LEONARD LOPATE AT LARGE

Today Leonard’s conversation is with Dr. James A. Parrott on his study of Ride-Hailing apps. Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing services have become a ubiquitous presence in the five boroughs over the past several years, but their popularity has raised questions about whether drivers can actually make a living working for them.The New York City Council recently voted to halt the issuing of new licenses for these services, and to set a minimum wage for drivers, based on the new study “An Earnings Standard for New York City’s App-based Drivers: Economic Analysis and Policy Assessment,” which looked at pay rates and working conditions for drivers working in the ride-sharing economy. Today, one of the co-authors of the study, Dr. James A. Parrott, joins Leonard in  for a discussion of this complicated and controversial issue.

On Thursday’s show, Leonard has a conversation with Khalil Cumberbatch, associate vice president of policy at the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy at The Fortune Society. On today’s show, Khalil shares his story and tells about the work he does at The Fortune Society to help out other immigrants in a similar position to where he was just a few years ago.

On today’s Leonard Lopate At Large, Leonard has a conversation with Edwin Frank, founder of New York Review Books Back In 1999, Edwin Frank founded New York Review Books to reintroduce out-of-print works—many in first translations from around the world—to the reading public. Since its inception, the series has won dozens of awards for its translations; the New York Times chose Magda Szabó’s The Door as one of the ten best books of 2015. New York Review Books have met not just

Today, Leonard hosts a tribute to Aretha Franklin… When Aretha Franklin died the age of 76, she left behind a body of work that will stand the test of time as some of the greatest music ever recorded.Today, Leonard broadcasts his

On Leonard Lopate At Large today, it is all things culinary as Leonard welcomes Robin Hood Radio’s Arthur Schwartz (The Food Maven) to the table! Arthur Schwartz was the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years. Having found success with his seemingly unending wealth of food knowledge in radio, print media, cookbook publishing, TV and teaching, Arthur now hosts a weekly show on the The Robin Hood Radio Network  

Today Leonard has a conversation with Peter Aaron, and Brooke Allen on Syria before the war. In 2009, Peter Aaron, an architectural photographer, and Brooke Allen, author and professor, went on vacation with their children to Syria. Brooke wrote a book about their experience called “The Other Side of the Mirror: An American Travels Through Syria” (Paul Dry Books). Within 2 years of their trip, civil war broke out and many of the landmarks that Peter had photographed were damaged or destroyed. His photographs—now a precious documentation of Syria’s vanishing history and culture—are currently on exhibit at the Venice Biennale and can be seen in a new book called “Syria Before the Deluge.”

  Today Leonard is joined in the studio by lead guitarist and founding member of the MC5, Wayne Kramer. From his genre-defining wall of feedback on the band’s seminal work “Kick Out The Jams” to their infamous performance at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that landed them both in jail and on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine before they even had a record deal, few groups had as wild or influential a time in the spotlight. The “big brother” band of The Stooges in their earliest days, the pioneers, purveyors and arguably creators of punk and heavy metal music, the MC5 created a sound far ahead of its time.

Today Leonard talks with Michael Patrick MacDonald on Ireland: Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston . After losing four of his eleven siblings and seeing his generation decimated by poverty, crime, addiction, and incarceration, he learned to transform personal and community trauma by becoming a leading Boston activist, organizer and writer. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling memoir, “All Souls: A Family Story From Southie” and the acclaimed “Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion.” He has been awarded an American Book Award, A New England Literary Lights Award, and a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center. As an activist, MacDonald has focused his efforts on multi-cultural coalition building to reduce violence and promote grassroots leadership from our most impacted communities. He has developed Gun Buyback programs and local support groups, which give voice to adult and youth survivors of poverty, violence and the drug trade.

Today Leonard talks with Italian food expert Lou Di Palo, the owner of his favorite cheese shop, Di Palo’s Fine Foods in Little Italy. The food blog Serious Eats described Di Palo’s Fine Foods a “100-year-old Italian specialty market with incredible mozzarella and fresh porchetta. Expect long waits, but they’re worth it.” Chef Daniel Boulud has called Di Palo one of the seven wonders of New York. “Di Palo’s stories come from the gathering of the food, the discovery of where it was made,” wrote Kenneth Rapoza of Forbes. “It’s not so much about the taste, but what makes it taste that way in the first place. So it all inevitably comes down to the air and the water and the grass and the sheepherder he’s met that led him to the perfect little farm, that made the perfect little cheese, somewhere south of Trentino.”

Leonard’s conversation today is with Dr. Ted Rueter on noise, specifically noise pollution in the city. Dr. Ted Rueter started Noise Free America: A Coalition to Promote Quiet while he was a political science professor at UCLA. “I found UCLA to be the loudest campus I had ever been to.” Today,  Dr. Rueter will talk to Leonard about noise pollution in New York City, particularly that caused by motorcycles.

Today, Leonard’s conversation is with Itamar Kubovy, the executive producer for Pilobolus dance company. Pilobolus  mission is to “create, perform, and preserve dances, applying the collaborative creative methods of Pilobolus; expand and diversify audiences through projects of all types and scales in live performance, film, and digital media, characterized by the qualities of our namesake fungus—adventurous, adaptive, athletic, surprising and revealing of beauty in unexpected places and to Teach dancers, non-dancers, and organizations how to harness the creative potential of groups using Pilobolus’s methods.”

Today on Leonard Lopate At Large Leonard has a conversation with Wendy Brawer And Charles Krezell On Green Activism In New York Eco-designer and public educator Wendy Brawer created of the Green Map System, the first resource of its kind, back in 1992 to raise local awareness of environmental issues in the New York area. In the years since, green maps have become a critical tool for conservationists around the world. Charles Krezell is the founder and president of LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens) and is a member of DeColores Community Garden on East 8th Street, where he has been an active East Village gardener since 1996.

On today’s Leonard Lopate At large, Leonard talks with Lisa Meron, Chris Hardee and Mary Booth: Burned Join Leonard for a discussion with the filmmakers of “BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal?” a new documentary which takes an unwavering look at the latest energy industry solution to climate change. Woody biomass has become the fossil-fuel industry’s renewable, green savior. The film focuses on the people and parties who are both fighting against and promoting its adoption and use.

Today, Isaac Shapiro joins Leonard in conversation about living in Japan during World War II Isaac  Shapiro was in his early teenage years when he experienced the American fireboming of Japan firsthand in the early 1940s, as he describes in his autobiography “Edokko: Growing Up a Foreigner in Wartime Japan.” With World War II suddenly at their doorstep, Isaac’s family was forced to move from city to city in the war-torn nation. After US troops began their Japanese occupation, he was hired at the age of 14 to be an interpreter for a U.S. Marine Colonel from Arkansas, a job that led him on a circuitous path to America.

Today, Leonard has a conversation with Monona Rossol, chemist, artist, and industrial hygienist, and the founder and of Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to providing health and safety services to the arts, and the Health and Safety Director for the Local 829, Union of the United Scenic Artists International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Today Monona will talk to Leonard about the dangerous toxins we encounter in our daily lives.