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.”