Your Hometown - Podcast
Your Hometown is an innovative new live event and podcast series conceived and hosted by historian Kevin Burke. The first season of this audio offering, a co-presentation between Kevin Burke Productions and MCNY, focuses on New York City as a hometown and features prominent New Yorkers—representing a range of backgrounds, neighborhoods, and industries—sharing never-before-heard details of their formative years growing up in and around the five boroughs.
The bi-weekly podcast series will launch in tandem virtual conversations that go behind-the-scenes of the podcast and continue the conversation with select guests. Click here to view upcoming events.
Ep. 1: Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Part 1 – Hollis, Queens
In the first of a two-part interview of Your Hometown, Kevin Burke speaks with Darryl McDaniels, the legendary hip-hop artist from Hollis, Queens, where he and his two friends formed one of the truly pioneering groups in American music: Run-DMC.
Ep. 2: Darryl “DMC” McDaniels 2 – Hollis, Queens
This is part 2 of a “double-album” interview with Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, who grew up in Hollis, Queens in the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, where he became one of three founding members of the Hall of Fame hip-hop group, Run-DMC.
Ep. 3 Richard Price – Parkside Houses, The Bronx
Richard Price is a writer’s writer, with novels that include The Wanderers, Clockers, Freedomland, and Lush Life. He’s also collaborated on such landmark television series as HBO’s The Wire, The Night Of, The Deuce, and The Outsider.
Ep. 4 Sigourney Weaver – Manhattan
Sigourney Weaver is one of the greatest movie stars of all time, and many of us think of her as the tough, no-nonsense screen heroines she has played in films from Alien to Avatar.
Ep. 5 Lynn Nottage – Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
Lynn Nottage is the first woman ever to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, and she’s one of the most important voices writing for the stage and screen today, with works that include Infinite Apparel, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Ruined, Sweat, and MJ: The Musical, an upcoming show on the life of Michael Jackson.
Ep. 6 Danielle Guizio – New Jersey/Manhattan
In an industry where most startups go up, down, and disappear, Danielle Guizio is a New York-based fashion designer on Forbes’s 30 under 30 list. If you think of the biggest celebrities on the style pages today, you’re likely to find a photo of them wearing her designs.
Ep. 7 Neil deGrasse Tyson – Riverdale, the Bronx
In this episode of Your Hometown, we turn a giant lens on the galaxy of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s childhood to explore the origins of his mission to make science fun and intelligible to the public.
Ep. 8 Maria Bartiromo – Dyker Heights/Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
Maria Bartiromo anchors three different shows on the Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel and was the first TV reporter to broadcast live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She doesn’t come from the world of CEOs, however.
Ep. 9 Al Sharpton – Brownsville, Brooklyn / Hollis, Queens
Our guest is the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose activism has made him a fixture in the press for decades in his hometown of New York City. Rev. Sharpton explains to Kevin Burke in this rare interview that there’s a traumatic incident that happened to him a long time ago.
Ep. 10 Sherrilyn Ifill – Jamaica, Queens
Sherrilyn Ifill walks into court with history behind her as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund. It’s the legal arm of the civil rights movement, and Sherrilyn is in its vanguard.
Ep. 11 Suzanne Vega – East Harlem and the Upper West Side, Manhattan
Suzanne Vega is that rare singer-songwriter whose work becomes part of the soundtrack of their hometown -- in her case, New York City. In this episode, Suzanne illuminates her childhood in East Harlem and the Upper West Side in the 1970s and how her experiences of the city, inside and out, flow through her work, even as she embraces the freedom to write from different perspectives.
Ep. 12. Sonia Manzano Pt. 1 – the South Bronx
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.
Ep. 13 Sonia Manzano Part 2 – The South Bronx
Emmy-winning writer and actress Sonia Manzano explains how she got from the Bronx to Sesame Street and lived a second childhood as an adult with experiences to share.
Ep. 14. Chef Priyanka Naik – Staten Island
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.
Ep. 15. David Johansen Pt. 1 – Staten Island
In part one of this epic two-part interview, David Johansen 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.
Ep. 16. David Johansen Pt. 2 – Staten Island
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.
Ep. 17. Tiffany Cabán – Queens
In this interview, host Kevin Burke talks with Tiffany Cabán 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.
Ep. 18. Sewell Chan – Queens
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.
Ep. 19. Glenn Ligon – Bronx
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.SUPPORT
Your Hometown is made possible in part with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support provided by Joan K. Davidson (The J.M. Kaplan Fund), Rudolph Rauch/Lanegate Foundation, Lori and John Berisford, Claudette Mayer, Paul Sperry, Victoria F. Morris, Peter M. Wolf, Kenneth J. Halpern, the Newburgh Institute, David Phelps Hamar, and an anonymous donor.
FUTURE GUESTS
- David Johansen
- Tiffany Caban
- Sewell Chan
- Glenn Ligon
- Pamela Talese
And others
