Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter for the WNYC Race & Justice Unit who focuses on issues of race and bias in our region. His reporting also tackles the topics of immigration, faith, and inequality. Arun serves as the regular fill-in host of the station's "U.S. of Anxiety" program.
Arun was the creator and host of Micropolis, a series about race and identity. He is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, On the Media and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Salon. He also frequently serves as an emcee and moderator of panel discussions on race, religion, and identity issues and has been a guest host of NPR's "Fresh Air." He lives with his family in Queens.
Find Arun's latest reporting on Gothamist.
Arun Venugopal appears in the following:
On Coney Island, sword swallower and kitsch square off against casino developer
Friday, March 28, 2025
Longtime sword swallower and strongman Adam Rinn recently presided over a mock funeral for Coney Island, which he says is threatened by a casino proposal.
Report finds that middle-income New Yorkers are the new face of eviction in the city
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Moderate-income New Yorkers are increasingly becoming the face of eviction in the city. That’s according to a new report from the Community Service Society of New York, which found th...
Early COVID Memories
Monday, March 10, 2025
Five years ago this month, the pandemic arrived in New York. The city declared a state of emergency, and began a series of shutdowns. We'll mark this anniversary on the show all week ...
New York City, 5 years after Covid
Sunday, March 09, 2025
The New York City area is still grappling with the effects of the COVID pandemic, five years after it first shut down the city. While many are back at their jobs five days a week, som...
Rikers Island, a present-day protest and a link to NYC’s ‘Kidnapping Club’ past
Friday, February 28, 2025
Nearly 200 years ago, Richard Riker — a powerful judge whose family the island is named after — was at the center of a network that included city officials, police officers and others...
Life after a crackdown on sex work along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Each night, Tsomo Dasel, the owner of Himalayan Yak restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, lets some of her staff leave work hours before closing. The measure is protective: Most o...
As the migrant 'crisis' recedes in NYC, criticism of the city stands its ground
Monday, October 21, 2024
The Brooklyn Community Board 1 meeting was a sleepy affair, almost entirely populated by members of the board, city officials and police officers who were all on hand to discuss the s...
NY skies, schools, government: Where Turkish interests pressed genocide denials.
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
New York City Mayor Eric Adams' indictment last month on charges he sold his office for favors, including silence about the Armenian genocide, is hardly the first time Turkish interes...
White House move spells doom for migrant program that's aided untold numbers in NY
Tuesday, October 08, 2024
The Biden administration said it would allow the program benefitting Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to lapse.
Thanks, office workers: Foot traffic in Manhattan nears pre-COVID levels, report says
Wednesday, September 04, 2024
Moritz Masberg, an attorney in Midtown, shows up to his Sixth Avenue office every day, along with about a third of his coworkers. He says he senses a promising trend.“The lunch places...
Eric Garner’s ‘I can’t breathe’ continues to echo across NYC and the world 10 years after his death
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
His dying declaration in Staten Island helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement, but experts say the push for police reform has since stalled.
New Yorkers in ‘disbelief’ over Hurricane Beryl’s toll. Here’s how to help.
Monday, July 08, 2024
Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have ties to island nations slammed by Beryl.
At a Queens school, migrant kids gain melodies, and respite from trauma
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
The Academy for New Americans in Astoria creates a welcoming musical home for new arrivals.
A very noncorporate project floated in Queens where Amazon wanted ‘HQ2’
Thursday, June 20, 2024
A community land trust wants to turn a city-owned building in Long Island City into a shared, community space, and put it out of reach of for-profit developers.
On Jackson Heights’ open street, NYC’s ‘moped crisis’ is in full throttle
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Queens neighbors, voicing concerns heard across the five boroughs, say they worry about being struck by e-bikes and other two-wheeled, motorized vehicles.
Key Queens lawmaker says she will formally oppose Citi Field-area casino
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Sen. Jessica Ramos says the "vast majority" of the project’s neighbors are against it.
Inside CUNY's antisemitism probe: Campus talks, professors, students under scrutiny
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the investigation in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.
Inside a Brooklyn kitchen that trains migrants for restaurant jobs, lifting an industry
Friday, May 10, 2024
A kitchen in Brooklyn is feeding the aspirations of new migrants in New York and the needs of the restaurant industry as well.
A hotel row in Queens is getting a new look. New affordable housing is part of the mix.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
The former JFK Hilton is being transformed into affordable housing; project admirers wish there were more projects like it.
Churches, synagogues, mosques could help NYC shelter migrants
Friday, December 08, 2023
Talks are progressing on a plan to pay houses of worship to provide sanctuary to migrants.
