Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Sean A. Mirski a lawyer and U.S. foreign policy scholar who has worked on national security issues across multiple U.S. presidential administrations ask, What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? He suggest the answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today

In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors’ soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower.

Join us as Mirski’s offers insight into international politics on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

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

Be a Friend: Twitter - https://twitter.com/lopate_leonard

Support the Station (select the Leonard Lopate at Large from the pulldown menu):

BAI Buddy: https://wbai.wedid.it

It’s one of the iconic photographs of American history: A Black teenager, a policeman and his lunging German Shepherd. Birmingham, Alabama, May of 1963. In May of 2020, as reporter Paul Kix stared at a different photo–that of a Minneapolis police officer suffocating George Floyd–he kept returning to the other photo taken half a century earlier, haunted by its echoes. What, Kix wondered, was the full legacy of the Birmingham photo? And of the campaign it stemmed from?

In You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live, Nonfiction author and journalist Paul Kix takes the reader behind the scenes as he tells the story of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s pivotal 10 week campaign, Project C, as it was known― in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. At the same time, he also provides a window into the minds of the four extraordinary men who led the campaign―Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel.

Join us when journalist Paul Kix shares the story of Project C, which provides a crucial understanding of our own time and the impact that strategic activism can have.

Be a Friend: Twitter - https://twitter.com/lopate_leonard

Support the Station (select the Leonard Lopate at Large from the pulldown menu):

BAI Buddy: https://wbai.wedid.it

Join us today when award-winning journalist and Regular Contributor Bob Hennelly shares his passion for bringing real 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.

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large. When Bob Hennelly investigates the story, you're going to get the perspectives popular media won't cover.

According to renowned advocate for children’s welfare and juvenile justice Jane M. Spinak, at the turn of the twentieth century, American social reformers created the first juvenile court. They imagined a therapeutic court where informality, specially trained public servants, and a kindly, all-knowing judge would assist children and families. But the dream of a benevolent means of judicial problem-solving was never realized. A century later, children and families continue to be failed by this deeply flawed court.

Jane M. Spinak illustrates how the procedures and policies of modern family court are deeply entwined in a heritage of racism, a profound disdain for poverty, and assimilationist norms intent on fixing children and families who are different.

Join us when Spinak shares strategies that center trusting and respecting the abilities of communities to create and sustain meaningful solutions for families on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

According to award-winning journalist Jeff Goodell, the world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.

Join us when Jeff Goodell expounds on his provocative book, The Heat Will Kill You First mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

Writer, educator, filmmaker, and scholar from Chicago - Dr. Rob Eschmann writes on educational inequality, community violence, racism, social media, and youth wellbeing.

His research seeks to uncover individual, group, and intuitional-level barriers to racial and economic equity, and he pays special attention to the heroic efforts everyday people make to combat those barriers.

From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, online communication exposes how racism operates in a world that pretends to be colorblind. In When the Hood Comes Off, Rob Eschmann blends rigorous research and engaging personal narrative to examine the effects of online racism on communities of color and society, and the unexpected ways that digital technologies enable innovative everyday tools of antiracist resistance.

Join us when Eschmann expounds on his investigation which influence online communication on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

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

Be a Friend: Twitter - https://twitter.com/lopate_leonard

Support the Station (select the Leonard Lopate at Large from the pulldown menu):

BAI Buddy: https://wbai.wedid.it

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large gardening expert Pete Muroski, founder of Native Landscapes in Pawling, NY returns to share tips and take calls.

Pete is a talented landscape designer with a particular affinity toward using material that is indigenous to the specific environment.

Join us when Pete touches on current weather patterns, proper pruning techniques and timing to keep our terrace, patio, and perimeter landscaping looking and feeling its best and more on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI, 99.5FM.

Symbols of Freedom is the surprising story of how enslaved people and their allies drew inspiration from the language and symbols of American freedom. Interpreting patriotic words, phrases, and iconography literally, they embraced a revolutionary nationalism that not only justified but generated open opposition. Mindful and proud that theirs was a nation born in blood, these disparate patriots fought to fulfill the republic’s promise by waging war against slavery.

Join us when Professor of History, University of History - Matthew J. Clavin examines his book Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. “Birchers” believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. Join us when Matthew Dallek discuss how the far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump, on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.

Gender Without Identity offers an innovative and at times unsettling theory of gender formation.

Rooted in the metapsychology of Jean Laplanche and in conversation with bold work in queer and trans studies, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini jettison “core gender identity” to propose, instead, that gender is something all subjects acquire -- and that trauma sometimes has a share in that acquisition. Conceptualizing trauma alongside diverse genders and sexualities is thus not about invalidating transness and queerness, but about illuminating their textures to enable their flourishing. Written for readers both in and outside psychoanalysis, Gender Without Identity argues for the ethical urgency of recognizing that wounding experiences and traumatic legacies may be spun into gender.

Join us when authors Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini share their clinical research of working with gender complexity on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large.