Joe Flaherty was a dock worker and high school dropout on the wrong side of 30 when he found an unexpected writer’s life beginning as a columnist for the Village Voice. A couple years later, he was running the 51st State campaign of Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin as two of the city’s most famous writers made their bid to run it on a 51st State platform built around the idea of giving New Yorkers more control of their own neighborhoods and slogans including “No More Bullshit” and “The Other Guys Are The Joke.”

Joe’s son Liam joins Lit NYC to talk about the very different Park Slope he grew up in, what his father accomplished in his short life before succumbing to prostate cancer at just 47 years old, what his dad would make of Mamdani’s new era, and much more.

One more storm, many more mountains of snow for winter-weary New Yorkers to slog through and a second chance for Zohran Mamdani to show he's up to his endless blizzard of a job.

FAQ NYC hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel dig into all that and more, including Mamdani's dubious threat to raise property taxes in the city if Albany doesn't hike taxes on the rich and what that shows about who's missing from his inner circle.

Eric Goldwyn, an author of the new A Better Billion report from the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University, joins Lit NYC to explain its modest proposal to remap the city with 12 new projects, 64 new subways stations and 41 new miles of rail — all for about the same cost as making buses free.

Brian Stettin, who spent the Adams years as the senior advisor on the severely mentally ill for the office of the mayor before the Mamdani administration eliminated that position, joins the podcast for a wide-ranging exit interview. Plus, the hosts discuss Mamdani’s mounting early missteps, the bad-faith critics pouncing on them, and much more.

Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Dave Giffen joins the pod to discuss the Mamdani administration’s efforts to bring unhoused people in from the vicious cold. Giffen talks about why he's seen the same problems repeat again and again under seven different mayors, and what it would take to actually change that dynamic and help put his group out of business.

Just a month into this new era, Zohran Mamdani is trying to get his feet under him as the ground remains icy and precarious. The FAQ NYC hosts discuss that and much more, including a deluge of fake news about the new mayor online and the last governor's new talk show.

The new mayor appeared to clear the bar with the city’s response to the first big snow on his watch. Meanwhile, his predecessor’s people were in the news again as Adams’ former chief of staff is reportedly the subject of a federal grand jury while his favorite deputy mayor for public safety is taking a new job working for ICE in Long Island.

Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel discuss all that and much more including what the ICE killings in Minneapolis mean for New York, and how Italian-Irish tensions in the Catholic church helped create a Sabrina Carpenter-Eric Adams crossover episode.

Noah Smith engineered this episode.

Arthur Tress, whose newly published photographs of gay men in Central Park’s Ramble in 1968 and 1969 are the earliest shots of outdoor cruising in a natural setting, joins Harry Siegel and Alex Krales on Lit NYC to discuss his work in a New York City where homosexuality was still a taboo and a crime, why he’s publishing it now, and much more.

This episode was engineered by Noah Smith, and produced by Harry, Alex and Amy Sohn.

Eric Adams said we'd miss him when he's gone as mayor, but he's still popping up — hawking an NYC cryptocoin in Times Square and taking potshots at his replacement when he isn't jet-setting or lashing out at an airport heckler.

The hosts discuss that and much more, including Zohran Mamdani's push after winning his own race to elect more socialists and the Democrats who aren't happy about it.

This episode was hosted by Christina Greer, Katie Honan, and Harry Siegel, who's also the FAQ NYC podcast network's executive producer. It was engineerred by Noah Smith.

Not even two weeks into the big job, Zohran Mamdani and his team are up and running — yet still struggling to get their footing.

Hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel dig into that and much more, including the new mayor's responses to pro-Hamas chants in Queens, and to two fatal police shootings in the same day.

This episode was engineered by Noah Smith.