FAQ NYC

When the New Yorker just isn't New York enough, you've come to the right pod…

Bradley Tusk looks at the Democrats playing musical chairs for their political lives, explains the cases for Andrew Yang and cryptocurrency, and shares the backstory behind P&T Knitware, his brand new bookstore, podcast studio, event space, and cafe on the Lower East Side.

A jam-packed episode for a jam-packed week of New York news, with Yoav Gonen of The City and Chris Sommerfeldt of the Daily News talking about all the candidates in Brooklyn who didn't even know they were on the ballot (including one candidate who isn't even alive), a dispatch from Alex Brook Lynn in Paris about sending formula across the Atlantic to frantic N.Y. moms, and Caroline Lewis of WNYC and Gothamist explaining what's happening with the state's rollout of legal weed and with the people who did (and still are) illegally selling it here.

For the 200th episode of FAQ NYC, a conversation about the Notorious B.I.G. and Brooklyn with Justin Tinsley, author of the new biography It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him.

Map master Steven Romalewski and penetrating politics reporter Brigid Bergin do their best to explain what the hell is happening with our upcoming election, where the maps are still being drawn and not even the dates, plural, for various contests aren't entirely certain. Plus, Nick Pinto of the brand-new NYC journalism venture Hell Gate breaks down his story there about the NYPD's Stonewalling Attorney Called Out for Lying and Forging Emails.

Michael Daly recalls his friend Jack Maple, the maker of the maps that changed everything.

An awful lot of New York politicians end up going to prison but Assemblyman Eddie Gibbs, who spent 17 months in Rikers as a teen followed by four and a half years in state prisons, is the first to do it the other way around. He joins the pod for a conversation about that, "the bad old days" and the state of the city now, and rapping and performing comedy with legends including the late Big L and Biggie Smalls.

A conversation from early Wednesday afternoon, before Frank James' arrest, about the train shooting and also Brian Benjamin' resignation.

Josefa Velasquez joins from Albany to break down the stop-and-start, hurry-up-and-wait path toward New York's forthcoming and already late $216 billion or so budget (and everything else) deal.

Jeff Mays of the New York Times breaks down Kathy Hochul's troubles with Black voters, and Craig McCarthy of the New York Post looks at what is, and ain't, new with the NYPD's neighborhood policing initiative, its anti-gun unit, and its quality of life enforcement push.