Dan Perlman is a comedian, writer and director in Brooklyn He co-created, wrote and starred in Showtime's critically acclaimed comedy series, “Flatbush Misdemeanors” which was sadly not renewed after its much lauded and pitch-perfect two season run. Don’t count Dan out though. He just keeps making things — short things for now. Much as Flatbush Misdemeanors got its start as a web series he made with fellow comedian Kevin Iso, Perlman has made two short films — one in 2020 and one at the end of 2023 — both starring the same two New York kids, non-actors playing versions of themselves. The first one, “Cramming,” has just been announced as the recipient of a grant from Rooftop Films so it can be made into a feature film. The second, “Practice Space,” will have its world premiere at the Lower East Side Film Festival this year. That announcement just dropped … today.

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Rapper, singer, artist, producer and, since 2010, one third of the Brooklyn hip-hop group the Flatbush Zombies, Erick the Architect has dropped his first full-length solo album, "I've Never Been Here Before.” The title is a sly allusion to where he's at in life — emotionally, physically, professionally, musically — and the 16 tracks within feature collaborations with a range of artists from Lalah Hathaway to James Blake to Joey Bada$$ to George Clinton and more. The result is a kaleidoscopic mix of psychedelic hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, classic boom-bap rap and neo-soul that reflects an omnivorous musical palate. Today, we discuss his so-called “villain era,” loss and growth, what he hates about contemporary hip-hop, Brooklyn and more.

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Robert Simonson writes about cocktails, food and travel for the New York Times, where he’s been a contributor since 2000. He is the author of seven books about cocktails — he literally wrote the book on the old-fashioned and one on the martini. His latest tome, out now, widens the lens — by a lot. “The Encyclopedia of Cocktails: The People, Bars and Drinks, With More Than 100 recipes” is a delightful omnibus, an alphabetical compendium of the most notable drinks, influential bartenders (living and dead), and important bars that have shaped the cocktail world — all in shot glass-sized entries from absinthe to the zombie.

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For 17 years Maria Popova has kept an online literary journal of sorts, a catalogue of what she’s been reading, contemplating and grappling with across multiple disciplines — literature, science, art, philosophy, poetry and what she has called “various other tentacles of human thought and feeling.” She started her site, the Marginalian, under a different name — you may remember it as Brain Pickings — as an email to a few friends and colleagues, a personal record of reckoning with her own search for meaning. Today it consists of hundreds of thousands of entries, cross linking ideas and connecting metaphysical dots. It is fundamentally a personal project, a map of one woman’s quest to understand this weird experience called life. And yet over the years it has proven to have a universal appeal, attracting millions of readers from all over the world who take comfort or pick up wisdom from her lyrical close readings.

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What makes a story a New York story? Maybe it’s seeing a drag queen emerge from a manhole cover on Canal Street in a full look at 6:30 a.m. Or it could be a woman carrying a bag of live eels on the subway to the shock of no one. The thing is, you know a New York Story when you’ve got one, and Dan Saltzstein has collected a whole book’s worth of little vignettes — short stories and curated tweets that perfectly distill that New York moment to a second or two. Saltzstein joins us today to discuss his book, “That’s So New York: Short and Very Short Stories About the Greatest City on Earth," and the makings of a great New York story.

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Not only is Dr. Uché Blackstock a second-generation Black woman physician, she is the first Black mother-daughter legacy to have graduated from Harvard Medical School. Today she is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, a consultancy that helps its clients in the healthcare and corporate space to provide racially equitable care. She is also the the author of a new book, “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism In Medicine,” in which she explores systemic inequity in the American healthcare system, clearly tracing its origins from slavery and after the Civil War to today — even in her own experiences as a medical student and a doctor.

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Most New Yorkers don’t need an introduction to Veselka. One of the last of many Slavic restaurants that once proliferated in the East Village, Veselka is turning 70 this year, it’s more robust, vital and relevant as a cultural hub that it’s ever been. It’s expanding into Williamsburg later this year and it’s the subject of a new documentary, out now, called “Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World.” Filmmaker Michael Fiore started filming his documentary 11 days into the Russian war on Ukraine. Over the course of a year he documented its effects here at home in real time. In this episode, third-generation owner Jason Birchard discusses the past, present and future of the iconic eatery.

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Lee Fields is a funk and soul legend who has been recording for 55 years and performing for longer than that. From his roots in hardscrabble Wilson, North Carolina — where his parents ran a speakeasy on Saturday nights and took him to church on Sundays — through the funky 1970s, Fields honed an explosive live act frequently compared to James Brown. After a decade-long setback in the ‘80s, Lee signed with Desco Records (an early version of Daptone) and sparked a comeback that continues unabated to this day. Now he is the subject of a documentary, “Lee Fields: Faithful Man,” available to stream everywhere on demand this week.

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Second City is the legendary Chicago improv comedy company that opened in 1969 and launched the careers of everyone from Bill Murray and Gilda Radner to Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Keegan-Michael Key to Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell and Mike Meyers and Tim Meadows and so on. This month they’ve opened their first ever New York campus — in Williamsburg. And this week we're speaking with two of the new ensemble members of the new Second City company in New York. Ben Rameaka and Yazmin Ramos are veteran comics, improv actors and comedy teachers. And today we’re going to be talking about what Brooklyn can expect from the new Second City outpost, the legacy of Second City, their own careers and more.

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Bensonhurst-born Anthony Mongiello is the unheralded inventor, he claims to this day, of the stuffed crust pizza. Mongiello, who holds a 1987 patent for the method of making pizzas with cheese baked into the crust, sued Pizza Hut when they rolled out their own product with the same name in 1995 — for $1 billion. That lawsuit — which was rejected in a summary judgment — is the subject of a new short docu-drama called "Stolen Dough." Silly? Maybe. But the facts are the facts: Mongiello had a patent for stuffed crust pizza before Pizza Hut came out with the same product with the same name. Let's discuss!

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