Episode 466: A Plan To Pay for Parks

Zohran Mamdani has promised to have 1 percent of the city budget go to the Parks Department — but so did Eric Adams, who never came close to delivering. Three experts and advocates discuss all that and more with host Katie Honan. Plus, Katie and Harry Siegel talk about all the latest developments from another wild week, and with just over a week to go before a new adminsitration takes power.

“In my quest to be more American than Americans, I wanted to know more than American music [and in 1972] I was staying with a great fiddle player and banjo player in North Carolina named Tommy Jarrell and he was puzzled, because a lot of the people who had come from up north to study with him were Jews and Italians — people for whom this was not their continuity. Tommy was a very inquisitive guy and at one point he asked me, ‘Hank, don't your people got none of your own music?’… That sent me scuttling back to Brooklyn to begin the same kind of research that I had done for hillbilly music.” Henry H. Sapoznik, the author of the Tourist’s Guide To Lost Yiddish New York City and a Grammy-nominated musician and producer, sits down with Lit Nyc hosts Harry Siegel and and Amy Sohn for a wide-ranging conversation about assimilation and adaptability, the difference between faux music and folk music, the overlaps between kosher, halal and Chinese foods, and much more. This episode was produced by Amy Sohn and Noah Smith, and engineered by Noah Smith.

The FAQ NYC hosts discuss terror fears here, a slow transition and a marathon listening session for Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, a time capsule for outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, and much more — including a man dressed as a hamburger with some serious small business concerns.

Amid the silly season of transition speculation, New Yorkers are waiting to see how Zohran Mamdani, a brilliant messenger, handles the levers of power and who else he's bringing inside of City Hall to help him run the huge machine. While those staffing decisions are playing out, slowly and behind closed doors, the outgoing administration is taking some swipes at Mamdani, including about the mayor elect's pledge to end homeless encampment sweeps. Episode hosted by Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel, and engineered by Noah Smith.

“I bought myself an electric bike to take my kids to the beach and started charging it outside after seeing stats on how many battery fires there were. I looked at other countries that are doing battery-swap networks and  I said, ‘We should do this in New York… My plan, if I can be this ambitious, is to build a city-wide battery-swap network everybody can use." Ineffable and inimitable gadfly and entrepreneur Baruch Herzfeld joins LIT NYC hosts Harry Siegel and Amy Sohn to talk about schemes and dreams, the thousand-dollar bet he lost to  a Fugee but hasn’t paid, the guys who climbed telephone poles when Williamsburg was wild, and much more. This episode was produced by Amy Sohn, and engineered by Noah Smith.

It turns out that the count of our mayors has been off by one, dating back to when the city had a population of just 2,500 — meaning the mayor-elect will be New York’s 112th mayor, though still the 111th person to serve. FAQ NYC hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel discuss that breaking 17th Century news, as reported by Eliabeth Kim at Gothamist, and much more, including Julie Menin’s early Speaker win and the World Trade Center-related death this week of a retired deputy chief who lost a son on 9/11. This episode was engineered by Noah Smith.

Are theater kids Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump having a bromance now, and did Jessica Tisch help bring them together? Is anyone not running for Congress? The FAQ NYC hosts discuss all that and much more before having an in-depth conversation with Crystal Hudson, the Brooklyn City Councilmember who’s one of the leading candidates to be the body’s next speaker in the first of a series of interviews with the contenders . This episode was engineered by Noah Smith

Is anyone in this town not running for Congress? Is it time for Democrats to finally usher an older generation out of Washington, and is there a way to build a party whose representatives are better distributed in terms of age, identity and geographic distribution? Is it time to finally feel hopeful about New York City's future? All that and more gets mulled over by hosts Christina Greer and Harry Siegel. This episode was engineered by Noah Smith.

Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost, the creators of the acclaimed new documentary about Gotham’s close brush with bankruptcy in 1975, Drop Dead City, discuss the film, the city that was, how its near collapse led to the city of today, and how Michael’s father Felix helped pulled it back from the brink with Big MAC, or the Municipal Assistance Corporation.

With the mayor's race decided and 2026 election moves just beginning, the FAQ NYC hosts talk about the Council Speaker's race that drew lots of attention at Somos, where Gov. Kathy Hochul got hit with another chant of "tax the rich!" There are only 51 votes that count in a closed-door campaign where the narrative question is whether the Council wants to speed up, or slow down, a Mayor Mamdani and his agenda next year. It’s a contest that he’s yet to publicly weigh in on. The practical question, though, is simply which candidate in a race — where the frontrunners appear to be Crystal Hudson and Julie Menin — can get enough votes to claim the big prize, and the nice office. This episode was hosted by Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel, and engineered by Noah Smith.