Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

When a robot kills a human, who takes the blame? An eerie, eye-opening work of science nonfiction, the new HBO documentary “The Truth About Killer Robots” considers three automation cases, raising questions of accountability and morality in the world of robotics. Exploring the provocative viewpoints of engineers, journalists and philosophers, the film goes beyond sensational deaths to examine more subtle but pervasive ways that robots affect humanity. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Maxim Pozdorovkin, director of "The Truth About Killer Robots" discusses this thought-provoking work.

Directed by multi Award-winning actor and director Joe Mantegna, the Off-Broadway production of “I’m Not A Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce” stars Ronnie Marmo brilliantly chronicling the life and death of the most controversial comedian of all time, Lenny Bruce. Busted for obscenity, Lenny fought for freedom of speech all the way to the Supreme Court before dying of a morphine overdose in 1966 while out on appeal. Don’t miss a conversation about this important production chronicling the life of comedy’s original bad boy.

“The documentary “‘¡Las Sandinistas!” compiles the reminiscences of women who fought with the Sandinistas, the revolutionary group in Nicaragua that toppled the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 and then ruled that country until 1990,” wrote Ben Kenigsberg of the New York Times. “In focusing on the testimonies of women, this film by Jenny Murray aims to memorialize what one participant, the poet Daisy Zamora, calls the ‘revolution inside the revolution.’ It argues that, despite chauvinism and sexual harassment from the movement’s male leaders, the Sandinistas were as groundbreaking for feminism as they were for ostensibly socialist governance.” On Wednesday’s “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Jenny Murray discusses the vital role women played in the Nicaraguan revolution of the late ’70s.

Lonnie Soury has managed media relations and public policy strategies for prominent wrongful conviction cases like Damien Echols and Marty Tankleff. One of his clients is Derrick Hamilton, who served 20 years in prison for murder before having his conviction overturned. On Tuesday’s “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Leonard, Lonnie and Derrick discuss false confessions, government misconduct and why progressive civil rights groups often don’t get involved with issues involving wrongful convictions.

“‘In the Shadow of Genius: The Brooklyn Bridge and Its Creators” is the latest book by photographer and author Barbara Mensch. In it, Mensch combines her striking photographs with a powerful first-person narrative. She takes the reader on a unique journey from recalling her experiences living alongside the Brooklyn Bridge and then traces her quest to understand the brilliant minds and remarkable lives of those who built it: John, Washington and Emily Roebling. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Leonard and Barbara discuss this iconic piece of the New York City skyline.

Andrew Cockburn writes the Letters From Washington column for Harper’s magazine. His most recent column “Blood Money: Taxpayers pick up the tab for police brutality” takes a hard look at the way local police forces are funded in America. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” Andrew and Leonard examine what kind of police force we are getting for our tax dollars.

In his rich history of Italy’s Tiber River, "Tiber: Eternal River of Rome," Bruce Ware Allen charts the main currents, mythic headwaters and hidden tributaries of one of the world’s most renowned waterways. He considers life along the river, from its twin springs high in the Apennines all the way to its mouth at Ostia and describes the people who lived along its banks and how they made the Tiber work for them. Take a trip with us backwards in time, down the banks of the Tiber.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Romania Alfred H. Moses has had a distinguished career in public service spanning more than three decades. After serving as Special Advisor and Special Counsel to President Jimmy Carter, President Clinton appointed Moses to be the American ambassador to Romania in 1994, where he served for three years. This followed his 20-year effort to free Jews and others in Communist Romania. Ambassador Moses’s book “Bucharest Diary: Romania's Journey from Darkness to Light” details the fall of the Communist dictatorship in 1989 and the Western diplomatic efforts he was involved in to help transform Romania into a free, democratic society in the 1990s. Don’t miss Leonard’s conversation with someone who was on the front lines of that historic time.

“The national security expert Keith Mines estimates, as he told Foreign Policy, that the United States faces, over the next 10 to 15 years, a 60 percent chance of civil war—some variety of violent political conflict on a large scale,” writes Jonathan Taplin in his cover article from the latest issue of Harper’s magazine, “Rebirth of a Nation: Can states’ rights save us from a second civil war?” He continues, "there is a solution built into the Constitution for defusing tensions created by such imbalances of power that conservative Supreme Court justices have shown great deference for: the Tenth Amendment, which declares that any power not specifically reserved for the federal government is granted to the states. The origins of the amendment stem from Thomas Jefferson’s debates with his friend James Madison during the 1787 Constitutional Convention.” In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Jonathan, who serves as the director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC, tells Leonard why he believes empowering the 50 states could save the nation.

In his novel “A View of the Empire at Sunset,” about the Dominican-born, British writer Jean Rhys, author Caryl Phillips wrote “there was something terribly illicit about her own waiflike presence in the world.” Though she was the author of revered works like “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Rhys rarely received the literary credit her work deserved during her life or after her death in 1979. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence, Caryl will join Leonard for a discussion of Rhys’s early life and work.