Glenn Ligon is a renowned artist who gives us new ways of seeing American history, literature, and society. How can we see him better through the lens of childhood? In this episode of Your Hometown, Glenn speaks with Kevin Burke about his experiences growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 70s, including his hour-and-a-half commute each way to Walden, the private school he attended on the Upper West Side from the first grade on. His mother made going to Walden possible for Glenn and his brother, and it involved sacrifices and risks. A commute is one thing. Where it can lead, another.

How would this change the landscape for Glenn and his family? Where would Glenn most feel at home, outside and inside, in his New York? Where would he feel safe, or watched, or like a stranger? And how does a city like New York, with its layer upon layer of construction, class, and culture, define not just the literal paths we take growing up, but the existential ones?

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

“Early 1970s New York Subway” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16a6SKjwZM

“Zora Neale Hurston '28 Sings Halihmuhfack” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0xmfgcK3w

“James Baldwin: Un Étranger dans le Village" (1962) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hPEaxeJWZQ

James Baldwin on Love and Sexuality from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZPmT3lk6cU

Clip from "The Naked Civil Servant" (1975) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlxn3F2tIWg

Music

Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump (1989)

Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting (1974)

Mahalia Jackson - Silent Night (1962)

Cool Change - Streets of The Bronx (1993)

Cher - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (1971)

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins - I Put A Spell on You (1956)

Artwork

Charlotte Yiu and Nick Gregg

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Special Thanks

Jonah Groeneboer and Lisa Koli at Glenn Ligon Studio; and Tate Dougherty and the team at Hauser & Wirth

This is the story of an “inquiring mind” who happens to be a journalist. Sewell Chan is the new editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. But before his move to Austin, and before his previous roles at the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, he was a kid growing up in an immigrant family in the outer boroughs of New York City, where his father drove a taxicab. Both his parents had seen a lot in their lives – but said little. Their New York was the New York of work, of their community, and of striving for a quiet, peaceful place to live, which ended up being in Queens. Yet when you meet Sewell, it's surprising that he came from such a quiet place, because he’s so engaged with the world, with history, with how people live and how things work. In this episode, Kevin Burke talks with Sewell about his coming-of-age years in New York, the meaning of home, and what the windows and doors were from where his family lived out to the larger world.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

WPIX Special Report: Blackout '77-City of Darkness from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0LV0zWFsVE

Broadway's Lost Treasures - Me and My Girl from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swX0qlHRDV0

Dolora Zajick - Amneris - AIDA - MET 1989 from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNN0VqaSlE

Bill Clinton 1992 DNC Acceptance Speech from https://www.c-span.org/video/?27166-1/bill-clinton-1992-acceptance-speech

1998 Harvard Commencement from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9Uj6nq4Y4

Times’s City Room Advertisement from  https://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/1194817108917/a-changing-metropolis.html

Music

Frank Sinatra - New York, New York (1980)

Ella Fitzgerald - Manhattan (1965)

Willie Nelson - Texas on a Saturday Night (1985)

Illustration

Charlotte Yiu

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Tiffany Cabán captured national headlines when she came within a hair’s breadth of winning the primary for district attorney in her hometown of Queens, New York, in 2019. It was an audacious move: a young, out-of-nowhere candidate running in her home borough against the establishment on a platform calling for major changes to the system. Snatching a moral victory from the jaws of electoral defeat, Tiffany kept speaking out. Two years later, she’s just won a seat on the New York City Council, where she will have a voice in the debate about what kind of hometown New York wants to be.

In this interview, host Kevin Burke talks with Tiffany about her coming-of-age story and what she experienced back there that made her someone who gets up and chooses to march on the front lines, has the skills to organize – and then has the fire in her soul to throw her whole being into fighting for what she believes in. This is a show about diving down to the first act in the life of a person – in this case, a person who sees something and is moved to do something about it. It’s a search for the people in her life who saw her and did something, and how she learned to stand up for herself and for others.

In a larger sense, it’s also about grace—the kind of mercy and compassionate understanding we find ourselves asking for and being asked to give in our lives—and whether that kind of grace, born of experience, can become the foundation for how we relate to each other.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

“Tiffany Cabán @ Rally for Bernie Sanders” from https://www.c-span.org/video/?465364-1/representative-ocasio-cortez-endorses-bernie-sanders-president

"Bernie Williams singles in 11th for 4-3 walk-off win” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iErizZHfs_U

“1010 WINS AM and CNN on Sept. 11” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dgKUsu-Ls

Audience footage of 2019 Tiffany Cabán campaign election party via @Samynemir on Twitter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1144077394933932033

Illustration

Charlotte Yiu

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

David Johansen is one of the all-time front men in music and an artist who keeps changing the game – not by degrees but by solar systems. In the 1980s, he had everyone feeling “Hot, Hot, Hot” as Buster Poindexter. Then he showed up as the taxi-driving Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray film Scrooged. Before all this, he was the glammed-up lead singer of The New York Dolls, the mythic rock band of the downtown NYC scene of the 1970s. Hard rock, punk rock, glam rock, heavy metal – the Dolls sit atop a lot of family trees. To this day, whatever room he walks into, from loft spaces to the swanky Café Carlyle, David Johansen owns it.

