Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know

The Cover Story Is Politics — the Actual Subject Is People (Season 2 Recap)

For the Season 2 finale, Juan Manuel Benítez revisits the moments that stayed with him — the candid answers, the unexpected turns, and the heaviest conversations of the year. Clips from Christina Greer, Luis Miranda, Micah Lasher, Ross Barkan, Julie Tighe, Frank DiLella, Grace Rauh and Zack Fink, Christine Quinn, Julie Menin, Carmen María Rey, Chuck Park, Erik Bottcher, Dr. Alister Martin, and Antonio Reynoso. Season 3 returns later this summer. Email Juan Manuel => juanmanyc@me.com

Chuck Park Quit the State Department to Protest Trump. Now He's Running Against Grace Meng

Chuck Park was born in Flushing to Korean immigrants who started out as street vendors on Canal Street, selling whatever they could find on the loading docks of Bloomingdale's. He grew up to become a U.S. diplomat under President Obama, serving in Mexico, Portugal, and Canada — until 2019, when he resigned with a Washington Post op-ed that called the Foreign Service not the "Deep State" but the "Complacent State." The breaking point was a photograph: Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his two-year-old daughter, drowned face-down in the Rio Grande. He drove back to Queens, moved into his parents' basement in Flushing with his wife and kid, and took a job at the MinKwon Center. Six years later, he is challenging seven-term incumbent Grace Meng in the Democratic primary for New York's 6th Congressional District. In this conversation from Columbia Journalism School, Chuck Park talks about why he believes Donald Trump won a second term, why he wants to abolish ICE, why he refuses money from corporate PACs, lobbyists, and AIPAC, and why he thinks "organized people" can still beat organized money — even when his opponent has roughly eight times more cash on hand. The primary is Tuesday, June 23. What he's reading: Los Detectives Salvajes / The Savage Detectives [https://nypl.overdrive.com/media/257734] https://nypl.overdrive.com/media/257734by Roberto Bolaño The book he recommends about the Korean American experience: Human Acts [https://borrow.nypl.org/search/card?id=ef101e3b-d216-5390-8deb-7f7ca326341d&entityType=FormatGroup] by Han Kang Where he takes visitors in NY-6: The 74th Street–Roosevelt Avenue station under the 7 train, and Main Street Station in downtown Flushing. Last museum exhibit he liked: The Ancient Egypt galleries at the Met [https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/egyptian-art] https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/collection-areas/egyptian-art— including the reconstructed Temple of Dendur. "It's the one that everyone visits when they come to New York."

Frank DiLella on Broadway's Affordability Problem (and Why It's Not Dying)

Mounting a small play in London costs about £2 million. The same play on Broadway? Around $8 million. That's the math Frank DiLella lays out in this conversation about why Broadway tickets cost what they do — and what New Yorkers can actually do about it. Frank has covered Broadway for Spectrum News' On Stage for nearly 20 years. He teaches at Fordham University. He's a multiple New York Emmy winner. And he's the person this city calls when it wants to know what's happening on a Broadway stage. We get into the affordability question head-on: union costs, real estate, and the rush tickets, TDF memberships, and Broadway Week deals New Yorkers should actually be using. We talk about why the Public Theater keeps minting hits that change the form — from A Chorus Line to The Normal Heart to Hamilton to SUFFS — and why Frank says Broadway is not dying, even when it sometimes feels that way. Frank also walks through the Hillary Clinton and Julissa Reynoso sit-down he just landed, his pick for the most underrated show of the season heading into Tony nominations on May 5, and the Liza Minnelli memoir he's been listening to on a loop. A New York story about the beating heart of the city — and the people doing the work to keep it pumping. Book recommendation: Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!: My Memoir [https://borrow.nypl.org/search/card?id=e80271af-1ab7-5b6a-bb57-e470b5398aee&entityType=FormatGroup] by Liza Minnelli with Michael Feinstein Show pick: Liberation [https://liberationbway.com/]by Bess Wohl, directed by Whitney White

"Still Worthy" — Alister Martin on Fathers, Patients, and the Next NYC Health Crisis

Dr. Alister Martin is the 45th Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — an emergency physician, Harvard graduate, and former White House fellow who's been on the job for two months. In 72 days, roughly 450,000 New Yorkers lose their Essential Plan coverage. HR.1 hits Medicaid in January. The CDC has been gutted, the federal government has pulled out of the WHO, and childhood vaccination rates in New York are slipping. The World Cup arrives in June. Martin's answer on all of it is the same: New York is not waiting for Washington. But this conversation is also about who gets to be treated as worthy. The kid from Jackson Heights whose mother — a Haitian immigrant and public school teacher — couldn't afford to stay in the city, and moved them to Neptune, New Jersey. The 11-year-old who overheard someone ask where he'd go when his mother died of cancer, and decided then to become a doctor. The 16-year-old with a third-degree black belt who tried to stop a friend from getting jumped and got kicked out of high school for it. The 20-year-old who met his absent father for the first time, and the 25-year-old who got a Facebook message from a brother he didn't know he had telling him that father — also a Harvard graduate — was dying of cancer. The emergency physician who carries all of it into the exam room. Book recommendation * Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn — NYPL catalog [https://borrow.nypl.org/search?query=another+bullshit+night+in+suck+city&searchType=title].

He Hired Mamdani to Run His Campaign. Now Ross Barkan Is Writing His Book

DESCRIPTION Ross Barkan covered New York City politics for years before running for office himself. He lost. His campaign manager was a little-known political operative named Zohran Mamdani. That man is now the mayor of New York City. Barkan is one of the sharpest journalists covering the Mamdani administration — and he reveals in this conversation that he is writing the definitive book on Mamdani's election and early months in office, due out in October from Random House. He is also the author of Colossus, a new novel out April 28th about a MAGA pastor in rural Michigan who built a perfect life on a lie. He calls it a novel for the Trump age. We talk about Mamdani's first hundred days, the Albany budget fight, why Barkan thinks the Jessica Tisch alliance was a mistake, what it's like to interview the man you once employed, and why he believes fiction is the last line of defense against a world that wants to outsource thinking to machines. SHOW NOTES Ross Barkan's Books * Colossus [https://www.amazon.com/Colossus-Novel-Ross-Barkan/dp/1648211771] * Glass Century [https://borrow.nypl.org/search?query=Glass%20Century%20Barkan&searchType=everything] * The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York [https://borrow.nypl.org/search?query=The%20Prince%20Cuomo%20Barkan&searchType=everything] Books Ross Is Reading * Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York, [https://borrow.nypl.org/search?query=Us%20v%20them%20Givony&searchType=everything] by Ronen Givony * The Ritz of the Bayou, [https://www.hubcity.org/books/nonfiction/the-ritz-of-the-bayou]by Nancy Lemann * Meet Me in the Bathroom, [https://borrow.nypl.org/search?query=Meet%20me%20in%20the%20bathroom%20Goodman&searchType=everything] by Lizzy Goodman Ross Barkan Online * Political Currents [rosselliotbarkan.com] * The Metropolitan Review [metropolitanreview.org]