LEONARD LOPATE AT LARGE

Join Leonard for a special Leonard Lopate at Large with master instrumentalist. Kenny Werner has been a world-class pianist and composer for over 40 years. His prolific collection of recordings, both as a bandleader and a sideman performing with jazz luminaries like Lee Koonitz and Archie Shepp, continue to have a profound effect on audiences around the world. In 1996, Kenny wrote his landmark book “Effortless Mastery: Liberating The Master Musician Within.” He has since created videos, lectured worldwide and authored numerous articles on how musicians, artists or even business people can allow their “master creator” within to lift a performance to it’s highest level, showing us how to be spontaneous, fearless, joyful and disciplined in our work and in our life.

Paul Rieckhoff is the executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a non-partisan non-profit group founded in 2004. With tens of thousands of members in all 50 US states, IAVA is America’s first and largest Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans group.Today, on Leonard Lopate at Large,Paul Rieckhoff discusses the issues facing members of the military currently in combat and those long retired from it.

For 14 seasons, “Saturday Night Live’s” Darrell Hammond delighted crowds with his uncanny impersonations of Sean Connery, Regis Philbin, and (most notably) former President Bill Clinton. Mimicking over 107 celebrities, Hammond found fame on the sketch show, appearing on films and even performing at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. But behind-the-scenes, the comedian suffered. Plagued by incapacitating flashbacks, Hammond struggled to cope, eventually turning to substance abuse and self-harm. After 50 years of pain and misdiagnoses, he discovered the root of his ailments: repressed memories from his youth. Documentarian Michelle Esrick captured Hammond’s story in the film “Cracked Up.” Esrick, who met Hammond via mutual friends years ago, could tell they were both on a healing path and wanted to tell the actor’s story with a balance of comedic clips, interviews, and the intricate sculptures from the artist Dustin Yellin. 

Today on Leonard Lopate At Large, Leonard’s guest  Brooke Jarvis will be joined by two of the scientists, Dr. Arthur Shapiro of UC Davis and Dr. David Wagner of the University of Connecticut, for a discussion of what is behind this massive insect disappearance.“Because insects are legion, inconspicuous and hard to meaningfully track, the fear that there might be far fewer than before was more felt than documented,” writes New York Times reporter Brooke Jarvis in her article “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here: What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?” “People noticed it by canals or in backyards or under streetlights at night — familiar places that had become unfamiliarly empty. The feeling was so common that entomologists developed a shorthand for it, named for the way many people first began to notice that they weren’t seeing as many bugs. They called it the windshield phenomenon.” I

Today, on Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard talks with the directors of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra about their unique approach to performing classical music. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1972 by a group of like-minded young musicians determined to combine the intimacy and warmth of a chamber ensemble with the richness of an orchestra. The ensemble performs without a conductor, rotating musical leadership roles for each work, with a focus on presenting diverse repertoire through collaboration and open dialogue. Orpheus aims to bring this unique approach to students of all ages through its worldwide education and engagement programs: Access Orpheus-NYC, Orpheus Music Academy, Orpheus Leadership Institute, and their newest project Orpheus Reflections, a program for people with Alzheimers and dementia and their caregivers.

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard and  Twyla Tharp discuss “Minimalism and Me” and her seminal dance performances from 1965 to 1971 that inspired it. One of the most important dancers and choreographers of the last century, Twyla Tharp has been pushing modern dance forward for more than 60 years. With her latest show, “Minimalism and Me,” currently in the midst of a three-week run at the Joyce Theater, Twyla revisits the creation of her influential early works and their relationship to the minimalist art movement of that era. Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than 160 works: 129 dances, 12 television specials, 6 Hollywood films, 4 full-length ballets, 4 Broadway shows, and 2 figure skating routines. Tharp has received 1 Tony Award, 2 Emmy Awards, 19 honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the National Medal of the Arts (2004), the Jerome Robbins Prize (2008), and a Kennedy Center Honor (2008). Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tharp published her autobiography, Push Comes to Shove (1992), as well as two instructional books, The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life (2003) and The Collaborative Habit:  Life Lessons for Working Together(2009). Tharp continues to create.

On today’s Leonard Lopate At Large, Join Christopher and Leonard for a discussion on how to make your holiday dishes something special. Renowned chef and cookbook author Christopher Kimball is the founder of Milk Street and the host of “Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television” and “Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio,” a weekly public radio show and podcast. In 1980 Christopher founded Cook’s Magazine and served as publisher and editorial director through 1989. In 1993, Mr. Kimball re-launched Cook’s Magazine as Cook’s Illustrated a

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large: Mary Hogan Camp, art historian and docent coordinator at the Morgan Museum, will talk about the exhibition and why Pontormo deserves to be considered one of the master artists of the Renaissance. Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo after the Tuscan town he came from, was a leader of the Mannerist movement that dominated Italian painting in the 16th century. Michelangelo once predicted that a 19- year-old Pontormo “will exalt this art to the heavens.” At a small show currently at the Morgan Library and Museum, Pontormo’s 1528 painting “Visitation” is being seen in America for the first time—on loan from a small church near Florence.  The New Yorker has called it “one of the damnedest great paintings of all time.”  

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard talks with H. Bruce Franklin for a discussion on the modern history of American military action. Growing up during the Second World War, H. Bruce Franklin believed what he was told: that America’s victory would lead to a new era of world peace. But once he joined the Air Force and began flying top-secret missions as a navigator and intelligence officer, he saw that even as U.S. leaders preached high ideals of peace and freedom, in reality the country was engaging in an endless cycle of warfare, bringing devastation and oppression to fledgling democracies across the globe.In “Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War,” Bruce draws from his 50 years as a renowned cultural historian share his hard-learned lessons about the real American history.

Today, Leonard Lopate at Large Features Joe Mantegna And Ronnie Marmo on their new Off-Broadway production: “I’m Not A Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce”. Today’s show chronicles the life of comedy’s original bad boy. Directed by multi Award-winning actor and director Joe Mantegna, the Off-Broadway production of “I’m Not A Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce” stars Ronnie Marmo brilliantly chronicling the life and death of the most controversial comedian of all time, Lenny Bruce. Busted for obscenity, Lenny fought for freedom of speech all the way to the Supreme Court before dying of a morphine overdose in 1966 while out on appeal.

On today’s edition of Leonard Lopate at Large, Jenny Murray discuses the role of brave women in the Nicaraguan revolution of the late ’70s. “The documentary “‘¡Las Sandinistas!” compiles the reminiscences of women who fought with the Sandinistas, the revolutionary group in Nicaragua that toppled the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 and then ruled that country until 1990,” writes Ben Kenigsberg of the New York Times. “In focusing on the testimonies of women, this film by Jenny Murray aims to memorialize what one participant, the poet Daisy Zamora, calls the ‘revolution inside the revolution.’ It argues that, despite chauvinism and sexual harassment from the movement’s male leaders, the Sandinistas were as groundbreaking for feminism as they were for ostensibly socialist governance.”

On today’s Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard, Lonnie and Derrick will discuss false confessions, government misconduct, and why progressive civil rights groups often don’t get involved with issues involving wrongful convictions. Lonnie Soury has managed media relations and public policy strategies for prominent wrongful conviction cases like Damien Echols and Marty Tankleff.  One of his clients served 20 years in prison for murder before having his conviction overturned. 

Today, Leonard’s guest is Andrew Cockburn, of Harpers On The Policing Of America Andrew Cockburn writes the Letters From Washington column for Harper’s magazine. His most recent column “Blood Money: Taxpayers pick up the tab for police brutality” takes a hard look at the way local police forces are funded in America. Andrew and Leonard today will examine what kind of police force we are getting for our tax dollars.

On Today’s Leonard Lopate at Large, Former U.S. Ambassador to Romania Alfred H. Moses, who has had a distinguished career in public service spanning more than three decades.  After serving as Special Advisor and Special Counsel to President Jimmy Carter, President Clinton appointed Moses to be the American ambassador to Romania in 1994, where he served for three years.  This followed his 20-year effort to free Jews and others in Communist Romania. Ambassador Moses’s book “Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey from Darkness to Light” details the fall of the Communist dictatorship in 1989 and the Western diplomatic efforts he was involved in to help transform Romania into a free, democratic society in the 1990s.

On today’s Leonard Lopate at Large, Jonathan Taplin talks about his cover article from the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, “Rebirth of a Nation: Can States’ Rights Save Us From a Second Civil War?” “The national security expert Keith Mines estimates, as he told Foreign Policy, that the United States faces, over the next ten to fifteen years, a 60 percent chance of civil war—some variety of violent political conflict on a large scale,” writes Jonathan Taplin in his cover article from the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, “Rebirth of a Nation: Can states’ rights save us from a second civil war?”“There is a solution built into the Constitution for defusing tensions created by such imbalances of power that conservative Supreme Court justices have shown great deference for: the Tenth Amendment, which declares that any power not specifically reserved for the federal government is granted to the states. The origins of the amendment stem from Thomas Jefferson’s debates with his friend James Madison during the 1787 Constitutional Convention.” In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Jonathan, who serves as the director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC, tells Leonard why he believes empowering the 50 states could save the nation.