Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Since he first appeared on the American literary scene, Jerome Charyn has dazzled readers with his “blunt, brilliantly crafted prose”

With Big Red, Charyn reimagines the life of one of America’s most enduring icons, “Gilda” herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red tresses and hypnotic dancing graced the silver screen over sixty times in her nearly forty-year career. The quintessential movie star of the 1940s, Hayworth has long been objectified as a sex symbol, pin-up girl, and so-called Love Goddess.

Reanimating such classic films as Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai, Big Red is a bittersweet paean to Hollywood’s Golden Age, a tender yet honest portrait of a time before blockbusters and film franchises―one that promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike. Lauded for his “polymorphous imagination” (Jonathan Lethem), Charyn once again has created one of the most inventive novels in recent American literature.

According to Professor Falguni Sheth despite the disapproval that "visibly" Muslim women face in the West, the U.S. does not ban the hijab or niqab. Nevertheless, it does find a way to manage assertive Muslim women. How so? Subtly and without outright confrontation: through the courts, bureaucratic processes and liberal discourses. Join us when Professor Sheth examines her book Unruly Women.

(8/11/22) Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times bestselling author Todd Brewster weave four recent pivotal moments in America’s racial divide into their disturbing historical context—starting with the killing of George Floyd—Seen and Unseen reveals the connections between our current news headlines and social media feeds and the country’s long struggle against racism.

According Hill for most of American history, our media has reinforced and promoted racism. But with the immediacy of modern technology—the ubiquity of smartphones, social media, and the internet—that long history is now in flux. From the teenager who caught George Floyd’s killing on camera to the citizens who held prosecutors accountable for properly investigating the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, ordinary people are now able to reveal injustice in a more immediate way. As broad movements to overhaul policing, housing, and schooling gain new vitality, Seen and Unseen demonstrates that change starts with the raw evidence of those recording history on the front lines.

Join us when professor at Temple University, American academic, author, and activist Marc Lamont Hill examines how the power of visual media over the last few years has shifted the narrative on race and reignited the push towards justice on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(8-10-22)In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single Black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades.

But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machine guns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearhead his tank unit's advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself. Join us when Robert Childs examines Immortal Valor on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Will Bunch, the epic untold story of college—the great political and cultural fault line of American life

According Will Bunch today there are two Americas, separate and unequal, one educated and one not. The strongest determinant of whether a voter was likely to support Donald Trump in 2016 was whether or not they attended college, and the degree of loathing they reported feeling toward the so-called “knowledge economy of clustered, educated elites. Somewhere in the winding last half-century of the United States, the quest for a college diploma devolved from being proof of America’s commitment to learning, science, and social mobility into a kind of Hunger Games contest to the death. That quest has infuriated both the millions who got shut out and millions who got into deep debt to stay afloat.

Join us for an examination of After the Ivory Tower Falls, when award-winning journalist Will Bunch embarks on a deeply reported journey to the heart of the American Dream, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(8/4/22) Taylor Brorby author of Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land, recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

Join us when Brorby, an Annie Tanner Clark Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah discusses his memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI 99.5FM.

According to author Jonathan Zimmerman, in America we like to think we live in a land of liberty, where everyone can say whatever they want. Throughout our history, however, we have also been quick to censor people who offend or frighten us. We talk a good game about freedom of speech, then we turn around and deny it to others. Free speech allows us to criticize our leaders. It lets us consume the art, film, and literature we prefer. And, perhaps most importantly, it allows minorities to challenge the oppression they suffer. While any of us are censored, none of us are free.

Join us when, historian Jonathan Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Signe Wilkinson discuss their perspective of free speech in America: who established it, who has denounced it, and who has risen to its defense, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(8/1/22)

Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, author and screenwriter Thomas McKelvey Cleaver brings to life the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 and November 15, 1942.

For 40 years from 1961, the late Eric Hammel interviewed more than 150 American participants in the air campaign at Guadalcanal, none of whom are still alive. These interviews are the most comprehensive first-person accounts of the battle assembled by any historian. More importantly, they involved the junior officers and enlisted men whose stories and memories were not part of the official history, thus providing a unique insight.

Join us when Pacific War expert Thomas McKelvey Cleaver examines the unpublished stories covering these events.

{7/27/22) Though you may not know his name, Robert Welch (1899-1985)—founder of the John Birch Society—is easily one of the most significant architects of our current political moment. In A Conspiratorial Life, the first full-scale biography of Welch, Edward H. Miller delves deep into the life of an overlooked figure whose ideas nevertheless reshaped the American right.

Welch became an unlikely candy magnate, founding the company that created Sugar Daddies, Junior Mints, and other famed confections. In 1958, he funneled his wealth into establishing the organization that would define his legacy and change the face of American politics: the John Birch Society.

Join us when Edward H. Miller an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University and the author of A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, connects the accusatory conservatism of the midcentury John Birch Society to the inflammatory rhetoric of the Tea Party, the Trump administration, Q, and more on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

(7/26/22) Robert Jensen co-authors of An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction. For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—and yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster.

On this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large, Jensen examines how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. Jensen weaves a secular reading of theological concepts—the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace—to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world.