Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Actress and filmmaker Nora Armani founded The Socially Relevant Film Festival New York in 2013 in response to the amount of violent stories she was seeing told across most mainstream entertainment platforms. The festival’s mission is the promotion of filmmakers who deal with socially relevant film content. Over 300 films from 35 countries have been screened to date. In this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI, Nora Armani is joined by some of the directors whose work is included in the festival.

In his new book “Lost in Ghost Town: A Memoir of Addiction, Redemption, and Hope in Unlikely Places,” psychologist to the Hollywood elite Dr. Carder Stout delivers a page-turning memoir about his fall from grace into the gritty underbelly of crack addiction, running drugs for the Shoreline Crips, surviving homelessness, escaping a murder plot, and finding redemption in the most unlikely of places. Join us for a conversation Dr. Stout about his wild, hard and fascinating life in edition of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

From the times its screens were first illuminated in 1970 as an alternative space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget, the iconic Manhattan movie theater Film Forum has continued to be one of the country’s premiere venues for independent film. After becoming director in 1972, Karen Cooper oversaw the theater’s several moves before the current Houston Street location opened in 1990. In 2018, Film Forum renovated and expanded the Houston Street cinema, upgrading the seating, legroom and sightlines in all theaters and adding a new, 4th screen. In this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI, Film Forum director Karen Cooper and programmer Mike Maggiore discuss five decades of presenting cinema from around the world.

With a mild winter soon to be a memory, our favorite gardening guru Pete Muroski of Native Landscapes returns to the program just in time to answer your questions on getting your outdoor plants ready for the big (or in this case, rather minor) warm-up. Join us for a discussion on spring gardening in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

From one of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch comes an impassioned look at the ways in which parents, teachers and activists are successfully fighting back to defeat the forces that are privatizing America's public schools. In her new book “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools,” Ravitch lays out why the promise of higher test scores has yet to come to pass and why she believe Common Core has been a dud. Join us for a discussion of the battle to save public schools from privatization in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

When it comes to fixing things around the house, there’s no one better to tell you what do and how to do it than Alvin Ubell. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, we open the phones so that Al and Larry Ubell can answer your questions about all of the potential home repair projects that can come with transitioning into the warmer months. No one knows more about getting your place ready for spring than Al Ubell.

Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus— which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Maus II continued the remarkable story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America. As creative consultant for Topps Bubble Gum Co. from 1965-1987, Spiegelman created Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. In 1980, Spiegelman founded RAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine, with his wife, Françoise Mouly—Maus was originally serialized in the pages of RAW. Join us for a discussion of Art’s latest work, “Foolish Questions” a New York Review of Books article on screwball comic strips, and his storied career in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

During the last half a century of its existence, the Ottoman Empire and the lands around its borders were places of constant political turmoil and unceasing military action. The enormous costs of war were paid not only by politicians and soldiers, but by the Ottoman civilian population as well. Jeremy Salt’s book “The Last Ottoman Wars: The Human Cost, 1877–1923” examines the hardships that ordinary people, Muslim and Christian alike, endured during decades of warfare. Join us for a discussion of this turbulent time in human history in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

It took decades for Michael Segal to grow his small insurance agency into the fifth largest independent insurance brokerage in the United States. The $250 million firm had 950 employees when a questionable federal prosecution destroyed everything he had built. Michael’s book “Conviction at Any Cost,” co-written with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maurice Possley, is a revealing, in-depth examination of how prosecutors crossed ethical lines, violated constitutional due process and FBI regulations in pursuit of their own objectives. Join us for a conversation with Michael Segal and Maurice Possley on the book and the troubling events that it chronicles, in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.

When Brooklyn native Ronald K. Brown and his dance company Evidence bring their signature contemporary African style back to The Joyce Theater this week with a program that honors two of the company’s seminal works and a new piece direct from its world premiere, it will mark a 35-year run in the venue. Join us for a discussion of this revered partnership with Ronald K. Brown and Executive Director of The Joyce Theater Linda Shelton in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.