In part one of this epic two-part interview, David talks with host Kevin Burke about coming of age on Staten Island in the 1950s and ’60s, a kid riding bikes, buying and listening to records, going to Catholic School, joining a band, and graduating from high school at the height of the Vietnam War. How did he get from the house his grandfather built on the North Shore to the pulsating East Village at the dawn of an era he’d help define? This is the origin story of a true original.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

All In The Family Opening Theme (1971)

“Horn Battle in New York - Carnival Miracle vs Harbor Tug” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeAJbDSITAk

“Traditional Latin Catholic Mass Easter Sunday” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AOvStZS64

Clip from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1961) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5yvMExqKNA

“Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” From my Fair Lady (1964)

Murray the K at the Brooklyn Fox from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHu9Y0zI0t0

Bob Dylan, talking on the radio, 1966, 26th January, 1966 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG1pITY_m8E

Music:

Buster Poindexter - Hot Hot Hot (1987)

New York Dolls - Jet Boy (1973)

David Johansen- Heart of Gold (1987)

David Johansen - Animals Medley (live) (1982) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zc-DQiI8tA

Enrique Caruso - Vesti La Giuba, Pagliacci (1907)

David Johansen - Big City (1979)

David Johansen And The Harry Smiths - Well, I’ve Been to Memphis (2000)

Howlin’ Wolf - Tail Dragger (1969)

Robert Preston - “Ya Got Trouble” from the Music Man Soundtrack (1962)

The Platters - The Great Pretender (1960)

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - Sock it to Me, Baby (1967)

The Fantastic Johnny C - Boogaloo Down Broadway (1967)

Wilson Pickett - In The Midnight Hour (1965)

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis (1973)

Janis Joplin - Bye Bye Baby (1967)

New York Dolls - Lonely Planet Boy (1973) 

Illustration

Nick Gregg

Part two of David Johansen’s Your Hometown episode is the portrait of an artist in the process of becoming. If Staten Island was the setting of David’s coming of age, Manhattan would him into his next act. Hear David talk with host Kevin Burke about living in the East Village, the early days of the New York Dolls, the birth of Buster Poindexter, and performing at the Café Carlyle. David’s hometown journey is an invitation to dive into what it means to be an artist and to find what in their origins stories is knowable and what remains enigmatic – even to them – as they continue looking around the corner, following their instincts and their muses.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

Oh Madeline “Play Crystal For Me” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UlhfUzsu6A&t=1s

All Dolled Up: A New York Dolls Story Found Tapes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92HhdXuqc4g

New York Dolls footage Local TV Story, 1973 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGnZ4RsUpBE

Man's Country New York Gay Bathhouse commercial from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er1Ri3qKavw

From Hot, Hot, Hot to Camelot, Buster Poindexter Plays Café Carlyle from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxULtuLMNiI

Music

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis (1973)

Prince Buster - Enjoy Yourself (1968)

New York Dolls - Bad Girl (Demo) (1972)

“Cabaret in the Sky” (1974) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNTN1gpuz38

David Johansen - In Style (1979)

"Wilkommen" from Cabaret (1972)

New York Dolls - Stranded in the Jungle (1973)

Buster Poindexter- Whadaya Want (1987)

Edvard Grieg Impromptu, EG 175 (1896)

David Johansen - Mara Dreams the Moongate of Uncommon Beauty (2007)

David Johansen - Piece of My Heart from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUxAIMvuqQk (2016)

David Johansen & Larry Salzman - James Alley Blues (2005)

Illustration

Charlotte Yiu

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Chef Priyanka Naik is a self-taught vegan cook, Food Network champion, social media influencer, and author of the cookbook, The Modern Tiffin. In this episode, host Kevin Burke talks to Priyanka about her New York story. How did growing up on the South Shore of Staten Island as the daughter of immigrant parents shape her senses—and her sense of home and the world. What about being a kid on Staten Island drew Priyanka closer to her roots in India? What sparked her passion for taking her family’s traditional recipes and putting her own modern spin on them? And what is the deeper source of her creativity, drive, and sense of daring to put herself “out there” in print and on camera as a virtual one-woman show?

