Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

Produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, “Invisible Hands” is the first feature documentary to expose child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world's biggest companies. Filmed in six countries including India, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Ghana, it is a harrowing account of children as young as 6 years old making the products we use every day. The film marks the directorial debut of journalist Shraysi Tandon and features Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kailash Satyarthi, New York Times writer and two-time Pulitzer prize winner Nicholas Kristof, journalist Ben Skinner, author and activist Siddharth Kara and Columbia Law School professor Mark Barenberg. On Monday’s installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large,” Shraysi Tandon joins Leonard for a discussion of this deeply disturbing phenomenon.

Since founding DLANDstudio in 2005, Susannah Drake has worked on projects ranging in scale from intimate gardens to large-scale urban planning initiatives. Her design for QueensWay transforms a 3.5 mile stretch of abandoned railway in Central Queens into a family-friendly linear park and cultural greenway. A leader in implementing design strategies to confront the impacts of climate change, DLANDstudio' Gowanus Canal Sponge Park is a working landscape that improves the environment of the EPA Superfund site over time. Don't miss Leonard's conversation with this visionary of environmentally conscious design.

“Readers will find many parallels to today’s fraught political environment,” reads the Publishers Weekly review of “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny” by Wednesday’s guest on “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, UC San Diego professor Edward J. Watts. “The powerful influence of money in politics, a delegitimized establishment and the emergence of a personality-driven, populist politicking…His well-crafted analysis makes clear the subject matter’s relevance to contemporary political conversations.” While Americans often compare this particular moment in the nation’s history to the fall of Rome, in this installment of the show, Leonard and Prof. Watts will examine the concrete similarities between the end of their civilization and ours.

Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, for USA TODAY called “Beyond the Call: Three Women on the Front Lines in Afghanistan” by Tuesday’s guest on “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Eileen Rivers, a “compelling story, too long untold.” Page continued, "Rivers reveals the power of women–of women in the U.S. military in Afghanistan, playing a crucial role in intelligence gathering that was impossible for their male counterparts.” Join us for a discussion with Eileen Rivers about these three brave soldiers and her experience documenting them.

Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review called Deborah Eisenberg “a writer of legendary exactitude, and slowness." Her new collection of six stories, “Your Duck Is My Duck,” is the first book of new writing she has released since 2006. “She is always worth the wait," Sehgal continued. “The new book is cannily constructed, and so instantly absorbing that it feels like an abduction. The stories themselves are simple and calmly recounted — a writer is taken up by wealthy patrons and bears witness to their disastrous marriage, a man attends his uncle’s funeral, another takes up a dog-walking gig. But the sentences are wild, full of breakneck swerves; leaps in time, space and point of view; all kinds of syntactic fireworks.” In Monday’s installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Deborah Eisenberg discusses “Your Duck Is My Duck” and the rest of her formidable career.

Who should control the space where a tragedy occurs? From what becomes of human remains to what an onsite memorial should look like, resolving this question often pits the family members of victims against the might of local and federal governments. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the footprint of what was the World Trade Center before it was destroyed on September 11, 2001, the area commonly referred to as Ground Zero. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Jay Aronson, author of "Who Owns the Dead? The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero" and Sally Regenhard, mother of firefighter Christian Regenhard who was killed on 9/11, discuss this complicated and often heartbreaking issue.

Have you ever wondered about the story behind this strange holiday we call Halloween? Wednesday, on a special October 31 installment of "Leonard Lopate at Large" on WBAI, author, artist and practicing witch Mickie Mueller, whose art has been seen on the sets of SyFy's “The Magicians” and Bravo's “Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce,” takes us on a guided tour into the past to uncover the secrets behind the spookiest day of the year. Illustrator of “The Mystical Cats Tarot” and author of the newly released “Llewellyn's Little Book of Halloween,” Mickie will attempt to shine a light on the darkest of annual celebrations.

Of all the divisions in America, none is as insidious and destructive as racism. The documentary “The Long Shadow” takes an uncompromising look at America’s original sin—slavery—and traces its history from the country’s founding to the racial divisions that still plague us in the present day. In today’s installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, director of "The Long Shadow" Frances Causey talks about how her family history led her to make this film and what about it relates to this present moment in our nation’s history.

“‘Basketball: A Love Story’ — directed by filmmaker Dan Klores, who made the 30 for 30 doc ‘Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks’ — has been structured in a way to make it consumable in manageable bites. Though [the series] is a mostly male-dominated affair, the parts that cover the women’s game are especially compelling because those stories aren’t told as frequently. Nancy Lieberman, a Basketball Hall of Famer and current assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings, talks about being told to “act like a girl” when she was growing up, and recalls how she ignored that advice, eventually playing as the only women on a men’s professional team in the United States Basketball League.” – Jen Chaney, Vulture. On Monday’s installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, “Basketball: A Love Story” director Dan Klores talks about what went into creating this unique take on the sport.

“On Her Shoulders” is Alexandria Bombach’s deeply moving portrait of Yazidi genocide survivor-turned-global advocate Nadia Murad. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Documentary Directing Award and the prize for Best Documentary at the recent Camden Film Festival, the film focuses on Nadia’s life as the 23-year-old participates in a dizzying display of diplomacy—from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing media interviews and one-on-one meetings with top government officials. In Friday’s “Leonard Lopate at Large,” Alexandria and co-producer Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown discuss this important film and the inspiring woman it profiles.