Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

The Invisible Extinction, a documentary about the human microbiome opens on January 6, 2023, in New York at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

The Invisible Extinction, co-directed by Steven Lawrence, spotlights the work and of renowned scientists Martin Blaser and his partner in the lab and in life, Gloria Dominguez-Bello - as they endeavor to save our vanishing microbes that are essential for our survival. As Dr. Blaser states we have lost over 50% of our internal biodiversity and the consequences are a huge rise in diabetes, life threatening food allergies, obesity and asthma.

Join us when we examine the film The Invisible Extinction which explores promising treatments in the US, Israel and China as well as diving into the brain-gut axis on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces the American freedom which is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others.

Join us when a prize-winning historian chronicles a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans’ freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(12-26-2022) In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant's clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice Systemchronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the "science" that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City and beyond, Fabricant takes the reader on a journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo. Join us when, Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant presents an insider’s journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo, on this installment on Leonard Lopate at Large

Media Benjamin, an advocate for social justice for 50 years skillfully wove together the historical record and current analysis, War In Ukraine looks at the events leading up to the conflict, surveys the different parties involved, and weighs the risks of escalation and opportunities for peace.

Join us when Medea Benjamin provides an understanding of a war with consequences that could prove cataclysmic, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

Join us when Kerri Greenidge a Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University shares a stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. A landmark biography of the most important multiracial American family of the nineteenth century, The Grimkes suggests that just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of the founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy—both traumatic and generative—of those myths, which reverberate to this day.

In War by Other Means Daniel Akst takes readers into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters -- four figures who would subsequently become famous political thinkers and activists -- and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin.

The resisters did not stop the war, of course, but their impact would be felt for decades. Many of them went on to lead the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the two most important social stands of the second half of the twentieth century. The various World War II resisters pioneered non-violent protest in America, popularized Gandhian principles, and desegregated the first prison mess halls. Join us on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large when Daniel Akst shared their story that has never been told.

Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots in Preparing for War.

The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war.

Join us on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large when Bradley Onishi discuss his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with an immersive look at the steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(12-15-2022) Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics, charts Marion Nestle astonishing rise from bench scientist to the pinnacles of academia, how she overcame the barriers and biases women of her generation faced, and how she found her life’s purpose after age fifty. Slow Cooked tells her personal story—one that is deeply relevant to everyone who eats and to anyone who thinks it might be too late to follow a passion.

Nestle reflects on her late-in-life career as a world-renowned food politics expert, public health advocate, and a founder of the field of food studies after facing decades of low expectations.

In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets. Join us when Marion Nestle told the story of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

Kathryn and Ross Petras are a brother and sister writing team. authors of many word-oriented books like New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong. Or their newest book, A History of the World Through Body Parts: The Stories Behind the Organs, Appendages, Digits, and the Like Attached to (or Detached from) Famous Bodies.

The duo has wrtten a myriad of books, which have received the attention of, or have been featured in, diverse media outlets including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Bustle, the Atlantic Monthly, the London Times, CNBC, and McSweeney’s.

Join us for a discussion around words. Have you ever wondered about the correct pronunciation of a word you use all the time. Are there words that you think you’re hearing people mispronounce or misuse all the time? In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Kathryn and Ross Petras, take your questions about this crazy thing we call the English language.

(12-12-22)Labeled an investigative journalism classic Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat offers a shocking exposé of the United States meat industry, the devastating failures of the country’s food system, and the growing disappointment of alternative meat producers claiming to revolutionize the future of food.

Well before COVID-19 swept across the United States and the chairman of Tyson Foods infamously declared that the food supply chain was dangerously vulnerable, America’s meat industry was reaching a breaking point. Years of consolidation, price-fixing, and power grabs by elite industry insiders have harmed consumers and caused environmental destruction. Americans have no idea where their meat comes from. And while that’s hurting us, it’s also making others rich.

Join us when financial journalist Chloe Sorvino presents an expansive view of the meat industry with in-depth research. Sorvino investigates corporate greed, how climate change will upend our food production, and the limitations of local movements challenging the status quo, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.