FAQ NYC

A year and a half after legalizing recreational marijuana, the first retail licenses have finally been issued even as the black market is booming and smoke shop robberies are through the roof. Ashley Southall, who covers cannabis in the city for the New York Times, goes into the weeds to explain what New York’s doing — and not doing — to correct the drug war’s damage, whether buyers can really trust the stuff getting sold here with California packaging, and much more. Listen here.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams rejoins the podcast to talk about his primary run against Kathy Hochul, the party's poor performance in November from candidates running as "Republicans light" and much more.

Pervaiz Shallwani dipped a hot dog into New York’s melting pot, and what came out was delicious.

Who's responsible for Democrats' losses in New York even as the party over-performed expectations nationally? Everyone seems to be pointing figures, and they might all have a point.

Jeremiah Moss, the author of Feral New York, 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.

Gotham Gazette’s Ben Max joins an election-night FAQ NYC podcast to offer some late-night early analysis in an episode that began before the governor’s race was called and continued after it was.

The former governor won't say if he voted for Letitia James, but he’s got lots to say about how the Democratic Party has lost the script on crime as people “are afraid of the feeling I get in the city,” and much more.

The City senior reporter and bona fide train knower Jose Martinez joins FAQ to break down the gubernatorial race's very high, yet hardly noticed, stakes for the already troubled future of the city’s circulatory system.

Co-host Christina Greer doubts that Lee Zeldin will upset Gov. Kathy Huchul, but she does think that “He's just that guy. Where it's just like, you're really dangerous but because you don't look like a DeSantis or an Abbott people don't think that he's as dangerous as he is. He's got the Youngkin effect.” And co-host Katie Honan shoots down the Congressmember’s debate claim about smelling pot on his one train ride during the race, which she joined as a reporter: “I’ll say on the record, I rode the subway with Lee Zeldin, and there was no pot smell. He said there was pot smell. And the only reason I noticed that is because there usually is a pot smell, right? So I was shocked that there wasn’t.” Plus, Laura Kavanaugh is now the first female commissioner of the FDNY, the city’s still not ready for what’s coming a decade after Sandy, and much more.

“You might want to get a snorkel”—In a special episode of FAQ NYC, Samantha Maldonado and Kendra Pierre-Louis look at the damage the “superstorm” caused 10 years ago in Coney Island and around the city, and the construction that’s followed.