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. 10h ago

    Tom DiNapoli Controls $295 Billion. Four in Ten Voters Still Don’t Know Him

    New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has held the office since 2007 and is now seeking a fifth full term. In that time, the state pension fund under his stewardship has grown to a record $295 billion. But after nearly two decades in office, does his tenure represent experience and stability—or an institution that has become too quiet and too slow? DiNapoli joins Juan Manuel Benítez to defend his record and explain what New York’s comptroller can—and cannot—do. They discuss audits that uncovered an undercount of COVID-19 nursing-home deaths, mishandled housing-discrimination complaints and weaknesses in Medicaid oversight, as well as investigations that DiNapoli says have led to more than 400 arrests and the recovery of roughly $150 million. They also examine campaign contributions from attorneys at firms that perform pension-related work, the ethical boundaries governing those relationships and how DiNapoli decides when New York’s pension fund should restrict or divest from an investment. The conversation turns to the fund’s positions on climate change, firearms, private prisons, Russia and Israel—and why DiNapoli rejects calls to use its investments to take a position on the war in Gaza. DiNapoli also reflects on winning his first election to a school board at 18, casting his first-ever vote for himself, growing up as a Democrat in a Republican family and spending four decades in public office. Topics include: Whether nearly 20 years in office amounts to expertise or complacencyThe limits of the comptroller’s auditing and enforcement powersMedicaid waste, fraud and oversightCampaign contributions and pension-related businessClimate risk and politically sensitive investmentsIsrael, Gaza and the boundaries of pension-fund policyDiNapoli’s political beginnings and what comes after another termWhy he believes Democrats struggle to remain unifiedBook mentioned: Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician by James M. Bradley — a biography of New York’s Martin Van Buren, the eighth U.S. president and one of the principal architects of the modern party system.

  2. Oct 16

    “Mamdani Played Trump Like a Fiddle”: J.C. Polanco on Leaving the GOP

    J.C. Polanco has plenty of criticism for Zohran Mamdani. But he also thinks the mayor “played President Trump like a fiddle.” The former Republican candidate for New York City public advocate joins Juan Manuel Benítez for a candid conversation about political loyalty, the cost of leaving your party, and what happens when neither side feels like home. A son of Dominican immigrants who grew up in the Bronx, Polanco explains why he once embraced Republican politics—and why Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants helped drive him away. Now an independent, he argues that Republicans have surrendered their responsibility to check presidential power, while sharply challenging the Democratic Socialists of America and Mamdani’s vision for New York. We discuss: • Why Polanco supported Kamala Harris—and wants a Democratic Congress to check Trump. • How Trump’s embrace of Mamdani complicated Republicans’ campaign against the mayor. • Kathy Hochul, Bruce Blakeman, and the independent voters both need. • How growing up in the Bronx shaped Polanco’s views on crime, opportunity, and government. • City-run grocery stores, immigrant-owned bodegas, and our disagreement over competition. • What Mamdani gets right—and Polanco’s criticism of his relationship with the press. • Why the former NYC Board of Elections president defends the city’s election system. Plus: the books he’s reading, the book he’s trying to write, and the toy poodle competing for his attention. Recorded October 14, 2026. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 🎥 NY1’s full New York governor’s debate — Kathy Hochul and Bruce Blakeman face off on October 13, 2026: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2026/10/13/full-debate--kathy-hochul--bruce-blakeman-spar-off-in-gubernatorial-debate 🎙️ The New York Editorial Board live: “Mayor Mamdani’s First 200 Days and What Comes Next” — the conversation J.C. references, featuring Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas and fellow NYEB members. Recorded at The Greene Space with ABNY on July 23, 2026. Listen and read the transcript: https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/mayor-mamdanis-first-200-days-and GUEST & READING 🎙️ Centered with J.C. Polanco: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/centered-with-j-c-polanco/id1830150435 📚 Relentless by Luis A. Miranda Jr.: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/luis-a-miranda/relentless/9780306833236/ 📚 The Dominican Republic: A National History by Frank Moya Pons: https://markuswiener.com/books/the-dominican-republic-a-national-history-second-updated-and-enlarged-edition/ SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW Subscribe for more conversations with the people shaping New York and beyond. Substack: https://juanmabenitez.substack.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@juanmanuelbeniteznyc Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/juan-manuel-ben%C3%ADtez-wants-to-know/id1837067235 If this conversation made you think, share it with someone who sees politics differently.

  3. Oct 2

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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."

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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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