Episode 100: The Storefront Domino Effect

It's FAQ's 100th episode(!), and Karla Murray joins to talk about her storefront project and all the small businesses New York is losing amidst… all this.

Episode 99: School for Scandal

Ace education reporter Madina Touré explains how New York's schools plan fell short, and looks at what's coming next.

Episode 98: Drain Brammage

Chrissy runs down some ominous New York news, Harry recalls getting accidentally stoned on the job and — this week's highlight — Alex talks with musician Stefan Zeniuk about his (beautiful!) sonic elegy for a sewer tunnel, performed with large instruments at the entrance to a sewer tunnel in Astoria earlier this week.

Episode 97: Six Ways To Sunday

Episode 96: What Now?

With Sally Goldenberg of Politico New York on the city's shift to the left, Jake Offenhartz of Gothamist on the NYPD's cat and mouse game, and much more.

Episode 95: The Window Is Blowing, The Sky Is Falling

Episode 94: Jumaane Williams and Jawanza James Williams

Chrissy talks with New York City's public advocate, and Harry and Alex talk with Vocal New York's director of organizing.

Episode 93: The Musical Episode

Four covers and an original song about the only city worth singing about, from guest musicians Dr. Sick and Isabel Alvarez in FAQ's second musical episode, recorded outside in the midst of a thunderstorm.

Episode 92: City in a Corner

Opening the schools is the key to everything else, explains the Times' Eliza Shapiro, and nothing about how that's gong to work is clear or certain. Plus, Emma Whitford on the imminent return of the eviction courts.

Episode 91: NYC on the Edge

Episode 90: Ritchie Torres on Policing the NYPD and the ‘Strength of My Own Operation’

The councilman and likely new congressman rejoins FAQ NYC to talk about his new bill intended to police the NYPD, the "Democratic Socialist Industrial Complex" and lots more.

Episode 89: Primary Shakeups as People Wake Up

A double episode, with Ben Max from Gotham Gazette breaking down Tuesday's high-stakes, mostly mail-in primary election night in New York, and ProPublica's Eric Umansky running through his unexpected crash course on cop reporting and police impunity.

Episode 88: Things Accelerate

Maya Wiley and Albert Fox Cahn call in to talk about the past, present and future of policing in New York.

Albert Fox Cahn talks about the upcoming vote on the NYC Post Act

Albert Fox Cahn, founder of S.T.O.P, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, talks to Alex Brook Lynn about The Post Act, a bill that will be voted on in City council this Thursday, June 18th. The Post Act could force the NYPD to become transparent about the technology they use to spy on New Yorkers.

Episode 87: Something Old, Something New and Something Gone

Former New York State Chief Deputy Attorney General and candidate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg joins the FAQ crew to talk about the "need to keep pressing."

Episode 86: ‘It Can Happen To Anyone’

This week, we interview State Senator Zellnor Myrie, who was pepper sprayed & cuffed by the NYPD at one of this week's protests. + Malik Wright from NY politics pod, House Party NY (@houseparty.ny) shares his thoughts on the protests. + NYC Journos talk city scene: @fractenberg @ndhapple @noahhurowitz & @lloydmitchellphotography

Episode 85: Cuomo, YOLO, Oh No

The FAQ crew talks with Cuomo family lip-syncher and comedian Maria DeCotis, Daily News City Hall reporter and amateur artist Anna Sanders, and Sarah Brafman of the small business group Reopen New York.

Episode 84: One Wave Down

Episode 83: Cor-oh-no Blues

Christina Greer talks with Jeff Mays of the New York Times, and Alex Lynn talks with Liz O'Sullivan of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. Plus the Cor-oh-no Blues as performed by J.P. Siegel, and much more.

Episode 82: Nap Time for the City That Never Sleeps

A look at night one of the overnight train shutdown with Clayton Guse of the Daily News, and at the tough working conditions for the "other" essential workers with Michelle Jackson of the Human Services Council.

Episode 81: Rat Gangs

A look at the shape New York is in and what happens after this, with Harry, Chrissy, Alex and guest Nicole Gelinas. Plus beautiful music from Namrata Tripathi and Quinn Raymond.

Episode 80: The Test

A (somewhat) optimistic look at what where New York goes after the virus, plus conversations with Wayne Ho of the Chinese-American Planning Council and Aaron Naparstek of the War on Cars.

Episode 79: Things Fall Apart

State Senator Zellnor Myrie calls in to warn about the state of the census in New York in the midst of social isolation, publisher and editor-in-chief Elinor Tatum discusses the state of the 109-year-old Amsterdam News, and much more.

Professor Christina Greer interviews Elinor Tatum of the Amsterdam News

Episode 78: Stay the Fuck Home

The strange scene in NYC now, as conveyed by Gwynne Hogan of Gothamist, looking at the city's coronavirus undercount, Nikita Stewart of the New York Times, looking at how homeless families are sheltering in place, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, looking at the people still out on the streets in the midst of all this.

Cut down to the bone! NYC nurses issue a list of demands.

Alex Brook Lynn of FAQ.NYC interviews Sarah Dowd, a nurse at Harlem Hospital, about what healthcare workers need to pull us through this crisis. As the world watches tired healthcare workers beg for supplies on social media, Sarah Dowd, a nurse at Harlem Hospital, doesn't want to see their troubles become an accepted “horrific sob story,” Sarah wants a "counter narrative," a narrative in which our elected officials “get things done.” On Monday April 6th, Sarah and her fellow healthcare work...

Episode 77: This Ain't Fine

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith, documentarian Akisa Omulepu and Barron’s reporter Alexandra Scaggs call in from their respective social isolations to look over what's happening in New York in the midst of all of this.

Interview: Alexandra Scaggs educated us on The Federal Reserve, Municipal Bonds, and Why it Matters.

Barron's financial journalist Alexandra Scaggs explains to Alex Brook Lynn how the stimulus bill impacts lending, what big things are changing with the federal reserve, and how the issue of municipal bonds, something that progressive economists have been on about for years, is finally entering the mainstream.

Episode 76: 'Unlike Anything We've Ever Experienced as New Yorkers'

Council Health Chair Mark Levine, isolated at home with a presumed case of the coronavirus, gets on the phone with Harry to survey our transformed medical system, and explain why testing outside of hospitals is a counterproductive idea now. And CUNY Professor Heath Brown talks to Chrissy about homeschooling, as New York families are getting a crash course in it.

Episode 75: New (Not) Normal

Episode 74: Evictions Go Viral

Alex Brook Lynn and Adam Levy talk evictions with David Brand of The Queens Daily Eagle, and assess what the city is doing (and could be doing) to help New Yorkers that face losing their home as a consequence of Coronavirus. On Thursday, March 12, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency for New York City. He said that the city needed to brace for six months of crisis mode; gatherings of 500 people or over are now banned, Broadway is going dark, and Madison Square Garden is closing....

Episode 73: The Safe Choice?

Progressive strategist Rebecca Katz joins Chrissy, Harry and Alex for a look at the shaken state of the Democratic party following Super Tuesday.