New York

Linda Simpson performed in and chronicled the drag scene in the '80s and '90s, taking some 5,000 photos of performers. She calls Tennessee's anti-drag legislation "ridiculous."

Michael Cecchi-Azzolina talks about what it's like to be a Maitre D' at the fanciest restaurants in New York City. He has worked in the business for three decades telling wealthy diners, celebrities and even the mafia whether or not they can have the table by the window. His memoir is called Your Table is Ready.

In the series, Lebowitz talks with Martin Scorsese about getting kicked out of high school, driving a cab in New York City in the 1970s and not having a cell phone. Originally broadcast January 2021.

Iconoclastic humorist Fran Lebowitz used to be known as a writer. Back in the late 1970s and '80s, she released two popular collections of essays featuring her cutting observations and opinions about life. But that part of her career was cut short by a decades-long case of writer's block — now she's known for talking. The Netflix series Pretend It's a City features Lebowitz in conversation with Martin Scorsese — who directed both the new series and the 2010 HBO documentary about Lebowitz, Public Speaking.

Hamill, who died Aug. 5, was a columnist and editor at the New York Post and the New York Daily News, covering wars, crime and the people of NYC's boroughs. Originally broadcast in '94, '08 and '11.

Amy Rigby was a sheltered Catholic teen from the Pittsburgh suburbs when she moved to New York City to attend Parsons School of Design and fell in love with the '70s punk scene.

Berman was 60 when she moved to New York with just one suitcase to start a new life. Berman's daughter, Maira Kalman, and grandson, Alex Kalman, tell her story in a new book and museum show.

Journalist Oliver Bullough runs kleptocracy tours in London, in which he points out mansions bought by corrupt foreign leaders and oligarchs. Moneyland describes their secretive transnational world.

Jay, who died Sunday, was an avid scholar of con games and could make cards disappear and reappear in ways that seemed impossible. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1987, 1998 and 2002.

Set in New York City in the 1970s, The Deuce centers on the intersection of sex work, pornography, organized crime, the police, politicians and feminists. Gyllenhaal didn't have a problem with the role, but she did have strong feelings about how the power dynamics of sex should be portrayed.

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast is a city person. She grew up in an apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y., and though she moved to the suburbs as an adult when she was pregnant with her second child, she never stopped loving the grit and excitement of New York City.

A new drama series on Netflix chronicles the rise of early hip-hop music in the late '70s. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the show's soundtrack is dense, complex and delightful.

A conversation with novelist Jay McInerney about finding fame as a young man, writing, New York City, and his new novel Bright, Precious Days about marriage, fidelity and middle age.

Stephanie Danler drew on her own experiences to write her novel about a young woman working at an upscale restaurant in New York. "It's so physically punishing," she says of her work as a server.

In Hanya Yanagihara's deeply moving novel, college friends rise, lose their bearings, fall in love, squabble and wrestle with life's tragedies in New York City.

While writing his new book, historian Eric Foner relied on a recently discovered record of slaves' escapes. He says the documents paint a "revealing picture" of life on the Underground Railroad.

Leonard S. Bernstein — the writer, not the composer — once owned and managed a garment factory. In his first work of fiction the octogenarian crafts quaint parables about the comic futility of life.

In the '70s, novelist Lawrence Block created New York private investigator Matthew Scudder who chases extreme bad guys. Liam Neeson now plays the character the new grisly film directed by Scott Frank.

Ben Lerner's new novel is about a writer who gets an advance for a second work of fiction, is diagnosed with an aortic heart valve problem and agrees to be the sperm donor for a close friend.