Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know

Juan Manuel Benítez
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Politics

"Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know" is a New York City-based interview podcast that gets inside the minds of the people shaping our world - from rising political heavyweights to policy architects to cultural influencers. Drawing on more than two decades of reporting experience on television and radio, and on his role as Columbia University’s Professor of Local Journalism, host Juan Manuel Benítez combines sharp policy questions with unexpected personal curiosity, exploring not just what his guests think, but how they think. Each conversation reveals the books, music, experiences, and obsessions that drive decision-makers, creating intimate portraits of public figures that satisfy both news junkies and anyone curious about the human side of power. It's journalism that remembers people are people first.

  1. 3d ago

    Do We Need to Walk Around With Our Passports? — Grace Bonilla on Fear in New York

    For the first time in her life, Grace Bonilla and her family found themselves discussing whether they needed to walk around New York City with their passports. Bonilla, president and CEO of United Way of New York City and the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, says that fear is transforming daily life across immigrant communities. This is the fourth interview in Season 3’s “New Yorkers on a Changing America” series. Subscribe on YouTube and follow the show on Substack, Spotify and Apple Podcasts now so you don’t miss the rest of the series. Bonilla explains why food-pantry lines suddenly grew shorter—not because the need disappeared, but because some families were afraid to leave home. She describes New Yorkers learning that they have lost SNAP benefits only when their EBT cards stop working, the coming changes to Medicaid and the administrative maze separating eligible families from essential assistance. A Drawing on her experience leading New York City’s Human Resources Administration, Bonilla discusses what government insiders understand that advocates often don’t, why people may trust community organizations more than government agencies and how United Way’s United for Benefits Access initiative is helping New Yorkers navigate the changing rules. She also reflects on raising three sons during an affordability crisis, the future of New York’s public-health system and the Queens places that remind her why she still believes in the city. Also, some advice for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. ABOUT GRACE BONILLA Grace Bonilla — United Way of New York City https://unitedwaynyc.org/board/grace/ United Way of New York City https://unitedwaynyc.org/ HELP AND RESOURCES MENTIONED United for Benefits Access https://unitedwaynyc.org/uba/ United for Benefits Access — SNAP Resources Hub https://unitedwaynyc.org/uba/snap/ NYC Human Resources Administration — SNAP information https://www.nyc.gov/site/hra/help/snap-benefits-food-program.page Find a New York City food pantry or community kitchen https://finder.nyc.gov/foodhelp/ Official information about upcoming Medicaid eligibility changes https://www.medicaid.gov/renew-info WHAT SHE’S READING “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism” — Stephen Breyer https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Reading-the-Constitution/Stephen-Breyer/9781668021545 PLACES SHE MENTIONS Rufus King Park in Jamaica, Queens https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/rufus-king-park Queens County Farm Museum https://www.queensfarm.org/ “Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know” — Season 3: New Yorkers on a Changing America. Subscribe on YouTube and follow on Substack, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  2. Sep 25

    Why Ric Burns Left Donald Trump Out of His Latest New York Films

    Donald Trump is not in Ric Burns's new film about New York. That was a decision. When Burns floated interviewing him, an institutional partner went "thin-lipped and ashen-faced" He explains why he left the president out, and why Trump is in the film anyway, as "a constant rumbling undertow." Burns has been making New York: A Documentary Film since the early 1990s. The first episodes aired in 1999; he was in the middle of a radio interview about the next two when the planes hit on September 11th. Episode eight arrived in 2003. Then nothing for twenty-three years. The last two premiered this week on PBS. We go through the mayors: Bloomberg is the towering figure of the new films — Burns interviewed him once, in 2013, and says he refused to sit down again; de Blasio gets accolades for his early accomplishments; Adams is a different story. Born in Baltimore and raised in Ann Arbor, Burns recounts the day he finally felt like a New Yorker. He loves the city. And it shows. The films: both new episodes are streaming at pbs.org and on the PBS app. More at Steeplechase Films. What he's reading: Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land — Robert Crawford (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know — Season 3: New Yorkers on a Changing America. Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Substack, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  3. Sep 18

    Maggie Haberman was in the room when Trump ranked himself above Hitler

    DescriptionDonald Trump held up a two-page memo and read it aloud: he was the most powerful person who had ever walked the planet — more powerful than Napoleon, Alexander, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Mao, Hitler. He was not making a moral argument. He was making a ranking. Haberman is White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for CNN, and co-author with Jonathan Swan of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Last week the president called her, among other things, a reporter who knows less about him than anyone else on the beat. We talk about being insulted by name, why she rejects the word "access," what genuinely surprised her across a thousand-plus interviews, including a Republican Congress she says is behaving like an arm of the executive branch. Then the New York half: a father who covered City Hall for the Times and a mother in public relations, a childhood spent partly in the City Hall pressroom, and why the current White House reminds her of the Donald Manes and Meade Esposito era of municipal government. And she settles something: her mother never worked with Donald Trump, whatever the internet says. What she's reading: I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir — Keith McNally (Gallery Books) American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump — Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark (Scribner) Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know — Season 3: New Yorkers on a Changing America. Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Substack, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  4. Sep 11

    Why Is Mamdani Everywhere? Anya Schiffrin on the Mayor's Army of Influencers

    Mayor Zohran Mamdani is on your taxi screen, on the Wi-Fi kiosk, in your feed. Anya Schiffrin spent the summer figuring out why. Schiffrin, who teaches at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, led a Tow Center team that identified 189 influencers with ties to the administration — and found that the mayor's office runs a Signal group with more than 200 content creators on it, feeding them talking points the way press offices once fed reporters press releases. We talk about who does get paid, what they're required to disclose, whether a Signal group is compatible with New York's record-keeping laws, and what happens to a news business already losing the ad money. Then Anya tells the other story: growing up on the Upper West Side between a father rescued from occupied France by Varian Fry and a mother who left Spain in 1939 — and what happened at the family kitchen table in 1988, when her father was pushed out of Pantheon Books. It's why she's spent a career studying media capture, long before anyone called it that. Anya's summer reading list: The Director — Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin (Simon & Schuster) Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era — Susan Neiman (W. W. Norton) Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells — ed. Alfreda M. Duster (University of Chicago Press) London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth — Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday) Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know — Season 3: New Yorkers on a Changing America. Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Substack, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  5. May 14

    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

  6. May 5

    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 by Roberto Bolaño The book he recommends about the Korean American experience: Human Acts 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 — including the reconstructed Temple of Dendur. "It's the one that everyone visits when they come to New York."

  7. Apr 28

    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 by Liza Minnelli with Michael Feinstein Show pick: Liberation by Bess Wohl, directed by Whitney White

  8. Apr 21

    "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 B******t Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn — NYPL catalog.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

"Juan Manuel Benítez Wants to Know" is a New York City-based interview podcast that gets inside the minds of the people shaping our world - from rising political heavyweights to policy architects to cultural influencers. Drawing on more than two decades of reporting experience on television and radio, and on his role as Columbia University’s Professor of Local Journalism, host Juan Manuel Benítez combines sharp policy questions with unexpected personal curiosity, exploring not just what his guests think, but how they think. Each conversation reveals the books, music, experiences, and obsessions that drive decision-makers, creating intimate portraits of public figures that satisfy both news junkies and anyone curious about the human side of power. It's journalism that remembers people are people first.

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