'Metro,' the Podcast That Tells Stories of This New York Moment

Sarah Koenig, from "Serial" and "This American Life," is debuting an audio show that features New York Times Metro reporters.

Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll find out about a new podcast that's all about New York. We'll also get details on a poll that put Gov. Kathy Hochul comfortably ahead of her Republican challenger.

You might recognize Sarah Koenig's voice from the public radio program "This American Life" and the investigative podcast "Serial." Now she and her microphone have zeroed in on New York City alongside some of my fellow reporters for a biweekly audio show, "Metro With Sarah Koenig."

The first two episodes debuted today, taking listeners to places like Grand Central Terminal -- to meet a man who polishes railings, doors and ticket windows that get smeared and smudged -- and to the diamond district, where people buy ultraluxury watches that cost as much as some cars. You can find the show on your podcast apps. New episodes will be released every other week, on Thursdays.

I talked with Sarah about why this is the moment for a program about New York and what we can expect to hear on "Metro," which comes from Serial Productions and The New York Times.

In the first episode, you say you want to do stories that make New York relevant no matter where you live. So is this going to be "This New York Life"?

Basically it is, because what we do, and what we do best, is stories with character and plot.

The thing that we are really trying to convey in the first episode is this is just about people. They happen to be living in New York, they're in a New York context, but they're just people struggling with the same things that we all struggle with no matter where we live in this country. You don't have to know about New York or be deep into New York's politics or policies to get it.

How personal will the show be? I mean, you were born in New York. You've lived in and around the city. Is this going to be Sarah Koenig's New York?

I wouldn't say it's Sarah Koenig's New York, actually.

I would say that it is my curiosity about New York, though. That, just over the months since we've started making stories, has been so fun and interesting -- learning about New York more than in a surface way. I feel like I don't know that much about New York in some ways.

But, yeah, I wouldn't say it's Sarah Koenig's New York. Like, it's me asking a lot of questions, trying to learn.

In "Serial," we were hanging on for either what was new or would happen next. Are you bringing that approach to Metro? In other words, will there be a through line from episode to episode?

No, this is individual episodes that stand alone. Stand-alone stories. They're in no way connected.

With "Serial," you created, basically, the template for true crime in a podcast. Obviously, crime is an issue in New York. We talk about it all the time, even when it doesn't happen to us personally. But that's not your focus the way it was on "Serial."

No.

Are you going to do an episode on crime?

You know, we're not really thinking about stories in so much of a topical way.

It's more like, if there is a narrative story about crime that happens, we'll be interested in that, but we're not going to just do a story on crime in New York as a topic. We need a story with a beginning, middle and end, with a central question, either a point someone's trying to make or a question we have that we don't understand.

That said, we want to be, again, relevant to what is happening actually in New York. So we're not ignoring politics or the elections or -- or crime or housing. But we're not a news show.

There was a moment in one episode when you said that the Knicks had won the N.B.A. championship for the first time since 1973 and that the city that produced Wall Street, junk bonds and Donald Trump now has a mayor who's a democratic socialist. What do you think is going on in New York?

I can say what I'm interested in watching for. But I am not billing myself as an expert on New York, and I want to be very careful that I'm not, like, prognosticating about New York.

I do think something is coming to a head.

I think New York tends to tends to see national feelings play out earlier than a lot of the country. And so it does feel to me like something is happening with the divide between being able to live comfortably in America and struggling like crazy and suffering.

That gap, it's not tenable. And it feels like New York is starting to grapple with that in a real way right now.

Weather

Look for sunny skies with a high near 67. Expect clear skies tonight with a low around 49.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Nov. 1 (All Saints' Day).

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I was eventually released and I was told I was being given a warning, that my actions were illegal and wrong, and that we had created a public disturbance and gone where we weren't supposed to go." -- Brad Lander, a Democrat running for a House seat from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, who was detained by the Israeli military in the West Bank. He was part of an international delegation helping to harvest olives alongside Palestinian farmers. He was released after about three hours.

The latest New York news

* Lost in a library book: When a Brooklyn woman dropped off a daughter's library book at a Bookmobile, she didn't realize that 100-year-old photos that had survived the Holocaust had been slipped in to flatten them out after they got damp. The photos went on a wild journey through the Brooklyn Public Library system.

* Emergency response times: The city comptroller found that it now takes 41.2 percent longer for ambulances to respond to life-threatening emergencies than it did a decade ago, and more than twice as long for non-life-threatening emergencies.

* Parents charged in daughter's death: A Bronx couple was charged with starving their 3-year-old daughter to death and neglecting her twin brother, who was hospitalized for severe malnutrition.

* The many lives of Cardi B: A shape-shifter with talent and personality to spare, Belcalis Almánzar, famously known as Cardi B -- "a regula, degula, shmegula girl from the Bronx," as she describes herself -- keeps finding new ways to express herself.

Hochul leads Blakeman by 14 points in poll

With early voting beginning on Saturday and Election Day 11 days away, Gov. Kathy Hochul is running well ahead of her Republican challenger, according to a new statewide poll.

The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, put Hochul ahead by 14 percentage points among likely voters, with 55 percent of the vote, to 41 percent for Bruce Blakeman, the Republican.

Even so, likely voters signaled ambivalence about Hochul's performance as she seeks her second full term. Just 49 percent said they approved of the job she has done, while 45 percent expressed disapproval.

She leads Blakeman by nearly 50 percentage points in New York City. But her campaign advisers have been concerned about whether voters in the city will bother to show up, given that few competitive contests are on the ballot. Her advisers are betting that Mayor Zohran Mamdani -- who has already recorded a social media spot for Hochul and is expected to campaign for her in the coming days -- can motivate voters who might otherwise sit this one out.

Hochul's own ads will take aim at Blakeman's connections to President Trump, who remains deeply unpopular across the state. Some 60 percent of likely voters disapprove of the way he is handling his job, according to the poll, which was conducted from Oct. 15 to Oct. 19 and questioned 1,167 likely voters across the state. It has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

METROPOLITAN diary

Getting a lift

Dear Diary:

I recently met a friend and his daughter for a drink on the Upper West Side. As my friend was walking me home, we came upon a group of young people -- two men and three women -- under some building scaffolding. The men were doing pull-ups almost effortlessly.

I rushed forward.

"Hey, I read that if you're a certain age and weight you should be able to hang for a certain amount of time," I said. I had just turned 80. "Can you lift me up?"

The men obliged. Once I started to hang, my friend pulled out his phone to get a picture.

The young women began to chant: "One 1,000, two 1,000 ..."

After about 20 seconds, I asked the guys to let me down. Once I was on the ground, I asked them how they had done it so easily.

"We are Alvin Ailey dancers," they said.

-- Meredith Bernstein

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. -- J.B.