Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Lewis H. Lapham has been the editor of Lapham’s Quarterly since founding it in 2007. The literary magazine uses material throughout history to explore a different theme in each issue. The editor of Harper’s Magazine from 1975 to 2006, Lewis is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. He is the author of 14 books, including “Money and Class in America,” “The Wish for Kings,” “Waiting for the Barbarians,” “Theater of War,” and “Age of Folly.” His documentary “The American Ruling Class” has become part of the curriculum in many of the nation’s schools and colleges. In this edition of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Lewis H. Lapham discusses the magazine, his prodigious career and a new edition of his 1988 book “Money and Class in America.”

Blake J. Harris’s 2019 book “The History Of The Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality” takes readers behind the scenes of Oculus, the upstart VR company founded in 2012 that—less than two years later—dazzled Mark Zuckerberg and was bought by Facebook for over $2 billion dollars. This incredible underdog story begins with Palmer Luckey, then just a 19-year-old dreamer, living alone in Long Beach, California. With the help of a slew of colorful characters—including those behind gaming sensations like Doom, Words with Friends, and Guitar Hero—Luckey’s startup company would deliver the dream of immersive and affordable VR to consumers, leading geeks and gamers to be excited in a way that they hadn’t been in years, and tech firms and investors scrambling to get in on the action before it was too late. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Blake J. Harris discusses the incredible story that inspired him to write “The History Of The Future.”

Do you always hear the same few songs on Spotify? See the same few genres of movies queued for Netflix? Constantly get turned off by the same three people popping up on your dating app? Aside from the monotony, do algorithms overrule our preferences, or even our taste for variety? Do algorithms and Artificial Intelligence actually control our lives now? In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Wharton School professor and computer scientist Kartik Hosanagar dispels some of the mystery around these omnipresent computer codes and expands on the concepts in his book “A Human’s Guide To Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms are Shaping Our Lives and What We Can Do to Control Them.”

Michael Rosenblum is a television producer, video journalist and author who created the first major correspondent-driven local TV news operation with the station NY1. Michael later went on to train on-air talent at Voice of America, the New York Times, the BBCNews10 and McGraw Hill. He is the founder of New York Times Television and the author of the book “iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video.” In this edition of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Michael Rosenblum offers tips on creating your own video content on a shoestring budget.

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. Close to 300 films from 35 countries have been screened to date. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Nora Armani joins two filmmakers whose work is included in the festival M.A.Taylor (“The Creepy Line”) and Cady McClain (“Seeing is Believing: Women Direct”) for a discussion on why socially relevant film matters.

Beloved New Yorker cartoonist and New York Times bestselling author Roz Chast has always been intensely alive to the glorious spectacle that is Manhattan—the daily clash of sidewalk racers and dawdlers, the fascinating range of dress codes and the pricelessly nutty outbursts of souls from all walks of life. Told through her singularly zany, laugh-out-loud cartoons, Roz’s latest book “Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York” is part New York stories, part personal and practical guide to walking, talking, renting and venting. Hours before her live Q&A with Bill Hayes at The Strand Book Store, Roz Chast joins us on “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI for a discussion on the book and what went into creating her iconic visual style.

In the years when Hollywood was under the tight control of the Production Code Authority, a new breed of movie mercenary-impresario brazenly broke every rule on depicting taboo subjects (primarily sex, drugs and childbirth) in films produced under the auspices of being morally uplifting. More carny showmen than movie moguls, wily entrepreneurs like Kroger Babb and Dwain Esper exhibited these films “roadshow” style, with garish lobby displays, live lectures and souvenirs. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Bret Wood, vice of the film distribution company Kino Lorber talks about curating a new series at Film Forum celebrating this absurd movement in film history entitled “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the last year recorded, fall of 2016, of 1.5 million college faculty members, 47 percent were part time workers. Yet for many adjunct professors, their salary is a small fraction of what the tenured profs in their own department make. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” we examine the fight in New York City over whether adjunct professors deserve to be paid higher wages with Emily Barnett, president of ACT-UAW Local 7902; Cagla Orpen of the Academic Student Workers at New School; Barbara Bowen, president of CUNY's Professional Staff Congress and CUNY adjunct professors Thomas Smith and Chris Wright.

For 20 years, Joe Strupp reported on the journalism industry for Media Matters and Editor & Publisher magazine. Now, in “Killing Journalism: How Greed, Laziness (and Donald Trump) Are Destroying News and How We Can Save It,” he lays out decades of history, expert reporting and insider knowledge in his take on the state of journalism, past and present and what those working in the industry must do in order to survive. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Joe expands on the concepts explored in his book.

As millions of Baby Boomers reach their golden years, the state of retirement in America is nothing short of a disaster. Nearly half the households with people aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all. The real estate crash wiped out much of the home equity that millions were counting on to support their retirement. And the typical Social Security check covers less than 40 percent of pre-retirement wages. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, sociologist Katherine S. Newman talks about her book “Downhill from Here: Retirement Insecurity in the Age of Inequality” and explains why she believes the current American retirement crisis touches us all, cutting across class lines and generational divides.