Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Award-winning journalist and Regular Contributor Bob Hennelly has a passion for uncovering the News behind the News. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, he has always had a keen interest in the roles of immigration, local politics, business, labor unions, real estate ownership, and environmental protection in the evolution of the United States.

For more than 30 years, he has reported on a broad spectrum of major public policy questions, ranging from homeland security to the economy, environmental contamination to corruption, and occupational safety to homelessness.

Join us today on Leonard Lopate at Large. When Bob Hennelly covers New York City's retirees’ traditional Medicare coverage on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

As we celebrate 50 years in Hip Hop, ILLMATIC CONSEQUENCES combines social science and hip-hop studies to address disinformation and propaganda that distorted political discourse after the 2020 election. In this text, scholars and activists come together to clap back on the lies that animated attacks at local school boards and the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. capitol. Following a thematic structure, these contributors address "The Crisis", "The Clapback", and "The Consequences", using hip hop and Afrofuturism as models for analysis and solutions to the cultural divisions in the United States.

Inspired by the work of David Roediger, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ibram Kendi, and Carol Anderson, ILLMATIC CONSEQUENCES stretches the vision and lexicon of Nasir Jones to a new generation of artists. Readers of this text will become the vanguard of a global society dedicated to freedom, justice, and decolonization.

Join us as the authors use Critical Race Theory lenses to theorize political, class, scientific, spatial and cultural dimensions of Hip Hop as modality and practice on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

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In this powerful and deeply felt memoir of translation, storytelling, and borders, Alejandra Oliva, a Mexican-American translator and immigrant justice activist, offers a powerful chronical of her experience interpreting at the US-Mexico border.

Having worked with asylum seekers since 2016, she knows all too well the gravity of taking someone's trauma and delivering it to the warped demands of the U.S. immigration system. Oliva recounts the stories of the people she's met through her work, she also traces her family's long and fluid relationship to the border—each generation born on opposite sides of the Rio Grande.

In Rivermouth, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different phases of immigration, looking at how language and opportunity move through each of them: from the river as the waterway that separates the U.S. and Mexico, to the table as the place over which Oliva prepares asylum seekers for their Credible Fear Interviews, and finally, to the wall as the behemoth imposition that runs along America’s southernmost border.

Join us when Alejandra Oliva approaches the painful questions: By which metrics are we measuring who “deserves” American citizenship? What is the point of humanitarian systems that distribute aid conditionally? What do we owe to our most disenfranchised? On this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

More than twenty years ago, 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan set into motion a hugely consequential shift in America’s foreign policy: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the American public. War Made Invisible, by the journalist and political analyst Norman Solomon, exposes how this happened, and what its consequences are, from military and civilian casualties to drained resources at home.

Join us when Norman Solomon examines his book War Made Invisible, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large

Tenants in rent-stabilized apartments will see rent increases in the coming year lower than worst-case scenarios, following a Rent Guidelines Board preliminary this past Spring.

Join us when Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, founder and owner of New York city-based law firm Outerbridge Law P.C. who’s practice is focused on landlord-tenant litigation and transactional matters examine NY tenants, landlords, and the rent guidelines board on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

With Homelessness in NYC being such a pervasive issue today's guest, former Commissioner of Mental Health Dr. Robert Okin covers the two years he spent on the street meeting and photographing homeless individuals with mental illness to find answers to many questions such as: How do they end up on the street? How do they survive the stress and privations of such a life? What combination of biological vulnerabilities, childhood traumas, drugs, mental disorders, and financial devastation brought them down? And how do some manage, against all odds, to climb out of this desperate situation?

He masterfully brings these people to life through stories and images that are intimate and gritty. Join us when Dr. Robert Okin challenges us to face the situation and do something about it rather than simply look away on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

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Christopher Miller, the Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times and the foremost journalist covering the country, was there on the ground when the first Russian missiles struck and troops stormed over the border. But the seeds of Russia's war against Ukraine and the West were sown more than a decade earlier.

The War Came To Us is the definitive, inside story of its long fight for freedom. Told through Miller's personal experiences, vivid front-line dispatches and illuminating interviews with unforgettable characters,

Join us when Christopher Miller takes us on a riveting journey through the key locales and pivotal events of Ukraine's modern history. From the coal-dusted, sunflower-covered steppe of the Donbas in the far east to the heart of the Euromaidan revolution camp in Kyiv; from the Black Sea shores of Crimea, where Russian troops stealthily annexed Ukraine's peninsula, to the bloody battlefields where Cossacks roamed before the Kremlin's warlords ruled with iron fists; and through the horror and destruction wrought by Russian forces in Bucha, Bakhmut, Mariupol, and beyond, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

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The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between vice president Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.

Join us when Historian Luke Nichter provides this eye-opening account of the political calculations and maneuvering that decided this fiercely fought election and reshaped our understanding of a key moment in twentieth-century American history.

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The Story of Russia is a peek into the thousand years of Russia’s history, concerned as much with the ideas that have shaped how Russians think about their past as it is with the events and personalities comprising it. No other country has reimagined its own story so often, in a perpetual effort to stay in step with the shifts of ruling ideologies.

From the founding of Kievan Rus in the first millennium to Putin’s war against Ukraine, Orlando Figes explores the ideas that have guided Russia’s actions throughout its long and troubled existence. Whether he's describing the crowning of Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral or the dramatic upheaval of the peasant revolution, he reveals the impulses, often unappreciated or misunderstood by foreigners, that have driven Russian history: the medieval myth of Mother Russia’s holy mission to the world; the imperial tendency toward autocratic rule; the popular belief in a paternal tsar dispensing truth and justice; the cult of sacrifice rooted in the idea of the “Russian soul”; and always, the nationalist myth of Russia’s unjust treatment by the West.

Join us when Orlando Figes shares a lifetime of scholarship inThe Story of Russia on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

In 1967, David Rothenberg produced a play called Fortune and Men’s Eyes that revealed the horrors of life in prison. This inspired him to establish The Fortune Society (Fortune). In its 50 years, Fortune has become one of the leading reentry service organizations in the country, serving nearly 7,000 formerly incarcerated individuals per year, providing a wide range of holistic services to meet their needs.

Fortune has also secured a position as a leading advocate in the fight for criminal justice reform and alternatives to incarceration. In September of 1971, David Rothenberg was one of a small group of courageous civilian monitors brought into Attica at the request of the incarcerated individuals who were fighting for their human rights – an incident that ended in tragedy but showed the world the horrors of the criminal justice system in the United States.

Join us when David Rothenberg, former member of the NYC Human Rights Commission discuss his focus on theater, social activism, politics,and a tireless focus on advocating for the lives of those impacted by the criminal justice system on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

Listen to past shows: https://soundcloud.com/leonard-lopate

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