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from her website

https://www.chefpriyanka.com/receiving-the-1st-copy-of-my-debut-cookbook-the-modern-tiffin/

Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSZZscsDDa7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSQWMGOj5gn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Clip from CNN broadcast announcement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuHfSo5YI_M

Clip from Throwdown with Bobby Flay (2020)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVp9QteuveQ

CNN coverage from September 11, 2001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VveRmJpFW6o

Music

Billy Joel, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” – The Stranger (1977)

Illustration

Nick Gregg

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Recommended Reading

Priyanka Naik, The Modern Tiffin (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

Chef Priyanka’s website: https://www.chefpriyanka.com/

Emmy-winning writer and actress Sonia Manzano, who played “Maria” on Sesame Street for more than 40 years, talks to host Kevin Burke about growing up in the South Bronx and how she draws on the “love and chaos” of her childhood to teach children—something she’s still doing through her new animated series for PBS Kids, Alma’s Way. 

Filmed in Manhattan and Queens, Sesame Street wasn’t that far from Sonia’s own hometown in New York City. Sesame Street is a fictional place that evokes city life from the stoop to the subway and apartments above stores. But Sonia grew up in the very real place of the South Bronx—most vividly on Third Avenue near Crotona Park. How different was Sonia’s New York from the one she helped to create as Maria? On our TVs, Sonia gave us something we needed: a feeling of love and safety, empathy and imagination. Where did she find these things when she was a kid?

This is a two-part episode. In the first part, Sonia takes us from the world of Sesame Street—actually, her audition—back to her beginnings in the South Bronx. And in part two, she explains how she got from the Bronx to Sesame Street and lived a second childhood as an adult with experiences to share. So, “come and play” and “sweep the clouds away” – by listening to one of the truest teachers you’ll find in New York or any hometown.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

Sesame Street: Show Open Season One

Clip from One Touch of Venus (1948)

“Whistling” Sound from Opening Scene of West Side Story (1961).

Final Scene from West Side Story (1961).

Music

Sesame Street: “I Can Remember (Bread, Milk, Butter)”

“Guajira Guantamanera” by Josiéto Fernandez (1929)

“Esta Navidad”: Puerto Rican Christmas Song – Unspecified: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings / Folkways Records (1958) 

“Tonight – Quintet” from West Side Story (1961)

“Tonight” from West Side Story (1961)

Illustration

Nick Gregg

Recommended Viewing

Alma’s Way and Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Recommended Reading

Sonia Manzano, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx

Special thanks

Gloria Bonelli

Sonia Manzano is one of the most influential voices in the history of public television. For more than 40 years, she was our neighbor, Maria, on Sesame Street, and she continues to connect her experiences and imagination through her new show for PBS Kids, Alma’s Way. In Part Two of her Your Hometown episode, she talks with host Kevin Burke about how she made her way from her coming of age in the South Bronx to Sesame Street and how the real and fictional maps of those neighborhoods – one real, one imaginary – overlapped inside of her and in the TV worlds she created for us. As a magical storyteller, Sonia knows just where to go in her memories for that powerful combination of laughter amid pathos – the funny in the sad, the lessons in the every-day.

Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.

Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.

Archival

Chesterfield Cigarettes Kinescope Tobacco Commercial from the Perry Como Show 

Father Knows Best: “Bud Takes Up The Dance” – Season 1, Episode 1 (1954)

Louis Prima & Keely Smith – “Don't Worry 'Bout Me”

Little Rascals: Our Gang of Follies of 1938

Original Godspell Cast on the Today Show

Godspell Cast performs at the Tony Awards (1972)

Sesame Street: Show Open Season One

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 0832 (1975)

Classic Sesame Street: “Maria’s Interruptions”

Classic Sesame Street: "Maria's Present for David”

Classic Sesame Street: "Maria Discusses Her Jobs”

Classic Sesame Street: "Mr. Hooper Helps Gordon”

Sesame Street Unpaved: "Mr. Hooper's Death”

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 2615 (1989)

Clip from Sesame Street Episode 3658 (1997)

Music

“A Boy Like That” from West Side Story (1961)

Nina Simone, “Feeling Good” (1965)

“America” from West Side Story (1961)

“Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago (1996 Broadway Revival Cast)

"Just My Imagination" - The Temptations (1971) 

Illustration

Tunshore Longe

Poem

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Recommended Viewing

Alma’s Way and Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Recommended Reading

Sonia Manzano, Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos