LEONARD LOPATE AT LARGE

In his novel “A View of the Empire at Sunset,” about the Dominican-born, British writer Jean Rhys, Caryl Phillips wrote, “there was something terribly illicit about her own waiflike presence in the world.” Though she was the author of revered works like “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Rhys rarely received the literary credit her work deserved during her life or after her death in 1979, which is why she is the subject of the latest installment in our Underread Book Series. 

On today’s show, Leonard interviews Shraysi Tandon, Director of Invisible Hands and Margaret Wurth from Human Rights Watch. Produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, “Invisible Hands” is the first feature documentary to expose child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world’s biggest companies. Filmed in six countries including India, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Ghana, it is a harrowing account of children as young as 6 years old making the products we use every day. The film marks the directorial debut of journalist Shraysi Tandon and features Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kailash Satyarthi, New York Times writer and two-time Pulitzer prize winner Nicholas Kristof, journalist Ben Skinner, author and activist Siddharth Kara and Columbia Law School professor Mark Barenberg.

Leonard’s guest today, Susannah Drake, talks about environmentally conscious design. Since founding DLANDstudio in 2005, Susannah Drake has worked on projects ranging in scale from intimate gardens to large-scale urban planning initiatives. Her design for QueensWay transforms a 3.5 mile stretch of abandoned railway in Central Queens into a family-friendly linear park and cultural greenway. A leader in implementing design strategies to confront the impacts of climate change, DLANDstudio’s Gowanus Canal Sponge Park is a working landscape that improves the environment of the EPA Superfund site over time.https://youtu.be/VKH-KF3Psnw

Today, on Leonard Lopate At Large, Professor Edward J. Watts: Mortal Republic “Readers will find many parallels to today’s fraught political environment,” reads the Publisher’s Weekly review of “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny” by UC San Diego professor Edward J. Watts. “The powerful influence of money in politics, a delegitimized establishment and the emergence of a personality-driven, populist politicking…His well-crafted analysis makes clear the subject matter’s relevance to contemporary political conversations.” While Americans often compare this particular moment in the nation’s history to the fall of Rome, in this installment of the show, Leonard and Prof. Watts will examine the concrete similarities between the end of their civilization and ours.

Talking with Leonard today is Eileen Rivers, author of Beyond The Call, about  three brave soldiers and her experience documenting them. Eileen Rivers is a USA Today editor and editorial board member. Formerly with the Washington Post, she has been writing and reporting on veteran affairs for more than fifteen years and has produced several multi-media online interactives covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A veteran of the US Army, she served in Kuwait following Desert Storm where she was sent into the former combat zone as an Arabic linguist, collecting and translating information from enemy targets. Rivers lives in Laurel, Maryland. Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, for USA TODAY called “Beyond the Call: Three Women on the Front Lines in Afghanistan” by Tuesday’s guest on “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Eileen Rivers, a “compelling story, too long untold.” “Rivers reveals the power of women–of women in the U.S. military in Afghanistan, playing a crucial role in intelligence gathering that was impossible for their male counterparts.”  

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large, Deborah Eisenberg discusses “Your Duck Is My Duck” and the rest of her formidable career. Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review called Deborah Eisenberg “a writer of legendary exactitude, and slowness.”“Her new collection of six stories, “Your Duck Is My Duck,” is her first book of new material since 2006.   

On today’s edition of Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard’s guests include author Jay D. Aronson, author of “Who Owns The Dead,” and Sally Regenhard, an American activist who has become one of the leading voices for the families of the victims of the September 11. After September 11, with New Yorkers reeling from the World Trade Center attack, Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch proclaimed that his staff would do more than confirm the identity of the individuals who were killed. They would attempt to identify and return to families every human body part recovered from the site that was larger than a thumbnail. As Jay D. Aronson shows, delivering on that promise proved to be a monumentally difficult task. Only 293 bodies were found intact. The rest would be painstakingly collected in 21,900 bits and pieces scattered throughout the skyscrapers’ debris. Sally Regenhard is an American activist who has become one of the leading voices for the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks. A former long-time resident of Co-op City in The Bronx in New York City who has degrees in behavioral sciences and gerontology and has worked in the nursing home industry for over 20 years, Regenhard became an advocate for skyscraper safety after the death of her 28-year-old son, Christian, a probationary firefighter with the New York City Fire Department, who perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001

On today’s spooky edition of Leonard Lopate At large, Leonard welcomes Mickie Mueller. Mickie Mueller explores magic and spirituality through art and the written word. She includes magical herbal washes in her art that correspond with the subject, making every piece enchanted. She is the author/illustrator of The Voice of the Trees; the illustrator of The Mystical Cats Tarot; and author of The Witch’s Mirror and Llewellyn’s Little Book of Halloween. Since 2007, Mickie has been a regular article and illustration contributor to Llewellyn’s annual almanacs and datebooks, as well as many other Llewellyn books. Her art has been seen as set dressing on SyFy’s The Magicians and Bravo’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce. Her home studio is set up right next to the cottage workshop that produces products with her art for people all over the world run by her husband, author and craftsman Daniel Mueller. Visit her online at www.MickieMuellerArt.com.

On today’s Leonard Lopate At Large Leonard talks with Director Frances Causey and producer Sally Holst: “The Long Shadow.” Of all the divisions in America, none is as insidious and destructive as racism. The documentary “The Long Shadow” takes an uncompromising look at America’s original sin—slavery—and traces its history from the country’s founding to the racial divisions that still plague us in the present day. Director Frances Causey and producer Sally Holst, both privileged daughters of the South, were haunted by their families’ slave-owning pasts. They grew up in a time when white superiority was rarely questioned, and challenging this norm was often met with deadly consequences.

On today’s edition of Leonard Lopate At Large,  Leanord has a conversation with Dan Klores about his creation of the twenty-hour series, “Basketball: A Love Story“‘ “Basketball: A Love Story” — directed by filmmaker Dan Klores, who made the 30 for 30 doc “Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks” — has been structured in a way to make it consumable in manageable bites. Though the series is a mostly male-dominated affair, the parts that cover the women’s game are especially compelling because those stories aren’t told as frequently. Nancy Lieberman, a Basketball Hall of Famer and current assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings, talks about being told to “act like a girl” when she was growing up, and recalls how she ignored that advice, eventually playing as the only women on a men’s professional team in the United States Basketball League.” – Jen Chaney, Vulture

Today, Leonard talks with Alexandria Bombach and Elizabeth Schaefer Brown, the filmmakers of the documentary “On Her Shoulders.” “On Her Shoulders” is Alexandria Bombach’s deeply moving portrait of Yazidi genocide survivor-turned-global advocate Nadia Murad. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Directing Award and the prize for Best Documentary at the recent Camden Film Festival, the film focuses on Nadia’s life as the 23-year-old participates in a dizzying display of diplomacy—from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing media interviews and one-on-one meetings with top government officials.

On Today’s Leonard Lopate at Large, Leonard’s guest is Frederick Wiseman, one of the nation’s preeminent documentarians, discussing his latest project as well as a career that includes over 40 films. Located in mid-America, Monrovia, Indiana is primarily a farming community. Frederick Wiseman’s film “Monrovia, Indiana” is about the day-to-day experiences living and working in the town, with emphasis on community organizations and institutions, religion and daily life in this farming community. Frederick Wiseman is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theatre director. His work is “devoted primarily to exploring American institutions”. He has been called “one of the most important and original filmmakers working today.”  

Today on Leonard Lopate At Large, Leonard has a conversation with Harlow Giles Unger talks about his new book, “Dr. Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation,” Ninety percent of Americans could not vote and did not enjoy rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness when our Founding Fathers proclaimed, “all men are created equal.” Alone among those who signed the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush heard the cries of those other, deprived Americans and stepped forth as the nation’s first great humanitarian and social reformer. Dr. Rush led the Founding Fathers in calling for abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, improved medical care for injured troops, free health care for the poor, slum clearance, citywide sanitation, an end to child labor, free universal public education, humane treatment and therapy for the mentally ill, prison reform, and an end to capital punishment.

On Leonard Lopate At Large Today, Richard Clarke discusses his book “Warnings.” “Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes” by Richard Clarke and R.P. Eddy is an important book for many sectors and fields of study. Cassandra is a figure in a Greek myth, of prophet whose dogged warnings are ignored. Today, Leonard discusses “Warnings” with Clarke, along with the author’s career working for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as a counter-terrorism expert on the National Security Council.  

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large, documentary filmmaker Anthony Muscato on “The Mooch.” When a documentary filmmaker chooses to present their story in an unbiased way, the director must be prepared for unexpected events to take their project in a completely different direction. In this case, what began as director Anthony Muscato’s effort to introduce Americans to the polarizing figure of Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci and his historically short 10-day tenure as President Trump’s White House communications director morphed into a story about a new kind of Beltway creature creeping into our politics.