Lit NYC
The ABCs of arts, books, culture, etcetera in NYC
About the show
Hosts Amy Sohn, Harry Siegel and others sit down each week to commune with artists, writers, critics, cranks, visionaries and loons and how their work, and their lives, relate to the past, present and future of New York.
The podcast is a project of The City, a nonprofit newsroom serving the people of New York.
Episodes
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Episode 18: Susan Watts Talking Pictures Again
December 25th, 2022 | 40 mins 20 secs
Daily News legend Susan Watts and THE CITY's Ben Fractenberg talk with Alex Brook Lynn about the art of shooting the news in New York, and share the stories behind some of their most powerful photographs.
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Episode 17: Michael Kimmelman’s The Intimate City: Walking New York
December 11th, 2022 | 39 mins 32 secs
New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, author of The Intimate City: Walking New York, joins Alyssa Katz in the latest installment of her occasional series asking the big question: What Is New York For?
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Episode 16: Pervaiz Shallwani’s Stinky Lunch Kids
November 20th, 2022 | 26 mins 5 secs
Pervaiz Shallwani dipped a hot dog into New York’s melting pot, and what came out was the delicious chaat dog.
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Episode 15: Jereemiah Moss’ Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York
November 13th, 2022 | 32 mins 52 secs
Jeremiah Moss talks with THE CITY's Alyssa Katz about the "tremendous community connection and and oftentimes joyfulness in a moment of tremendous trauma and tragedy” for the people out in the streets amid the city's shutdown and reopening.
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Episode 14: Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil Years as ‘The Girl Behind the Fishtank’
October 23rd, 2022 | 40 mins 6 secs
Ann Nocenti, the writer, journalist and filmmaker who wrote and edited some of the most iconic Marvel comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s — and who created the iconic characters Elektra and Longshot — joins the FAQ NYC podcast to discuss her early years in New York as “the girl who lived behind the fishtank,” quite literally, how her work in asylums influenced her stories about superheroes, creating Marvel’s first openly transgender character, the role of “fake news” in the comics she’s working on now, and much more.
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Episode 13: Manny Kirchheimer’s New York, and His Pandemic Time Warp
October 9th, 2022 | 32 mins 34 secs
Alyssa Katz talks with America’s “least known great documentarian” about his 86 years living here, his work during the pandemic editing his footage of the city from the 1950s (and that you can see over the next two weekends at the Museum of the Moving Image), how graffiti trains inspired his film Stations of the Elevated, and the big question: What is New York for?
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Episode 12: Andrew Kirtzman's Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor
October 1st, 2022 | 37 mins
Biographer Andrew Kirtzman talks with Harry Siegel about his quarter-century covering “America’s mayor” and the inevitable question: What happened to Rudy Giuliani?
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Episode 11: Twenty-one Eulogies for New York City
November 13th, 2021 | 1 hr 17 mins
Twenty-one eulogies for the City of New York, in large or small part, collected for Alex Brook Lynn's installation “Eulogy For New York,” which ran during the month of October in the West Village.
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Episode 10: Issa Ibrahim’s Eulogy for Jamaica
October 26th, 2021 | 29 mins 52 secs
Artist and musician Issa Ibrahim talks with Alex Brook Lynn about a song he wrote in New York's Creedmoor psychiatric facility, eulogizing the neighborhood he grew up in.
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Episode 9: Talking Pictures With David Godlis and Luc Sante
July 25th, 2021 | 1 hr 4 mins
Photographer David Godlis and writer Luc Sante talk with Alex Brook Lynn and Harry Siegel about Godlis Streets, his new book of 1970s street photography, and the different ways that shooters, and writers, captured glimpses of that city and the sometimes alluring "generalized small-time crumminess of so much of that decade."
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Episode 8: Charles Farrell’s (Low)Life: A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing, and the Mob
July 14th, 2021 | 1 hr 20 mins
Jazz great turned boxing manager Charles Farrell visits the pod to talk with Harry and Vice's Tim Marchman about his memoir that covers, among other things, playing with Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, fixing fights for the mob, "the Moby Dick of boxing" and lots more. Stick around to the end to hear him play a little piano, too.
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Episode 7: Elon Green’s Lost Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
May 19th, 2021 | 52 mins 37 secs
Author Elon Green joins Nolan Hicks and Harry Siegel to talk about Lost Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York and how a city crew including Rudy Giuliani's mom, Bernard Kerik, Robert Morgenthau, Linda Fairstein, William Bulger and Mike McAclary all tie into that story.
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Episode 6: Alec MadGilllis' Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
April 28th, 2021 | 45 mins 12 secs
A conversation with Alec MacGillis, the author of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, about Amazon and, among many other things, its expansion in New York City AFTER the collapse of its HQ2 plan here as the brave new pandemic economy has accelerated America's great divergence.
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Episode 5: Dave Manheim’s Dopey
April 16th, 2021 | 34 mins 58 secs
Dave from the "DOPEY," podcast shares a few stories with Alex Brook Lynn about drug addiction and recovery in New York City.
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Episode 4: Talking Pictures with Susan Watts
January 23rd, 2020 | 37 mins 48 secs
Susan Watts, director of visual content for Scott Stringer, sits down with the FAQ gang for a look back over some of the shots from her 25 years as a photographer for the Daily News, New York's Picture Newspaper.
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Episode 3: Julie Satow’s The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel
July 29th, 2019 | 35 mins 42 secs
Journalist Julie Satow, author of The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel, joins Harry and Alex Brook Lynn to share some of those secrets.