The Metropolitan Diary — the longest-running column in The New York Times — turns 50 this year. For a half century, a page that was introduced as part of a push to relieve the publication’s  stuffy reputation has been the only one in the paper of record where ordinary, so to speak, inhabitants of the paper’s namesake city could read, and publish, brief stories and bits of doggerel about ordinary life here. 

Ed Shanahan, who’s curated the page for the last decade, joins Lit NYC host Harry Siegel for a deep dive into the diary, the online community that’s developed around a pre-internet institution and those glorious days of yore when every successful contributor was rewarded with a bottle of Moët.